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readyplayerhobi · 4 years ago

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Flower | 37

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff

; Word Count: 5k

; Warnings: Discussions of IVF, sperm donation

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh…incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: Thank you for the reception to the last chapter! :D I think that was the most comments/feedback in a long time for Flower haha. It means a lot to me to have your comments like that <3333 I hope you enjoy this one, perhaps it’s not really what you were expecting. I changed the last few around and the characters had decided this was the way they wanted to go! (it might sound silly but honestly, characters have a life of their own!)

; Flower Masterpost

“Meeps!” Hoseok’s calls from the hallway, catching your attention from where you’d lined up all your baking ingredients on the counter. “I’m heading out.”

Placing the glass bowl down carefully, you wipe your hands clean before heading out and smiling at him brightly. He’s got a dark denim jacket on alongside his new favourite black leather biker style boots, looking suitably rocker and even more sexy. Maybe you had a thing for those boots.

You don’t let him know this though, just watching as he pats his pockets to check he has his phone and wallet before a concerned expression takes over his face. Chuckling, you reach out to tap his hand, revealing the car keys he’s panicking over and causing his cheeks to fluff a pretty rose.

“Thanks. Do you want me to bring you anything back later? I can swing by the store on my way back home once we’re done?” Shaking your head at him, you squeeze at the hand you’re still touching and give him a thankful smile.

“No, I’m good. We’re going to order in later. Maybe that Japanese place that we ordered from the other week or something. Thank you, though. Enjoy yourself, okay? Text me when you’re going to set off.” Hoseok nods before leaning forward, giving you a quick kiss before he’s out of the door.

Standing for a moment, you overhear the sound of his car starting up before turning around and heading back into the kitchen. Grabbing your phone, your fingers tap at the screen as you let the girl’s know that the door is open for them to just walk in. Almost as soon as you’ve sent the message into your group chat, you’re distracted away by the bark from Ciri at your feet.

She’s still pretty small, only a little bigger than she’d been three months ago when Hoseok had proposed, but you think that just makes her look cuter. Thankfully, she’s been very easy to train so far and she’s currently sat so prettily as she looks up at you, big eyes staring intently at your hands.

Another short, sharp bark makes you laugh as you glance at the stuff you’d gotten out to bake with. Crouching down, you stroke her fur and make baby noises to her until her tail is sweeping the floor rapidly.

“Ciri-billy, I haven’t even started yet! You can’t eat them as they are now. Have some patience my darling.” You don’t know why you call your pets the nicknames that you do, or even where the names come. They just tend to pop out of your mouth when you’re talking to them and you just roll with it.

It’s caused Hoseok to laugh more than once to hear you call Kasumi your chicken or Ciri your little pudding. Particularly given you don’t call him by many pet names, instead just using his name or Hobi. Occasionally he’ll get a ‘babe’ or a ‘sweetheart’ but it’s not too often.

“Soon my bub.” Giggling, you give her a final stroke before standing back up and facing the counter. Quickly opening Spotify and beginning the playlist of your favourite songs, you keep your phone within easy reaching distance while looking over the recipe you’d printed out earlier in the day.

It takes only minutes for you to become entranced in what you’re doing; careful measuring of ingredients and the delicate balance of mixing them to create a wonderful treat. Only what you’re making today isn’t for yourself, or even your best friends.

No, they’re for Ciri. You’d found a recipe for grain-free dog treats and you’d decided to try making them. Part of you couldn’t quite believe what you were doing, particularly for a dog, but you would enjoy seeing Ciri enjoy them all. It wouldn’t surprise you if Hoseok decided to try and eat one himself.

You’re so involved with baking and singing along to the music that plays through the Bluetooth connected speakers in the kitchen, obviously something that Hoseok had bought because you’d considered it pointless, that you don’t hear the front door opening. It’s only when you turn to put some of the finished treats onto the wire trays that you’ve lined up that you realise when Chungha is suddenly standing in front of you.

Shrieking, you jump and have to battle to not drop all the freshly baked goods onto the floor while cursing up a storm. Almost immediately she moves to help you, apologising profusely as she yelps when grabbing a falling dog treat, her face twisting as it burns her fingers.

“Oh fuck! Chungha, shit. Are you okay? Oh my god, come over here.” Tugging her to the sink, you turn on the cold water and shove her hand under it, ignoring her whine of pain as the cold water interacts with her burn. The two of you focus on making sure it’s okay, even resulting in you going to grab the first aid kit Hoseok had bought a year ago when a sudden voice interrupts.

“What is going on here?” Two sides of wide eyes turn to Soyeon, letting her see the medical stuff you’ve haphazardly thrown on the side as you’ve looked for the burn ointment you could have sworn was in here. A glance at the treats causes a small ‘o’ to form on her pretty lips before she leans against the counter, elbows on the top.

“Ooh, baking mishap?” Teasing you with a grin and a wiggle of her brows, you nod before handing Chungha the tube you’d finally found. She gives you a smile of gratitude and applies some to her hand, her lips pursed into an adorable pout as she concentrates. You’re so busy concentrating on watching her that you almost miss Soyeon’s hand as it reaches out to the wire trays.

“No!” Shouting, the word causes her to jerk in surprise as she snaps her hand back with almost obscenely wide eyes. Cringing, you realised that you’d perhaps been a little bit too loud and give her an apologetic wince.

“Sorry. I just...they’re not for us. They’re for Ciri! I found a recipe to make some treats for her so I thought I’d give it a go. Think I made enough for her?” Brow raising, you chuckle while gesturing to the ridiculous amount. Perhaps you’d bought a little too many ingredients and gotten just a little excited in it.

There’s no way you could feed Ciri all this before they went off. She’d end up getting sick, and you hated having to clean that up. Which meant you couldn’t because then Hoseok would have to clean it up and you know he’d whine and pout the whole time.

“I can take some back for Mandu?” Soyeon offers, referring to the cute golden labrador that Jungkook and her had adopted two months ago. They’d gotten her from a shelter as a puppy and Jungkook had been the one to pick her name, unsurprisingly choosing something food-related given mandu was Korean-style dumplings.

“Sure, I’ll make sure you can take some back for Eevee too,” Glancing to Chungha, you gesture over to the box on the other counter. “For us though, I did make us some triple chocolate cookies! Not entirely sure how many are left because Hoseok was being a locust.”

That gets a snort from them all as you separate the dog treats so that all three dogs will get an equal amount before washing your hands. Chungha puts the kit away and takes out two glasses from a cupboard before handing one over to Soyeon. The two take a glance inside the fridge before filling them up with fizzy lemonade.

As far as you knew, that was just what Hoseok liked to drink with one of his alcohols. It made it more like a soft drink or something.

Grabbing the box of cookies, you head into the living room and sit on the couch with a leg curled up beneath you. Your best friends follow and sit as well, looking over at the television where Netflix has been paused in the show you’d been watching. One of what was considered to be your worst traits was that you took far too long to watch the ‘popular’ shows, which is why you’d finally started watching Breaking Bad way too late.

Hoseok had been bugging you to try and watch it for years now but you’d just never been interested.

“Ooh, you’re getting to a good bit.” Chungha comments, reaching forward to grab one of the cookies out of the box and munching on it. A soft noise of happiness leaves her as she chews, her butt wiggling as the flavours melt on her tongue.

“Shh, I already have to put up with Hoseok doing that. I don’t need you doing it too,” Pursing your lip into a pout, you cross your legs and grab the sleeping Pikachu cushion from your side before hugging it. “I’m going, to be honest with you as well, I don’t really like this. I don’t get the hype.”

As expected, both of them look at you with shocked faces that make you want to laugh. You don’t know what it is about going against the grain but the reactions you got never ceased to amaze you.

“Are you kidding? Breaking Bad is like...television perfection! The character arcs are just...urgh, exquisite.” Brow raising, you watch as Chungha continues to wax poetic about the show while Soyeon nods along and interjects now and again in support.

“Well, I think it’s pretty boring. And I don’t like Walter. He’s an asshole.” More shocked looks cause you to reach out and take the PS4 controller, exiting the show and moving on to look through the large list of shows and films Netflix had on offer. Without any input from either of them, you settle on The Umbrella Academy.

You’d already watched both seasons but it was something easy to have on in the background while you all probably talked instead.

“How’s wedding planning?” The question comes from Soyeon, who lets her head drop onto the back of the couch. Kasumi is laid out next to her, probably purring contentedly as her soft fur is stroked and she gets all the scratches and love. Ciri is currently curled up between Chungha and you, her tail hitting your thigh gently.

“Good, good. We’ve chosen a date and booked the venue so...we’re going to get the invites done as soon as we can. Before we get onto picking stuff for the actual ceremony and all that, we’re going to book the honeymoon. Priorities, you know. I think we’re leaning towards Argentina for two weeks at the minute but that might change.” You were adamant on exploring the world with Hoseok and Argentina would be your first foray into South America.

Which wasn’t much really considering you’d only ever visited Italy and Thailand so far. But still, when the opportunity arose then you would grasp it firmly.

Chungha finishes off her cookie before brushing at her mouth delicately, “Have you bought one of those wedding planner’s? Where it lists out all the stuff for you to plan and add in ideas and stuff?”

Nodding, you smile at her before gesturing over to the bookcase to the right. Alongside the books, video games, figurines and plushies that had accumulated over time was the binder that you’d purchased only days after getting engaged. Part of you was still trying to get your head around the fact that you no longer had a boyfriend but a fiancé.

And in a couple of months then you’d have a husband. It was odd to think about.

“Ah, it’s all exciting to think about.”

“It is, but I don’t have much more to tell you at the minute, to be honest. We haven’t decided much more apart from that and I haven’t looked into anything else. I’m trying not to overwhelm myself, you know? Go slow.” That gets them both nodding in acknowledgement before they look around.

“Where’s Hoseok gone today?”

“Oh, he’s gone to a concert with Taehyung and Yoongi. Some...weird prog-rock band or something. He’s been playing some of the songs lately and they sound odd but he’s into it so,” You shrug with a wry twist to your lips, causing them to snort. “I doubt he’ll be home before midnight, to be honest, so...we have the house to ourselves, ladies!”

“I mean...I’m pretty sure the most exciting thing we’re going to do is just eat food or something. Which is probably all we ever do when we’re together. You guys are not good for my waistline.” Soyeon groans, patting her flat stomach and you give her a droll stare.

“Really?”

“Yeah?” Chungha backs you up and you can’t help but laugh in amusement, giving her an equally amused stare. She’s just as skinny as Soyeon is but you can’t bring yourself to argue with either of them. Everyone has their issues going on after all.

That thought makes you frown and you reach out to Soyeon, clasping her hand tightly as you watch her with concern. Your sudden change in demeanour causes her brow to lower, gaze skittering away from yours given how intense it was.

“You’re okay, right? There’s nothing wrong or anything you’d wanna talk about?” The sincerity in your voice makes her smile softly, her free hand coming to rest against your own and squeezing it gently.

“I’m okay, I promise. It was just a joke, honestly.” Twisting your lips slightly, you stare deeply into her eyes before nodding slowly in acceptance. After spending so long hating yourself, you didn’t want to let your friends feel even an iota of the self-hatred you had. Especially when they were so pretty anyway.

“So err...while we’re still talking about moderately serious stuff, I have something to ask both of you. I mean...well it’s kinda weird that I’m asking you both but I figure I should ask you to get your permission before asking them.” Chungha is babbling and you tilt your head in question, brow creasing as you wonder what on earth she’s trying to get at. She seems nervous given the way her fingers play with themselves and her eyes skitter away from your direction.

“Dahyun was supposed to be here, you know that, but she’s ended up having to go see her grandparents as her grandma is sick right now. Otherwise, she’d be here too. So...we’ve decided that we want a kid. And we’re looking to adopt, we’ve put our names down and everything but it takes a while to even get approved for that. But we also would like to have a baby as well. Like...one of ours. I know Dahyun, in particular, is quite eager to get to experience pregnancy because she’d always dreamed of having a baby but as you can guess, being lesbians we don’t have the option of getting pregnant so easily.” Now your eyebrows have lifted high, probably almost to your hairline as you listen to Chungha’s nervous words.

It doesn’t surprise you that they’re wanting to have kids now. They’ve been together for a while as well, and you know that they’ve been considering whether or not to get married. For the moment though, they’d just registered themselves in a civil partnership, unsure whether they wanted to go through the whole wedding thing just yet. Though you did not doubt that they would eventually go for it.

Kids were the next logical choice for them, and you felt excitement bubbling in your stomach at the thought of Chungha being a mommy. Even if you didn’t like kids, it didn’t mean that you weren’t excited for your friends when they wanted to have them.

You could imagine that it was a bit more stressful for Chungha and Dahyun as a lesbian couple, as compared to a heterosexual couple. The more you thought about that actually, the more unfair it seemed. People were getting pregnant all the time by accident, but your best friend had to go through so much effort to get the same result.

“So, we’ve looked into IVF and all that stuff. There’s not just IVF, there are other methods too. But if we’re spending money on it then we’d rather have the best chance of success, you know? I’m not explaining it very well but I’m not a scientist either, we’ve researched it a lot and had a preliminary appointment either way. I just...have something potentially awkward to ask.” She pauses at that, her face twisting into a picture of nerves and hesitation.

A glance at Soyeon has you catching eye contact, but neither of you says anything and decide to let Chungha go at her own pace. You have an idea as to where she’s going with this, but you feel that she should at least be allowed to get there on her own.

“So, we can use sperm from a sperm bank, right? It’s all checked over and vetted, but it’s really expensive. And I know that sounds rich considering we’re wanting to have a baby and the last thing they are is cheap, but we’re trying to look at all our options for the moment. What I’m trying to ask in a long-winded way is would either of you be okay if we asked Hoseok or Jungkook to maybe donate? I know it sounds awkward given we know them and you’re both dating them but they can get everything tested and I’d feel a little easier if we knew the sperm donor, you know?” A grimace takes over her mouth, causing you to frown as you reach out and squeeze her leg in reassurance.

“Hey, there’s no need to apologise. I think we’ve all been friends for long enough that something like this can be discussed without ridicule or negative emotions, right?” Looking to Soyeon, you feel relief as she smiles and nods in agreement. “I’m excited for you to start a family! You know I’m not one for kids so I can’t say I understand the whole process you’re going through but I can assure you that I’ll support you and Dahyun the whole way. In terms of a donation...well it’s up to you, Soyeon, and Jungkook. Hoseok literally can’t.”

Glancing between them both, you make a scissors gesture and watch in amusement as both their eyebrows rise in realisation. It wasn’t something you’d discussed with them before, even if Hoseok had been fine about it, mainly because you’d felt Hoseok’s health and your sex life weren’t things to casually talk about. But you felt it important at this moment to make sure Chungha knew that you weren’t being callous.

“Oh? That makes sense though, you’ve never wanted kids and it doesn’t surprise me that Hoseok doesn’t want them either then. So that leaves Jungkook, huh?” Soyeon chuckles, leaning back against the couch and stroking at Kasumi’s ears gently. You wonder what she’ll say, given it’d mean her best friend having Jungkook’s baby before she does.

Some women wouldn’t be on board with that, and you suppose it’s a sign of how much Chungha loves and trusts you both that she’s querying you both with this. On the other hand, you have complete confidence that if you both turned her down then she wouldn’t be offended and they would instead use a sperm bank as she’d said.

Chungha turns more to Soyeon, playing with her hands as her nerves ramp up. It must be affecting Ciri because the dog sits up, tilting her head and staring almost in concern at your friend. Smiling, you scoop Ciri into your lap and scratch behind her ears until her back leg is going.

“You can say no, I won’t be offended. Nor would Dahyun, if she could be here. We don’t expect anything. I just wanted to ask you both first because I felt it’d be rude of me to just go to him instead of querying with you two. You’re my best friends and they are your boyfriends after all. Also, Jungkook can definitely say no too. Once again, we don’t expect him to agree if he’s not comfortable with it. I just...wanted to ask, you know? We kinda considered all of Hoseok’s friends because neither of us has many male friends and we’d love to be able to have a better idea of the donor’s personality, a more detailed medical history and everything. Plus, with us having to do everything medically then it helps to make it a little more ‘normal’ for us. He doesn’t have to be involved in the baby’s life if he doesn’t want to be, otherwise, I’d just like for him to be known as an uncle. In the future, we’d tell them who their sperm donor was if Jungkook was okay with it and they wanted to know.” You find yourself nodding, appreciating the fact that Chungha and Dahyun have thought this through.

While Soyeon might agree to let them ask Jungkook, there was every chance that Jungkook might not want to agree anyway. Maybe he doesn’t like the idea of another woman having his baby, even if he won’t have any rights to it. Some people didn’t like things like that. Or maybe he just didn’t want to, for whatever reason.

The fact that she was making it clear that Jungkook and Soyeon were both allowed, even encouraged, to say no if they felt uncomfortable at any moment settled you. You didn’t want to think that your friends were being forced or coerced into something just because they felt that they had to do it.

“Would it be cheaper though? I mean, I’m assuming they’d have to do tests and stuff to make sure he’s not got any diseases or genetic things that they ideally don’t want to pass on? Doesn’t that cost a lot?” Chungha sighs and nods, her lips turning down slightly.

“We would, but the difference is that I doubt we’d have to do those tests often. So if he agreed then we’d have the tests done but then after that, we don’t pay anything else. The sperm bank that was recommended to us is $1000 for just one vial of sperm. So if that doesn’t work then we have to pay out again. And I’m not saying we wouldn’t pay Jungkook, we’re both willing to offer but the idea of being stung for that much for a tiny vial is painful.” The price makes your eyes bulge while Soyeon’s jaw drops.

“Holy shit! A thousand dollars for something he just washes away? Fucking hell, he’s wasting thousands every time he jacks off. Oh my god, that must be the most expensive thing I’ve ever had in my mouth then.” Snorting, you bite your lip in amusement as you consider how many times Hoseok had ejaculated with you. Though you doubted the man was getting anywhere near a thousand dollars, it was still mind-boggling to know that the price tag on a cumshot.

“It’s ridiculous, right? I mean, okay it’s not really because obviously, they have to do all those tests and stuff. But still! You can understand why we were shocked. Either way, if you or Jungkook says no then we’re going to go that way. I want you to know that we’re not laying all our eggs in one basket. No pun intended there.” That makes all of you chuckle, the mood lightening up as you do so.

Reaching forward to the box you’d placed on the coffee table, you grab another cookie before handing more out to the two of them. Each takes one with a grateful smile before biting into it.

“I’m okay with it. I’m not sure whether I want kids or not and I think we’re just taking it as an ‘if it happens then it happens’ approach. So, to me, I’m not bothered if Jungkook says yes. Plus, you’re my best friend and I’d much rather you have a baby where you know the dad and can get more information from him. And oh my god, Jungkook would make such good babies. They’d be adorable and he has the sweetest personality!” Soyeon squeals, shaking the cookie around in excitement as she imagines his metaphorical children.

For a moment, you imagine it as well and can’t help but smile. You certainly hoped that his babies would all get his big, emotive eyes alongside his endearing personality. Before you can comment on it though, Soyeon continues.

“I will make it clear though, that he doesn’t have to say yes. He might not be comfortable with the idea of having someone he knows having his kid. Or he might not like the idea of not being involved in their lives in a father kind of way. On the other hand, he might turn around and say that he isn’t bothered at all and will give you as much as you want. But I want it to be up to him. Thankfully, I’m not a hugely possessive person so I’m not bothered by the idea of his kids with someone else.”

Watching Chungha’s face carefully, you can’t help but smile at the palpable relief that spreads over it upon Soyeon’s words. That smile vanishes though when you see her eyes glisten, the unshed tears forming fast and causing you to gently put Ciri onto the floor before you’re scooting over to her. Wrapping your arms around her, you make reassuring noises.

You’re not one to get emotional, nor can you handle other people’s emotions, but your best friends are different. They’ve been in your life for long enough by now that you feel the urge to care for them, to listen to their worries and soothe their fears. Seeing Chungha, who is normally so strong, starting to cry at Soyeon’s words makes your stomach hurt.

“Hey, hey!” Soyeon gushes, rushing over to the other side of Chungha until you’re all in some kind of weird cuddle fest. It just makes Chungha let out a laughing sob, the sound thick as the tears slowly start to fall.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know if I was doing the right thing asking you both this. I know it’s something so big and important. You might have told me to fuck off and got angry with me at even thinking of it and I was so scared that you’d be annoyed by it. I mean, how many other people are going to ask their friends if they can have some of their boyfriends’ sperm to knock up their partner?” Wiping at her tears, you tut softly as you try to erase the eyeliner and mascara that’s begun to smear as well.

“I mean, it is a slightly odd ask. I think we can both agree with that,” Soyeon nods in agreement, running her fingers through Chungha’s hair. “But we’re your best friends. You didn’t demand this from us, you gave us a choice and made it clear we can deny it. I’ll be honest, if Hoseok hadn’t got the snip then I would’ve said no. I’m not personally comfortable with the idea of someone else having his baby. But I know that you would have accepted that choice and not tried to push me. Same as you’ll accept whatever decision Jungkook makes.”

“Yeah, she’s right. We love you, and we know you love us which is why you felt you could ask this of us. I’m more than happy to help my best friend start her family and I know that Dahyun has made you happier than anyone else has over the years. If everything works out then I’m going to be the coolest aunt ever.” Grinning brightly, Soyeon manages to succeed in making Chungha laugh softly.

Getting up, you rush off to the bathroom before coming back and handing her some tissue and make-up remover wipes to clean up her face. A brief smile of gratitude is given to you before she proceeds to scrub at her face.

“You’ll both be great auntie’s. Even if you’re not going to be hugely into the whole thing.” She’s looking at you then, wry amusement in her eyes as her lips twist slightly. Feeling heat spread in embarrassment at her words, you shrug and murmur an apology.

“Don’t worry, we won’t push anything on you. That is, even if it manages to happen. Who knows, maybe we’ll get approved for adoption super quick and we go through that first instead? I have no idea what’s going to happen.” At that moment, Ciri decides to make her presence annoy with a shrill yap.

Looking down at the floor, you chuckle at the sight of her annoyed face that she got pushed off the couch. Reaching out, she jumps up and wiggles herself so that she’s half on Chungha and half on you.

“Okay, I think we’ve had enough emotional and in-depth talks for today. Or at least, for this hour. How about we put on YouTube and just start watching animals being funny? Cheer us all up.” Reaching out for the controller, you exit Netflix as Soyeon nods.

The conversation isn’t quite over, you can tell that much, but you know that for now it’s just being put onto the back burner. You don’t have much more participation you can give the whole thing given you’re not being involved in it, but you’re sure that Chungha and Soyeon will talk everything out much more in-depth before Soyeon asks Jungkook.

It’s an important topic but given Chungha’s emotional nature right now, you don’t want to push it any further just yet. Instead, you figure it’s time to lighten the mood a little before any more serious talk can be had.

“Find one of those TikTok compilations, they’re so funny.” This comes from Soyeon as she points at the screen.

“What? No way, you have to watch like 20 TikTok’s to find one funny one. Vine was so much better.”

“Those are fighting words.”

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simp-for-spencer-reid · 4 years ago

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Sugar with a Side of Coffee- Ch. 13: Purple Hyacinths and White Orchids

Chapter 13: Purple Hyacinths and White Orchids A/N: I’m sorry in advance Masterlist

Cate awoke the next day with a headache from drinking so much wine. Her alarm was chiming through her phone and it felt like the sound bounced between her ears. Pressing her palm into her forehead to create a pressure that wasn’t her headache, she let out a large sigh as she sat up in bed. It was her mistake to keep drinking with Spencer’s friends when she knew she had to work the next day. Even though she was paying for it today, she had a really fun night at Rossi’s.

Spencer had driven Cate back to her house last night. Instead of the usual comfortable silence, Cate was blabbering the whole ride in Spencer’s car. Not only was she the chattiest Spencer had ever seen, she was also the touchiest. Not always touching him, but fiddling with the radio, opening all the compartments to see what was inside. A wine-drunk Cate was brazen and not nearly as quiet as she normally was.

“Want to know my favorite flower?” Cate said out loud to Spencer, while rummaging through the pockets of his suit jacket that she was still wearing. Spencer glanced over to her.

“Of course.” He smiled at her. Every few seconds, a street light would shine an orange glow in the car, and Spencer swore this was the most beautiful he had ever seen her.

“It’s Asters. I like all colors but pink would be my favorite I think.” Cate started to take off her shoes in his car. She was struggling with the small buckle on the heel. “Now it’s my turn to ask you a question.” She sat back up, defeated by the small metal buckle. There was a silence as she thought of what to ask him. “What’s your middle name?” She decided. He had just pulled into her parking lot.

“Walter.” He quickly said, before getting out and walking around to open her door.

“Spencer Walter Reid.” Cate tried his full name out. She took Spencer’s outstretched hand and stepped out of his vehicle. She eyed him up, repeating his full name again. “Yeah, that seems about right.” She interlaced their fingers.

Spencer thought that the elevator would be their best option to get Cate safely to her floor. She dug in her clutch for her keys and passed them to Spencer to put into the lock. The two walked into Cate’s apartment just as Shrimp was walking past the hallway with one of the little toys Spencer had gotten him. Cate sat on the bench in her foyer and extended a leg to Spencer.

“Please help.” Cate stuck her bottom lip out. Spencer grabbed her ankle and his nimble fingers just barely struggled with the buckle. He laughed and motioned for her other foot so he could take the other heel off. When Cate stood up, Spencer admired the height difference between them. He could tell Cate was getting tired by the way her bubbling conversation faded. She slid his jacket off, holding it out to him. In the soft light of the hallway, Spencer could see her freckles that peppered the top of her shoulders.

That night was the first time that Spencer had seen her room. It suited her. He pulled back her black and white comforter. Cate laid down, still in her dress, getting settled in. Spencer kissed her forehead and gently took the bobby pins from her hair. He rested another yellow throw blanket over her body. On his way out, he gave Shrimp a scritch and quietly shut the door behind him.

“I feel like we haven’t worked together in forever!” Marta said loudly. Cate walked into The Empty Mug with her sunglasses on. She scrunched her face.

“Why must you be so loud?” Cate closed her eyes, pausing in her step. Marta chuckled.

“Hungover on a weekday? You’re becoming quite the rebel, Catherine.” Marta was putting the last of the chairs down. “It’s getting colder, my parents were thinking of retiring the cart for the season.” Marta informed Cate.

“Aw, I’m gonna miss my cart!” Cate was walking to the back room to put away her things and put on her apron. Like clockwork, soon after Marta flipped the sign on the door from closed to open, Spencer walked in.

“Hey, Sweater Vest, when are we gonna get a visit from Morgan for a change?” Marta joked with him, starting a pot of coffee. Cate came out of the back, her face lighting up when she saw Spencer.

“How are you feeling?” Spencer laughed. He had moved so he was standing in front of her. Cate brought a hand to her temple.

“Oh, you know, dealing with the aftermath of your friends. Remind me not to try and keep up with them again.” Cate laughed. Spencer shifted his weight from heel to toe.

“Would you like to go to the new Italian restaurant on Jefferson street later tonight? Like a proper date?” Spencer looked hopeful. Cate’s smile grew.

“I’d love to.” Cate nodded. She was mentally picking out an outfit already. The end of her shift could not come fast enough. As soon as Spencer mentioned Italian, Cate was thinking of an alfredo dish with bread sticks. Cate felt like she was back in high school, giddy like a schoolgirl for the first real date she’s had in awhile. She supposed she could count the museum date as a date, but she categorized it as friends, since that was all they were at the time. This time, though, their feelings were aired out and on the table and they were exclusive. That’s what made it a real date.

Cate just about ran home, her scarf blowing behind her as she rushed to her apartment. She showered and washed her hair to fix her hat hair. She shaved her legs, even though she planned on wearing tights. After her shower, she walked to her room in a towel, laying out her outfit she had curated all day. A dark green sparkly dress that had long sleeves. It fell above her knee, so she had black tights to cover legs and a black pair of ankle boots with a small heel. She curled her hair for the first time, managing to only burn her fingers twice. She facetimed Marta to show her the outfit and swoon over this date. Seeing the time, she wondered why Spencer hadn’t been to pick her up yet.

She remembered that they hadn’t decided on how they were meeting. Cate figured she’d shoot him a text and let him know she would meet him at the restaurant. Cate’s nose was red and a bit runny from the walk to the restaurant. The restaurant was all lit up with soft yellow lights and it was everything Cate imagined a real date would be.

Cate gave the hostess both her and Spencer’s names. He had made a reservation under his name in advance, despite the full house and the hostess informed Cate she was the first of their party of two to show up. The hostess led the way to a table for two, in a more secluded part of the restaurant that was more dimly lit and the tables in this area all had candles on their white table cloths.

It had been about fifteen minutes before Cate let some negative thoughts cross her mind. She tried calling Spencer, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Cate was on the second basket of breadsticks, pleading with the waiter for a few more minutes. After ten more minutes, Cate had decided to order her meal, not wanting the reservation to go to waste.

She could barely eat. Half of it was boxed up for Cate to eat for lunch the next day. The waiter had come back, telling her there was already a card on file to pay for the meal. Out of pure pettiness, Cate did something she never usually did. She ordered dessert for herself. A chocolate lava cake was brought to the table. The servers were now sneaking peeks at Cate sitting by herself. She pretended not to notice and picked at her chocolate cake that only tasted like spite. Cate finally gave them her own card to pay and left the restaurant with her leftover box.

She hauled a cab to go home, since it was now dark and freezing out. While she was in the backseat, her phone rang. Spencer’s name flashed on the screen. She wanted to answer and give him hell, but she left it for voicemail. She chuckled bitterly to herself thinking of Derek already chewing him out- wherever they were. It’s not like he would tell her what state they were in or where they were headed. Her phone finally stopped ringing, and a new voice message notification showed.

“I am so sorry. I know I promised you a date tonight. What I did was inexcusable. I’m on the jet and I’m an hour and a half out. Can we talk?” Spencer’s voice was rushed with embarrassment. Or was it guilt? After she texted Spencer to meet her at her place the taxi pulled up to her building’s entrance. Cate paid and got out of the car.

She left her box on the counter. She wanted to stay in her outfit so Spencer could see what he missed, but she didn’t want to be too mean. A part of her felt bad for being mean. She knew he had a demanding job and she was lucky to have spent so much of Spencer’s free time with him so far. She knew he was out there, getting the bad guys and making the world a safer place. With a sigh, she changed into sweats and a t-shirt and plopped on the couch with some reality show to fill the silence.

A knock on her door made Cate jump from a sleep. She hadn’t even realized she had closed her eyes. She could hear Spencer frantically knock again. His voice coming from the other side of the door.

“Cate? If you can hear me, please let me in.” Cate looked through the peephole. He was still in his FBI windbreaker. Still feeling mad at him, she opened the door just enough so he could see one eye. “Oh, thank god. I really am an asshole. I’m so sorry.” He started to say.

“Just tell me you got the guy.” Cate’s face was still hard with anger. She sighed. “Tell me you solved the case and it was good for you guys.” Cate blinked.

“Yeah. Yeah we did. It was tough, but we did it. That’s why I was late.” Spencer’s shoulders slugged.

“You weren’t late. Late implies that you would’ve showed up at all. You didn’t. I sat there by myself for an hour.” Cate spat. She took a deep breath in, fingers tapping the door while she made a decision. Opening the door wider, she let Spencer in. He followed her to her kitchen, where she took out a plate to reheat the leftover meal she had. “You must be hungry.” Cate said. Knowing that there was one less killer loose made Cate feel less angry at Spencer. She took out two forks and the two picked at the alfredo pasta together in silence. As they ate, Cate moved closer to Spencer, slowly pressing into his side. She was glad he was safe and home.

Spencer stayed the night, the two snuggled up in Cate’s bed. Cate’s head rested on Spencer’s chest, his arms wrapped around her. In the morning, he had to get up before her and he gave her a quick kiss before leaving to go back to the bureau for another day.

On another occasion a few weeks later, Spencer had promised Cate to another date at a different restaurant. Like before, Cate had gotten dressed and ready- waiting for Spencer to pick her up as promised. She facetimed Marta as she waited for Spencer to arrive. They discussed some new baked goods to try at the shop for the winter. She hung up the call when her doorbell rang.

She excitedly opened it, but it wasn’t Spencer on the other side. It was Penelope. She looked guilty, and when she saw Cate, she looked at her with pity.

“I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Penelope said. In her hands, were a bouquet of Cate’s favorite flowers: pink Asters. Cate sighed. “I can’t stay for long, I have to get back to my batcave, but I also brought you this.” Penelope handed a pint of chocolate ice cream to Cate. Cate smiled sadly at Penelope and thanked her for stopping by.

Spencer’s poor attempt at trying to mend his mistakes was to invite Cate over for more sleepovers and movie nights. He had even given Cate a key to his place. In the cases where he knew he was staying overnight, Cate would let herself in and water his plants for him. Sometimes she would wrap herself in his housecoat. She loved Spending time with Spencer and she was grateful to have met a wonderful male specimen, but she was growing tired of the kisses in passing and waking up alone in a bed where they had slept together. Cate bitterly thought of how she used to be happily single and how she became a wreck of a woman in love.

It happened one day when she came home from The Empty Mug. Spencer had beaten her to her apartment door. She smiled, excited to see him at a reasonable hour for the first time in a while. In his hands, he held a bouquet made of purple and white flowers.

“What’s the occasion?” Cate questioned with a small laugh. “Not that I’m not happy to see you.” She smiled at him, opening the door for the two of them. Spencer brought the flowers to the island. Cate could tell he was nervous. “What’s up?” now she was growing anxious.

“I know these aren’t your favorite flowers. They’re purple hyacinths and white orchids. They both mean sorry. Well, the orchids mean I’m sorry and the hyacinths are more of a please forgive me.” Spencer spoke with his hands, playing with his fingers.

“Forgive you for what, Spencer?” Cate placed her hands on the countertop of the island. “What are you talking about?” Cate shook her head.

“You deserve more than this. I feel awful when I have to leave for a case. You don’t deserve being stood up or waking up alone. And as bad as I want to be what you deserve and what you need, I can’t quit doing what I love. I wish I could but I can’t.” He stammered out. Cate grew angry at him, the floodgates had opened and everything she felt was coming out.

“You don’t get to tell me what I need! You don’t get to decide how I feel!” Cate started. She had come to terms with how their relationship was and how important Spencer’s job was. He was keeping people safe and Cate knew what she signed up for.

“Stop being so understanding, you’re making this harder than it has to be.” Spencer closed his eyes, pressing his thumb and index finger into them.

“Fine. I won’t say that it kills me not knowing where you go. Or if you're safe. I won’t say that it’s been easy, but I've been here, spencer. and I was planning on being here!” Cate yelled. Her throat burned. She didn’t want it to end like this. Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t figure out why Spencer wanted to end this so bad.

After a silent standoff between Cate and Spencer, he curtly nodded and turned out the door. Cate let herself sit on her kitchen floor and Shrimp finally came out now that the screaming match had subsided.

Spencer was off his game at work. The team had spoken amongst each other and had come to the conclusion that Spencer and Cate were no more. That was a lie, Derek had visited the shop to get the details from Marta. Even though things were tense between Spencer and Cate, Derek wasn’t the only one visiting the shop.

“How long are you gonna let him just sit out there?” Marta asked, peering out the window to Spencer, sitting on the bench across the street from the coffee shop. He had been spending all his free time on this bench that faced the coffee shop. He hated how cold he got on the bench. Winter was in full swing now. He hated even more how things ended between himself and Cate. He tried reaching out to her, but Cate wouldn’t answer her phone or her door when he knocked. He knew he royally messed up.

“Until he freezes” Cate replied, not looking up from prepping a coffee order. She tried her best to ignore him. Talking to him or even seeing him would break her. She knew she would let him back in and she would just suffer again.

“Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean you have to be cold hearted” Marta told Cate. Marta felt bad for the two of them. And not just because all the scheming her and Derek had gone through to get them together had failed, but because they were good for each other. Marta made Spencer his usual coffee order and walked across the street to the bench.

“She hates me doesn’t she?” Spencer asks. Marta sighed.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say hate but maybe strongly dislike” Marta said, trying to lighten the mood.

#sugar with a side of coffee fanfic #spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction

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the-american-witch · 4 years ago

Text

Strength In Numbers

Originally a prompt from @supernaturalimagine: Imagine being a hunter with TFW and getting diagnosed with cancer, so the boys help you through everything

Word Count: 1802

Warnings: Cancer, awkward hugs, angst, mentions of medical testing including blood, alcohol as a coping mechanism

A/N: This became a truly self indulgent piece, I wrote this while nearing my own five year anniversary of beating cancer and I thought (and still think to this day) “What if it came back?”

The day you hoped would never happen and dreaded has finally come. It was supposed to be so simple. Go in. Draw some blood. Get the results and OK from the doc. Leave and be on your merry way. There weren’t supposed to be any extra tests. No CAT-scans. No ultrasounds. Not this. Please, God, not this. You were supposed to die on a hunt. Maybe by demon or eaten by a werewolf or hexed by a witch. Not something as ordinary and mundane and everyday as this.

You got back to the bunker as quietly as possible and went to the dining room. You got a pie fresh from the bakery downtown, some pizza, and five bottles of the grocery store’s most expensive whiskey. You didn’t know how your boys would react but you planned on drinking at least two bottles yourself.

You figured the two Winchesters were either in their rooms or the library. Cas, you hoped, would come when you prayed to him. You opened the first pizza box, a meat lovers, and within 20 seconds flat Dean and Sam came and started chomping on the slices like the gigantors they are. Dean let out an indecent moan making you roll your eyes as you picked up your own slice.

The older Winchester eyed the pie. “Pizza and pie? Holy shit, y/n. I could kiss you!”

You wrinkled your nose. “Not with your mouth full of pizza mush you won’t!” You all talked about the current case they were working on. Possibly a ghost in a town a couple states over. You offered to help anyway you could, even if it was playing “sympathetic stranger” to the vics’ loved ones.

After a while you set out four tumblers and filled them while silently praying to Cas.

“Hello, Y/n. You called?” asked Cas.

“Hiya, Cas.” You greeted warmly. “Just wanted to know if you wanted to eat and drink with us. Even got the hamburger pizza you like.” wagging your brows. Cas squinted at you and for a second you worried that he had you figured out. After a moment though he sat down and ate the pizza quietly.

The four of you ate and drank and after about a half hour you felt the tell-tale sign of the warmth spreading through your body. You poured even more in your glass, emptying it and placing it on the ground and replacing it with another. You thought you saw Sam and Dean give each other a look at that, but you were too consumed in trying to figure out how to tell them to care.

You looked up from your glass and smiled a bit too brightly. “Who wants pie? I could go for some pie.” That time you see that all of your boys shared a look. There was no denying it.

Sam was the first one to break the silence. “Um, not that we don’t appreciate all of... this,” he started, gesturing towards the pizza, whiskey, and pie, “but, um, what’s all this about?” At your (faux) confused look he stumbled over his words trying to elaborate. “It just seems a bit...”

“Over the top,” supplied Dean, taking a drink.

Sam nodded in agreement. “Yeah...over the top. We just want to know everything’s okay.” The other two nodded in assent.

You looked at your boys. Your family. You drank the rest of your whiskey in one go, creating a grounding burning sensation in your throat.

“Uh, there is something I need to tell you.” Immediately they tensed up and you rushed to soothe them. “Don’t worry it’s not anything supernatural or anything. Definitely not any kind of monster or demon or ghost or anything.” You let out a bitter laugh and poured more alcohol. “Definitely not.”

You watched Dean furrow and unfurrow his brows as he thought over those words.

But it was Cas who asked, “then, what is it you need to announce that would require so much alcohol?”

You laughed a bit too loud, making everyone in the room, even Cas, cringe. “Um, remember just after we met, we were swapping hunting stories...you saw the scar on my chest and asked about it, and I told you it was from a surgery and left it at that?” The boys nodded. “Obviously that’s not the whole story so.”

“Then what is?” you weren’t looking but you could feel Sam staring at you as he asked that.

“It’s where they put in the device they needed to inject my chemo. I am--I was a cancer survivor.” Met with silence you charged on with your oh-so-tragic-backstory. “Just before my freshman year of high school, I was diagnosed with Leukemia. Because of the type, all I needed was chemo. Hence the device. I’ve been in remission since I was sixteen, and I even made the five-year mark so yay me! Right? They say once you make it past the five year mark you’re basically cured right?” You drank even more and refilled their glasses before replacing the empty bottle for another. You felt a burning in your eyes and throat and you knew it wasn’t from the whiskey. Well, at least not completely.

“I went to the doctor today. Even after the five year mark they wanna check over you every so often. Make sure everything’s all peachy ya know? They got the blood work back and, uh,” you coughed out a laugh, desperately trying to hold back tears, “they found some numbers in the labs. Of course by then I already knew what it was. But they had to do everything by the book. So they did the tests. In the exact same order too. It was like being a scared little teenager all over again,” you stated, the first tear falling.

You heard a shuffle of movement, and felt a bunch of arms wrapping around you. “Um, it seems that, uh, apparently I r-relapsed.” You choked on the last word and started sobbing. “I was in treatment for over two years. I was, was doing so well. I-I’ve been cl-clean so long. After f-f-five years it’s supposed to be like imposs-impossible to relapse!” you cried out between sobs. “It’s not fair!” After that you laid your arms on the table, your head on your arms. Crying so hard you couldn’t speak anymore.

You felt a hand stroke your hair away from the table. Another rubbed circles on your back and two more grabbed your hands. Stroking the back with the pads of the thumbs. You guessed by the jerky movement hand on your back it was Cas’. The hands holding yours weren’t as calloused as Dean’s, making them Sam’s. Meaning that the oldest Winchester was the one stroking your hair, resting his cheek on your head. Of all the ways you imagined having hands everywhere on you...this was not fucking it.

How long you cried you didn’t know, but you did eventually slow down a bit. They continued to comfort you the whole time.

Once it was mostly sniffles and shaky breaths from you, you heard Dean softly ask Cas, “Can’t you do anything? Can’t you cure her?”

You knew it was a long shot, and weren’t even surprised when he murmured, “No. It’s beyond my powers to cure someone of an illness of the body’s own making.”

Dean raised his voice just a bit, but obviously trying to be soft for your sake. “But what about when Zach gave Sam cancer and then took it back?” You had no idea what Dean’s talking about so you assumed this was before you joined them.

“Like you said, it was Zachariah who gave it to Sam, so he was able to get rid of it. Besides, Zachariah was higher in rank than I was. Had more power. Sam’s was artificial. Y/n’s cancer is from her own body. No outside influences. Only an archangel or God himself could do what you’re asking.”

You raised your head a bit, just enough to state, “I did it the last time without God or the others. I can do it this time without them too.” You looked at your hands, still enclosed in Sam’s. “I don’t need God, I just need my family. Even if from afar.” You added on with a weak and watery smile.

Sam gave you a confused look. “‘Afar’? Why--? You don’t see us sticking with you through this?”

“...I’ll be in a hospital. With cops, Sam. With a shit load of security cameras.” Your voice gained some strength. “Not to mention I’ll have to give my real information. DOB, SSN, I’ll be on the grid again. You might be recognized and you can’t risk it. I can’t let you risk it. Not for this. Not for me.” You stated firmly.

You felt a puff of air against your head, and twisted to look up at Dean who was rolling his eyes. Cas looked remorseful, whether it was because of what was happening or because he couldn’t do anything about it you weren’t sure.

You raised an eyebrow at Dean, silently asking what that was about to which he responds,

“C’mon Y/n. Do you really think that something small like security cameras is enough to scare us off? Since when do we run from them?”

You shook your head in exasperation. “Dean, this isn’t a laughing matter. I don’t want to be the reason you’re finally caught and sent to jail. I can’t have that on my conscience. I can’t be the reason you guys are locked up with who knows how many monsters and demons are roaming the world. I can’t-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Dean ceased your rant by turning your chair and placing his hands on your shoulders. “First of all, we’re with you no matter what, so whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with us and we’re not leaving you. Second of all, you know we know how to avoid things like cameras and how to ditch the cops. You’re not doing this on your own, we won’t let you.”

“Won’t let me? What like I won’t let you risk it all for me?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, exactly like that.”

You sighed, looking up and tried to blink back more tears that you already felt coming. “...I don’t get a say in this, do I?”

This time Sam scoffed and you briefly wondered if you should be offended they seem to be rapidly making disparaging you a past time. “Not a chance. Dean’s right, you’re right. You weren’t alone last time and you’re sure as hell not going to be alone this time. We’re with you, y/n.”

You sniffled and looked at each one of your boys. Look each of them in the eye and say, “Thank you.”

#my writing #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #supernatural imagine #reader insert #second pov #angst #cancer #sick!reader #alcohol as a coping mechanism #alcohol use

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druid-for-hire · 6 years ago

Photo

new Hadestown au, ICARUS!ORPHEUS, wherein orpheus is not the world’s greatest musician but rather the world’s greatest inventor/mechanic/tinkerer. his creations are wondrous and beautiful and a miracle. Orpheus his mission is to create something that will repair the world--take what’s broken, make it whole.

Orpheus is still very much an artist--only his art in this AU is visual instead of auditory. and he’s still poor! not everything he makes is immediately useful for survival and y’know, hardly anyone has the money to buy things, and he has a propensity to just. give things away, especially the smaller trinkets he makes. and they take a Long Time to make. so he still works at hermes’ bar

SO!!!

this orpheus is body pain solidarity KDSKFJH

he has a fucked up back from all the heavy lifting he does around the workshop, being hunched over while he works on stuff, and being stuck in weird positions for extended periods of time when he’s working on machines and whatever, especially the bigger ones

also he’s got a wrist brace

he has a set of gear he wears a lot especially when he’s in his workshop

1) his wing pack! he built it himself and he’s proud. the pack was also made to help with his back problems. he doesn’t wear his mechanic gear when he’s working at the bar, but sometimes he’ll leave the wings on because back hurty. also, following w icarus, the wings are kept smooth & together and waterproofed w wax, kinda like a gloss. he reapplies every so often

2) his goggles! every part about the design is impractical (the red lenses and the beak) but i like them. they protect his eyes from flying bits and sparks and sawdust etc. when he’s working and wind when he’s flying

3) his boots! they’re sturdy workin’ boots, and have a talon function to clasp onto and lift things up. especially useful for moving bigger things around the workshop, up to higher levels and what have you, and he gets to flit around the whole space with minimal usage of ladders. (yes, they’re inspired by Vulture’s boots from Spider-Man: Homecoming)

(ALSO. the model of his wings are white crow wings, bc of the myth of Coronis)

because in greek mythology, crows started out white and had beautiful voices and the reason they turned black and got croaky calls is because a crow had to tell Apollo that his lover, Coronis, left him to marry a mortal

and Apollo got so upset he burned the crow and then burned Coronis to death, or burned the crow and then turned Coronis into a crow, depending on the version

(thanks to @princessponies81 for helping me figure this bit out)

so there are some... parallels here

also, IIRC crow wings are elliptical-type wings, meaning they’re good for a lot of control and maneuverability in tight spaces. good for the workshop

also he makes automata too! he has this little mockingbird to help him around the workshop. lots of calls for lots of signals, like how a car will have diff beep signals for low gas or parking brake on or door left open or key left in etc... little bird can measure and alert for lots of things

he’s also less noodle-y than canon orpheus because of how much he uses his arms and legs doing lifting, work, and flying

he’s not like. Built or anything. but hes got some strength to him

he doesn’t just make really good machines either; he’s absolutely as skilled in fine, delicate things as much as the big pieces—he sees the details himself, has to make it himself, he’s as skilled in silversmithy or goldsmithy as he is in mechanics, and i imagine he has skills in metallurgy too. maybe even a bit of glassblowing? just for piece assembly. all his pieces will fit most perfectly if he makes them himself

things like the Silver Swan automaton (i’d link a video but external links are illegal on tumblr)

also... i don’t know if they manage to get married this time, but they at least get the wedding bands

lover, tell me, if you can--who’s gonna make the wedding bands?

@supercantaloupe: the river gonna give us the wedding bands -- he draws the mineral, the stones from the silt, and crafts them himself

SO, he charms eurydice with one (or many) of his dazzling creations that also have usages in practicality and survival

as is the youzhe, she leaves when he gets to obsessive with working on something, holed up in his workshop instead of like. Surviving the winter

they last longer into the winter this time though because again, he does have a couple of machines good for tiding over the winter and surviving, and eurydice can operate them. but he’s too caught up with creating something to fix the world to repair them when they break down

when he leaves, he leaves his mockingbird to take care of his workshop while he’s gone. make sure there’s not leaks or fires, etc., keep everything in working order

the trip to hadestown still takes a long time, but less time than in canon, given that orpheus gets there on a pair of wings, though he gets grounded plenty of times due to bad weather. plus, his wings aren’t really meant for long-distance

so in the end the time still matches up; the events underground still happen on the onset of proper spring

he sails over the wall of the Styx on his wings, but it’s a feat easier said than done; it really is high and wide, just... hundreds of feet tall, and i headcanon that the “wall” is in fact seven layers of fortification because some myths say the River Styx wraps around the underworld seven times

and he is not a high altitude flier

uhhhhhhhhh blah blah something something ... i’m not clear on all the details but here are a few things:

orpheus gets the shit kicked out of him in Papers as usual and the fates hold his wings over him instead of his guitar

i have no idea how If It’s True goes

SOMEWHERE there’s Hey Little Songbird II (thank you to @supercantaloupe for authoring this idea);

it's Hades to Orpheus this time. Ironic, as he sings and flies, a real songbird.

and orpheus, that inspired inventor, that mechanic, that engineer, blessed by Hephaestus himself, being tempted to stay. It's a marvel of engineering, those factories. But they're rough around the edges, dirty, inefficient, unrefined. Imagine all the work he could do. Imagine how grand it would be, with just his help. And imagine how much fun it would be to fix it all!

but since he's fallen in love - and lost her once already - he has to pause and think. it's too good to be true, isn't it? Is it true? Can he really stay here forever, with parts and tools and endless projects worthy of his skill and attention - at least, without her?

ok back to me writing stuffs

there is no Epic I / Epic II / Epic III; the titles are now Trial I / Trial II / Trial III, like trial runs of prototypes, and on the third one it has a double meaning as a trial of judgement

Trial III goes as such:

(and thank you to @ferretteeth for this)

Hades orders him to build. An impressive invention in turn for his life – a chance he gives only because his wife is smitten with interest.

Orpheus gets three days and no more, and when he is finally ordered to come before the throne of basalt and steel he brings his invention. And Hades gives a curt, mocking laugh, because all Orpheus has in his hands is a simple box of bronze, cheap and adorably human.

He almost orders for Orpheus' death the moment he sees it, but then the boy lifts the lid and reveals a mechanical flower. Petals made out of metal rusted rosy, nectar of flecks of fool's gold.

Delicate and beautiful; extremely finely spun, as if the metal were only woven fibers. It is as soft as any silk.

"Where did you get that," the king snaps in a hurry. "How did you know–"

And then, with the twist of a key, the invention reveals to be a music box and long lost chords fill the Underworld.

(i originally had the idea that he builds a planetarium that replicates the summer above, a caught snippet of the thing that hades could never make on a large scale. a beautiful thing with flowers that blossomed and played the old song as hades brushed his hands across them, sun above. but i figured it’s probably more in line with the sensibilities of Hadestown if orpheus had created something less... grand)

so eurydice and orpheus are granted their chance to leave.

i’m not sure what the test is, because he’s got to fly out with eurydice clutched in his talons, and i want him to be as much a victim of his doubt as in canon

but he has to follow this flight path with absolute perfection, down to the flap. you fly too high, the flames of hadestown will catch him. he flies too low, the flames of hadestown will catch her.

i think, in his paranoia, he flies too high, and his wings catch fire

his wings are on fire--his arms are strapped in to them. he’s burning up. he’s burning.

he’s slowing down in his ascent. in a moment, he knows that if they’re going to make it, it’ll only be one of them, and... he’s not going to drop eurydice. he can’t do that to her.

when his wings can no longer climb, he throws her the final distance to the surface. she turns around and reaches desperately for him, but he’s too far away.

he falls. a comet.

he breaks.

the fact is, he dies

but he dies in hadestown. so now he’s just... well, one, no chance of going back aboveground. two, now he’s... sitting at the bottom of that long climb, broken and in pain, surrounded by the charred skeleton of his wings, broken and burned feathers, drips of melted oil and wax, and blood

he’s... there for a long time, just suffering, before someone comes to see if they made it out, and finds him at the bottom

hades sees this as an opportunity to bring him back, let him heal, and put him onto projects, perhaps “to get your mind off of it all,” but. orpheus doesn’t want to work. he doesn’t want to do anything

thanks to supercanteloupe again for co-authoring this section:

Hades says he'll squander his god given talents to just sit around all day but Orpheus won't listen

hades has just zero fucking clue how to deal with a depressed human

"have I not given him all he could want, metal, tools, a workbench? Bed, bread, fire? Strength in his bones? And yet he refuses still? The boy must be mad," he cries, angry

@s-aint-elmo: "i got a new mechanist"

“you ruined a perfectly good talented young man is what you did. look at him, he's got depression"

persephone herself is a mess (less so after Trial III) but she has at least some sense—she is more in touch with mortals than him, spending time with them up on the surface and throwing revels, but also greeting those who lost their lovers/sisters/brothers/mothers/fathers in the winter before

persephone encouraging orpheus to build, not for her sake or for Hades', but for his own. little flowers, little birds, wind up toys and music boxes. something to keep him going

s-aint-elmo: she brings him pressed flowers from the surface, little trinkets, tokens of the green. orpheus only lets the first few wilt and rot at the corner of his table.

flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart

it's a sad, painful reminder

he eventually has the resolve to rebuild his wing pack—better this time, because really, he feels crippled without them after living w em for so long

edit: (and the feathers are black, a la the crow myth)

when hades first sees him like, passing by w wings on his back, he turns to persephone like “what have you been saying to him?” “only what he needs to hear, husband”

he has a great fear of actually getting off the ground at first, though

he’ll perch at the edge of a rooftop, but... doesn’t move. it’s a leap of faith he doesn’t feel like he can take

he always saw air as just a medium to move through, that it would support him, as easy as swimming

now he sees straight through it to the ground

he has burn scars across the entire back of his arms, hands, and fingers

it’s a reminder every time he gets to working

rough patchy skin. calloused fingers from work

big sigh

eurydice goes home.

there is the empty shell of his workshop. his many machines and trinkets and tools and his hundreds of unfinisheds and thousands of scraps of plans, and… his bird left to care for the shop after god knows how many weeks or months.

it flies down and greets her, some string of whistles and beeps she only half understands. then it asks for orpheus

she tells it that he fell; he’s not coming back, it’s too late

the bird sticks by her from there on out, the last “living” remnant of her lover, besides his shell of a workshop

ok i haven’t thought farther than this, please have fun with this au i think it’s a new favorite alongside Unswayed AU & Apartments AU

#icarus orpheus au #hadestown #hadestown au #hadestown fanart #my art

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dakotacrisis · 5 years ago

Text

Deal’s End (5)

Paris and desires are burning this day

(Read on AO3)

---

“Up and at em, love.” Felix smacked Marinette awake with a pillow. “Time for school.”

“Since when are you excited to go to school?” Marinette chucked the pillow back at him.

“How about you get up and stop questioning me? We got work to do and a boy’s bed to get you into!”

“Once again, I am only fifteen!” Marinette dropped out of bed.

“Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it.” Marinette tried to speak but Felix cut across her, “And don’t bother lying, you’re hotter than a desert for him.”

“Surprised you didn’t say hot as hell.” Marinette smirked as she went to get dressed.

“Honestly, it isn’t that hot unless you’re at the burning fields.” Felix caught the night shirt she tossed over the screen, “The whole place is more humid than anything which I think is almost worst. It is warm but it is also moist...I do not miss it.”

“Sounds gross.” Marinette emerged from behind the screen now dressed. “I’m gonna grab some breakfast, want me to sneak you anything?”

“A croissant.”

“Nutella to go with it?”

“Always.”

“Got it.” Marinette walked downstairs and ate her breakfast with her family. She smothered a croissant in nutella for Felix and walked out of the house. Felix followed shortly behind munching happily on his food.

“You know, if you just knocked on the front door you could come and eat breakfast with us. My parents never object to another mouth to feed.”

“Nah. This is fine.” Felix jammed the rest of the croissant in his mouth.

As soon as they stepped outside Marinette shrugged off her cardigan. “Nothing I love more than a late spring heat wave. Why is it so hot today?”

“Global warming?” Felix shrugged. They walked into class and it seemed everyone else was feeling the heat despite the air conditioning. Marinette pulled up the forecast and saw that it now predicted a heatwave for the next couple of days before dropping back down to normal temperatures. Looks like sundress season was coming sooner than they thought.

They sat down for class and Ms. Bustier started the lesson by announcing a project. They would be focusing on temptation in literature. Particularly, they were to focus on the classic literary theme of temptation: knowledge, desire and chaos used as a foil to innocence and youth. Such examples being the biblical creation myth, the greek Hades and Persephone myth, Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, and Spencer’s The Faerie Queen.

Marinette couldn’t help the look she sent Felix who was pleasantly listening to the assignment. Why did she have the itching feeling he may have dabbled with the lesson plan?

“We’ll be doing these in pairs.” Ms. Bustier pulled out a list, “Alya and Kim. Sabrina and Max. Chloe and Alix. Nino and Ivan. Mylene and Rose. Adrien and Marinette. Juleka and Nathaneal.”

Adrien and Marinette! They were paired?! What miracle was responsible for…

Her glee died down as she cast another glance back at Felix. He gave her a subtle thumbs up.

When she turned back around Adrien was watching her with a smile. “Looks like we’re partners.”

“Yeah, so it seems.” She smiled back.

After explaining the rest of the project Ms. Bustier let them get together to start working. Felix stood off to the side unperturbed by the busy students around him. The teacher hadn’t called his name during the pairings. How could she forget to slot him somewhere? Or more likely that was just more of his powers to influence the world around him so he didn’t need to do any actual work. Now that Marinette thought about it she never saw Felix do any assignments but he always turned in homework. Was he miracling his way through the class? What a cheater!

“I’m rather excited about this project.” Adrien took the vacant seat next to Marinette. “It’s so different from what we usually cover in class.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She forced a laugh. They went over the project and created an outline before the bell signaled the end of class. It was a short day so they only had a few more classes before everyone departed the school.

Marinette pinched Felix’s arm as they left. “Did you have something to do with the lesson plan today?”

“Who? Me?” Felix feigned innocence, “What makes you think that I would ever do something like that?”

“The exploration of temptation in period literature? You want me to believe that it was one big coincidence?”

“I gotta have some fun. Also, I worked hard enough creating that lesson plan last night while you were up in your room doodling. I was gonna see some fruition with it!”

“Wait, you actually created the project? You didn’t just put the idea in the teacher’s head?”

“I am a rather smart demon with an affinity for literature. I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

“Felix, the demonic teacher. It sounds like the plot of an anime.”

Marinette was in a happy mood as she ascended the steps up to her room. Maybe she could even work up the courage to text Adrien.

“Whatcha doing?” Felix peered over her shoulder.

“Trying to think of something normal to text Adrien.” She sighed, “You’re my wingman, help me.”

“Got it.” he took the phone out of her hands and turned it off.

“Felix! Why did you do that?” She gaped at him. “I’m finally taking some initiative to be social with my crush and you do this?”

“It’s too soon. You want him to text you first.”

“But--”

“Ah ah ah!” he shushed her, “You asked for my help and you are going to get it and respect my choices. Trust me. It’ll all work out.”

“I hope for your sake it does.”

“Ooh, scary lady.” He tapped the fan and turned it on. “Hmm, I have an idea in the works. I’ll come back to you.”

“Are you actually going to inform me about the plan this time?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you that part one involves you inviting mister perfect over here to work on your project tomorrow.”

“Alright, that shouldn’t be too hard. We do need to work on it after all. What’s part two?”

“Still working on that. But you need to make sure to leave at least a ten minute gap between when you get home and when he comes over.”

“Why?”

“Again, still a work in progress. Just make sure it gets done.”

“Okay.”

The next day after classes concluded Marinette did as Felix instructed and invited Adrien over to her house to study.

“Sounds good.” Adrien nodded. “I need to stop by my house first though. That okay?”

“Perfect. Drop by when you’re done.” There. Adrien was coming over and she had some time to kill before he did.

While Marinette was trusting that whatever Felix was planning was going to help she couldn’t help but add a little something to the afternoon. She had mentioned to her parents she was going to bring Adrien over to the house to study and requested that they make them a special snack. They knew how she felt about him so they were only too eager to help in any way they could.

After school let out and Marinette went back to the bakery she picked up the box her dad had prepared and went upstairs.

“What’s in the box?” Felix asked trying to open it. “Did you order something special for me for being such a great wingman?”

“You wish.” Marinette held the box out of his reach. “These are passion fruit eclairs with italian meringue that I asked my parents to make special since passion fruit is Adrien’s favorite flavor. So keep your hands off them!”

“That’s not fair! Just one!” He reached again.

“Back off devil boy!” She unlocked the apartment door. “If there are any leftover you can--oh my god why is it so hot in here?!”

“Hoo, yeah, it is definitely toasty in here.” Felix pulled on his collar. “I knew it was gonna be warm but damn this is better than I could have imagined.”

“You would like this.” Marinette set the box in the fridge to keep cool. “Remind you of home?”

“Vaguely. But this is all part of the plan.”

“Plan? Wait, did you turn off the air conditioning?” Marinette sneered. “Felix! It is a billion degrees in here!”

“I know, which is why you should change into something more comfortable.” He handed her a stack of clothes he wasn’t holding before.

“Are you dressing me now?” Marinette looked at the outfit choice. A pair of shorts and a crop top. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“I cannot wear this in front of him!” She threw the shirt at him. “Also, when were you in my closet?”

“That’s not important. What is important is that you go get dressed. Adrien may be here any minute.”

“I am not putting this on!”

“Listen, a little primal attraction can help turn the tide of emotion. At the very least seeing you in that outfit should put some saucy thoughts in his head which is a step of getting you out of the friend-zone.”

“It seems dirty though.”

“It’s not like I’m telling you to lounge on the couch in your birthday suit while smooth jazz plays. It is literally just a peek of flesh. Also, you two kept making those food puns yesterday so he’ll appreciate the shirt.”

“All This & Dim Sum.” Marinette sighed as she looked at the cute little cartoon of dim sum. “Fine. I’ll wear it. But I swear if this backfires I am going to invest in a holy water spray bottle.”

Despite her better judgement Marinette changed into the outfit. It was more of something she’d wear around the house by herself. Not for what was essentially a study date. Hopefully Adrien didn’t think it was too weird.

“Now that’s much better.” Felix smiled when she reappeared. “Looking hot, love!”

“Yeah, it’s a million degrees in here!” Marinette grabbed a glass of water.

“That not what I--nevermind.” Felix was looking a little feverish himself.

A knock on the door startled them both. “Lover boy is here.” Felix walked up to Marinette’s room. “Good luck, hot stuff.”

Marinette shook her head. He was so weird. She took a deep breath and braced herself as she opened the door. “Hey Adrien, glad you could come over.”

His gaze raked over her none too subtly and she noticed him visibly gulp. “Me too.” His voice broke and Marinette tried not to laugh. “Ahem, I mean uh…it’s kinda hot in here isn’t it?”

“The air conditioning broke. Poor timing for it too.” She shrugged. “But once you get used to it it isn’t that bad.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Adrien stepped inside. They set up on the couch to work and Marinette grabbed them both something cold to drink so they weren’t dying of heat stroke.

Things were going well enough and they were getting a lot of work done. The only problem was that Adrien was intentionally avoiding looking directly at her the entire time. She knew it! This outfit was uncomfortable for the both of them.

“What are you doing?” Felix popped up next to her out of nowhere.

She yelped and bumped into Adrien. “Something wrong?” Adrien asked. He looked at where Marinette was staring but saw nothing.

“Uh nothing, sorry, thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.” She laughed it off. She glared back at Felix after Adrien looked away. ‘What?’ she mouthed.

“Make a move already.” Felix said, “It has been painful watching you two dance around each other like this.”

She gave him another look as if to say, ‘What do you want me to do?’

“Put this,” he grabbed her hand, “here.” He placed it on Adrien’s thigh.

Oh god...what had he done? Adrien looked over at her with wide eyes. She couldn’t look away and curse Felix out for doing this. She’d look insane. Not that she didn’t look insane right now with her hand still on Adrien’s thigh and nothing to say! Felix put her in this mess and wasn’t helping her get out of it.

“Uh,” she removed her hand, “Would you like a snack?” Her voice was at least three times too high to be normal.

“Oh, um, sure.” His face was impossibly red.

“Cool.” Marinette darted from the couch to grab the eclairs out of the fridge. She passed Felix and shot him a dirty look. He was gonna get an earful later.

She plopped back down on the couch with the box in her lap. “Here,” she opened it, “They’re passion fruit.”

“Really?” Adrien shifted so he could get a closer look. Their legs were touching! “Passion fruit is my favorite.”

“I know.” Marinette smiled nervously. Adrien looked her back in the face with a smile that matched her own.

“I didn’t say anything earlier but that is a cute shirt.” Adrien pointed, “Did you make that?”

“This? Oh no, I bought it at this little boutique. Half the clothes in there have puns of some sort on them.”

“Sounds like my kind shop.” Adrien laughed.

“Yeah, if you want crop tops or bodysuits.” She grabbed an eclair.

“You...uh...you shop there often?” Adrien mumbled between bites.

“Why you wanna know? Want to see if I have matching booty shorts?” She teased.

Adrien’s face caught fire once again. Where had that come from? Felix was still in the corner and gave her a double thumbs up. She was hanging around this demon too much. He was rubbing off on her. She never would have dared say something so cheeky before.

Felix disappeared again and Marinette decided to cool off with the flirting.

They finished their work early and Marinette walked Adrien to the door. “Sorry about the heat.” She apologized, “But at least we finished the project.”

“Yeah.” Adrien looked her over one more time. “Hopefully next time I’m over the A/C will be working.”

Marinette’s heart leapt at the thought of him coming over again. “Yeah, totally,” She grinned. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school then.”

“See you.” Adrien opened the front door and ran into Felix who was waiting on the other side. “Oops, sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Felix shrugged and strolled inside. “It is a sauna in here! What were you two crazy kids getting up to?”

“Our project.” Marinette flicked the side of his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I was informed there was food.” Felix eyed the box of leftover eclairs. He grabbed it before looking back at Marinette. “Looks like the pastries aren’t the only snack in here. Looking good, Marinette!”

“Felix!” Marinette screeched. Adrien was right there!

“What?” he shoved an entire eclair in his mouth, “Adrien, lad, don’t you agree?”

“I uh…” Adrien looked down sheepishly.

“On second thought, she isn’t a snack.” Felix shook his head and leaned closer to Adrien, “She’s the whole damn meal.”

“Out!” Marinette shoved him out the door. “Take the eclairs and go!”

“Touchy.” Felix rolled his eyes. “I’m leaving. See ya!” Felix rushed downstairs and into the neighboring apartment he supposedly lived in.

“I’m sorry about him.” Marinette sighed, “His people skills are not the best.”

“He is certainly outspoken.” Adrien chuckled. “But he was right about one thing.”

“What?”

“You look good.” Adrien nodded. “You always look good.”

“Oh,” Marinette blushed, “Thank you.”

With that Adrien left leaving Marinette with a lot fo warring feelings in her head. She wanted to ring Felix’s neck for his interference but in the end it had worked. Adrien had been flirting with her. Adrien thought she looked good! She was gonna swoon!

“I think that went rather well.” Felix appeared next to her with a now empty eclair box. “Don’t you?”

“YOU!” Marinette seethed. “What was that! What were you thinking? Why did you put my hand on his thigh like that?!”

“Cause you weren’t making a move!” He snapped his fingers and the air turned back on instantly cooling the room again. “And look what happened. Everything turned out fine.”

“And your intrusion right at the end?”

“I was aiming just to get the eclairs before you could offer the rest of them to mister perfect. But I saw another opportunity to talk you up and I think it still worked out.”

“Whatever,” Marinette sighed. “I’m too sweaty and frazzled to deal with you right now.”

She looked up at him and swiped a bit of cream off his face. She popped the finger in her mouth licking the cream off. “I’m gonna get a shower.”

“Right.” Felix nodded furiously. “I’m gonna throw this box away.”

Felix quickly exited the room.

“Okay?” What was his problem? Did he forget there was a garbage can right here? He was out of her hair at least. She bound into the bathroom to wash away the grime of the hot afternoon. Tomorrow was another day and with it was most likely another plan of Felix’s that she needed to be ready for.

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(1) (2) (3) (4) (6)

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(tagged)

@sannsibarr @miss-mysterys-blog @maribug-adrienoir @mermaidreject @corabeth11 @goblinwhoships @symwinter

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #felix #felinette #demon au #writing

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shirtlesssammy · 5 years ago

Text

15x03: The Rupture

Then:

Long Live the Queen

Now:

We start right where we left off. Hunters are guarding the failing perimeter, while our team heads back to the crypt to perform Rowena’s spell. They set to salting the place while Rowena casts her spell. It starts to reinforce the barrier, but then things start to flicker and Rowena is knocked back in a blast. The spell didn’t work.

There are too many ghosts and they’re too strong. Dean suggests killing as many ghosts as possible before the wall falls, but Rowena scoffs at the idea. Belphegor walks off and Cas follows him. Dean gets all soldier mode and starts yelling about not giving up.

*Samwitch Alert* Sam, ever the mediator, hunkers down next to Rowena to ask if she needs anything. He rests his hand gently on her shoulder and they share meaningful looks.

Meanwhile, Bel and Cas wander the graveyard. Bel tells Cas, “You can’t even look at me.” Put a pin in that comment. They wander to the hell mouth.

Sam and Dean discuss strategy. Dean’s pissed at God. (*AHEM*). He’s not going down without a fight. Sam is distracted, staring at a lovely framed Rowena looking at the Book of the Damned.

Bel has an idea. He suggests finding Lilith’s Crook, a horn Lilith used to keep order with all the demons in Hell that she sent to Earth.

If they get it and use it, they can draw all the ghosts and demons that are now topside, back to Hell. Rowena has a spell of her own devising to close the hole in the ground. (Crack thought: This is a healing spell. Maybe she’ll use it on herself to heal her own wound.) The spell only takes a couple ingredients, and she’ll need an assistant. She says this while looking at Cas, but then says, “Dibs on Samuel.” Lololololol. That’s right, girl, he’s all yours.

Someone will also have to lob the spell bomb over the edge of the tear. Belphegor then pipes up asking for help in Hell. “I want protection. Muscle.” Without a beat, Dean responds, “Yeah, Cas’ll go.” And Cas’s look of WTF sums things up quite nicely. Cas has been to Hell before. I mean, yes, uurgh, saving your sorry ass from it, Dean (ok, I’m on no Dean hate-train but it’s easy to lash back at him when he’s being this way.) “Well, it sounds like I don’t have a choice.” I feel like all three members of Team Free Will uttered something along those lines tonight and I’m not well. Dean says, “Go team.” There’s no free will in this house.

Ketch is still in the hospital and is visited by the demon, Ardat. Things don’t go well. (Remember in Temple of Doom when they ripped a still beating heart out of someone and an entire film industry created a whole new rating because of it? Now they’re just showing this shit on network TV at 7pm. What a time to be alive.) (Also, good riddance Ketch. You killed Eileen and I’ll never forgive you.)

Belphegor continues to needle Cas with the idea that he’s not wanted by the Winchesters. Cas tries to ignore him. Cas asks how they get down there. Belphegor isn’t sure and walks closer to the edge to look over. Cas pushes him over the edge and a good time was had by all. Cas jumping in after him, not so much fun.

Bleached hair hunter (what’s her name, she seems cool and I hope she sticks around) shows up with all the spell ingredients for Rowena. Dean reveals that he DOES know about Harry Potter.

Dean hears from Ketch, but it’s not Ketch, and Dean spills their entire plan to Ardat. Question: If Castiel is spelled with one ‘s’ but his nickname is spelled ‘Cass’, why wouldn’t Belphegor’s nickname be ‘Bell’? (Why yes, I do like to rehash centuries old fandom sticking points.)

Cas and Belphegor wander around a very quiet Hell. Everyone is topside apparently.

Belphegor tells Cas that he thinks he’s growing on Sam and Dean, “like a cancer.” Cas tells him that they’re using him and that he shouldn’t mistake that for care (AAGHH, stop). They find Lilith’s vault.

Inside the vault, they discover a demon happily looting the place. He greets Belphegor cheerfully. Looting is fun! When the other demon doesn’t have the horn, however, Cas kills him immediately. Cas is SO DONE. Belphegor leads Cas to the box containing Lilith’s crook and we learn that it’s warded by an Enochian hymn praising Lucifer. How very on brand for Lilith! She was also the only one who could read Enochian so, Belphegor points out, it’s a damn convenient thing that Cas came along on this trip to Hell.

Cas tries to recite the incantation on the box but it fails. Belphegor points out that perhaps it ought to be sung. We as a fandom are then ROBBED of Misha singing the entire incantation. (CC: Shaving people punting things? After a suitable mourning period, of course.)

Dean sets up next to the Hell pit while inside, Sam’s torn between fighting alongside his brother and performing the quieter (but essential) magics inside. THIS SCENE -- this tiny line represents so much of what I hope for Sam’s journey this season. That he’s described as a witch by Rowena, that he’s GOOD at this and leadership… There’s so much potential just waiting below the surface for Sam to give voice and form. “And magic isn’t fighting?” Rowena asks him as he frets. “[Dean’s] doing his part; it’s time for you to do yours.” GUH

In Hell, Cas pulls out the crook. It is indeed a sheep’s horn. He’s about to hand it over when he’s tossed across the room. It’s Ardat! She’s been onto Belphegor since the gates flew open, suspecting that he’d try to take over Hell. Cas and Ardat fight, Ardat arguing that Belphegor’s aspirations are much higher than he lets on. Belphegor kills Ardat and Cas confronts him about her claims. Belphegor laughs and then casts Cas from the vault.

He crows over his victory to Cas. The crook is a siphon that can pull all the souls into him, giving him godlike power. Cas realizes that every move by Belphegor has been carefully planned to somehow get Cas down to Hell with him to open the chest and get him the horn. WHERPS. As Belphegor blows the horn, the Earth and Hell resonate with it. Cas struggles against a forceful wind to try to get back into the vault and stop Belphegor.

For That Shirt Barely Survived Science

In the crypt, Sam and Rowena join hands and start the spell.

They chant together. Sam turns away for a moment to look towards the door, no doubt wondering what’s going on outside. Rowena calls him to task with a gentle smile and “Sam.” GUH that’s what finally broke me. (Boris has always been the more ardent Samwitch shipper but this gentle remonstrance really did me in.) The spell ignites. Dean’s hex bag glows and he hurls it into the pit. Belphegor fills with souls. It’s happening! All the things!

And then Cas tackles Belphegor and the horn ceases abruptly. He punches Belphegor again and again. (It has been a VERY trying couple of days.)

Upstairs, something’s wrong. The rift continues to crumble but Rowena looks…afraid.

Cas is interrupted from punching Belphegor by the demon pleading for mercy in Jack’s voice. “It’s me. Jack.” UGH fucking demons. Cas is visibly tormented by this. He spreads his hand, hesitates, then summons his grace. It...FLICKERS. (Ruh roh) Still, it ignites enough for him to press his palm to Belphegor’s forehead - to Jack’s forehead - and smite him. (Ever since that Shaving people promo, I’ve been expecting Jacks’ body to burn but I never imagined that Cas would have had to be the one to do it. What a horrible, traumatic thing. Excuse me while I wrap Cas in a blanket, then myself, then Boris, then all of you readers.) (Boris: *crying noise, crying noise*)

Sam and Dean compare notes over the phone. The crack is closing but “something doesn’t feel right.” That old hunter instinct is correct, because things are about to get even worse. Rowena wanders across the room while Sam is on the phone. He looks over in time to see her STAB HERSELF in the shoulder. She pulls out her resurrection sachet. “Won’t need that where I’m going.”

Rowena bitterly explains that they’ve bungled their last option. Or, penultimate option. There’s one more spell she can use to contain the souls. “Death is an infinite vessel,” she explains. “It draws its power from its caster.” Tears linger on her cheeks as she reveals that there are only two ingredients: her “still-coursing blood and the last is my final breath.” She’ll absorb all the spirits and after a time, her body will break down and release them all to Hell where they belong. (She will also, of course, be trapped there AND dead which SUCKS BIG TIME.)

Sam tries to talk her out of it but she doubles down. She needs to die and Sam’s the one who must do it. “My real, permanent demise is in your hands. It’s in Death’s books.” Sam tries the “screw fate” argument on her but it doesn’t fly.

Outside, Cas reemerges from the pit and Dean confronts him about the shaky spell. Cas explains that he had to kill Belphegor and the crook was destroyed, and Dean handles it with his customary grace. JK Dean flips the fuck out.

Rowena says something incredibly intriguing to me, then. Rowena tells Sam that she wouldn’t kill herself for the sake of anybody, but she would do it for prophecy. For magic, to which she’s devoted her life. (I’m looking directly at Billie here, who chose to reveal the agent of Rowena’s demise to her. Who MEDDLED and helped bring this about. Billie! What’s your game? Call me!) Sam tries to pull away from Rowena, who has gripped his hand and pressed the knife to her gut. “We’ve gotten quite fond of each other, haven’t we?” she asks and places a friendly hand on his shoulder. I’d love to write that suddenly PUPPIES ran into the crypt and they played with them for the rest of the episode but…

Rowena tearfully commands Sam to kill her, weighing her life against the fate of the world and the survival of Dean. She pushes AAAALLL of Sam’s buttons. Sam embraces her and stabs her right in the gut at the same time. She forces him to look her in the eyes afterward. “That’s my boy,” she tells him and I take a crying break from this recap because this performance is too goddamn much.

And just like that, the first ingredient is in play. Rowena walks from the crypt in her flowing pink gown like a stained rose and souls fly into her. She strides to the edge of the pit and looks at Team Free Will one last time before saying, “Goodbye, boys.” She throws herself down into the depths of Hell. The ground seals behind her. It’s done.

For Buffy Summers “Death is your gift” Science

In the bunker Dean’s footsteps echo down an empty hallway. He checks in on Sam, who’s sitting sorrowfully in his room. Sam brushes away tears before turning to face Dean and I’m basically dead right now.

Dean drops a quick recap: the town is safe, Hell is closed, Ketch is dead. Dean tries to rally Sam. They beat Chuck’s final apocalypse. Hooray?

Afterwards, Dean throws a giant taco party for all their hunter friends. JUST KIDDING! Dean drinks hard liquor alone in the library when Cas comes in.

Cas asks how Sam’s doing and Dean is just…so angry. Dean asks Cas why he didn’t stick to the plan. Cas defends his decisions. “Something always goes wrong.”

Dean rejoins with: “Why does that something always seem to be you,” and I’m feeling sudden empathy for Ketch, for I have also just had my heart ripped out of my chest and held, still beating, up to my face.

“You used to trust me. Give me the benefit of the doubt.” But that’s no longer the case. Cas winds through the issue quickly, with spare words. He’s tried to talk to Dean about what he’s going through, about his failing powers, but Dean freezes him out. Dean still blames him for Mary’s death. Cas realizes it now fully, perhaps. He is DEAD to Dean. This is all delivered so softly. So TERRIBLY softly.

Dean meets this all with utter silence. He is so emotionally shut down, he can’t even shout anymore. There are no broken lamps. It’s just one non-functioning Dean with no words and bare flickers of eye contact.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” Cas concludes and turns to go.

Finally, Dean speaks. “Where you going?”

“Jack’s dead. Chuck is gone. You and Sam have each other. I think it’s time for me to move on.” Dean speaks not a word, doesn’t move a muscle, and Castiel turns and walks out the door. And just like that, Team Free Will fractures.

We’re back to Sam and Dean against the world, and doesn’t everybody just…feel great?

______________________________

Oh, My Still-Beating Quotes:

Get me close to the epicenter, find me a nice protected ghost free space. I’ll patch those crumbling walls right up and we’ll all be home for high tea.

I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let some glorified fanboy get the last word

To put it in American action movie terms, you’ll be carrying the bomb, I light the fuse, you toss it in

Oh Cas, your voice, it’s like an angel

I’ll be a god. Or, you know, close enough

I know this in my bones. It has to be this way.

I know we’ve gotten quite fond of each other, haven’t we?

______________________________

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn 15x03 #the rupture #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #rowena macleod #belphegor #arthur ketch #supernatural season 15

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magnetothemagnificent · 5 years ago

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I wrote this heartbreaking little ficlet about Crowley's fall to accompany my artwork.

"Aww, look who's back from the stars," Gabriel commented mockingly as Raphael joined the rest of the Archangels.

Raphael preferred spending the least amount of time with his peers, enjoying the vast expanse of space, surrounded by his art.

"We're still missing someone," Uriel pointed out as they all sat in a circle.

"Lucifer," Michael narrowed her eyes.

Lucifer finally sauntered in, his maroon eyes shifting about.

"You're late," Gabriel chided.

"Fashionably," Lucifer added with a wink, plopping himself down next to Raphael.

"I hope I didn't miss anything," he nudged the Healer.

Raphael shifted uncomfortably in his seat. All the Archangels made him weary, but Lucifer gave him a particularly uneasy feeling.

"Let's discuss the order of business, shall we?" Gabriel started with a grin.

"The stars seem to be complete," Uriel reported, offering a rare nod of approval to Raphael.

Taking his cue, Raphael began describing all the stars he had meticulously crafted.

The rest of the Archangels seemed bored.

"I guess it's on to the creatures," Michael interrupted.

Raphael went silent.

"They'll be scattered around the Earth, of course," Gabriel continued, "although the finest will be in the Garden."

Raphael had always been curious about the Garden. He loved the beauty of the stars, but he was a Healer at heart. And while the stars pulsated with energy, they weren't alive. The Garden would be full of life.

After the meeting ended, Lucifer called Raphael aside.

"Are you excited to start working on actual creatures?" he asked.

Raphael nodded, confused as to why Lucifer approached him. Lucifer had his friends, he knew. He never met them, in fact, he rarely encountered other angels aside from the Archangels.

"I hear they're going to be spectacular. A whole world, God's creating," Lucifer added, putting a hand on Raphael's shoulder.

The Healer pulled away.

"Look, Lucifer, I don't mean to be rude, but why are you suddenly talking to me? Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel avoid me, and you're always doing something with your gang. Forgive me for being a tad suspicious."

Raphael narrowed his golden eyes at Lucifer, who only smirked with amusement.

"Why don't you walk with me," he suggested ambiguously, taking Raphael's hand.

Raphael tried wringing out of the Archangel's grasp, but was accosted by four other angels who had appeared by Lucifer's side.

"Raphael, meet my friends," Lucifer smiled, leading the Healer away.

"Where are you taking me?" Raphael asked, his voice rising with concern.

He had always been suspicious of Lucifer, but he had never feared for his safety. Now, surrounded by four other, intimidating angels, he wasn't so sure.

"I want to show you something," Lucifer whispered, putting a hand on Raphael's forehead.

They were in a desert. The light was blinding, and Raphael struggled to keep his eyes open.

Sand whipped past his red hair, getting caught in his mouth and face.

He looked around, and he saw two people. They weren't angels, but they had a curious familiarity about them.

"Where are we?" he asked, glancing at Lucifer, who only stared at the pair intently.

A flash of light, and new noises erupted. They were in a market. All sounds and smells and colours milled about. Smaller people raced past Raphael's skirts.

"Who are these?" he asked, but Lucifer remained silent.

He blinked and they were at the base of a looming tower.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" Lucifer finally remarked.

He snapped his fingers, and the tower came crashing down.

When the dust cleared, they were standing on a marble floor, surrounded by polished columns.

Raphael pivoted, and he was at the edge of a sea. A grand ship was coming into view, its sails billowing in the salty breeze.

"Lucifer, what are you-"

It was dark. Sounds of screaming echoes down long, narrow streets. The stench of rot burned Raphael's nose. He saw one of the people, but it was sickly and frail.

Instinctively, he reached out to the person, but the person collapsed at his feet.

"Lucifer-"

He was now surrounded by people. The people were laughing, watching a performance on a colorful stage. Raphael could scarcely understand the dialogue.

"It's poetic, almost," Lucifer remarked.

The stage went up in flames, and the laughter turned to wailing.

"Lucifer, make it stop!" Raphael begged, but it was futile.

They were standing in a box, overlooking a parade. The air was thick with evil as people marched past, whirling in a storm of hatred.

They were in a field of poppies, and gentle music played as young people ran past in a feverish dance.

They were in a bustling city when an explosion rang out, and Raphael looked up to see a tower fall.

They were in a whitewashed room, and a person was cradling a tiny, newborn person.

"These are humans," Lucifer uttered simply, gesturing at the people, who were frozen in time.

"And this," millennia of humanity flashed before Raphael's eyes, "is their destiny."

Raphael looked up at Lucifer. They were back in Heaven, but not back to the innocence Raphael once had.

"Why?" were all the words Raphael could muster before tears ran down his cheeks.

"Because of the plan," Lucifer answered, emotionless.

"I have to go," Raphael muttered, wiping away his tears.

Lucifer watched him as he ran back to his stars. It was only a matter of time.

Raphael was engulfed in conflicted silence when Gabriel approached him.

"Raphael, come now," he ordered, shaking him out of his self-reflection.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's Lucifer. He's starting a coupe."

When Gabriel and Raphael arrived at the scene, Lucifer and his cronies were swarming the Metatron, demanding to speak to God.

When Lucifer spotted Raphael, a devilish grin spread across his face.

"Hey, Raph! Nice of you to join the party!" he yelled smugly.

Raphael opened his mouth to protest, but was stopped by Gabriel.

"Nothing good comes of talking back to him," he told him, violet eyes flickering with anger.

Raphael dutifully remained silent.

The Metatron finally appeared, but the riot could not be satisfied.

"We want to speak to God!" a short, dark haired angel screamed, waving their fist.

"Whatever you wish to ask the Lord, you can ask me," the Metatron explained uneasily.

The crowd booed, but Lucifer silenced them.

"Okay, fine. We'll ask our questions!" he stepped forward.

"Why create the humans when you have us?" he asked boldly.

The Archangels gasped at his audacity.

"Yeah," a blond angel added, "why give them the paradise when they did nothing to deserve it?"

The crowd grew louder, each angel voicing their question.

Raphael was suddenly overcome by the rashness and courage of it all. A lifetime of pent up questions and grievances boiled over, and he broke away from the Archangels.

"Raphael, wait!" Michael screamed, but it was too late.

Lucifer smiled as Raphael fell to his knees.

"Why, Almighty," he asked, tears welling up, "do you create humanity just to make them suffer?"

With that, a thundering voice bellowed out from above.

"YOU QUESTION MY PLAN?" The Almighty roared.

Lucifer stood resolute in defiance, but Raphael trembled.

"FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, YOU WILL BE CAST OUT OF MY LIGHT, AND BE DOOMED TO BE THE LOWLIEST OF THE CREATURES!"

Raphael felt a sharp pain, like something being ripped out of his heart.

He looked down at his hands, and scales had began to form on the hands that once created galaxies.

"No!" he whispered, and the ground opened up beneath him.

He plummeted down, down, down. Desperately, he flapped his six wings, but they were useless against his descent. The scales travelled further up his limbs, and Raphael felt his eyes throbbing. He was lost.

He fell into a pit of boiling sulfur, the brimstone flames licking at his skin, his face, his wings. He struggled to breathe, and felt himself sink down into the couldron. His wings seared, and the stench of burned feathers and hair choked his lungs.

With every will he could muster, he dragged his damaged body out of the ghostly blue flames. Four of his six wings had been burned away completely, and dark tar clung to the shredded, remaining two.

He crawled along the cracked, steaming ground, as angels fell all around him. His strength ebbing away, he sobbed bitter tears of hopelessness.

The Healer collapsed, surrounded by the Fallen.

Raphael opened his eyes to see a grotesque version of Lucifer holding out a hand.

"I can't describe how happy I am to see you alive, darling," Lucifer grinned.

"L-Lucifer?" Raphael stammered weakly.

"Not anymore," the malevolent creature chuckled, kneeling to Raphael's level.

"Satan seems to fit a lot better," he remarked coyly, tousling a strand of Raphael's singed hair. The Healer winced.

"And you can't be Raphael anymore, either," Satan continued.

He looked down at the corner Archangel, who was now more serpent than angel.

"Crawling on the ground. I think I'll call you Crawly," he decided.

"Crawly..." the Fallen Angel mouthed hoarsely.

"Yes, Crawly. Welcome to the Fallen, Crawly."

#good omens #archangel gabriel #archangel michael #archangel uriel #lucifer #the fall #raphael crowley

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thegardenandthegrave · 5 years ago

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My Independent Publisher Roadmap:

[Image Description: Indie Street Marketing branded infographic (red and black text and an empty road in the background). There are five slightly transparent gray boxes in the foreground that contain the five stages of publication as determined by indiestreetmarketing.mn.co. All content in the infographic is also provided in the following text. End.]

for @reshiramgirl88

Oh god, I’m sorry this is so long. Worth the read though, I promise!

Five Stage Publication:

Stage 1 - Drafting

[Image Description: This is where the magic begins, where you start off with brainstorming and outlining and writing. This is the NaNoWriMo stage, the 'let me rant about my WIP' stage. This stage ends with two very important elements. The first is a completed first draft manuscript and the second is an Ideal Customer Profile]

So this is the stage that a lot of writers get stuck in. It’s the quicksand sinkhole of starting over with a new project. There’s nothing wrong with living in this stage, but if you want to actually publish a novel worth reading you have to have two things:

1. A Book.

2. An Audience.

One of my favorite quotes is:

“You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.”

― Jodi Picoult

You have to have a book in order to publish and sell a book. This is the hard part for a lot of authors, the part that they get bogged down by for years and years trying to make their debut novel some perfect specimen of literature.

Guys, my friends, my fellow authors; do not allow yourself to be bogged down by the weight of perfectionism that accompanies years of reading ‘the greats’ and thinking you’ll never be one of them. A favorite line of mine from Charles Bukowski goes:

“ don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it.”

The second part of stage 1, the part that is almost unheard of with writers who are just starting out or plan to publish traditionally, is the ideal customer profile. I’m actually posting a series on the ICP in a few days so I’ll give you a basic rundown and link back to it here when it comes out.

Essentially, your ideal customer profile is a character sheet for the person most likely to enjoy and cherish your work the way it was meant to be enjoyed and cherished.

It’s important to develop your ICP near the end of stage one because moving on to stage two without it means missing huge opportunities to throw in the little nods and subtle glances that will really thrill your audience.

Stage 2 - Revision

[Image Description: Your revision process may be your own, but the fact remains that you have to have one. For some, it looks like printing out the book and redlining it. For others, it's about re-writing the entire thing. No matter which way you do it, this is where you will put in your foreshadowing and arch phrases. This step CANNOT be skipped.]

I used to write a book and then think it was done.

I used to write a book and then put it into a spell checker and a grammar editor and think it was done.

I used to read through it over and over and over and then ignore it for months as I tried to figure out where the missing part of the story was.

I’m not saying these methods are invalid. I’m just saying that after I learned to pull up a blank document side by side with the original and then write the whole thing out again many of the pains of plotting disappeared and my work moved into the professional arena.

Maybe it was the way I had to focus on the words as I read the story again, or maybe it’s because I’m a chronic underwriter and re-writing gives me a chance to unpack certain lines to expand the story.

I think it might be a little bit because revising is a lot like moving houses. You have to decide what to pack up and what to leave behind, and when you’re done you’re left with a newer, cleaner house and a sense of exhausted accomplishment.

Stage 3 - Editor/Beta Reader

[Image Description: While many writers try to skip from stage 1 to stage 3, others try to skip stage 3 altogether. Don't. Stage 3 is what brings your book into the professional realm and smooths out those rough edges. Feedback from your editor and beta reader may loop you back into stage 2 for another round of revision.]

So my first comment here is directed more towards stage 2 and how important it is.

I’ve beta-read too many books that didn’t go through the revision process. I’ve seen too many authors kill their own work over comments from beta readers that could have been avoided if the author revised their work before placing it into the hands of someone who could hurt them.

The connection between an author and their editor/beta reader is a very emotional one. My editor and I are sharing a hotel room at a writer’s conference in a few weeks. My beta reader is refused to talk to me for a week because of how I left the cliff hanger at the end of the last book.

These two people are your gatekeepers.

Where traditionally published books have agents and publishers to keep the tide of bad writing decisions from seeing the light of day, indie authors have their own poor judgment and a burning desire to see their works in a published form.

Your editor can save your asses (literally, the word was suppose to be assess and I accidentally deleted an S during the final touches stage. My editor caught it before I sold too many copies).

Your beta reader can warn you if your character’s personality changed halfway through or if the room for your final confrontation is a blank white box in their minds because you maybe forgot to describe it every single time your characters were in there before.

Stage 4 - Final Touches

[Image Description: This is where we clean up our blurb, tag lines, cover, and formatting. Creating auxiliary content for content marketing, and developing a media strategy. At the end of this stage, we push publish (or place the book on pre-order). ]

This is my golden stage.

This is what I’m going to college for and what I plan on building a media and consulting company around. This is something I’m going to be posting a lot about so I won’t say as much here.

If you have questions on stage 4 publications pls send them to my ask box, I am always ready to help with the marketing.

Stage 5 - Continuation

[Image Description: The connection between the reader and the writer is a unique one, and is something that many indie authors tend to neglect. Your readers are people. They need assurances that there is another book coming, someone to yell at for the last cliffhanger, and a place where they can connect to other readers. As a publishing author, it is your job to provide them a way to connect. ]

Continuation is really almost an extension of stage 4. It’s the engagement side of being an author. It’s where the fandom is born.

This is where I think a lot of authors make their last mistake. Those who manage to get themselves to this stage tend to drop the ball because The History Of Authors clearly states that we are ethereal and unknowable creatures who mustn’t interact.

Times are changing, folks. Technology is changing us. We are a social bunch and we want that connection. We want the validation. We want the community.

An author that can give their audience a sense of belonging, who can engage them openly and respectfully, and who can make them feel as though they are remarkable is going to be the author who has the competitive advantage.

tldr: come ask me questions about author marketing.

#original #writing advice #publishing advice #indie street marketing #ISM advice #I'll tag other people later #when i have the spoons for it

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merculuros · 6 years ago

Text

Chrisker Series

When You Fall For Your Enemy

You Aren’t Alone, You Have Me (Part 2)

Summary: Wesker who still doesn't remember anything, wants to learn about his past. Chris tells him his made-up story which upsets the other. When Chris tries to comfort him, Wesker surprises him with his unexpected reaction which only leaves Chris stunned and confused.

Pairing: Chris Redfield x Albert Wesker

Word count: 2,765

Tags: Crack, Humor, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Alternate Universe: Canon Divergence, Post Re5, amnesiac!Wesker, Slow Burn, Kissing, First Kiss.

Author’s Note: You can find this series on AO3. I was going to add the link but if I do that, the post will not show up in the tags, so here we go.

“Alright, we have some options here; gold, silver and titanium. What do you think?” Chris asked looking at beautiful, shiny rings under the glass panel.

“Why do I help you choose your engagement ring? Can’t you do it by yourself?” Jill answered through the phone.

“You should have thought of all this before you got me in this mess. Also buying rings was your idea and I don’t know about rings that much. You have to help me.” If Chris had to suffer through this, she had to as well. After all she was the reason why he was in a relationship with Wesker. He wasn’t exactly fan of the idea but Jill said it might be necessary not to make Wesker suspicious, he didn’t want to be caught unprepared again.

Jill sighed rolling her eyes “Hmm let me think for a second. …. I think you should go for a titanium or a silver ring. More simplistic, you know.”

“What’s wrong with gold?”

“I have a feeling Wesker wouldn’t like gold or …. maybe he would since he likes to be very dramatic and extreme. Honestly I don’t know, but if there is one thing I can say, most of the time people choose gold for their wedding ring. I mean if you really want to speed up the things” she giggled uncontrollably “and marry him as soon as possible, then buy a gold one.”

“Jill, you are the worst friend I have ever had in my entire life.” Her giggles were turning into laughter before he hung up furiously.

********

Chris stood in front of the door outside his home. Taking one of the rings out of the little velvet box, he put it on. He studied how it looked stretching out his left hand curiously. He was glad he listened to Jill because this ring was just what he wanted if he ever really wanted to get engaged to someone. The outer part was covered with titanium which made the ring look simple but elegant while a turquoise stone was crushed inside creating a beautiful contrast. He wasn’t a jewellery guy anyway, so this was good enough for him.

Fishing the key out of his pocket, he unlocked the door and stepped into the long hallway. Even though it had been two days since Wesker moved in with him, they didn’t have a chance to talk since Chris had to work late at night this week and Wesker would stay at home all day. Whenever he came back home, he would be too tired to do anything other than sleep, so they could barely see each other. He avoided this long enough, but today was the day they would have the long-awaited conversation.

Just when he was about to pass the doorway of the living room, he stopped in his tracks upon seeing the blonde. Wesker was lying down on his belly on the sofa, one hand tucked under his head like a pillow. There was an open book laid on the floor which he must have dropped after he had fallen asleep. Slowly approaching the other, he chuckled lowly seeing what he was wearing today. All these years he had known Wesker, he never saw him wear anything other than black, only the dark blue uniform when he had been his captain. A few days ago when he brought some clothes for Wesker, Chris took upon himself to color his wardrobe a lit bit, so he purchased shirts, hoodies, pants and other type of clothes with wide range of colors just to be petty, which was incredibly amusing to him since he wasted a lot of time and money just for that. Though it was worth the sight he had his eyes on right now. He never imagined the day he would see Wesker dressed so casually; in a pink hoodie and a gray boxer, but here he was witnessing it. If he had to be honest, pink looked exceptionally good on him and the boxer. Yeah … that damn boxer which made his perfectly round ass look perkier and –

Wow, way to go Chris.

Shaking his head to distract himself, he crouched to take the book slowly. His eyes landed on the blonde’s face this time, he found it fascinating how Wesker looked the same and different at the same time. This was the face that was engraved in his mind for years, but his features looked so soft that the man before him was like a different person. His hair wasn’t slid back like the usual style Wesker preferred; it was disheveled and falling on his face. Chris got a sudden urge to run his fingers through the blonde locks to see his face more clearly. He reached out his hand hesitantly. Just when he was about to touch his hair, the other shifted sleepily and Chris withdrew his hand as if it was electrocuted. A few seconds later, red eyes opened languidly and focused on his face this time full with surprise.

“Oh, you are home early today.” Lifting himself up, he sat on the couch and blinked his eyes a few times to protect them against the sudden assault of light coming through the curtains.

“Yeah, it was just for this week. Normally I always come home early.” Chris answered moving out of the way so he could give the other more space. Standing up, Wesker yawned and stretched up his long arms high to bring his muscles back to life. With that movement his already short hoodie was pulled up revealing his toned abdomens. Chris’s eyes must have lingered too long because he heard a low chuckle which made him to look up and see that he was caught looking. Averting his eyes from the blonde, Chris started to fiddle with the book in his hand and Wesker headed towards the kitchen deciding to leave not to embarrass him. Chris didn’t trust himself to watch the man go, since unconsciously he didn't have a problem with looking at the inappropriate parts of his body.

“Uhm … are you hungry? There isn’t much in the fridge, so we might need to go shopping later.”

“I had a bit too much at lunch so I am not hungry. I – I mean We don’t cook that often so we don’t buy a lot of stuff to make food. If you are hungry, I can order whatever you want. That’s normally how I- we do it.” Chris knew he had zero cooking skills, so he would have take-outs or order fast-food most of the time.

“Since we had breakfast yesterday morning, I haven’t been feeling hungry at all and I still feel like I will be fine if I don’t eat anything” Wesker laughed nervously “and I hope you have an explanation for that. Not knowing what’s going with me is starting to scare me.”

Wesker and being scared, ha? That’s a first. A small smile tugged to the corners of Chris’s lips “I will change my clothes then we will talk.” After putting on something more comfortable, Chris headed back to living room, on his way back he realized the air smelled like coffee. Wesker made some coffee?. Which he hoped was the case because that was the only thing he needed right now. Entering the room, he saw two cups placed on the table, hot steam coming off them. Wesker was sitting crossed-legged on the sofa, both hands holding the hot cup and his eyes fixated on the barely visible steam dissolving into the air. When he saw Chris walk in, Wesker gave him a little smile and brought the cup to his lips to drink some, with one hand he patted the space beside him for Chris to sit. Chris averted his eyes quickly, thinking how close they would be side by side but sat down anyway. He didn’t know what to do with this nice Wesker. It would be so easy to deal with him if he was like his old self, but now he wasn’t the ruthless madman with a god complex who had tried to destroy the world over a week ago and it would take a while for Chris to get used to him. As long as he stayed that way, Chris wouldn’t have a problem with living with him either.

“Thanks for the coffee … uhm … is there something you specifically want to ask or do you want me to just tell you everything?” A thoughtful look appeared on Wesker’s face like he couldn’t decide which to choose.

“How did we meet?” he asked suddenly. It wasn’t the question Chris expected but he found it pretty normal since he was his so-called fiance. The idea on its own made Chris want to facepalm so hard that he could barely hold himself not to.

“That would be actually a good start because I think this whole story will answer a lot of questions for you.” He grabbed the cup and sipped a little buying himself some time to go through his made-up story in his mind.

“I am all ears.” all his attention was on Chris now.

“You know, I told you before that we fight against bio-terrorism.” Wesker nodded without even blinking “and this whole thing started with that pharmaceutical company called Umbrella years ago. To sum up shortly, they were experimenting on people secretly and their failed experiments turned these people into zombies. Then one day the viruses they created were leaked in Raccoon city which revealed their true face.” Also your true face. But of course he wasn’t going to say that. “Since then, we have been trying to take that company down. And about three years ago, we found another one of their secret facilities. We went there to destroy it, but then in one of their laboratories we have found you.” Chris watched the other’s face carefully and saw that Wesker’s eyebrows raised in surprise then he continued “It turned out that you were one of their researchers and a virologist. That’s how we met and the reason why you have red eyes and some super-human abilities you may not be aware of yet is because they experimented on you too.” A heavy silence sank down on them. Wesker’s eyes were wide with shock, surely that wasn’t the story he expected to hear at all, but that was the best Chris could come up with half truths and half lies. A totally different story would make it hard for Chris to explain his body’s inhuman nature.

“Are you telling me that I am partly responsible for the destruction that company caused. That’s … that is horrible. You must have thought I deserved what I have got.” His head was hung low and his eyes looked guilty. Chris couldn’t believe what he was hearing, Wesker showing some kind of remorse for all the things he had done before was unreal. Who are you? Wesker’s opposite twin. Maybe it is the best for everyone that you don’t and hopefully won’t remember anything.

“No, I never thought that. Nobody deserves that kind of inhuman treatment.” Not even you. If there was one thing which came out out of his mouth and wasn’t a complete lie, it was this. He never wished that torture on anybody.

“Uhm you said I was one of their researcher. Why would they experiment on me if I was one of them?”

“This is the worst part, I am sorry but you have right to know. The owner of Umbrella, Ozwell Spencer was obsessed with finding immortality which is the reason why he founded Umbrella. To achieve this, he had genetically advanced children all around the world kidnapped to use them as test subjects. For this purpose, they initiated a project called …. Project Wesker” upon hearing his surname, Wesker gasped probably seeing where this was going “these children were monitored, controlled by Umbrella all their lives. And when the time came, they were injected with prototype virus and only one of them survived. That person was …”

“….. me.” Wesker completed his sentence, his voice was barely audible. If Wesker looked upset after learning he had been one of them, he looked depressed now. As much as Chris hated the blonde, he couldn’t lay all the blame on him. Umbrella created a monster out of an innocent child, none could deny that. Chris remembered the day he found Spencer dead with Wesker standing above him. Maybe that’s why you killed him. Learning you had no control over your life pushed you deeper into darkness.

“But you know these are all in the past. They are gone and you can live however you want to without them haunting you.” The atmosphere was getting gloomy, so Chris wanted to cheer him up a bit “Also I have a nice surprise for you.” Wesker lifted his head up and looked at him.

“What is it?” There was no eagerness in his voice for any surprise but he tried to smile anyway.

He dug his hand into his pocket “When you were in the hospital, I realized that you lost your engagement ring on the mission.” Taking out the ring box, he showed it to him “So I bought you a new one.”

“Come on, give me your hand.” The blond held his left hand before him. Chris was mesmerized how long and elegant his fingers were compared to his thicker ones. Putting on the ring, he hummed appreciatively.

Wesker’s brows were furrowed, he was looking at the ring, though it seemed like his mind wasn’t there.

“Do you like it? If it isn’t to your liking-”

“No, it is perfect. All the things you have told about my past …. I don’t know, I feel empty. My whole existence in life was planned to be nothing more than a test subject. I have no family, no friends. I have no one. That’s a lot to take in.” He laughed but there was humor in it. At this moment, Chris wanted to switch off that part of his brain which made him feel bad for the blonde but he couldn’t help himself, he had a soft heart.

“Oh, wow. I am really offended. Am I no one to you?” Chris asked jokingly, his remark leaving a smile on the blonde’s face. “You know you have me.” The brunette added squeezing his hand reassuringly. He didn’t know why he felt the need to comfort the man like this but he did it anyway. Their eyes met and Chris saw that Wesker’s eyes lightened with something else now. Before he could understand what was going on, he felt the blonde’s lips on his own. His eyes widened in shock, his body unable to move. Wesker’s hands held onto his shoulder, pulling himself into the brunette’s lap to sit. Despite his bold move, his lips were shy against his. The blonde must have interpreted his lack of reaction as a refusal, so he blinked his eyes a few times feeling hurt. He was pulling himself back to apologize, then Chris held the back of the blonde’s head and locked their lips together again. He needed to play along with this game to make this fake relationship seem real. Though deep down he wasn’t complaining about the kiss. Chris shared a lot of kisses with both men and women in his past relationships before, but Wesker’s might be the softest he ever kissed. For a second, Chris debated if he should deepen the kiss or not. Then Wesker leaned back, their lips separating with a loud pop. The blonde had that disheveled look again but this time his cheeks were slightly pink too. Chris was sure he looked almost the same.

“You know, I saw potato chips in the kitchen today. I say we watch a movie or something. What do you think?” He asked, his eyes looking anywhere but Chris. Chris could have laughed at how uneasy Wesker looked trying to change the subject to make the situation less awkward, if he wasn’t feeling the same.

“Yeah, good idea. I would like that.”

The blonde quickly climbed down off his lap and disappeared into the kitchen. Of all people Chris knew, Wesker had to be one to kiss him and what’s worse was that he actually enjoyed it as much as he didn’t want to admit. Burying his face in one of the pillows as if to hide his embarrassment, he whined. He was feeling like fate was playing a cruel game on him and he didn’t know how to free himself from it.

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fairy-changeling · 6 years ago

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The first time Loki met Thor, the boy was five years old.

Loki had not meant to leave it so late. It had judged Frigga's pregnancy by the standards of his own people. He had assumed it would take her as long as it might an Frost Giant to birth a child and he had calculated accordingly. He returned to Asgard on the eve of Thor's birthday, in those calculations he had been correct, but in everything else he had been wrong.

He had swept into the throne room in a flurry of snow, head to toe in black, filled to the brim with the bitterness he had been cultivating since he last saw Odin.

The room had fallen silent in horror. The only sound had been that of swords being drawn, the noise of metal bared to air and Loki had welcomed it, had welcomed the power it showed he possessed. Odin had been fearful of him, and well he should have been.

"I have a gift for your child," Loki had said, the words so innocuous but he saw Odin flinch.

Then that smiling, blond haired child had run forward - so big and happy, and completely unafraid of Loki - eager for the gift Loki had brought him and it had dumbfounded Loki.

He wove something from the air - a glittering ball of sparkling lights to amuse a child - then vanished as quickly as he had come.

He returned the next year, for Thor's sixth birthday, with a present already planned. This time it was sugar and nectar that he spun in front of Thor's delighted eyes, creating for him a delicious edible gift that hardly lasted the day. Loki did not mind. He enjoyed watching Odin's face as the man looked on, watching to see any sign, any hint of betrayal. Loki had laughed and created further treats; enough in the end for the whole of the royal court.

He came again the next year and the next. Each time he made Thor something new - fire that did not burn him, a cloak of feathers that hid him from his father's eye, and each time Thor delighted in Loki's attendance. Loki stayed late into the night, weaving magic that was nothing more than parlor tricks but enchanting the young prince and his friends.

Then Loki had begun to adventure, bringing back with him not only books and trinkets of the ancient worlds, but Thor's birthday gifts as well.

From the land of the dwarfs he bought Thor a beautiful clockwork toy and Thor managed not to break it until the night before his next birthday.

Loki gave him then a gift befitting the fact that he would one day be a grand warrior - a hammer that could only be wielded by Thor himself, although the boy could hardly support its weight. From that day forward, Thor was never without his beloved hammer.

Loki went to the home of the dark elves and returned with stolen treasure. For Thor's birthday that year he gifted the youth fine iron gauntlets inlaid with precious rubies - ones Loki had plucked from the elves’ treasury himself.

The next year he returned with spell work - a bow that would never miss it's target when fired by Thor.

In that year as well he chose to make his home in Asgard.

Loki had been a nomad, travelling as the spirit took him, never remaining for too long. The only constant in his life had been his return at high summer for Thor's birthday each year. Now though, he staked out ground and worked his magic and grew great spires of ice that jutted up into the clouds. He crafted himself a tower from that ice and lived there, overlooking the royal palace.

Queen Frigga taught him some of her own magic that year as well, simple spells that Loki had never taken the time to learn. She taught him to make flowers bloom and Loki grew roses - black and sharp thorned and he let them grow over his tower, reminding all who looked upon it that he was still Loki, the god of lies and betrayal and they should not take his new closeness as any sign that he had softened.

He gave Thor a belt that year and smiled at Thor's surprised face. "Wear it when you fight," he told the young man. "It will make you stronger still."

For Thor's fourteenth year, Loki appeared late in the day, and brought a strange music box. It was wooden, and when opened had nothing inside it, but it played whatever Thor desired - sagas or chants, battle songs or ballads. It had within it multitudes, anything Thor could want to hear and into the night the people of Asgard danced, carried along by the music Loki had gifted them.

It would be Thor's fifteenth birthday in three days. Despite having a year to plan, to find himself a greater gift than he had in the years before, Loki was without anything.

He had adventured extensively in the autumn, but nothing he felt worthy of the prince had come into his possession at the time. He had studied and studied his books of magic during the winter months and nothing had presented itself as a possible present. In spring he had sought to renew his tentative friendship with the Queen in order to understand better what she thought Thor might like.

Loki had learned much about what his mother wanted for him, but he had not learned what it was Thor wanted.

It had been easy to please Thor when he was a child. All Loki had needed to do was create spun sugar. Now it grew harder with each passing year.

Thor was becoming a man and Loki had no idea what to gift one such as he.

Magic prickled at Loki’s skin, alerting him to an intruder, alerting him that his wards had been compromised.

Loki had warded his tower as soon as he had built it. He was not so foolish as to think he was accepted in Asgard. He knew that any night there might come soldiers from the palace, ready with swords and fire, to drive him out or kill him. They needn't come at Odin's request, although Loki assumed they would have his blessing if they managed to rid the king of the eternal thorn in his side.

He stood up and strode to the tower window, flinging it wide so he could look down.

He recognized the tousled blonde head immediately. Only Thor would be brave and fool hardy enough to try to climb the roses surrounding Loki's tower. The thorns were sharp on purpose, to discourage such acts, but it seemed that Thor had not an ounce of sense in his head.

"You are impossible, Odinson," Loki shouted down to him, frowning. "And why are you here? Your birthday is not for three more days."

He did not want to invite anyone into his tower. He certainly did not want Thor to think he could come and climb up to see him whenever he liked. He did not wish for anyone to assume that they could have him whenever they wanted.

Thor had often begged for him to stay after the cock had crowed and his birthday was over, but Loki had refused. He had refused invitations from Frigga to visit throughout the year; or the grand summons that came during some state visit or feast to which Loki had been begrudgingly invited. He liked his privacy. He liked to come and go as he pleased, on his own terms. He did not wish for anyone, especially a spoiled prince, to believe that he was entitled entry into Loki's personal sanctum.

All the same, he reached down, feeling his magic flow through his fingers. The thorns blunted and the brambles grew thicker, sturdier, easing Thor's way up to him.

it was infuriating how Thor smiled up at him, all sunshine and the confidence of youth as if he’d had known Loki would bend his wards and his protections for him.

#thorki #because I have been thinking of fairy godmothers #and loki turning up to threaten odin #because they have history (ohhh)#and then thor just being thor and charming loki even though he tries not to soften his heart to him #loki sweeping into places being dramatic #it is fun to play with myth backstory #and make loki some kind of strange magical uncle figure who shows up with presents #and who thor is a bit obsessed with #and there is a ridiculous level of research in to thor's gifts

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intothewickedwood · 6 years ago

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Once Upon A Time Rewatch: 1x10 7:15 am

This is my favourite episode of OUAT and my favourite Snowing centric!! I’m excited to watch!

Mysterious August is Mysterious

I wonder if August stopped outside of Regina’s house on purpose.

Bless Mary Margaret rushing like anything to see David.

She didn’t order anything. Is she allowed to do that?

She is the cutest. Sitting there to read a book even though she hasn’t ordered anything.

The way she looks at him!! So longingly! My Snowing heart!!

David’s keeping it cool. “Can’t let MM know I come here at 7:15 am everyday just to see her. Oh MM! Imagine seeing you here!”

Man, the way they look at each other is breaking my heart. Let them be together Goddamn it! But also don’t hurt the cinnamon roll Kathryn.

Look at Kathryn being cute in the car!

Emma caught MM. I wonder how long she had her suspicions.

Emma’s just trying to look out for MM. She’s trying to protect her from falling in love with a married guy because she knows that kind of pain and doesn’t want her friend to suffer.

“I just like to come here to see him.” “So, you’re a stalker.” I guess it is kinda stalkery.

“It’s not like I’m following him. I just know that he spends his mornings with Kathryn, gets coffee, then drives to the animal shelter to start work at 7:30. And then he’s home around 5.” Wow Mary Margaret! She’s got it bad. How the hell does she know all this! Has she waited outside his house! Omg! God bless xD.

How does she know they pick up Chinese for dinner on Thursdays though??

That was nice of Red to bring Snow all that food.

Is Red’s name actually Red or is it a nickname. These are the questions that haunt my nightmares.

Oh, I guess it’s been a month since Snow met Charming. That was quite the meeting. They both can’t stop thinking about each other. That’s true love y’all!

I really like the look of this scene with the fog and the water. It gives it such an ominous feeling.

Red must have told Snow she could find Rumple at the docks. I wonder if people usually meet him there. It must be near where he lives.

The atmosphere makes Rumple look way creepier.

How did he create the exact potion she needed out of just the water? It must be either magic water or he could’ve made it magic I guess.

Why does King George call him James when there’s no one else around but the two of them I wonder?

Gosh George, he’s already sacrificing his happiness for your kingdom, now you want his heart too??

Only now have I realised that the bird David used to deliver the message to Snow is probably the same one Mary Margaret found in Storybrooke.

I wonder if birds are used in the Enchanted Forest like the owls are in Harry Potter.

I just love the idea of David working at the animal shelter.

“If I wait, she could be lost forever. Completely alone.” Poor Mary Margaret can’t bare the idea of anyone being alone like she was all those years and like she probably feels she will be now that David is with Kathryn. It breaks my heart to think of her being so lonely all those years.

David being worried about Mary Margaret going out in the storm <3

Emma looks adorable in that hat.

This is the most civil Emma and Regina have been with each other up until now. If there’s one thing they can come together with, it’s Henry’s safety.

“He must be one of the untold millions you cursed.” Oh Emma, you have no idea.

Are the birds magical? Like how do they know where to send the message or who to send it to. I wondered the same thing about Harry Potter. Is this something I should try?

I’m so confused about Grumpy’s story. I use to think he was saying that his love double crossed him but I can’t see Nova doing that. I think he’s saying he bought a stolen diamond? I’m not sure.

Oh my God, that was quite the tumble. My poor child! That must have hurt. It’s so lucky she managed to grab onto that thing. That would be so scary!!

My poor baby’s terrified!! Help her!!

Thank God David followed her!

That is so Goddamn romantic.

He cares so much about her, he couldn’t let her brave the storm alone <3

Mary Margaret’s desperation to get the bird to her flock is the most adorable and heart-breaking thing. She’s not even thinking about her own safety. She’s just so caring and determined to save this bird from a life of loneliness.

I love rain scenes!

This episode is everything. So romantic. I love it so much!

But surely that fire wouldn’t be enough to burn the castle down.

This rain scene is awesome!

I love this Cabin.

David trying to get MM warm <3. He’s a caring boy.

This whole cabin scene <3. It’s my favourite scene. It hurts my heart. You can tell that it’s breaking Mary Margaret just being around him but not being able to be with him.

My poor child!

Emma being adorable in that outfit.

How comes no one else seems to be in Granny’s? Where’s Granny or Ruby?

I love August being mysterious. You never know what he’s up to.

“I’m going to make you wait. You’re going to have to wait a long time and watch me carry it around. Hauling it to strange and mysterious places. And with each passing moment, the mystery will become more tantalizing. Your imagination will inflame, but so will your frustration. Never knowing – only guessing – what could possibly be inside that box?” August! Why are you like this!

He loves being enigmatic.

She got the bird to her flock! “Okay girl. Time to join your friends. You can do it.” This means so much to her <3. What a cute.

This curse is so cruel. They have real feelings for each other but can’t be together. Poor babies.

George, why you gotta be like this.

Why can’t they just be together!!

I love Kathryn. She deserves the world. I really like David and Kathryn’s scenes. They could’ve been great friends.

The dwarves being there for Snow <3. At least she doesn’t have to be alone anymore.

In the last episode, Regina watched Snow walking with the dwarves in her mirror so this episode’s events must have occurred at the same time as those of True North.

Emma being supportive as Mary Margaret watches 7:15 go by <3. Their friendship is everything.

If only she’d waited before she took the potion.

They can’t stop seeing each other! They picked the same time!

This is one of my favourite Snowing kisses. The music! And then the way the music changes when we see Regina was watching!

Has Regina been watching them at 7:15 all this time?

I loved this episode so much!!

#ouat #once upon a time #snowing #snow white #david nolan #prince charming #mary margaret blanchard #ouat rewatch #ouat rewatch 2019

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vinylackles · 6 years ago

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chapter two: the calling

a story about an angel, a hunter, a choice, love, a kitten named bumble, and will

masterlist of chapters || ao3 link

To say he was shocked was an understatement. The last he had heard about God’s whereabouts he was off in a far galaxy, experimenting new creations with Amara. And now here he was. In front of him in the woods in Nebraska, with a tiny kitten in his hands.

“Hello Castiel. It’s been a long time. I see that you found my friend.” He looked down at the kitten, who had very casually curled up in a tiny ball and was lulling itself to sleep with a few purrs in his palm. If Cas’ thoughts hadn’t been otherwise engaged, he probably would have smiled at how precious it was.

“You’re back,” is what he said instead.

“Indeed. Apparently, I missed quite a lot.” His diction was more formal, and he looked less like Chuck and more like the ethereal being that Cas had spent his entire existence hearing about; a man to be feared. His hair was shorter, his beard shaved. No graphic t-shirts and converse. Something had changed on a deeper level, though Cas couldn’t put a finger on it.

“Yes. You could say that. Why are you here?”

“I needed to speak with you.”

“And you choose here?” Cas looked around, almost sure that there would be other settings that would be better suited for the meeting. Especially since it was God after all, and he could choose anywhere he liked.

“It’s private, and I needed to speak with you alone.”

“Dean is right around the corner,” Cas warned. “He’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Your lover won’t realize that you’re gone, don’t worry. If our conversation runs too long, I’ll… pause things. Our matters are much more important.”

Cas waited, a nervous knot forming in his stomach. What could God want with him? Something so important that he’d come out of hiding again just to tell him. He doubted that was a good thing.

“The natural order of this place has been… disrupted. When I created the arch angels, I never really considered the fact that they may be able to travel between different dimensions of time and reality. In all honesty, I never thought that a Nephilim as powerful as Jack would come into being, so the thought never worried my mind. But alas, as I so often seem to be, I was wrong.”

“As I’m sure you guessed, I’ve been off with my sister. And she has taught me much more than I could have hoped for. But most importantly, she has told me that I need to take responsibility for the things that I create and bring into the world. I need to make it right.”

As unnecessarily wordy as his response was, Cas understood the point that he was skirting around.

“So you know about Michael, from the apocalypse world. And you’re here to stop him.”

“Not exactly. I won’t need to take any action in that. Besides, I have a weak spot for my children, I often find it hard to kill them. I highly doubt I’m the best suited for the job.”

“The humans on this earth are your children as well. Dean is your child, and you left him here to be taken over by your power hungry, malicious, evil son. Or had no one filled you in on that little incident.” Cas couldn’t hold his tongue, although he knew that he should. He could feel the heat rising in him, filling him to the fingertips.

“Easy, Castiel. I am fully aware of everything that has happened, and I know how frustrated you must be. The way I see it, it makes you perfect for the job.” “The job?”

“I need you to stop Michael. To put an end to him.” His tone was very matter of fact, and it angered Cas to his deepest fibers.

“Right. I haven’t been trying to do that since he came over here in the first place or anything. Let me get right on that.”

To the angel’s surprise, God simply laughed. He bent down slowly, shifting the kitten that Castiel had almost forgotten about into one hand, gathering a few leaves together to make a bed of sorts before sitting the tiny creature down amongst them. He wiggled a bit at the new surface, peaked one blue eye open, and then settled back down into sleep.

“Your anger will help fuel you. When I made you, I knew that you would be protective to a fault. You will do anything to protect those you love the most, which means you will do absolutely anything to stop Michael. That is why I need you Castiel. You do not know the meaning of quitting, you never have.”

“But I’ve been trying. I’ve exhausted everything that I know how to do. How am I supposed to stop him?” Cas hated the way the words sounded. He felt like a small child, begging.

“Did I ever say that I wouldn’t offer you any help? There is someone who knows far more about Michael. He’s a… closer relative of his, I suppose. I would like you to speak to him. Meet him in the Amazon as soon as you can get away without anyone noticing. He will help you in your mission, which should remain between you and him. No need for Dean to know, for his own sake.”

“How am I supposed to get to another continent by tonight?”

“Oh, right. I forget sometimes, about the fall.”

And with a simple snap of his fingers, Castiel’s wings were restored. The feeling was euphoric, like stretching out a muscle that had been cramped for as long as he could remember. He had forgotten what it felt like, to have his feather touched by the wind, not just the cold air on the bare bones of the skeletal remains. He let them stretch to their widest range, relishing in the sensation again. It took him a moment to realize that his grace had been restored to its full capacity as well.

“I wouldn’t keep him waiting long Castiel. As soon as you can get away from Dean with no detection, you should go. I’ll be watching. Remember why you rebelled, and who you can trust. Oh, and if you don’t mind, take care of my friend for me. I think you’ll find him quite endearing, and possibly useful.”

And with another snap as simple as the first, he was gone. Cas stood there for a moment, unable to make his feet – or his wings now he supposed – move. The whole interaction had come so far from left field he wasn’t sure he even wanted to catch it. But he supposed now he didn’t have much of an option.

“Well, I guess you’re coming with me since I’m responsible for you now.” Cas sighed, reaching down into the leaves to scoop up the kitten, who meowed very quietly and rested in his hand. He carefully opened one of the pockets of his trench coat, placing the creature in it. He curled up, completely content in his cozy new home.

Like riding a bike, he tensed the right muscles and suddenly he was up in the air again, flying freely. It was glorious, so glorious that he almost forgot that he was trying to be discreet, and appearing out of thin air was the opposite of that. At the last moment, he veered to the left, landing behind the frame of the van. Good thing too, because Dean was already outside the garage, a small box in his hands.

“There you are. Where the hell did you go?” He said as soon as Cas emerged from behind the vehicle.

“I was just… walking.” The lie felt odd on his tongue. He hadn’t lied to Dean in a long, long time.

“Right… Well, you ready to go? I was thinking we should stop for lunch, I’m starvin’.”

“Sure.”

And so Cas followed Dean back to the impala, coat pocket heavy and mind heavier.

“So. These five dates. You wanna elaborate?” Dean asked. At least, that’s what Cas thought he asked, considering the words were inhibited by an un-humanely large bite of a burger.

“I would assume your thoughts would be the same as mine. You were present during them, after all,” Cas murmured.

“Well, the first one you came up with was way off base. So, I’m curious what you think the other ones are.” Dean continued eating, shoving fries in his mouth at an alarming rate while Cas began to speak.

“First one was the night you came back. The second one was that hunt in Arizona. We left Sam back in the hotel and drove all night, out into the desert. Third was our Halloween movie marathon. Fourth was the hunt in Indiana, though I didn’t enjoy that one particularly.”

“What!? That one was fun! I took you to that weird antique shop and bought you that creepy snow-globe you wanted!” Dean looked honestly offended.

“Yeah, and you almost got yourself killed the next day. If I had to decide between a Christmas decoration with small woodland creatures and mediocre snow, or avoiding my boyfriend’s death, which one do you think I’d choose? Although, if I’m so worried about your death I suppose I should make you order a salad once in a while. You’re going to get heart disease.” Cas eyed the grease on the plate that had snuck out the back of Dean’s burger.

“And I need to start burning Sam’s Men’s Digest mags before you get your paws on ‘em,” Dean grumbled. “You only said four dates. What’s the fifth?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was a small meow, though it didn’t come from Cas. Unfortunately, Dean heard it, even over the bustle of the diner. Damn hunter’s senses.

“Do you see a cat in here? I swear I just heard one.” He looked around, ducking a little to peak under the nearby tables.

“No. There is most definitely not a cat in this diner,” Cas panicked. If he could sweat, he would be doing so. In all honestly, he had forgotten about the little creature in his pocket, and he wasn’t sure how Dean would react. He hadn’t really considered it, with everything else he had going on in his brain.

“Castiel.” Dean rarely used his full name. He assumed that if he’d had a middle or last name, Dean would have used those too, for emphasis. “You better not have a cat in your friggin’ lap.”

“I don’t have a cat in my lap.” Cas said proudly, much to Dean’s relief. “He’s in my pocket.”

And as if he understood, the kitten popped his head up, two bright blue eyes wide and awake, and seemingly very interested in all of the patrons in the restaurant.

“Cas! You can’t just carry kittens around in your pockets. What the hell, man!?”

“But he’s mine. And I love him.”

“Yeah, alright, I hear yah. But you coulda just told me. He probably belongs at Harry’s anyways; he has a bunch of strays out there. He gives em’ all food, they live happy lives.” Dean was eyeing the little thing, who was paying him no attention, and instead watching the sunlight glint off of the fork resting beside Dean’s plate.

“This one is my responsibility. I’ll care for him. I know you don’t particularly like cats. I also think it’ll be good for Jack to have an animal around.”

The kitten launched itself then, wiggling out of Cas’ pocket and jumping, just barely clearing the table. Its little paws slipped and skidded on its quest towards the shiny object, and Dean snatched it and held it under the table, the waitress missing the incident by just a few seconds.

“Anything else I can get you gentlemen?” She asked, popping over to their table.

“Just the check ple-OW!” Dean said, suddenly bringing his hand up to suck on his finger.

“You alright dear?” The waitress looked concerned, her eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them.

“Oh yeah, just peachy.”

Cas felt a tiny furry tail rub against his ankle where his pant leg had ridden up a bit. He looked down to see the kitten pawing at the pattern of bees on his socks. Cas found it immensely amusing.

“That lil son of a bitch bit me!” Dean murmured across the table as soon as the waitress was out of earshot, still cradling his finger.

“Well, you startled him. Here, let me see.”

Reluctantly, Dean held out his hand, revealing the scratch mark and one tiny wound, with a single drop of blood. Cas swiped a finger over it, healing it instantly.

“Better?”

“You didn’t need to use your grace for that, it was just a scratch.”

“I have plenty to go around.” Cas immediately regretted the words. He was never going to make it without blowing this whole operation before it had even begun.

“Yeah? Since when.”

Cas was saved from answering as the waitress came back and set the check down on the table. Dean reached for his wallet, throwing a twenty down before rising quickly from his seat. Cas discreetly reached under the table and scooped up the kitten, who seemed very sad to be moving away from the bee socks he was so intently playing with. By the time Cas made it to the car, Dean already had it started and was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

“If that thing scratches up my Baby’s leather, we’re leaving him in Nebraska, you hear me?”

“His name is Bumble, and he won’t mess up your precious car.” Cas had just enough venom into his tone to let Dean know that he was going to give him this one thing, and the hunter seemed to get the message.

“Yell if you see a pet store anywhere. We’ll have to get him some food, and a box.”

“And toys. Babies need toys, for stimulus.” Dean didn’t have to ask to know that Cas had read that in one of the parenting books he’d studied before Jack had arrived. At least the knowledge was going to get some use. And even if he didn’t want to admit it, seeing his angel in the passenger seat with the tiny kitten in his hands was adorable to say the least.

Cas sat Bumble down on his lap, only to have him jump again, this time onto the dashboard. The pair watched as he looked out the windshield for a moment, then curled up on the vent, fur blowing slightly from the outpouring heat, his purrs matching up with the rattling of the Legos below him for the rest of the ride.

It was as if Christmas had come early in the bunker for both Jack and Sam. They were head over heels in love with the little fur-ball that was now running around freely as if he owned the place.

“Bumble! Bumble, come back!” Jack would call out each time the new family pet even went out of eyesight. And he seemed to already know his name, because he would come prancing back with a new toy in his mouth – Cas had essentially bought the entire aisle of fluffy mice and small balls filled with bells. Sam was subtler, but each time Cas would leave the room and come back, he had moved to follow the little guy around, occasionally picking him up to scratch his ears.

But, even with all the playing and love, when Bumble was ready to sleep, he meandered his way past Jack’s white sneakers and around Sam’s pile of files to follow Dean as he decided to head to bed.

“I thought you were going to put that car part on? And you were going to teach me how to do it.” Cas said, moving to follow him as well.

“I’m beat Cas. Bed is the only thing I’m doin’ right now… unless you have other plans.” Dean raised a suggestive eyebrow, earning an eye roll.

“We’re not having sex tonight. You said you were going to teach me about cars.”

“I’m sorry sweetheart, but I’ll show you tomorrow, okay? Promise. C’mon, let’s go to bed.” Dean’s eyes went soft, a mixture of sweetness and sleep. It made the pit of guilt in Cas’ stomach swell.

He was stalling. If Dean went to sleep, he’d have no excuse for staying and not following God’s instructions. He supposed no one was forcing him to partake in this, but a shot at Michael was hard to pass up. And he knew his older brother well enough to know that unless he was dead, he was still a threat to Dean.

Try as he might, Cas couldn’t think of a valid reason to keep Dean up any longer than he already had. So instead, he followed him around closely, even to the bathroom to watch him brush his teeth. He didn’t know what he was going to be told tonight, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t going to be easy, or quick. And that meant more time away from Dean, which was the last thing he ever wanted. When Dean spun around from the sink, he had a frown on his face.

Cas couldn’t help it – he leaned forward, closing the space between them for a quick kiss. It wasn’t their first, but they had only shared a few, and Cas missed just barely, catching the corner of his mouth.

“Try that again,” Dean murmured, a gentle encouragement. Cas leaned in again, kissing him a little harder, getting the angle right that time. He tasted like spearmint and it brought a smile to Cas’ lips, which lasted until Dean effectively kissed it away. Dean never missed. He’d had much more practice than Cas, the angel supposed.

“What’s gotten into you today, huh? You aren’t usually this lovey-dovey.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Cas asked.

“’Course not. I just wanted to make sure that you’re alright. Is it about me not calling you my boyfriend, back at Harry’s? Cause, I was gettin’ there, I swear. It’s just kinda new, and I’m not used to saying ‘my boyfriend’, yah kno- “ Cas cut off his ramble with another kiss. He had already forgotten that interaction entirely anyways.

“Didn’t miss that time. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.” Cas took his lovers hand in reassurance, pulling him gently back to their room. They climbed into bed after shedding a few layers that Cas knew he was going to have to put right back on. He didn’t care. Being close to Dean was all that mattered for the moment. He relished in the weight of him next to him on the bed, and as he began to doze off, Dean curled onto his side, right against Cas. His head rested on his chest, his hand coming up to grasp at Cas’ shirt, as if he was afraid that he would leave in while he slept. And it broke the angel’s heart to know that his fear would come true, at least tonight.

And so Cas waited until Dean was snoring soundly to move out from underneath him and don his clothes again. He picked Bumble up from where he was laying on some laundry and placed him on the end of the bed, as if the small creature could replace his presence somehow.

And then, he flew.

chapter three: weapons drawn

any feedback would make my day :’)

#this was kinda a filler chapter #but things shall REVEAL THEMSELVES MWAHAHAHA #also bumble is important but I also love him the mostest SO #hope yall like cats lmao #jad #destiel #destiel fanfiction #deancas

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mittensmorgul · 7 years ago

Text

Not all choices are created equally.

I'm really tempted to write something about free will vs Dean's "I don't have a choice" in 13.23, because he did have a choice... but the other option was to drink copious quantities of alcohol and wait for the inevitable blast wave, you know? Everyone keeps quoting the "we'll always end up here" nonsense from 5.04 as if it proves they never really had a choice. But the thing is, they absolutely didn't "end up there." Lucifer is DEAD.

DING FREAKING DONG, BITCHES.

They're in the bizarro world version of that original "end" because all their previous choices had led them here-- all those times they chose wrong (and right, or just chose what they could live with in the aftermath), all those times Lucifer didn't get shoved back into the box, and God's choice to leave Lucifer alive in the first place after 11.22. This is the result of Sam and Dean being left to clean up God's mess… So in a way it was inevitable, because you can't just lock up problems and hope they stay locked up. And AU Michael is actually a problem of Lucifer's own making… if he hadn't deliberately tried to spit in Chuck's face by making a nephilim, that doorway to AU Michael's world would never have opened in the first place.

At that point, Sam and Dean absolutely DID have choices. But by 13.23, all their choices boiled down to "which is the lesser of two evils."

Sometimes there just aren't any GOOD choices.

And anyone suggesting that Dean should've just locked the door to the bunker and waited for the end, as if that was in any way the better option… well I’ve got to really side-eye the rest of the entire season worth of choices and consequences. Because that’s the rub of free will. Dean said it way back in 6.20:

CASTIEL: I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN: Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL: You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will-- DEAN: You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!

Since then we’ve learned a lot about not only what Free Will is, but we’ve been more and more blatantly reminded about the fact that all choices have consequences. And sometimes Big Choices have Cosmic Consequences. Consequences that affect the future, narrowing down the potential future array of choices.

It’s no longer a matter of Free Will vs Fate at that point, it’s a matter of navigating through the consequences of PAST CHOICES until-- like Jessica the reaper told Sam and Dean in 13.19-- the only option is to go nuclear or go home.

Jessica: Rowena’s changing people’s fates. She’s killing them before their time and when a reaper shows… Sam: She torches them too. Jessica: Yes. Dean: Why? Jessica: You’ll have to ask her when you stop her because if she keeps this up she is going to throw off fate…. The whole greater machinery of death. Sam: That means? Jessica: Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? Dean: Ashton’s second best movie! Sam: { looks at Dean incredulous} Yeah of course….. one small mistake can cause all kinds of bad. What about it? Jessica: If just one person dies before their time a lot of things that were supposed to happen… don’t. The ripple effect from just one early death can affect hundreds of lives and changing their fates changes even more fates until things just become sincerely unfortunate and we have to hit the reset button. Sam: What does that mean? Jessica: Usually? A mass kill off like the Black Plague or a mid sized war… Something to wipe the board clean. So… you’re help in avoiding that would be greatly appreciated by everyone.

So there is a sort of “fate” attached to death, because dying is the one thing we’re all fated to do, you know? It’s the one thing nobody can wiggle out of (well, unless they’re Winchesters, apparently, but the whole premise of the show has always been that they’re different-- and yes I’m including Cas in that because duh). And messing with life and death this way-- not to mention messing with alternate universes which was Billie’s concern in 13.05, wherein resurrecting Dean to deal with that mess was the lesser Cosmic Consequence-- has a wider-reaching series of consequences. It’s not fate, but the inevitable result of screwing with the Natural Order.

(and quick lil reminder that in 13.05 DEAN CHOSE to die, accepted his death... and Billie basically said... NOPE THAT’S NOT AN OPTION TODAY, in a tidy flipping of everything Dean ever thought Free Will was about.)

And this is what Death has been teaching to Dean since… ever. (see 6.11 for the major exposition on this point)

I've seen people saying it was pointless to have Dean say he didn't have a choice (and people who then make the entirety of his decision based on saving Sam and no one else), but Free Will doesn't mean there's always going to be a GOOD choice to be made. I mean, that's not how life (and the inevitability of death) works. It's not always "easy 100% virtuous option" vs "terrible and easily condemnable option." Sometimes the choice is between fighting and surrendering entirely, and there is no other viable option. (and on a meta level, from outside the narrative, this is the sort of narrowing down of options that drives the story to this sort of do-or-die choice that makes season finale cliffhanger drama happen.)

(and again, Naomi reminded us again in 13.18 that everything eventually ends... even when it doesn’t)

And surrendering entirely is just... not an option for Dean in any universe.

And of course Dean chose to fight, and NOT JUST TO SAVE SAM >.>

I mean he could have let Sam die and felt helpless, but there were absolutely stakes beyond that, like seeing Lucifer eat Jack's grace, and knowing what Lucifer would do with that sort of power. He hadn’t been up to his usual Threat Level all season long. Dean had seen a much weakened Lucifer in 13.13, but boosted with Nephilim Grace, and lacking any other reason not to just burn the world down, this was absolutely a DEFCON 1 situation here. Nuclear war was imminent.

(and largely out of Dean’s potential array of choices, here. It was basically a choice between which nuclear warhead he was gonna fire, and he chose the one he had at least a remote chance of being able to pilot himself)

(*spends 30 seconds imagining Dean waving a cowboy hat around as he rides the nuclear bomb as it’s dropped a la Dr. Strangelove*)

Lucifer’s depowered state and general apathy, and then his desire to get his hands on Jack to use him for his own purposes of elevating himself to a sort of stolen godhead, remaking the world (sans humanity, unless they learned their place and worshipped him because he believed he deserved that) in his own image, and basically using the entire planet to give a big fuck you to God… I mean, these aren’t obscure and unknown things about Lucifer. These have always been the stakes when he’s been in play. Dean learned this firsthand in 5.04.

But there’s also Jack. You know, the kid they spent the back half of the season trying to rescue (along with Mary) from the AU? The kid that Cas had told Dean he'd literally argued his way out of the Empty to protect? I'm... ?????

It’s not possible for Dean to look Cas in the eye and NOT acknowledge that he’s just as focused on saving JACK (who just had his grace ripped out in front of his eyes after finally rejecting Lucifer’s status as his “father” and completely throwing his lot in with Humanity, making the ultimate declaration of his place in the universe as a member of the Winchester Family and TFW 2.0) as he is on saving Sam. To say otherwise is just… disingenuous at best, and completely ignores more than half of the season’s major themes to do so.

Just because Dean said he didn't care about himself, but did care about his brother a few episodes earlier... that doesn't make him saying yes to Michael ONLY about Sam. More than half the season centered around the rescue mission for both Jack AND Mary, and to reduce the emotional struggle Dean went through over them to something entirely unimportant in this ultimate moment of choice is just… gross. Even if Sam had died in 13.21, Dean would press on to get them home, or or what did Sam even die for?

Going back to the Cosmic Consequences of previous choices, Billie sort of warned him all along that messing with the AU was gonna lead to trouble, and here we are. I wonder what Jessica the reaper reported to Billie when Dean said yes? And I keep thinking about this from 13.05 when Dean chose to die:

Billie: That doesn't sound like the Dean Winchester I know and love. The man who's been dead so many times but it never seemed to stick. Maybe you're not that guy anymore, the guy who saves the world, the guy who always thinks he'll win no matter what. You have changed. And you tell people it's not a big deal. You tell people you'll work through it, but you know you won't, you can't, and that scares the hell out of you. Or... am I wrong?

She said that to him like she was issuing a formal challenge. That was the bait that dragged Dean through the rest of the season, and it got an immediate boost when Cas came back to him at the end of that episode. Cas gave him the emotional carrot to push through to the end.

The reapers and their "clean hands" policy can't interfere, but Death can do the usual Death thing of nudging Dean to where he needed to be. Giving vague warnings, and even vaguer directions… Like in s6 Death’s warning about “the souls” didn’t help change the ending, but it kept Dean pushing in the right direction to eventually understand; even if he couldn’t stop the bad thing happening, at least he’d be forearmed to fix it once it was broken.

So going back to Dean’s choice to say yes to Michael. It was always only ever going to come back to this choice-- not in a replay of 5.04 or even 5.22, but in the ultimate subversion of it, with a few conditions attached. And in a truly disturbing twist, this is exactly what Jack promised in 12.19…

Cas in 5.22, after successfully stopping the original Apocalypse, at great personal cost:

CASTIEL: You got what you asked for, Dean. No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same. I mean it, Dean. What would you rather have? Peace or freedom?

Dean asked for freedom, and he got it. Just more of the same. But in 12.19, Cas swallowed the kool aid Jack’s powers served up-- the promise of peace and paradise. And this is the result. In 5.22, Dean wasn’t terribly content with the consequences of his choices, and I mean yes they very much did save the world, but at what cost? And he couldn’t even begin to see the future consequences of his cosmic interference yet (see: the rest of the series post 5.22 for evidence).

And this result in 13.23? Is the cosmic opposite. For reasons entirely beyond their control (because the Winchesters are not omniscient nor omnipotent-- not even Cas or Jack), and all they’ve ever done was the best they could in any circumstance, it’s unfair to suggest that this ultimate choice Dean had to made wasn’t entirely the result of a season-long (or even series-long) flow chart gradually cutting off options until the final coin toss could only be between these two final options. Peace or freedom, flee or die, Michael or Lucifer. He’d just reached the last chapter of the Choose Your Own Adventure story, where the only way out is through.

Sure, Dean absolutely had a choice. He could’ve chosen to barricade the door to the bunker and wait for their inevitable death at Lucifer’s hand, but we know what he does in that circumstance (hello 12.22). So even if it gets them all killed, he’ll use the grenade launcher, because really, Dean will always choose to go down fighting rather than surrendering to fate.

And now we know that drive has ultimately led him to the unthinkable choice to accept what he’d always been told was his fate. Because it was either that or watch the world burn.

And yes, he knows exactly what Michael wanted to do to our world, and he understood there was a bigger risk to this choice than anything else he’s ever had to do. He knows exactly what Michael intended to do to the world, because in addition to the rescue mission aspect of the back half of the season, this was the other Major Threat, and the other side of the coin that Cas suggested might be why he was resurrected. Michael brings War. And Cas believed he was resurrected to also stop that war from happening.

So there Dean was, looking Cas in the face. Cas, who’d been Dean’s personal win in 13.06, and yet NONE OF THAT was stated by Dean directly TO CAS, while Cas repeatedly stated that his two-pronged reason for even being alive was 1) to protect and save Jack, and 2) to stop AU Michael from making war on their world.

(not even touching on Cas’s PERSONAL issues with Lucifer, and his personal mission to-- if not kill him outright, at least grind Lucifer’s face into the ground in every possible way, from everything about how impotent he was to even stand up to the least of his creations to adopting and teaching human love to the greatest of Lucifer’s creations… I mean, THIS WAS NOT INSIGNIFICANT TO CAS)

And in that moment, immediately after Cas had to watch his first mission go up in flames as Lucifer undid Jack and stole his grace, and had to confront this ultimate personal failure against Lucifer and the ultimate personal failure of his promise to Kelly, and his ultimate personal failure to protect Jack… even in that moment there was still one final choice to be made.

Dean clearly negotiated terms (which we don’t know the entirety of, but hopefully will learn in 14.01), because Lucifer was the immediate threat RIGHT FRIGGIN’ NOW. Not only to Jack and Sam, but to the entire universe. They had one weapon that could stop him, which was utterly useless without an archangel to wield it. But they also had one slightly used archangel in the scratch and dent bin and one perfect vessel…

Sometimes the choice is really that limited, but to say it wasn’t a choice is doing a disservice to the entire season, and to the entire series going right back to the start.

#spn 13.23 #that's what free will is #dean is the center of the universe #COSMIC. CONSEQUENCES.#billie the reaper #using your words #winchester family dynamics #there's always a choice but sometimes all your options suck donkeys

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lovelylogans · 7 years ago

Text

my true love gave to me

ships: platonic lamp, prinxiety, logicality

warnings: drinking, swearing, food mentions, jokes of the “it’s so cute i’m going to die” variety

words: 14,210

read on ao3

Twelve broken cookies, eleven homemade ornaments, ten crumpled solo cups, nine choreographed dance numbers, eight pissed-off mall elves, seven kept promises, six kinds of wrapping paper, five mismatched shoes, four doofus roommates, three different drinking games, two mugs of coffee, and the smell of smoke at 4 AM.

The original song might be catchier, but honestly, Virgil prefers his version. Even with all the hilarity and hysteria.

Something is burning. The smell's what wakes him, and it takes him about three seconds to identify the scent of smoke.

Fantastic. Virgil loves starting the day with a surge of adrenaline straight out of the gate.

Virgil stumbles out of bed, managing to avoid bouncing off the wall, and careens his way to the kitchen, feeling a little bit like his body is a bumper car being piloted by a sugar-high toddler. Distantly, he thinks he probably should have put a shirt on, in case he has to flee the building at the tail-end of December, but he can't really bring himself to care about that just now.

He comes to a stop in the doorway of the kitchen, and makes a sound that could only be compared to a particularly inquisitive squeaky hinge.

Two heads snap around from where they are focused on something on the kitchen table. Virgil leans a little to see what it is and nearly overbalances. He thinks he can hear his adrenal glands screeching to a halt in sheer confusion. Logan, wild-eyed, throws himself casually atop the kitchen table, and Roman is beaming at him at full wattage.

"Hello, friend-o!"

If the rest of Virgil's brain cells were awake, that would be the point where the Kill Bill sirens would start going off. Firstly, because Roman only calls people friend when he wants something from them. Secondly, the last time Roman and Logan teamed up in the shroud of darkness it resulted in what Patton politely terms as "a science experiment mishap" and Virgil terms "sweet fucking fuck, you idiots, we're going to lose our deposit, and my mind, and then our lives, in that order." Thirdly, there is still the scent of something burning.

As it is, he's too distracted by the brightness and eagerness of Roman's smile. His currently awake brain cells have folded up the list currently titled "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" and is beating him about the head with it. God, why does he have to live with his crush, it's the worst thing ever.

His brain finally seizes on a talking point, and he says, "Fire?" in a voice still gruff from sleep. Belatedly, he crosses his arms over his bare chest.

"No, no, nonononono, what?" Roman says, laughing the fakest laugh Virgil has ever heard while exchanging a frantic look with Logan, who is posing on the table in a way that wouldn't be out of character for Roman, but for Logan looks like the least natural pose possible. Logan is also currently gesturing to Roman to get Virgil to leave the room, as if Virgil can't see him.

"You look sleepy, Virgil," Roman says, voice sugary-sweet, arm wrapping tight around his shoulders and steering him away from the kitchen table of mystery. Roman's arm is very warm, and his body is a tense warm line against Virgil's side. The material of his sweater is very soft along his bare skin. Virgil is quietly dying, just a little. "Aren't you just so sleepy?"

Virgil's body traitorously leans into Roman, and he mumbles, "What are you two doing?"

"Shh, nothing, nothing, don't you worry your pretty little head about it," Roman says, and Virgil is aware he's being steered out of the kitchen and thereby away from whatever apocalypse-worthy thing Roman and Logan have deemed fit to create in the dead of night, but he's also very very tired. And also, Roman just called him pretty.

"But I smelled smoke," Virgil says, sleepy and confused and a little punch drunk off human contact, and before he knows it, Roman has shoved him unceremoniously onto his own bed.

"Did you?" Roman asks, attempting to wrap Virgil in all the blankets like the world's most emo burrito.

Virgil tries in vain to wriggle his arms loose, which results in a five minute detour of the conversation while Roman attempts to bundle him up and Virgil attempts to keep the ability to breathe without being smothered to death.

This ends with Roman laying mostly on behind and slightly on top of Virgil, pinning him to the bed, and Virgil making a few token wriggles of malcontent but really mostly kind of enjoying the weight and heat of Roman's chest to really try anything. He is very warm. He should probably be trying to get back up again but all his brain is capable of is a half-asleep stupor, stunned and lazy with it.

"I know what you're doing," Virgil mumbles from where his face is mostly squashed into the pillows. He now knows what it's like to be the little spoon with Roman, this is going to ruin his life, but also this is the best thing that has happened to him this week.

"That's nice, Virgil," Roman says distractedly, and Virgil feels the sensation of Roman's arm leaving his body. He supposes this might mean that Logan and Roman are having some kind of gesticular conversation behind his back, but as Virgil is pinned, he can't exactly eavesdrop. Eyes-drop? Since he'd be looking at it.

Virgil wants to laugh. Patton would like that one.

Patton. If Roman's snuggle-warfare is going to work—and it probably will, at this point of exhaustion Virgil's only requirements for sleep are "vaguely horizontal" and "warm" and Roman knows that—then Patton will be the only one making sure the apartment doesn't explode, and Patton sleeps with the kind of force that would make hibernating bears weep with envy.

He is the last line of defense. If it were just Roman or just Logan awake, Virgil would leave them to it. But Roman and Logan are a duo to be reckoned with. Logan and Roman are the type of people who are convinced whatever they'd create would be used to ascend to the astral plane with Africa by Toto blaring in the background. Roman and Logan are the type of people who think they could create something that would be used to unlock the final secrets of alchemy. Roman and Logan would merrily burn down the whole apartment complex if it furthered one of their brain children.

Virgil has a sudden and terrifying mental image of being tackled by dozens of tiny Roman-and-Logan look-a-likes, whilst they both cackle proudly in the background.

Right. Okay. Either he needs to caffeinate or sleep, and he can do neither of those could happen while they're in danger of Roman and Logan realizing An Idea.

Virgil pushes himself up onto an elbow, intent on going to see what Logan was blocking from sight, and very suddenly, Virgil is on his back, Roman laying on top of him with a wild light in his eyes.

"Um," Virgil says, because now he knows how Roman feels on top of him this is the best and worst EVER, "you, uh, realize this is just making me more curious. Right?"

Roman's weight on top of him is—nice, to say the least. There's an odd sense of comfort from being boxed in like this, which is saying something, because if it were anyone else Virgil would probably be halfway to freaking out. As it is—

Roman blinks down at him, elbows on either side of Virgil's head, close enough that Virgil can pick out all the little golden flecks in his eyes. "There's nothing to be curious about," he says, high-pitched. "I, um. What if I just really wanted to tuck you in?"

Virgil rolls his eyes. "Sure. And Logan wanted me to draw him like a French girl, and the smoke was just a scented candle, right?"

"I'm so glad you've understood the situation," Roman says brightly. The fact that he is currently on top of Virgil hasn't fazed him at all. "Now, don't you feel better? Relaxed enough to sleep? Preferably until noon?"

Virgil's eyes narrow. "I'll accept your terms," he says warningly, "if you promise me that whatever you and Logan are doing won't affect our security deposit."

"No, no, of course not," Roman says soothingly, and adds, more seriously, "Really, Virgil. I promise. You know how protective Logan gets over the deposit. The most danger we're in is a couple of burnt fingers, maybe." He pauses, and then leans in close enough that his lips are brushing Virgil's ear FUCK, "It's a matter of Logan's pride, really. I'm doing him a favor."

Virgil really hopes that Roman cannot feel his pulse from where their chests are pressed together. "Logan's pride?" He whispers, half to the air and half into Roman's shoulder, eyes squeezed shut.

"Mmm," Roman hums into his ear. "He required a bit of creative flair for a certain someone's present."

It clicks then. Patton. Of course. In the cover of night, when Patton would only be roused by the sound of sirens, and even that was a stretch. He supposes they just hadn't counted on Virgil's panic response. Logan and Patton's mutual crushes were the worst kept secret within the apartment, except, it seems, to Logan and Patton themselves, who were both equally convinced they would be resigned to pining away in misery forever.

"Ah," Virgil says. "I'll, uh. I'll just stay here, then. Where you've tucked me in so nicely."

He waits patiently, trying not to spontaneously combust, and adds, "You, um. You can get off of me now, Roman, you've got me convinced."

"Oh!" Roman says, and he draws back, clearing his throat as he awkwardly clambers off of Virgil. "Of course. Ah. Sleep well."

A little cold, very conscious of his bare chest, Virgil draws the blankets around himself tighter and turns back onto his side. Distantly, he sees Roman going to where Logan is standing in the doorway, and he can hear the low murmur of Logan's voice, too soft for him to catch, but he can definitely see the way Roman's shoving his shoulder as they walk away.

When he's certain that they're out of sight, Virgil turns his face into the pillow and screams a little.

2 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS

In the morning—actually the morning, it's a Christmas miracle—Virgil rolls out of bed and tugs on a shirt, this time, before slouching to the kitchen.

"Mornin', kiddo!"

A warm mug is pressed into his hands. Virgil doesn't even look to see what it is before immediately working on transferring the contents of the mug into his body, right now. Bless Patton, it's coffee, because Patton knows that Virgil would chug an entire pitcher of coffee if given the chance.

When he breaks to breathe, he makes a grunting noise of greeting at Patton, who smiles and asks if he wants eggs or cereal.

"Whatever you're having," Virgil mumbles, and starts drinking more of his coffee. He glances around the kitchen surreptitiously—there are no obvious signs of damage, which means Roman kept his promise.

Patton goes about pouring them two bowls of artificially bright cereal, and Virgil pours himself another mug of coffee.

"Good morning!" Roman trills, swooping into the kitchen with all of his usual obnoxious morning-person-ness. Virgil, huddling over his cereal bowl, is suddenly very conscious of his unbrushed rat's nest of hair. He makes another sound of greeting that could be perceived as friendly.

Roman angles his smile at Virgil, and Virgil tries his best not to choke on his cereal. Roman probably knows exactly disarming he is, and he certainly isn't above flirting to get out of trouble, as shown by the last science experiment mishap/sweet fucking fuck, you idiots, we're going to lose our deposit, and my mind, and then our lives, in that order/time the landlord marched in to have a talk with Roman and staggered out looking like he'd seen the face of God. How does he not even look slightly disastrous in the mornings, life is unfair.

"What's the plan for today, Padre?" Roman's asking, making himself a mug of tea, or whatever, because Roman's a functional adult who's severed his ties to caffeine, whereas Virgil is stuck in a dark and captivating affair with it.

But Patton's frowning at the doorway, fiddling with the sleeves of his cat hoodie, the one Logan had gotten him after a hard week that turned into a hard couple of months, and he has subsequently worn religiously. "That's odd," he says, in an undertone. "Usually Logan's up by now, I wonder if he's sick?" He turns his big, doe eyes onto Virgil. "Did he look sick yesterday?"

Virgil opens his mouth to suggest that maybe Logan's tired because he was up at 4 AM trying to clandestinely make something for Patton with Roman, but Roman's already winding his arm around Patton's shoulder, shooting Virgil a look as he does so.

"Maybe our resident Einstein's just taking a bit more rest, hm? It is break, after all. I'm sure he'll love whatever idea you've got planned for us." Roman squeezes Patton's shoulder, shaking him a little bit, comfortingly.

"You think so?" Patton says, a little breathless, looking like his eyes will start glimmering like some kind of anime protagonist any second now.

At that moment, Virgil manages to look out into the hallway, and leans hard enough to see Logan, who is straightening his necktie and staring at himself in the mirror. Virgil presses his lips together to keep from laughing. Primping? Roman's style, definitely. But not Logan's. Unless—

"Hey, Patton, he's coming down the hallway," Virgil says loudly.

Logan jumps in the hallway, glowers at Virgil as he weakly smooths his hair back, and then clears his throat, striding into the kitchen. He goes straight to the fridge, pulling out that niche organic jam that Patton bought once and is now a permanent staple on their shopping list because it was a jam that both Roman and Logan actually liked. He places two slices of bread into the toaster, and pours himself a mug of dark, bitter coffee.

"What were you saying, Patton?" Logan says, attention on the toaster so he can't see the aggressive heart eyes Patton is sending at his back. Virgil's phone buzzes, and he glances down at it.

sir sing-a-lot: can we shove them under some mistletoe today?

Virgil's lips twitch, and he smirks at Roman in agreement, rolling his eyes.

dark and stormy knight: honestly if i have to endure another logan monologue about "feeLINGS????" i might actually go full rom-com and lock them in a closet together

Roman snorts, inelegantly. Virgil might die, it's one of the cutest sounds he's ever heard. The "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" has that sound on it like fifty times, but Virgil doesn't care, it's going on there again.

"Well," Patton says, straightening himself up, "There's this thing me and my friends used to do as kids, and I thought it could be fun, you know, to make sure we all get into the Christmas spirit!"

There might be someone who would deny Patton something when he's looking so excited, but that person absolutely did not live in this apartment building.

"Sounds fantastic!"

"Fine by me."

"Adequate."

Patton laughs, looking delighted and a little confused. "I haven't even told you all what it is yet!"

"Doesn't matter," Roman declares. "Logan decided what we did yesterday, Virgil decided the day before, and I've got dibs on tomorrow. Today is your day, Pat."

They did. Logan decided on going to see a rendition of A Christmas Carol, an option Roman had joyously agreed with, and then they'd had a group dinner after that. Virgil's day had been marathoning Christmas movies, munching on popcorn and candy canes and Patton's cookies.

Logan nods from where he's smearing copious amounts of jam over his toast. Virgil is busy slurping the last of his coffee, but he manages to give a thumbs-up of agreement.

"Okay," Patton says, after everyone's finished their breakfasts, and holds out a Santa's hat. "Everyone, take a name! If you get your own, put it back."

The other three shuffle around, and Logan sticks his hand in first, then Roman, then Virgil, then Patton. Of course, Patton draws his own name, so they have to do it all again, and Virgil glances at the name scrawled in Patton's sloppy print. Logan.

"Everyone got it?" Patton says, and the other three nod. "Okay, who's got who?"

They all blink.

"I thought this was secret Santa," Virgil says.

"No, it's Not-So-Secret Santa, there's a twist," Patton says happily. "See, look, I got you, Virgil."

"I got Patton," Roman says.

"Logan," Virgil says.

"Roman," Logan says, holding up the scrap of paper as evidence.

"Ooh, that works out so well!" Patton squeaks happily. "Okay, so the rules of Not-So-Secret Santa are pretty easy to follow. Since you've got me, Roman, and Virgil's got Logan, you two are on a team!"

A team. On a team with Roman. Virgil doesn't care if Patton tells them the rules to Not-So-Secret-Santa are to immediately punch your person in the face, he will break Logan's nose if it means he spends extended alone time with Roman. Logan's a bro, he'd understand, he'd probably do the same to Virgil to ensure alone time with Patton.

"So that means you and me are together, Logan," Patton says, and they take a moment to exchange Totally Platonic Longing Eye Contact Between Best Buddies, before Patton clears his throat and looks back down at his scrap of paper, then at Virgil and Roman.

"Anyways," he says, "there's a dollar limit—five or ten, ideally—and a time limit, too, but we'll decide on that when we get to the mall and see how busy it is. We just get a gift—something small, or cheap, or funny, or something you think the person would like, that's all."

Oh God, the mall. Two days before Christmas. A Sunday. It's going to be a zoo.

"So get thinking, and get dressed!" Patton says happily. "We'll head out once everyone's ready."

Right. A cheap gift for Logan. What would Logan even want? Logan's one of the least materialistic person he's met.

A vision blooms in his mind, rapidly, and Virgil feels himself grinning as he reaches for his usual hoodie. It's perfect. It's wonderful.

"Dear God, you look absolutely unholy," Roman comments as they both step into the living room, carefully fastening a bright red scarf around his neck. Virgil narrowly avoids stepping into the Christmas tree, as he has been since Patton put it up. The things is mostly decorated with a sparse collection of ornaments Patton and Roman made in their spare time, the chain of colored paper Virgil and Logan had spent a long, dull day making that loops around the tree three times, and truly obnoxious amounts of tinsel and fake snow. It's horrific. Virgil loves it.

"I've just thought of the perfect gift for Logan," Virgil says brightly. "It's just a matter of making sure they've actually got it."

Roman grins at him, a little confused but happy nonetheless, but Logan and Patton are stepping into the living room, and they all bundle into Patton's car. Patton puts on some CD of instrumental Christmas music that Logan loves, because he's super gone and has probably listened to it sappily whilst drawing hearts and doodling Logan into all his notebooks. Logan smiles when he hears it, and Patton looks as if he is about to ascend through the roof of the car.

Virgil looks down at his phone when it buzzes.

sir sing-a-lot: ffs please don't tell me that he put this on because of logan sir sing-a-lot: wait, of course he did sir sing-a-lot: because they're in LOOOOOOOOOOOVE

dark and stormy knight: how much you wanna bet that they're late meeting us because of all the breaks they have to take to stare into each other's eyes

He glances over as Roman's phone buzzes, and watches him grin at the screen. Virgil directs his own little smile towards his phone screen.

sir sing-a-lot: i think we have a Holiday Mission, Brendon Urie

If he wasn't in the same car as Roman, he would absolutely be pressing a hand to his chest in shocked awe and flattery. As it is, this is going on the "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list.

dark and stormy knight: first of all i am not worthy second of all ???

sir sing-a-lot: Operation Mistletoe sir sing-a-lot: i promise you that by the time school resumes the nerds will be making lovey-dovey eyes at each other with full knowledge that the other likes them back, and so hopefully they will contain their sap to their own rooms

dark and stormy knight: you have to do literally nothing to convince me

sir sing-a-lot: so clearly the first step is this shopping trip, but how much can we coordinate if we're shopping?

Virgil angles a look at Roman, who's staring at him, eyebrows lifted.

dark and stormy knight: so what do you propose?

If he's judging by the state of the parking lot, Virgil would say they're completely and totally fucked. He takes a couple seconds to draw some deep breaths before they all exit the car, because crowds aren't exactly his favorite thing, much less driven-mad-by-holidays crowds, but he isn't going to be the person to strike down all the fun. He can handle this.

Suddenly, someone's hand is around his wrist, and he hears Roman shout, "COME ON, VIRGIL!"

He angles a look back at Patton and Logan, but all they do is send him equally coordinated winks, because Virgil had freaked out in front of Logan about the "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list and Logan had called in Patton in a panic about emotions and also Virgil's anxiety, so there's no help at all there.

He doesn't have time to reflect on that before Roman's pulling him, half-running through the parking lot, and into the door, where Roman adjusts so he's holding Virgil's hand, everything is FINE—

"Okay," Roman says brightly, "if I recall correctly, your gift for Logan's over this way, come on, hurry, we have to lose them—"

"We don't have to lose them, they're walking across the parking lot like normal people," Virgil complains, but he follows along to where Roman's pulling him.

Down ten dollars and hiding his purchase in a shopping bag, Virgil trails after Roman as he trawls the various stands for the perfect gift for Patton. It doesn't take him very long to find one, and the various things needed to dress it up to Roman's standards, and Roman's leading him to a relatively quiet alcove. Passing suburban mothers give them the stink-eye, because clearly two college-aged boys in a small space could mean nothing good.

"Okay," Roman says, hands on his hips. "So, first things first, we need to find out where Patton and Logan are, and then sneak up on them."

"So how do we find Patton," Virgil muses.

Roman pauses, tilting his hip, and then snaps his fingers. "I've got a plan."

Five minutes later, Virgil is being glowered at by a woman who is juggling two babies, but he cannot bring himself to care, as Roman is pressed into his side.

"If this doesn't work we're going back to my plan," Virgil grumbles, which is going back to the car, locking themselves inside it, and leaving Logan and Patton to wander the mall for them for however long Roman and Virgil can stick it out.

"It'll work, trust me," Roman says confidently, glancing down at his phone and then scanning the food court, and then immediately whacking Virgil's shoulder in excitement. "See, what did I tell you!"

There, at the edges of a line for the cookie booth Roman Snapchatted to Patton, are Patton and Logan.

"Princey, I take back all my words of doubt," Virgil breathes. God, he really shouldn't have doubted it—cookies were Patton's ultimate vice.

"As you should," Roman preens, and then, "What do you think they're talking about?"

Virgil flattens his voice into his best Logan impression. "Cookies? Anything you desire, Patton."

"Oh, Logan," Roman catches on, sending the bounce factor in his voice to over nine thousand, "The only thing I could possibly love more in this world than these cookies is yo-ouu!" His voice goes into a ridiculously high-pitched Mariah Carey impression, and Virgil has to muffle his laughter against his hoodie sleeves.

They cycle through a variety of topics that Logan and Patton may or may not have been discussing, including: how dashing, suave, and debonair Roman is, how cool and edgy Virgil is, the possibilities of eloping to Vegas, how they were going to give Virgil and Roman all of their winnings from Vegas, and the dog they were all going to adopt right after this.

Logan and Patton eventually get close enough that they can hear them, though, and Roman and Virgil duck down even lower, shushing each other, still giggling a little.

"—think Roman and Virgil are doing, anyways?"

Like that, the laughter's gone. Please don't say anything about my crush on Roman, please don't say anything about my crush on Roman, Virgil thinks, his latest attempts at telepathy. God, that would be the worst reveal ever, and already Virgil is starting to hold his breath.

"Well, it's not last year," Patton says, "They've come a long way, haven't they?"

They share a laugh. Virgil doesn't think Roman's breathing, either.

"They have," Logan agrees. "I thought that living in the same apartment would've aggregated their relationship, not softened it."

"It did at first, though," Patton says. "Remember that time they were yelling at each other, and I was kind of upset and you took me out for milkshakes?"

Roman and Virgil exchange a look of surprise. The fact that neither of them had heard about this—

"At one AM," Logan says, voice a little softer, the way it only ever softens around Patton. "And we got cookies from that late-night bakery and parked on the roof of one of the parking garages."

Roman's hand grips his upper arm, and Virgil looks at him. THAT SOUNDS LIKE A DATE, Roman mouths exaggeratedly, and Virgil nods in agreement.

"And we sat on the hood of your car, and you told me all about—"

"—the planet's rotation slowing down because of tidal forces. I remember."

They're staring into each other's eyes, and seriously, how the hell do they not understand that they're in love with each other, Virgil's going to knock their heads together if Operation Mistletoe doesn't work. But Roman's never broken a promise to him, and then the vendor's calling them forwards, and Logan's already digging out his wallet.

"Logan, you don't have to—"

"I want to," Logan says, stubborn, and that—hits Virgil in a way he didn't expect. Because Logan runs budgets five times over, goes down to argue with the admission's office on a monthly basis about his various scholarships and tuition costs, pinches pennies like his life depends on it. And Patton knows it. They all do.

"Well," Patton says, soft. "Only if you let me buy you coffee later."

Logan doesn't respond, only hands Patton his cookie. Patton's smiling, happy and a little sad, and Logan clears his throat.

"So, do you have any ideas on what to get Virgil? I'm pretty sure I know what I'll get Roman."

Roman tugs at Virgil's arm, and they hustle as discreetly as they can after Logan and Patton. It takes a little while to shake off the sense of seriousness that settled over them before, but it only takes Patton innocently lifting up an electrically pink hoodie and asking Logan, "For Virgil?" to send Roman into hysteric laughter.

Virgil shoves him, and apparently it sends him into a grandma, and the grandma goes flying into the mall Santa display, bumping her against the sleigh and sending the presents in the sack on the sleigh flying. A swarm of mall elves descend upon them and immediately threaten escorting them from the premises if they insist on causing trouble. Being rounded up by eight people in curved shoes and belled hats just makes Roman laugh harder as Virgil desperately apologizes and hopes that neither Logan or Patton look to see what the disturbance is.

Virgil gets his revenge, though, when Logan dryly suggests to Patton that he could buy Roman some music that isn't Broadway or Disney in addition to his other gift, to expand his horizons, and Roman looks so offended that Virgil chokes on his own spit laughing at him, which makes Roman thump on the back, then rub his hand up and down his shoulders.

"You—your face," Virgil wheezes into his hoodie sleeves, and at last manages to compose himself, straightening to stand, Roman's hand still gentle between his shoulder blades, which stretches to his arm wrapped around his shoulder, tugging him in for a friendly little hug.

Or at least, that's how he's sure Roman thinks of it. Virgil's heart is doing a happy little tap dance in his chest, complete with overenthusiastic jazz hands, and Virgil lets himself soak in it, just for a few seconds.

Then he pulls away, looking around. "Did we lose them?"

Roman curses, stepping back and turning in a circle, before both of their phones buzz.

sunshine personified: hey there!! logan and i noticed that you're just behind us! want to stop and exchange gifts in starbucks?? we can walk around some more after if you both want!

"Caught in the act," Roman sighs, and sends a suitably cheery response back. He takes Virgil's hand, and says, "So, we'll walk around more, and maybe conveniently lose them?"

"Sounds good to me," Virgil says, mouth dry. Roman's hand is warm, and his fingers lace neatly between Virgil's. Right on the "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list, then.

Roman looks around, squinting around the crowd. "Starbucks can't be that far from here, can it? Which way is it again?"

They end up doubling back towards the food court, where Patton has somehow snagged them a table and is waving at them enthusiastically as Logan sips on a coffee Virgil's sure Patton bought for him, like he's not entirely sure Patton is real.

Virgil picks up his order—peppermint mocha, because now his coffee is festive—as Roman beguiles Patton and Logan with the story of how Virgil knocked him into a little old lady, and ended with them being threatened by the elf cops. Virgil flushes and groans in all the right places, even going as far to hide his face in his hands again, and Patton reaches over to rub his shoulders bracingly, and—

It's nice. It's really, really nice. The day's been really nice. The tiny gremlin that lives inside Virgil's brain is just waiting to see what will go wrong, but he ignores it the best he can. The day has been good. He's having fun. He just has to, you know, ignore and repress all of his feelings to ensure that keeps happening. He shouldn't be feeling anxious or nervous or depressed or anything, it's—fine. He should be fine. He is surrounded by people he loves and who love him back and they are having a nice day out.

"Gifts time!" Patton sings, wriggling excitedly in his seat, and he claps his hands. "Should we exchange and open them all at once, or one at a time?"

"One at a time," Roman says, smiling brilliantly, and he holds out his shopping bag to Patton. "For the one who came up with the idea today, hm?"

"Aw, Roman," Patton says, blushingly, and accepts the bag as Roman doffs an imaginary cap. Virgil smiles, trying to make himself really feel it, and decides to narrow his focus on Patton.

Patton squeaks happily over the adorable stuffed kitten Roman bought him, with a sky-blue ribbon-collar ("for accessorizing," Roman declares) and Patton happily squeezes Roman into a little side-hug.

"So, Virgil, here's yours," Patton says, passing across the plastic bag, and Virgil draws out... a thing? It looks like a tiny stuffed monster.

"It's a worry doll," Patton says, picking it up and opening its mouth. "See, you can write down whatever's stressing you out and put it in its mouth! So, um. So even if you aren't in a place where you can talk about it with us, there's still someone to hear about it, in a way."

Virgil is fully aware that his face is doing something, but he doesn't bother to hide it. God, Virgil doesn't deserve to even be on the same continent as this man. Because Patton knew all of it—the way he was raised by parents who seemed, at best, mostly confused by him, and stepped back from disciplinary action at a young age, because they thought he was a good kid, when in actuality Virgil was just scared to break the rules, overridden by irrational thoughts of getting kicked out and punished. Because Patton knows how Virgil's words get all tangled and and choked up, caught in his throat and in his chest, and how Virgil could barely manage to fumble out a request for help even on his worst days. And Virgil is working on it, he really is, but—

Virgil reaches blindly and grabs onto Patton's wrist, squeezing tight. He doesn't quite want to leap over the table to hug him, so this is going to have to do for now. A corner of his mouth is quirked up in a smile, and he's staring at the hideous little burlap monster that's landed between them—and then he looks up at Patton.

"Thank you," he says, and he's proud that his voice comes out sounding only a little croakier than normal.

Patton's hand grabs his wrist back, and he squeezes tight, voice warm and gentle. "You are so very welcome, Virgil."

They both squeeze one more time, and Virgil draws back first, clearing his throat and gathering the little worry monster to his chest, avoiding everyone's eyes as he downs about half of his coffee. When he feels slightly more normal, and also like he's about to pass out from air shortage, he resurfaces, clears his throat, and shoves the shopping bag at Logan. He could really use a laugh just now, to break the tension.

Logan's brow creases as he looks into the bag, and creases further as he draws out his gift.

"What is this," he says flatly, staring at it.

"It's an emoji pillow," Virgil says, inordinately pleased with himself.

Logan turns it around, as if to compare the done-ness of his face to the crying-laughing hysteria of the pillow.

"Thanks," Logan says. "I hate it."

And that's it, the deadpan needed to snap the tension—Virgil starts laughing first, shortly followed by Patton, and Roman's booming laughter does Logan in—his straight face cracks, and he starts to laugh, too, looking resignedly at the pillow and then back at Virgil and at the pillow again, but Virgil's gone on the certain type of laughter that only comes after someone has come very close to crying.

As their laughter is dying down, Logan, smirking, hands over his bag to Roman, who unwraps it with glee, and blinks, confused, pulling out a gold-backed mirror, glancing into it and back at Logan.

"A mirror?" Roman says.

"Truly, you'd like nothing more than to receive yourself," Logan says, and Roman's free hand flies to his chest and there's a reappearance of his offended face, and Virgil's cackling at him again, arm wrapped tight around his stomach, cheeks hurting from smiling so wide.

"Look," Patton says, holding the emoji pillow next to Virgil's face, "it's you!"

That sets everyone off, then, and Virgil can't even bring himself to care that there are hordes of people turning to stare at the four college boys guffawing stupidly at an emoji pillow.

Yeah. It's a nice day out.

CHRISTMAS EVE

"Oh, what a beautiful mooooooorr-ning! Oh what a beautiful day! I got a beautiful feeeeeeeeeeeeeling! Everything's going my way!"

Virgil jerks awake, and it takes him a few moments to comprehend what is going on just then.

Roman, who is currently holding a travel cup of coffee directly under his nose, must have serenaded him awake, which, his voice, god fucking dammit, and also he must have been out already, because he looks all dashingly windswept and handsome, cheeks a little flushed from the cold, fuck Virgil's life.

Virgil accepts the coffee and goes about putting the majority of it into his body as fast as he can, and emerges, blinking at him and making a hand gesture that he hopes conveys explain.

"I've decided what I'm doing today, and it will graciously go towards Operation Mistletoe," Roman declares grandly. "Of course, if you're uncomfortable with it, we can always brainstorm, but I really think—"

Virgil grunts at him, gestures a go on, and starts drinking the rest of his coffee. Roman waits patiently until he surfaces again.

"A Christmas party," Roman blurts out, and Virgil blinks at him.

"A what," he says, voice a growl, roughened from sleep.

"It won't be anything too crazy," Roman adds soothingly. "Just some theater people, maybe some of Logan's nerd friends, and some people Patton knows. Some mistletoe, a bit of a tipsy confession, and we've got a classic rom-com on our hands."

Virgil blinks. He's pretty sure there's dried drool on his face, and he's shirtless again. Why does Roman always see him at this time of day.

Roman leans in closer, and adds, soft and beseeching, "Virgil, I promise, if you aren't comfortable, I won't do it, we can make it something else—"

Promise. Roman has never, ever broken a promise for as long as Virgil has known him. Roman takes his word very seriously. It's on the "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list. It's one of the things Virgil really admires about him, crush aside.

Virgil takes a second, and says, "Promise me I won't be stuck with clean-up?"

"Promise!" He practically sings. "I'll handle all of it, Virgil, you're just in charge of making sure that they're in the same room as each other. They'll gravitate to each other anyways. Oh, this will be wonderful," he declares, and whirls his way out of Virgil's room, leaving Virgil to blink at his coffee and belatedly scrub a hand up and down his face.

When Virgil finally emerges from his room, Patton and Logan are sitting at the table as Roman pitches his party proposal, in full Dads mode.

"Virgil said he was okay with it, too, so it's just you two to agree," Roman adds, nodding to Virgil, and Patton and Logan both swivel to look at him.

"Are you?" Patton says.

"Yeah," Virgil says, pouring himself another mug. "Sounds fun. Roman said it wouldn't be too big."

He can practically hear their exchanged glances—the "Virgil Agreed to Socialization!" one—and Patton says slowly, "Well, as long as you know that since it's your party—"

"My cleanup, yes, I know, Virgil's already told me," Roman says brightly. "Invite anyone you want, it'll be just a lowkey little thing—"

Roman picks up his phone, looking like the world's busiest little social butterfly, and Virgil slurps down more coffee. They're in for an interesting day, and an interesting night. If Roman's plan goes as he thinks it will, then Operation Mistletoe will be done. Another promise kept.

For most of the day, Virgil barricades himself in his room. It's nothing personal against any of his roommates, and they all knew it. If there's going to be a big social event, then Virgil needs to charge for it. So he spends most of his day watching A Nightmare Before Christmas, scrolling through social media, and listening to his favorite albums. He gets a text from Roman to start expecting people at 9, which really meant 9:30, but regardless, he drags himself out of bed at 8 to start getting ready.

Eyeliner, eyeshadow, and because Virgil's leaning into the Jack Skellington today, he goes with a dark lip stain. The theater people Roman's invited will love it. He tugs on an outfit—dark ripped jeans, black t-shirt, Christmas sweater shockingly similar in design to his favorite hoodie, gutterstomping black boots—and slouches out of his room, into the living room.

He takes a couple seconds to stare, his brain currently blaring "YOU SHIT, YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH ROMAN AND NOW YOU'RE RESIGNED TO SUFFERING IN SILENCE HERE ARE ALL THE REASONS" as his eyes sweep up and down what he can see of Roman's outfit, from behind—he's wearing a tight red button-up with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a well-tailored pair of black slacks, the only ridiculous, incongruous thing with his outfit is his own pair of boots—more suited for adventuring than gutterstomping.

Virgil clears his throat, tearing his eyes towards where Roman's eyes would be, and says, "Anything I can do to help?"

Roman spins, and his eyes do an up-down-up-down-up-down-up over Virgil's outfit, coming to rest on his makeup. Virgil shifts—he's second-guessing it already, maybe he just looks like an idiot, he can wipe it off, and change his whole outfit too, actually.

"Is it too—?" Virgil starts, and Roman practically shouts, "NO!" so loudly Virgil startles a little.

"I mean, ah, no," Roman says. "It's perfect. You look perfect."

Virgil scuffs the toe of his boot along the floor, clears his throat, and swallows, before he repeats to his feet, "Anything I can do to help?"

"Patton might need help," Roman says, "you should check."

Virgil nods, and heads to the kitchen, where Patton is surrounded by plates of cookies, and he's setting a tray of cookies onto the stove, presumably to cool.

"Anything I can do to help?" Virgil repeats, and Patton whirls around.

He's wearing a sweater that declares Bah Humpug, with a picture of a pug wearing a santa hat on it. It's bedazzled. Very adorable.

"Look at you, kiddo, that makeup's so neat!" Patton exclaims. "We're just waiting on this last tray to cool, really, but maybe you could open up that pack of cups over there and set them on the table—?"

Virgil nods, and tears open the plastic surrounding the red solo cups. He places them carefully on the table that holds a modest selection of alcohol, including a bowl full of punch and supplies to make eggnog. Virgil straightens the bottles, cursory, and starts a conversation with Patton about dogs and Christmas. Patton's plating the cookies when Logan's voice comes floating down the halls.

"I look ridiculous," he complains.

"You look hot as hell, shut up, I wish I had your arms," Roman responds.

Virgil and Patton exchange looks, and Patton's toting the plate out into the living room, Virgil hot on his heels.

Roman's saying, "Logan, really, cut loose, you deserve it," and suddenly they veer into sight from Logan's room. "Tell Logan he looks hot," Roman complains.

Logan's wearing...something that definitely came out of Roman's closet. It's a white shirt, short-sleeved, almost like the usual style of polo shirt that he usually wore, but then Virgil noticed the mesh. It's almost a classy amount of mesh, if such a thing exists, in a sort of floral pattern. Belatedly, he realizes that Logan's wearing makeup, too, something that makes him look even sharper and more angular, and a bit of glitter? It works for him. It works for him really, really well.

There's a clatter, and Virgil turns a little to see Patton, slack-jawed, the plate of cookies on the ground, the cookies hopelessly crushed. Patton is not even slightly moving to pick them up.

Logan's arms go to awkwardly cross over his chest, before he seems to remember something, and instead shoves his fists into his pockets, shoulders hunched.

"Uh," Patton says, "You, uh. You look. Uhm. Good!" He says, proud of himself for seizing on a word. "Really. Really good. Uh."

Logan straightens his posture, a little. "Really," he says, uncharacteristically timid.

Virgil says, "That style... really works on you."

"What, yeah, that," Patton agrees, and actually shakes himself, and looks down at the plate. "Oh no, the cookies!"

He crouches to pick them up, and Roman shoves Logan forwards.

"Logan, help Patton, I've just remembered I want Virgil's advice on the sound system," Roman says cheerfully, and suddenly Roman's grabbing Virgil's sleeve and yanking him into the living room.

"That's the closest I've ever seen Patton to giving bedroom eyes," Roman hisses into his ear.

"How did you convince Logan do a makeover sequence?" Virgil says.

Roman looks very innocent, and says, "Logan might be a couple shots ahead of us, and also I may have told him that Patton likes his arms. So."

"You're evil," Virgil snickers.

"I'm going to make Operation Mistletoe happen," Roman says. "It'll be a goddamn Christmas miracle."

"You didn't actually want my opinion on the sound system, did you?"

"Nope, sorry. We're leaving them alone together as much as we possibly can this evening, Gerard, that was the plan."

"What is it with you and these flattering nicknames lately," Virgil says.

Roman grins like a shark, all teeth, and doesn't say a word.

It doesn't take all that long for people to show up—they make a beeline for the booze, which is unsurprising, and Roman presses a drink into his hands.

"I know you're not for mingling, so do what you want," he says. "But Mistletoe will happen. Discourage anyone flirting with either of them."

Virgil nods, mission received, and goes to give his scariest snarling face to anyone who tries to approach Logan.

He really only has to snarl at two people, considering Logan's locked up in a corner with Patton most of the time anyways, and so Virgil ends up drifting around the edges of the room, eyes narrowed.

The party's still filling up, people arriving every couple of minutes, and Roman's the life of the party, greeting people, directing them towards the drinks and snacks, laughing and cracking jokes. Virgil feels at peace, at least, as at peace as he ever does at parties—people are giving him space, he can see the people he came with, this is his home turf.

The music is mostly in the background, no one dancing yet, people collected in clusters and filling themselves up on alcohol and Patton's snacks. Virgil figures he may as well follow their example. He goes to grab a cookie.

At some point between Virgil going to the kitchen and coming back out with a half-eaten snowman in his hands, the theater horde has taken over the sound system, and some song from La-La Land is playing as they're all sitting in a loose circle. Someone has brought some of the alcohol out from the kitchen, so it's more easily accessible. It's easy to see why.

"Who is most likely," muses a girl Virgil recognizes from a few of Roman's shows, "To shoplift?"

Everyone points to someone, with a few people more common than others. The ones with more people curse a little before they start to drink. Roman's eyes catch on his and they brighten, and he waves Virgil over to sit next to him.

"What's this?" Virgil asks, tucking his legs in to criss-cross.

"Who's most likely," Roman says. "Basically, ask a question, and if two people point at you, you have to take two drinks. Or however many people, you have to take that many drinks."

Virgil nods. Self-explanatory enough.

"You good to play?" Roman asks.

"Yeah, sounds fun," Virgil says.

There are several things that he miscalculates, which he realizes as people are complaining about this game and demanding a new one.

One, it's hot in here, with the increasing amount of human body heat and the fact that he wore a sweater. Two, he's a lightweight regardless, but three, considering how rarely he drinks, his tolerance is pretty shit anyways.

Basically, he's one and a half mixed drinks in, and he's reached a point of tipsy where he's much more... smiley. His thoughts are a little looser, slipping away from him so much easier than they usually did, and things were just a bit funnier. Not drunk, not even close, but it's enough of a reality check that he decides to add more mixer and less alcohol to his next drink.

Patton and Logan sit next to them for the next game, and Virgil grins, bumping shoulders with Patton in camaraderie.

The people have settled on sip sip shot, which is really just making Virgil realize how little he knows about drinking games. But Patton doesn't know either, so that makes him feel less alone. God, he loves Patton. Patton's the best human being on this earth.

"It's like duck duck goose," Roman explains. "Except the duck is sip, which means you sip at your drink. And goose is shot, so you have to chase the person around the circle. If you win, they take the shot. If you lose, you take the shot."

Virgil and Patton both nod in comprehension, and everyone squirms into a tighter circle configuration so there would be optimal running space. Virgil's smiling still. This reminds him of being a kid at recess, except he never had friends when he was that little, so this is just. Even better.

Someone's hand taps his head. He takes a sip of his drink.

It's a pretty even routine, occasionally broken by yelling and clapping and heckling, but Virgil never gets chosen to be goose, which is just fine by him. However, Roman is, which is much less fine by him, because that means Roman's not sitting next to him anymore. Virgil tries his best not to pout. He's not entirely sure if he succeeds.

The game dissolves a lot like the one before it; people start getting distracted, and branch off on their own, which just causes the whole big group to concave on itself. Just as well; Virgil's finished his drink.

"Virgil!"

He turns, and grins as he sees Roman, who looks very suddenly knocked off-kilter—most people expect Virgil to be a sullen drunk, or maybe even a handsy one, not a giggly drunk. Roman knows he's a giggly drunk, though, so maybe he just—forgot? Or something.

"Roman!" Virgil says, matching his tone as best as he can, and Roman shakes himself, squeezing between a couple of people.

"I've had an idea, and Valerie's volunteered to help us along," Roman says, gesturing grandly to the girl next to him. "We need to beat Logan and Patton in beer pong."

Virgil blinks. "Um, why?" He's down to destroy Logan, at any time, but this seems like a random idea. But he will win. That much is guaranteed. Virgil is not above cheating to ensure it.

"Because," Valerie says, "the losers have to do body shots off each other."

Virgil is suddenly not so dedicated to winning.

"I'm in," Virgil says, wondering how many throws he can fumble without Roman noticing he's doing it on purpose. Probably a lot. Virgil isn't very athletic. Plus he's tipsy.

Roman turns to Valerie, squeezing her shoulder. "Find Patton and Logan for me? Virgil and I are going to set up the table."

His fingers lace with Virgil's again, and Virgil doesn't bother hiding his smile as Roman tugs them towards the kitchen, as they shuffle around plates to counters and Virgil grabs a stack of red solo cups.

"How many?" He asks.

"Ten each side," Roman says, carefully stacking plates and bowls of snacks on the counter, and Virgil obliges, placing them in careful pyramids. Roman's just filling the cups with punch as Logan and Patton both step through the door, Patton a little wild-eyed, Logan cool with focus.

"Prepare to lose," Patton declares joyously, nudging Virgil in a friendly way as he skips over to his side of the table. Virgil sticks his tongue out at him.

He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Roman as Roman chivalrously accepts Valerie's offer of a ping-pong ball, before he turns to Virgil, holding it up in front of him.

"Blow on it?" Roman asks, voice low, lashes fluttering, just a little. Virgil notices he has something sparkly and golden on his eyes that he didn't have at the start of the party. "For luck."

Virgil smiles, and obligingly huffs out a warm breath over the ping-pong ball, over Roman's fingers.

"Suck it, losers," Roman declares, pompous, and then immediately sinks the shot. Virgil whoops in encouragement.

Logan rolls his shoulders, angles a glower at them, and then tosses; he misses, and Roman and Virgil both boo him.

The game continues, and as each cup vanishes, people gather round to watch them. There's more heckling and more cheering for each side, but oddly, Virgil doesn't mind the attention, even when he misses more shots than he makes. Logan is horrible enough that it evens out. But it turns out that Patton is actually a secret master at beer pong, so it's mostly Patton and Roman keeping pace with each other.

They get down to three cups on each side. Roman arches his brows at Logan, before turning and bending over, wiggling his hips enticingly at Logan.

Logan scoffs, shoving his glasses up his nose. "That's not going to work," he says, and then immediately whiffs his shot. "Okay, that worked," he admitted, quiet, as Roman straightens up with a whoop.

"My secret weapon—my ass!" Roman declares proudly, and elbows Virgil, conspiratorial. "Do you know how many games of beer pong I've turned around because I decided to show off my ass?"

Virgil snorts, accepting the ping-pong ball. It is a fantastic ass, and it has its own little carefully detailed section on the "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list, but he's not about to inflate Roman's ego right now.

Patton's version of a distraction is screaming a curse word, which shocks Virgil so terribly he ends up accidentally throwing the ping-pong ball into a bystander's face.

"Patton, I am surprised at you!" Roman teases, and Patton, flushing, just shrugs, tossing him the ping-pong ball.

"We do what we need to do," Patton says.

Logan starts rapping Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobics, and although it is a fantastic sight, it doesn't faze Roman, who sinks his shot, and smacks his hand against Virgil in a celebratory high-five. It does, however, derail the game for a solid three minutes, as some theater kids start beatboxing for Logan, and cheer him on, dancing along as Logan finishes the rap with a smug little smirk, people clapping him on the back and whooping at him.

Which means it's time for Virgil to distract Patton.

"WHEN I WAS, A YOUNG BOY," Virgil screams at the top of his lungs, at a pitch that makes him sound at best like a wailing cat, and Roman bends double, cackling, even as Virgil continues shouting the lyrics to "Welcome to the Black Parade," miming the instruments and headbanging as hard as he possibly can. A few of the gothier-looking theater kids join in, unable to resist the call of their people, and Virgil is lost in the truly unique sound of a horde of drunk college emos trying their best to imitate guitars with truly horrible screeches.

"Shake it off, Pat, shake it off!" Logan declares, clapping his hands on Patton's shoulders and shaking him a little, but it was shitty timing for them, because it was right at the apex of Virgil's killer air guitar solo.

"WE'LL CARRY ON! WE'LL CAAAARRYYY OOOON! AND THOUGH YOU'RE DEAD AND GONE, BELIEVE ME—"

Patton throws. Bounce. It hits the edge of a cup and clatters off, and the people roar. Two to three.

"That's okay, we'll get 'em next!" Logan declares, arm soundly around Patton's shoulders. Patton looks too delighted by this development to really be upset about missing his shot.

Roman sways a little on his feet, and Virgil reaches out, touching his hip to steady him, and leans in close.

"You got this," Virgil breathes into his ear.

Roman nods, looking the most serious he has ever looked, takes aim, and tosses the ball.

It sails in a beautiful rainbow arch, landing in the left cup.

The crowd around them screams. Three-one. Roman's pumping his fist in the air in victory as the crowd heckles Logan, telling him to drink, but Virgil doesn't care, because Roman's grinning at Virgil, who grins back and wraps a happy arm around his shoulders, pressing his nose into Roman's cheek in a moment of perfectly happy drunken camaraderie.

"It's on!" Logan declares, squashing the cup and dropping it at his feet, as he and Patton had for the previous eight. "It's on!" He bumps hips with Patton, and leans forwards exaggeratedly, squinting at the cups as people yell "send it back!" at him.

"Who even WAS Rosalind Franklin," Roman yells, but it doesn't deter Logan—he sinks it, and Virgil groans, taking the cup and shaking out the ping-pong ball before he starts to drink, Logan screaming, "She was a VISIONARY, that's who!" in the background.

Virgil has seen a drunk Logan get emotional over Rosalind Franklin, so maybe this wasn't the best path to start him down on, but Virgil crushes the cup and drops it, shaking out his hands and rolling his shoulders. Last cup. Two to one.

Roman's hands are bracing on his shoulders, squeezing, before he leans into Virgil's space, hand drifting down to his waist to squeeze, just a little, wow, this is not good for his focus.

"Shut your eyes," Roman says, and Virgil lets his eyes slide shut, blocking out the sight of the crowd, of Logan and Patton, of Roman in his space. All he can feel is the artificial warmth from the alcohol pooled in his belly, and Roman's hands on him, steadying and warm.

"Take a deep breath," Roman intones, and Virgil does as he says, taking a deep, even breath in and letting it out, squaring his shoulders.

"Let it all fall away," Roman says into his ear. "The crowd's not even there. Logan and Patton aren't even there. It's just you, and the ball."

And you, Virgil wants to say. No matter what Virgil tries, he can't block out Roman.

"Now," Roman says, "open your eyes, focus on that cup, and crush it. If you sink it, I promise I'll let you blast any emo song you want."

Virgil opens his eyes. He spins the ball in his fingers, and hesitates, before holding it up to Roman.

"For luck," Virgil says, looking at him through his lashes. Roman smiles, brings Virgil's hand to his mouth and kisses his fingers, before meeting eyes with Virgil as he blows out a cool breath, mouth a perfect o shape.

Virgil tries his best to smile like that hasn't affected him at all, and turns to face the table, narrowing his eyes.

"Just you, and the ball, and the cup," Roman says, hand drifting to the small of Virgil's back.

And you, and you, and you, Virgil thinks, and tosses the ball.

The resulting scream is deafening.

"VIRGIL!" Roman screams, and Virgil turns to face him, mouth open a little in astonishment. "VIRGIL, YOU BEAUTIFUL MAN, YOU DID IT!"

Virgil lets out an odd, aborted half-laugh of astonishment. "I did it?"

Rather than answer, Roman's arms close around him, and suddenly, the room is flying, Roman's arms tight around him as he's spun in the air, and Virgil's laughing, the world a technicolor bleed of colors and Roman's arms keeping him secure and safe and happy, and it's over too soon, but Virgil wraps his arms around Roman's shoulders, hugging him back, tight, trying to communicate all of his complicated feelings through this one hug.

"You're the best teammate ever, you know?" Virgil says into his ear, and draws back, but not enough to unwind his arms from Roman's neck.

Roman's about to say something, opening his mouth, one of his hands curling around Virgil's wrists as if to keep him there, when Valerie yells "BODY SHOTS!" and Roman and Virgil both turn away from each other with a start, looking over to where Patton's fidgeting a little and Logan's trying not to squirm as Valerie applies the salt to his neck.

"Your lime," Valerie says, and Logan sticks it in his mouth, trying his best not to move too much, as there's a shot glass tucked into his waistband.

"PAT-TON, PAT-TON, PAT-TON," people start to chant as Valerie steps back with an elaborate twirl of her wrist, as if to say the floor is yours, and Patton steps forwards, adjusting his glasses. Logan says something to him, too low for Virgil to hear over the chanting, and Patton shakes his head, before Patton leans forwards, licking a broad stripe up Logan's neck. He drops to his knees, knocking his face into Logan's thigh before managing to close his lips over the shot glass and tipping it back, surging to his feet and sucking the lime from Logan's mouth into his mouth.

"I feel like I just watched my innocence die," Virgil comments, at a loss for other words. Patton winces from the acidity of the lime, and Logan looks—well, he looks like Patton's just hit him with a train, a hand coming up to his neck where Patton licked it.

"What innocence," Roman snorts, and Virgil whacks him a little.

Patton's lying on the kitchen table, though, doing as Valerie directs, grimacing but placing the lime into his mouth, propped up on one elbow, the other hand tugging his sweater away from his neck. Virgil can see why, because now Valerie's pouring the tequila into the hollow of Patton's neck, and Logan still hasn't moved his hand from where Patton licked him, staring at where he's laid out on the table.

Logan screws his face up in determination, though, and licks the salt line on Patton's chest, bending his head to suck the tequila out of the hollow of his throat, and Patton seems like he's about to faint, head tilting back as Logan presses his mouth against his skin. Logan bites the lime from Patton's mouth, snatching it away.

"No, I see what you mean," Roman muses, and Virgil snorts back. Roman tugs on his hand, and says, "C'mon, let's blast your victory song."

Virgil grins, letting himself be led away, and says, "In for some danger tonight, then?"

"Oh, always with you, Virgil," Roman says, looking at him over his shoulder, before leading him to the sound system and grandly presenting Virgil with his phone.

Virgil's tongue pokes through his teeth as he scrolls through Roman's extensive music library, and then he says "Ah!" as he sees the song he wants, pressing play, and his body starts rocking to the beat, an absent-minded bobbing.

The same goths from before come flooding into the living room, and Virgil grins, tilting his head back as he joins their voices in song.

"AM I MOOORE THAN YOU BARGAINED FOR YET?!"

Suddenly, Virgil is twirling, and Roman grins when he stops, their hands twined together again, and Virgil laughs, head tilting forwards, before he tries his best to keep up.

Roman dances like it's a language that Virgil doesn't know, effortless and graceful and—okay, yes, sexy, he looks incredibly sexy when he dances—but Roman always looks like he's having the time of his life whenever he dances, sings, performs, and Virgil finds himself unable to focus on his feet when Roman's beaming like that. Besides, he and Roman are too busy singing along to Fall Out Boy to really pay attention to technique.

Roman's hands are getting sweaty in his, and Virgil's sure his are doing the same, but he can't bring himself to care all that much—watching the way Roman moved, hearing him sing, that was what was taking up his attention at the moment, and all too soon, it ends.

There's the plucking of notes, something Virgil thinks he's heard maybe once or twice before, but Roman's ears practically perk up, spine going straight, and he can see a similar response in all the theater kids.

"Roman!" Valerie's yelling, waving an arm, "I need my dancers for this one!"

Roman turns to look at Virgil, and Virgil waves him off, grinning.

"Go on," Virgil says, "be a big Broadway nerd. I'll be okay."

"Well," Roman says, and squeezes his hands. "If you insist."

"I do," Virgil says, and at last their hands drop, and Virgil wanders off in search of a drink.

When he comes back, canned margarita in hand, Valerie's finishing off "All That Jazz" with all the verve of performing it live in front of a crowd, and Roman is currently helping hoist her into a split, a hand bracing her thigh, the other clinging to her hand, like it's no trouble at all.He hopes no one tramples over their horrible-wonderful tree, or the presents underneath—Patton had tried to get them to wrap all the presents with one wrapping paper per person, to make it more organized, but somehow two other kinds had gotten in there, so it's just a mess of colors and tags. Virgil takes a moment to be thankful for their high ceilings, and settles into an armchair that's been shoved out of the way to enjoy the show.

Virgil applauds enthusiastically when they finish out the song, along with the theater nerds who didn't know the choreography, the science nerds Logan invited along, and the nerds Patton knew were on campus over break.

He really should have expected this when Roman said a ton of his theater friends were coming over, because it seems they've landed in Roman's Broadway playlist, people singing and dancing and pretending with imaginary props. They shout for who sings what, swap in and out depending on who knows choreography, and every time, Roman's in the thick of the scrum, belting his heart out, twisting along to choreography and improvising to some degrees of success.

West Side Story's prologue, Roman dancing along to the Jets', snapping and twirling and leaping to his heart's content.

Pippin, Roman doing his best Fosse as someone Virgil doesn't recognize belts out Glory, his movements, Roman twirling an imaginary cane and doffing an imaginary cap, hips cycling and crooning along in the background.

Sound of Music, Roman charming and serenading Valerie, Valerie hopping along the couches as they duet Sixteen Going on Seventeen, theater people doing a variety of ballroom dances as a form of background dancing.

Grease, Greased Lighting, Roman smoothing his hair back and popping the top few buttons of his shirt, thrusting hips and funny faces and precise gesticulation, and he even sends a wink at Virgil, where he's sipping his drink. Virgil flushes, and smiles a little, hiding it behind the can.

This is the point where Patton and Logan stand on either side of his armchair, and Patton says teasingly, "Having fun, Virgil?"

Virgil tucks his knees up to his chest, and says, "Well, Roman is."

Patton grins, ruffles his hair, and passes him another unopened can of margarita, before grabbing Logan's hand and tugging him off to the kitchen.

Virgil meets eyes with Roman, and Roman's eyes are lit up excitedly as he takes a second to gesture in their direction, before he resumes his number at full enthusiasm.

Footloose, the titular number, and Roman's sweaty and bright and so full of life, glowing with it, and they mostly let the preprogrammed voice handle it, theater kids dancing, goofy and bright, Roman spinning and twirling between partners, trying to dance with everyone, laughing and chattering and bright.

Grease again, Born to Hand Jive, Roman on the periphery as two more people Virgil doesn't know take center stage, swinging and lifting their partners and throwing them, and Virgil would be much more worried if it wasn't for the alcohol.

Heathers, Freeze Your Brain, and Virgil knows this one, so he stands and sings as everyone does their best dramatic JD, Roman surging over to Virgil as they sing together, trying their best to dance to such depressing lyrics. The song ends, and it leads into one Virgil doesn't know, blinking owlishly at the speakers, dropping his empty can belatedly.

"Rooo-MANNN," Virgil hears at least three people yell, and Roman laughs, messing his hair before he takes center stage, stomping and clapping along to the beat.

"You guys are never going to let me live this down, are you?" Roman asks the crowd ruefully, and there's a loud cheer of NO, and Roman laughs, ducking his head, before he starts to sing along, poppish and exaggeratedly eager, hips shaking as he claps along.

"LOOK—AT—MY—ASS, LOOK AT MY THIGHS—"

Oh no. Virgil knows what song this is now. And Roman is going all out on the choreography.

"I'M CATNIP TO THE GUYS! THEY CHASE MY TAIL, THEY DROOL AND PANT—WANNA TOUCH THIS BUT THEY CAN'T!"

Virgil is going to have a stroke.

"ALL THE BOYS WANNA COME AND PLAY," Roman belts, snaps and winks at Virgil, "SNAP MY FINGERS AND THEY OBEY, WHY DO THEY FOLLOW ME ROUND ALL DAY? WATCH ME WHILE I WALK AWAY—"

This is it. This is the day Virgil's soul vacates his body. It's been a good run.

"I BEEEEEEND AND SNAP! FEEL HOW HOT IT'S GETTING!"

Virgil does not need Roman to tell him how hot it's getting, thank you.

"BEEEEEEND AND SNAP! AND WHEN YOU'VE GOT 'EM SWEATING, SPRIIIING THE TRAP! THEY CHEER AND CLAP!"

Clap, clap. Roman's having a great time. Virgil distantly wonders why the theater kids associate the Bend and Snap with Roman, and if he survives this, he will certainly ask him later.

"NO TIGHT MEN, CAN DEFEND, 'GAINST THE BEEEEEEND AND SNAP!"

Distantly, Virgil recalls how Roman said his ass was his secret weapon. He cannot help but agree. He is watching Roman tackle some ass-centric choreography, and it is honestly a wonder as to how Virgil hasn't fainted yet from where he's standing on the fringe of the circle of theater kids surrounding Roman.

But more people are jumping in to fill in parts, but Virgil cannot stop staring at Roman. What the fuck is his life.

The song both takes forever and is over too soon, and for the first time, Roman steps out from performing as the girls get ready for a rendition of the Cell Block Tango.

He's still grinning, fanning himself. His shirt is soaked with sweat, and he never rebuttoned his shirt, so Virgil can see the top of the expanse of his chest, his hair sweaty. Roman pushes it out of his face.

"Phew!" He declares, and Virgil is trying his hardest to untangle his tongue from the knot it's formed, so instead mutely gestures to the kitchen.

"Drinks, great idea, Virgil," he says, clapping him on the shoulder, and they both go out to the hallway, where Virgil stops dead and whacks Roman on the shoulder, shoving his hand over Roman's mouth when it looks like he's about to start screaming.

Because Patton has Logan pressed back against the wall, kissing him hard. One of Logan's hands gripping Patton's shoulder to keep him from leaving, the other where Virgil can't see. And Patton's cupping Logan's face with one hand, the other tight on his hip. And they are not stopping.

Virgil yanks Roman into the kitchen before they get caught.

"Holy fucking shit," Roman scream-whispers as soon as they're safely out of sight. "Logan did it!"

"Operation Mistletoe!" Virgil cheers, and Roman cheers back, "Operation Mistletoe!" And they smack a high-five, then Virgil, laughing, surges forwards, hugging him tight.

Roman smells like sweat and cologne. Virgil can feel his still-quick pulse from where he's pushed his face into Roman's neck, and Roman laughs as he hugs Virgil back, a hand bracing the back of his head, an arm strong around his waist.

"You always get so giggly when you're drunk," Roman says, sounding fond. "It's like the natural order's been swapped."

Virgil hesitates, tangling his fingers into Roman's shirt. T hen they shift, so they're still in each other's arms, but staring at each other.

"Well," Virgil says, mouth dry as he fiddles with Roman's collar. "Lowered inhibitions, you know?"

"I know," Roman says.

"Is it weird?" Virgil says.

"You're always weird."

"I—I mean, do you... like it?"

"I always like you, Virgil." Roman says, voice soft, and his eyes are soft too, and this is it, Virgil can feel it, the air heavy with potential.

Roman's so stupidly beautiful. His eyelids are coated in that glimmering gold that Virgil noticed before, and it brings out all the gold in his eyes, the gold that magnetizes Virgil, like some kind of magic. The sweat on his face glints in the low light, accentuating his cheekbones. He's still smiling. He looks like some kind of beautiful statue come to life.

It's Roman—a year ago, Virgil would have laughed at himself for this, thought someone would have been joking. But he knows Roman so much better now—Roman, who hides his insecurities so well it looks to so many outsiders that he doesn't have any. Roman, who works so hard to make sure that all of his work is perfect and up to his standards. Roman, who's trying to improve himself every day. Roman, with his ridiculous nicknames, and his fancy posing, and constant singing. Roman, who lights up so much whenever there is music, or dancing, or laughter.

Just. Roman. The "You Shit, You're In Love With Roman And Now You're Resigned To Suffering In Silence Here Are All The Reasons" list is so long and so varied it could be turned into a book, and Virgil finds something new every single day to admire and love about him.

So why can't he say any of this to him? The old, constant frustration, trying to reach inside of himself only to choke on whatever he wants, needs, to say, like he's on the verge of tears the whole time. Like the words trip and stumble on the way to his tongue, and fall into a sixteen car pile-up complete with flames and screaming. And he doesn't want to mess this up.

He really, really doesn't want to mess this up.

"What?" Roman asks, edged in a laugh. "You're staring at me."

Virgil makes a frustrated noise, says, "Words," and then grabs Roman's collar, pulling him forwards, and pressing his lips against Roman's.

Roman makes a noise of surprise, and Virgil presses closer, lips moving against his.

In all honestly, Virgil thinks tongues are kind of weird, but when his tongue first meets Roman's, that belief goes straight out of the window. The kiss is consuming, and slow; Virgil's in the lead, his tongue pressing against Roman's first, and he could feel Roman's body against his, muscles relaxing, and Virgil tangles his fingers into Roman's sweaty hair because he does not want him to leave. He knows he's inexperienced, but he hopes it's still good for him anyways, because this is amazing. Roman's arms are still around his waist, and he kisses him harder, Roman's mouth hot and insistent, and oh wow, okay, wow—

"Wait," Roman breathes, and then he pulls back. "Wait, wait."

Virgil freezes, and Roman pulls back, staring at him, mouth open. The sight of Virgil's lip stain smeared around his lips, his mouth, gives Virgil a surge of something to his stomach that he wasn't expecting, at all.

"What?" Virgil breathes, and Roman's eyes squeeze shut.

"You're drunk," he groans.

"I don't care," Virgil says, and Roman's hands land on Virgil's wrists, gently tugging his hands from his hair, and his eyes are still closed as he brings Virgil's hands to his shoulders, thumbs rubbing gently at his wrists. He looks—blissful.

"I do," Roman says, and he opens his eyes, meeting Virgil's. "It's—it's important, Virgil, you're—important." He presses a hard kiss against Virgil's left palm, then presses his cheek into Virgil's hand, holding Virgil's hand against his cheek.

You're important. Virgil swallows, slides his thumb along Roman's cheekbone. He loves this stupid noble idiot.

"I—I know how much you hate anyone saying this, but we'll talk later, all right? When you're sobered up. I promise."

Virgil's eyes squeeze shut. I promise. And Roman never breaks a promise.

"But you—I mean—" Virgil huffs out a breath, and says in a rush, "We're, like. On the same page. Right? This isn't—?"

Virgil doesn't get to say what this isn't, because Roman's cupping his face.

"Look at me, please, Virgil," Roman says, and Virgil opens his eyes reluctantly.

"You're one of the most important people in my life," Roman says, eyes half-lidded. "I didn't—I didn't say anything, because I didn't know if you—and I wanted—I want—"

"What?" Virgil says, his voice hushed.

"You," Roman says, strangled. "I want you."

It doesn't sound sexual, not at all, despite the fact that Virgil had his tongue in Roman's mouth a minute ago. It sounds like Virgil is the beautiful princess that Roman's been questing for, like in some ridiculous Disney movie.

The door to the kitchen opens, and Virgil and Roman leap apart, as if it isn't obvious by looking at Roman's mouth what they've been doing, and someone shouts, "Roman, it's Rent time!"

Roman sighs, looking out at the party, and back at Virgil, eyes full of conflict.

"Go on," Virgil says, soft. "You're the life of the party."

Roman's fingers card through Virgil's hair, and Virgil leans into his touch. "Later," he says. "Later. I—I promise you're not alone in feeling this. It's just—" he smiles, sudden, huge and bright. "You just have the worst timing, Virgil."

Virgil laughs, and steps back. Roman runs a hand through his hair, and heads back out to the living room.

Virgil's alone in the kitchen. Suddenly, he doesn't want to watch Roman singing. He doesn't really want to talk to anyone just now, actually.

He steps into the hallway—empty now, Logan and Patton must have relocated—head full of confusion, and stops in the bathroom to scrub off his makeup. He slouches quietly into his room, toeing off his boots, wiggling out of his jeans, tossing aside the sweater, and pulls on the ridiculous Peanuts-themed Christmas pajamas Patton got him.

He curls up in his too-big bed, and hugs a spare pillow close.

You're important, you're important, you're important.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Virgil wakes up to a distant headache, a dry mouth, and sweating like a fiend.

He opens his eyes, and the events of the night come rushing back.

Apparently, when Roman said sobered up, he meant first thing in the morning, and by that he meant as soon as you wake up, because Roman, shirtless, has replaced the pillow—a little spoon, and Virgil tries his best to keep his breathing even and calm.

Cool, so Roman decided to come cuddle last night? Awesome, tight, love it. Virgil's not quietly flipping his shit to himself at all.

But—wait—somehow, miracle of miracles, Virgil is awake before Roman.

Virgil carefully props himself up on his elbow, and resigns himself to waiting to watch Roman wake up.

He doesn't have to wait very long.

Roman stirs, face scrunching up, and he makes a groaning noise to himself, turning his face into the pillow, only to make another distant noise of complaint. A stretch works its way through his body, like a cat, and Roman blinks his eyes open at last.

"I knew it," Virgil says, sleep having ground down his voice. "There was no way a person was so inhumanely peppy in the mornings."

"Virgil!" Roman says, voice similarly scratchy, and he flips so that they're face to face. "How are you?"

"A little hungover, a lot nervous," Virgil admits, and Roman says, "Oh, I brought in some water, it's just—"

Virgil turns, and there's a little hangover pack on his table—a glass of water, advil, a couple mints. Virgil takes the medicine, downs the water, and sticks the mint into his mouth, offering the other one to Roman, who takes it, smiling, sitting up, too. Virgil notices belatedly that he's still in the slacks he was wearing last night. And also, Virgil is wearing Peanuts-themed pajamas.

"The apartment's all clean," Roman says. "I have no idea who, but five separate people have left behind a single shoe, I've no idea how or why. And Patton's got all the presents under the tree."

"Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," Roman says, and clacks his mint against his teeth, shifting, and blurts out, "I lied."

Virgil stiffens, like ice is flowing into his veins.

Roman doesn't seem to notice. "Logan and I weren't making Patton a Christmas gift."

Virgil blinks. "I—what?"

"We weren't working on making Patton a Christmas gift," Roman repeats, leaning forwards. "Operation Mistletoe was, in fact, a two-pronged plan. Logan wanted to get together with Patton, and I—I wanted to get together with you—so we tried to make a plan."

Virgil blinks, and says again, "What?"

"Patton told Logan and I about Not-So-Secret Santa after you went to bed, so Logan and I decided to throw the selection."

Virgil blinks. "You cheated?"

"I know, Patton would be very disappointed in me," Roman says. "Logan didn't know that I was going to follow him, though, that was just a you and me thing. And Logan and I decided to make a plan for the party—the body shots were Valerie's idea, but I did come up with the Bend and Snap bit."

"It was a very good bit," Virgil says faintly.

"And if the party didn't work, then, well, there were a lot of plans, there would have been some actual mistletoe involved—"

Virgil snickers, and then he pauses. "Wait, then what was the smoke?"

Roman looks sheepish. "We, ah. We burned the lists of bad ideas."

Virgil snorts, and Roman smiles.

"So, ah," he says, and looks nervous. "I've, um, kind of been in love with you for a while now, so—"

"Oh," Virgil says, breathless, then, "Cool, same."

"Same," Roman snorts, and suddenly, he's slithering forwards, hands cupping Virgil's face.

Warm. He's so warm, and his lips are so soft, and the way they move with Virgil's speaks of experience that Virgil doesn't have, but that's okay, that's more than okay, and he tastes like mint, and Roman's kissing him long and soft, and Virgil feels warm, too, lit up from inside, like some kind of magic that only Roman was privy to, like Roman's trying to give him something, and Virgil tries his best to receive it, give it back.

"Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown," Roman whispers, and Virgil groans, throwing an arm over his eyes before he starts to laugh.

"What, like yours aren't just as bad? It's the bunny suit from A Christmas Story."

"I obviously have the panache to pull it off," Roman sniffs, and grins at Virgil. "Look at you, Eeyore-rable."

Virgil boos even as Roman's situating himself on Virgil's lap, and Roman says, "Like adorable? Adorable Eeyore?"

"Crossing references, doesn't count," Virgil says, grinning even as he arches up to meet Roman's lips again.

"Which plan was it?" Logan's voice comes from the doorway, and Roman yelps, throwing himself over Virgil like Virgil was the one whose virtue needed protecting, as if Roman was the one wearing a shirt.

"Logan!"

"I mean, I'm assuming it was either Plan A or Plan C, but—"

"Shut up, it was Plan B!" Roman groans into Virgil's shoulder. "Would it kill you to knock?"

Logan angles a severely disapproving look at Virgil. "Plan B? Really?"

"I have no idea what that means," Virgil says.

"My hips are very seductive and my ass is entrancing, Logan, they made you miss that shot last night," Roman huffs, and it clicks.

"Oh, my God. B for Bend and Snap?" Virgil says, over Logan's spluttering.

"Are we having a party in here, or something?" Patton asks, materializing in the doorway, and Roman groans into Virgil's shoulder again, Virgil grinning and cupping the back of his head.

"It's Christmas!" Patton declares. "Get up, get up, there are presents! And cocoa! And mistletoe! Put on a shirt, Roman! I'm so happy for you two! Virgil, I love the jammies! Come on!"

Virgil, laughing still, gets pulled from bed.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

#text #sanders sides fic #my fic #christmas fic #logicality #prinxiety #logan #patton #roman #virgil

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hiraeth-doux · 7 years ago

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A Road Paved In Gold (12/?)

Summary: Steve Trevor didn’t die in the sky in Belgium, but his survival came with a price he couldn’t have ever imagined.

A/N: Okay, this is probably something you’ve been waiting for? I hope? :)) Thank you for your patience, guys ♡♡

AO3 | FF.net

Gotham, 2017

The storm came two night later, strong and vicious, the nature lashing out at the world with frightening determination. The wind was bending the trees around the lake house in half while the thunder rolled angrily so close to the roof that it felt like it was going to shake it right off any second.

“Do not turn left,” Steve said into a headpiece as he watched a grainy image of a security camera on the screen before him.

“There’s also a right,” Victor’s voice sounded loud and clear in his ear.

“There’s a staircase straight ahead of you,” Alfred leaned closer to the screen across the desk, his fingers tapping impatiently against it.

Steve’s stomach tightened, his mind racing. The howling of the wind outside was making the Batcave feel particularly… well, cavernous, and yet he still preferred it to the ground level of the house where the walls suddenly felt fragile under the raging gusts of wind and a heavy downpour that made him feel like they were drowning. What was Bruce thinking living in an actual glass box he had no idea.

The distress call from the S.T.A.R. Labs in Gotham came about an hour ago, and at first it seemed that it was merely a power outage issue, what with the storm practically trying to flood the entire city. Until the maintenance crew arrived to have a look only to find the building alight and half of the staff beaten up within an inch of their lives while the other half was holed up in every nook and crevice they could find while the Lab was taken over by what appeared to be a group of people who Barry described in a hushed whisper as ‘freaky’ – Steve found that detail particularly helpful.

Fast, strong, ruthless, and without a grain of humanity and consciousness to them, they were adamant to leave the place, even if it meant taking a few lives along the way.

“Test subjects,” Bruce grunted with disgust when they came across some sort of hibernation pods in the basement with life support system hooked up to them. Steve could hear him running, his footfalls soft and almost soundless for someone his size. “Someone was trying to create their own universal soldiers.” The words sounded sour in his mouth, like he bit into a lemon.

“Or meta-humans,” Victor added somberly.

Steve exchanged stunned glances with Alfred.

New meta-humans…

And suddenly everything felt a thousand times more real – the intensity, the danger, the tight voices on the other end. Like the whole world zeroed in on a handful of people trying to solve this puzzle while the time slowed down to a crawl, so precious each moment was. So life-changing each of them could be.

His mind jumped to Waller. To their conversation a couple of days ago. She wouldn’t do it—she wouldn’t have time–

How long could it take to drug and brainwash someone out of their mind? Maybe not long, but Victor said that the place looked like it had been operating for some time. Located on the lower level that wasn’t even supposed to be used, it could have remained hidden for a while, he figured. A backup plan? Her Task Force X plan had failed spectacularly, costing her not only a chunk of her ego but also the trust of the people she was meant to protect. And the League, despite her attempts, was barely under her control.

If he was honest with himself and based on what he knew about this woman, Steve wouldn’t have put keeping a whole new army on ice past her. Someone – Bruce? – had mentioned hibernation pods, and given the Labs’ access to resources and technology, he didn’t doubt that they could probably come up with a way to keep someone in a medically induced coma for as long as they needed it.

Until the storm cut off power for however short a time and woke the subjects up.

But that was a food for thought for later, and definitely something to consider when they had more time and hopefully information. Right now, they needed to get everyone out of the facility and try to round the… whatever those people were.

“They are soldiers,” Steve muttered when one of the cameras snatched an image of two men in what looked like hospital scrubs walking along the corridor, their eyes glassy, their faces nothing but stone masks that carried no trace of emotion.

“Pardon me?” Alfred turned to him.

“Soldiers,” Steve repeated, his brows pulling together. “You can see it in their postures, in the way they move.” Like they were on a prowl.

He wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad news. On the one hand, it was one less question bumping around his head. On the other, though, they were trained to survive at all costs, they tended to be excellent at hand to hand combat, and although it factored greatly into a certain degree of predictability that the League could use to their advantage, devoid of all other instincts, they could be lethal. Especially devoid of other instincts.

He’d seen it before, in the Great War. Not a medically induced condition, but more like despair that stripped men around him off their humanity. Like they weren’t going to stop at anything. They had reached their limit and had nothing to lose. Except they were not at war now.

The men paused in front of the camera and looked up, and for a second Steve got an unnerving feeling that they were staring straight him. So much so that he even drew back involuntarily. And then one of them reached for the lens and the screen went black.

“Great,” Alfred muttered.

“Victor, is your father there?” Steve asked a little too loudly, getting a muttered curse from Bruce.

“No,” Victor responded promptly. “Not this late. The only staff around are those burning the late night oil.”

A loud noise of something like a file cabinet toppling to the floor cut him off.

And then Diana’s voice barked at Barry to duck, so close that it made Steve’s pulse stutter. More commotion followed dotted with grunts and yelling, although whose it was hard to tell. Arthur’s war cry cut in, close to someone with a headpieces as he deemed being hooked to one of Bruce’s gadgets uncool. More screams. Rapid footfalls of someone running.

“Master Wayne?” Alfred said if a little tentatively, fearful of being distracting when Bruce least needed it.

Nervous energy mixed with adrenaline was throbbing in Steve’s chest, hot as lava. His hand was gripping the edge of the desk. Another peal of thunder rolled over their heads, making the whole house shake all the way down to the foundation.

“We have half of them, out of about a dozen,” Victor’s voice cut through the sounds Steve was no longer trying to interpret. “And all staff is safe in the back, but a few might need medical assistance. Those guys knew what they were doing. ”

“Don’t hurt them,” Diana’s order followed, muffled and too far away from them, and still like on cue Steve’s heart slammed hard against his ribs. “It’s not their fault. They are confused and don’t know what’s happening.”

“Just another Friday night,” Alfred muttered, rubbing his eyes, the lines around his mouth deeper somehow, his concern no longer hidden behind the ever-present façade of mild disinterest.

The problem, however, wasn’t to just stop the rogue subjects, but to do it safely, seeing as how Diana was right and they were as much the victims here as the people they had turned on, but remembering that was all the much harder when someone Steve actually cared about was fighting on the front line.

His mind was still spinning, trying to put the information together. From the pieces he’d snatched here and there, it looked like someone was attempting to create new meta-humans by pumping people – who might or might not have volunteered for it on their own free will – with steroids and a chemical cocktail meant to increase their endurance and stamina and god only knew what else. During the process of transformation they were, apparently, sedated either to reduce the pain of the process or to avoid violent outbursts, but when the storm hit the city, the lightning damaged several power lines in the area, shutting down the machines they were hooked to and cutting off the drip of the sedative. The few minutes that it took the emergency generator to kick in were all they needed to wake up, drugged up out of their minds, disoriented, and desperate to get the hell out of the place that had turned them into something that they couldn’t understand. There was nothing to them but heightened strength, fast reflexes, and an animal instinct to survive at any cost now.

The one thing that Steve wanted to know right now was if there was a way to really save them.

He thought back to Dr. Maru and her experiments, to the Nazi camps during the Second World War, and felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Funny how people never truly learned not to play god. Their ways grew more refined, but at the core so little had changed over the past hundred years that he was starting to wonder if they were going to keep running in circles for as long as they existed as a species, or if there was hope for them still.

Steve jolted at the sound of a loud crack upstairs, and then a flash of lightning darted toward them, a breeze of movement sending a stack of papers to the floor and the air around them was suddenly thick with static and smell of the storm.

And then Barry was lowering Victor onto the concrete floor, grimacing with exertion as he struggled not to collapse as well.

“What happened?” Alfred asked as Steve moved instantly to crouch near the Cyborg, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

“Nothing,” Victor winced, his whole body twitching slightly all over. “I’m good.”

“No, he’s not,” Barry protested in between sucking in gulps of air, his face glistening with the rain water. “The robot man is not meant to be tossed against walls,” he explained.

Steve turned to Victor, not quite certain what he was looking for. He was no medic to begin with, and Victor… Victor wasn’t even human, biologically speaking. Whatever his injury was, it had to be internal, and to be completely honest, he wouldn’t know how to go about it even if he knew where to start.

“I’m good,” Victor insisted, frowning with one human eyebrow and waving them off. “Just… need to… I’m fine.”

“Is it over?” Alfred asked Barry.

“No,” Barry shook his head fanatically. “Diana said to get Vic out of the way.”

Her name set Steve’s inner alarms wailing. “Where is she?” He asked in a suddenly hoarse voice. “Barry, where is Diana?”

“She was with Arthur, last time I saw her,” the younger man responded if a little uncertainly. “They were about to be done. There was like a storage room, kinda like a vault on the lower lever and we were trying to lure them all there, those… things.” He inhaled with a shudder. “And then one of them sorta decided to play a Cyborg rugby.”

“He didn’t—” Victor winced.

“You stopped responding, dude,” Barry interjected and then looked up at Steve. “They should be here any moment.”

Steve nodded, not quite buying his feigned nonchalance, not when Barry was basically vibrating with either excitement or stress, or a combination of both. At least he didn’t seem hurt. Steve looked up at the screens. And froze.

Breaking into the Labs’ intranet was a piece of cake, what with Bruce’s advanced toys the origins of which he tried not to think too hard about. And helpful, too, as it allowed them to tap into the live feed of the security cameras. However, it wasn’t what drew Steve’s attention now. It was a small red warning signal blinking in the corner of the screen.

Earlier, when the power went off, the emergency generator kicked in. But right now he could see that for some reason, when the central supply was restored, the generator didn’t turn off as it was meant to, and now the place was so overloaded it was a miracle the sparks weren’t flying.

Steve darted toward the workstation and swore as his fingers hit the keyboard.

“Captain…” Alfred started.

“I need to turn off the power,” Steve muttered, as if saying it out loud would somehow make it happen. He could feel three pairs of eyes on him, quizzical and worried.

“Ms. Prince asked not to--” Alfred began, stepping toward Steve.

“It’s a laboratory, Alfred,” Steve cut him off. “What do they have in laboratories?”

“Super cool tech,” Barry piped in from behind them.

“Illegal experiments?” Alfred offered, puzzled.

Steve shook his head without looking away from the screen. “Oxygen tanks.”

He heard Alfred suck in a breath.

“If there is a fire…” Steve started, but refused to go any further, his imagination helpfully supplying him with a vivid picture he wasn’t sure he’d be able to erase any time soon. “Ms. Prince might need to be unhappy about this some other time--Dammit!” He smacked his fist on the keyboard in frustration. “It’s not responding. I need to—I have to—” He sprung up to his feet, his breath hitching. “They need to shut it off… Bruce!” He barked into an earpiece.

And it was then that he realized that he couldn’t hear anything anymore. Nothing, not even the ever present sound of someone’s footsteps or breathing heavy with exertion on the other side. The channel was silent.

“It’s down,” Alfred said before he could ask. “The communication system is down. Must be the storm…”

“Victor--”

“I can’t.” Still sprawled on the floor, the Cyborg grimaced in what looked like pain. “I can’t connect to anything, not until I…” He trailed off with a wince.

“I could go,” Barry said quickly standing up, his glance darting toward the staircase. “I’m fast.”

Steve paused and turned to him, considering his earnest, eager face, his whole body still shaking slightly either from energy coursing through him, or adrenaline, or cold. They needed to turn the power off as soon as possible, and of them all, Barry had speed on his side.

“Do you know how to do it?” Steve asked.

Barry hesitated. “If you tell me…”

At that, Steve was shaking his head and running up the stairs already, ignoring Alfred calling his name and taking two steps at a time because it was a matter of minutes, perhaps, and maybe Barry was fast, but if he did it wrong, he wouldn’t be helping anyone. He could kill them all.

Steve’s hands were shaking with adrenalize when he rolled his bike out of the garage and into the dark driveway, its wheels skidding on wet gravel. He tried Diana’s phone on the way out the door, not surprised to hear it ringing somewhere in the house – they left in a haste. And then Bruce’s in a burst of wild hope, but it went to voicemail, seeing as how they were all busy.

It was up to him then.

The rain was still falling in earnest, the wind throwing angry handfuls of water at the face shield of his helmet. The handlebars were sleek and slippery in his hands, and he had to grip them tight so as not to feel like he was going to veer off any moment. The wet road glinted in the headlight of his bike while the world around him was nothing but blackness and he hoped desperately that he wouldn’t get lost in the maze of unfamiliar streets as he circled around the city.

Another lightning pierced the sky, and Steve sped up, fearing the worst. If any of them hit S.T.A.R. Labs, it wouldn’t stand a chance. Even now, he was half-expecting to see a blaze of fire on the horizon.

Instead, the S.T.A.R. Labs perimeter lights came into view, sooner than he had anticipated, the parking lot glistening with puddles.

He skidded to an abrupt halt, the traction of his bike on the slippery ground nearly sending him flying, and hit the ground running as he yanked his helmet off and tossed it on the grass. Frigid rain blinded him momentarily. Even from twenty yards away, the building was towering ominously over him.

This part of town was crowded with banks and business centres, bustling with life and commotion during the day, but this late at night and in the storm that was seemingly trying to eradicate the world itself, it was dark and dead silent save for the explosions of thunder and the rusting of the rain. There was something unnerving in it, in the darkness around him and the echo of his footsteps on the pavement.

A few of the second-floor windows were lit up, but the front entrance was locked and his pounding on the thick reinforced-glass door remained unanswered. He could hear muffled sounds of struggle coming from the inside, police and ambulance sirens piercing the air – Alfred must have tipped them off. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, panic building up inside of him like a tidal wave threatening to drown him.

He swore under his breath, the expletives that even Charlie, known in his brave days as a cussing pro, would find impressive, and started toward the back of the building, desperately trying to remember the layout the saw captured on the CCTV camera and the floor plans that he wasn’t sure they could trust. The main breaker box controlling the power supply of the building was inside, but there was also a backup one, for emergencies, although Steve didn’t think that anyone could have possibly accounted for something like this when they were designing this facility.

He heard a glass break somewhere inside the building, his head snapped up automatically, and there was only so much he could so not to dash in that direction on instinct. Instead, he nearly fell, running into Batmobile, black as the night itself, parked crookedly on the lawn.

Someone screamed above him.

Breathless, Steve stumbled in the dark, hands groping along the wall, and then all but threw himself at the breaker box when his fingers grazed against the metal. He could smell the smoke already, the metal was hot when he touched it, but it was locked, too. He glanced around, looking for something to break into it with, but this far away from the street lights, everything was black and thick with shadows around him. He was running out of time.

He flexed his fingers, curling them into a fist, and hit the lock once, twice, three times, the door bending under the force of his blows. At last, something gave in inside of it and he yanked the door open with enough force to nearly rip it off, his eyes scanning the switches wildly. When he touched them, they were hot, almost melting. He could see small sparks, too. Could hear the low hum of electricity running wild.

A moment of hesitation, and Steve flipped a few switches down, burning his fingers on the melting plastic. The whole building plunged into darkness. Everything went eerily quiet for a few long moments. All he could hear was the patter of the rain all around him, heavy drops bouncing off his jacket, his hair plastered to his head.

And then a sound of a broken glass pierced the night. A window above him shattered and something – someone – went flying out of it. Steve recognized one of the subjects immediately by the swift roll along the wet grass and a predator crouch that he came up in. He looked up for a brief second and then his eyes fixed on Steve – a new target.

“Oh, hell,” Steve muttered when the man lunged at him, his teeth bared and his body poised for attack. They really didn’t have time for this.

The impact of collision sent Steve into the brick wall, his breath knocked out of his body. He hissed in pain when his bad shoulder took the worst of it, pain jolting down his arm and he pushed the soldier away. He stumbled as stars exploded behind his eyes, his hand groping along the wall for support. But the man wasn’t done. He was coming at Steve again. And bloody hell, those people were basically superhuman and he very much was not.

His hand shaking, he grabbed onto the breaker box door and yanked at it, slamming it into the man’s face. He staggered unsteadily but not from the damage so much as in surprise. Not letting him gain his bearings, Steve swung at him, punching him square into a jaw and bracing himself for another attack. However, before he could so much as blink, a glowing lasso all of a sudden wrapped around his chest. The next moment Diana herself landed gracefully behind them, her eyes blazing and her expression fierce in the pale glow of the emergency lights, and pulled hard.

The man fell back onto the concrete pathway with a dull thud, swallowed instantly by the darkness and rain. He didn’t move after that.

Steve exhaled sharply.

They stood in front of one another as the pause stretched between them, separated by the veil of rainfall. His chest was still heaving, his hands flexing ever so slightly, curling into fists and uncurling again, his mind oddly empty. This was the first time he saw her in her armour since the 50’s and he couldn’t help but stare.

Diana glanced down at the man sprawled at her feet, which Steve found awfully ironic and more than a little hilarious, considering that it summed up the feelings of all League members toward her pretty damn accurately, albeit in a slightly more figurative sense. Then she looked up at Steve, a faint frown on her face, although he couldn’t tell if it was meant for him or the situation in general.

But before either of them could say a word, Arthur appeared behind him, his eyes locked on the man sprawled on the ground.

“Nice catch, Cap,” he noted gruffly, but not without approval.

“Wasn’t me…” Stave started, swallowing back a comment about how much more in his element the Atlantian seemed when he was drenched, his hand clasped tightly around his trident and his face all but joyous in the fight. He truly did find his calling with the League, it seemed.

Steve hoped he didn’t spear anyone in that building, or they would have some serious issues with the authorities. Amanda Waller would not be pleased.

Another shadow that leaped from the broken window effectively derailed the train of his thought, and then Bruce was standing over the man as well, his shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breathing. Steve could see a cut on his cheek, the rain washing away the blood, his eyes narrowed against the wind.

He glanced briefly at Arthur and Steve before his gaze was drawn back to Diana. “I guess we got them all,” he noted.

She nodded and lifted her eyes again, but by then, Steve already stepped into the shadows and disappeared in the rain.

---

“Does it hurt?” Alfred asked, more curious than concerned, which, given Vic’s history with surviving far worse things wasn’t much of a surprise if Steve was honest with himself.

There was curiosity pulsing inside of him, too, so at least they had that in common.

Sprawled on the couch in the lounge, Victor looked up at him. “It doesn’t hurt,” he responded. “It’s more like…. Like if you throw a laptop against a wall, you wouldn’t really expect it to work as well as before, would you?”

“I wouldn’t throw a laptop against a wall,” Alfred noted.

“Not everyone is that considerate,” Victor grimaced a little, and tried again, “Imagine your system failing.”

Alfred arched an eyebrow at him. “I’d rather not.”

“So how does this work?” Steve asked. Sitting across the coffee table from the couch, he leaned forward, elbow propped on his thighs as he studied the Cyborg closely. He didn’t look any different, admittedly, but using his own analogy, a broken device might not either. Only one of his hands was flexing ever so slightly as if he was squeezing an invisible stress ball.

Victor turned to him. “Nano-bots will patch me up. At least I don’t feel like I’m being electrocuted from the inside anymore. I’ll be good as new in no time.”

“Which is… how long?” Barry inquired.

“A few hours, probably.”

“Would you like some aspirin, Mr. Stone?” Alfred offered graciously.

Victor shook his head. “Thanks, Alfred, but I don’t think it’s how this works.”

“Well, then,” the older man straightened up. “In that case, I better go check if Master Wayne has any bones that need to be snapped into place. Ms. Prince,” he nodded at Diana who stepped into the lounge on his way out.

A brief hello, and she moved into the room. “Victor,” she smiled at the Cyborg, walking over to the couch. She studied him, her head tilted. “How are you feeling?”

“Like someone broke him,” Barry offered helpfully. He turned to the Cyborg and poked him in a metal shoulder. “Hey, can we reboot you?”

Victor waved his hand off. “Can we reboot you?”

“I’m not made of Nano-bots,” Barry pointed out.

“My point exactly.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Diana asked, nipping their bickering in the bud.

Victor tuned to her and nodded. “I am.” He paused. “It’s just—it’s easier to be here where my father doesn’t prod at me even though it’s nothing,” he added, and asked, “What about… those… whoever they were?”

Diana’s brows pulled together, and Steve remembered Arthur mentioning the Labs’ staff and night security who got a full dose of weird and had to be coaxed out of their hiding spots, not trusting the people who had attacked them to be detained and no longer dangerous. Several had to be sent to the hospital with concussion and a few broken bones, none of them coherent enough to even begin to tell their side of the story yet.

“They are under observation for now,” she responded. “Once the drug they are on wears off, they will be sent into a recovery therapy to see if they can remember what happened to them and who did it.”

“There was nothing in the S.T.A.R. Labs on them?” Steve looked up at her. “No records, no…”

“No,” she shook her head.

“I asked dad to check,” Victor spoke, his gaze darting between the two of them. “But he doesn’t have the clearance.”

“I bet we won’t have an issue with that,” Steve muttered, thinking of the magic that the Batcave contained.

Diana nodded. “Bruce will see if he can bypass their firewall, but there’s a chance that whoever is behind this was careful enough not to leave any trace.”

“So, we’re just making meta-humans now?” Barry asked, voicing what everyone was thinking.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Diana said diplomatically. “We don’t know that for a fact.”

“It was obvious enough last night,” he pointed out.

“Waller?” Victor offered.

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. “She is quite busy trying to sweep it under the rug right now,” he said carefully, mindful of not looking at anyone in particular. “She couldn’t control Suicide Squad and she can’t control Justice League. It is not unreasonable to assume that her trying to keep quiet about this is an attempt to keep her record clean, but there is also a possibility that she might be tired of waiting and decided to take the matters into her own hands.”

“So that’s a yes, maybe,” Barry summed up.

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Diana promised. She turned to Victor again and leaned in to place her hand on his cheek. “Thank you, for helping last night.”

He nodded again, and even smiled, his voice softening. “Sure thing.”

“And if there is anything--”

“I’ll ask,” he promised.

She reached for his hand a squeezed it, encouragement and affection pouring out of her eyes. Then she looked up, her eyes locking with Steve’s.

“Can we talk?” She asked.

He blinked, startled, as if there was another Steve in the room and she couldn’t have possibly meant him. His gaze held hers, a silent question in her eyes. Anticipation. Uncertainty. They were doing a damn good job dancing around one another without much of actual communication and he wondered what could have possibly made that change.

“Yeah. Sure, of course,” he said when the pause between them grew sufficiently awkward and cleared his throat.

“In private,” Diana added when he remained sitting.

Steve nodded if a little hesitantly, feeling like a moron for no reason that he could pinpoint, and rose from his seat to follow her.

“What’d you do?” Barry’s whispered theatrically to his back, but Steve barely registered the question.

He thought they would to the study, or maybe the kitchen, but instead Diana headed to the garage where she pulled the driver’s door of a grey Volvo open, keys in hand. She paused when Steve stopped several feet away from the car, more confused than anything at this point, watching him with one eyebrow raised. Half-dare, half-invitation.

Oh, hell, it wasn’t like he had anything to lose, and his curiosity was starting to get the best of him.

Steve slid into the passenger seat without a word and she started the car, the engine purring softly under the hood as they rolled out into the driveway, gravel crunching under the tires.

“Were they the military?” He asked when they were on the highway, staring out of his window and trying not to think of a thousand reasons for Diana to ask him to come somewhere with her for a talk, none of which looked particularly bright in his mind.

There was little they could say to one another that couldn’t be said in front of everyone else in the house, and he wondered if the trip was meant to make it less uncomfortable for either of them.

“It seems so, yes,” she responded, her voice measured.

He nodded. “Makes sense. If you want to create enhanced soldiers, it would probably pay off to use the real ones for it.”

The idea made him sick, the things he’s seen before vivid and clear before his eyes. They had fought so hard for every grain of peace. He could still smell the blood on his hands, feel the recoil of the rifle ram into his shoulder, hear the echo of the gunfire so clear in his mind like someone was pulling the trigger not ten feet away from him. All this, and they were still here, in the midst of another war the people were bringing upon themselves for no reason he could think of. And still, every victory felt like merely a stepping stone leading to another battle, and another one, and another one. And there seemed to be no end to them.

Nothing was ever enough.

“Do you really think Amanda Waller is behind it?” Steve asked after a few moments.

Her fingers tapped against the steering wheel. ��The question is – why would she?”

“You said so yourself – she wanted someone like you to control, but she can’t control the League. I don’t see anything stopping her from trying to create an army of Terminators if she is so hell-bent on power.”

He saw Diana glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “I thought that having you here was meant to get Bruce to cooperate.”

“Bruce doesn’t seem like the type,” Steve breathed.

There was something that the Batman wanted from Waller, but Steve didn’t know how long they would keep up this charade without going for each other’s throats. When her team arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs last night, just missing that narrow window of being useful, he did think that it was not going to end well. He wondered how close they came to having another casualty or two.

Diana bit he lip, two faint lines appearing between her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

They hadn’t spoken again until she pulled up to a curb near an old apartment building not far from the business district of Gotham. Red-brick building with bay windows and high stoops reminded Steve of the Beacon Hill area in Boston. He looked up, taking in the cheery curtains on said windows and potted plants on the windowsills and the general air of coziness that spoke of belonging, and felt a twinge in his gut. Nostalgia for the things he never had.

He followed Diana up the stoop leading to the entrance and then to the third floor where she opened one of the doors and stepped into an apartment. The large window right across the door overlooked the street and a row of similar houses on the other side of the road. He allowed himself to have a look around, noting that the place seemed spacious but impersonal. There were no knickknacks on the half-empty bookshelf, plain blinds instead of curtains, and the air smelled faintly of dust. Clearly, it had been a while since anyone bothered to open windows to let some fresh air in. Or to live here, for that matter.

“What is this place?” He asked at last, overcome with curiosity.

Diana closed the door behind them and paused hear the counter that was separating the small kitchen from the living room. She put the car keys on the countertop that, to Steve, looked like real marble. He was no expert, but the place seemed like a rare find.

“Clark stayed here when he was working on Lex Luthor’s case,” she answered, glancing around. “Bruce kept it after he—after Clark died so that Lois could take care of his things.” Okay, that would explain the boxes in the corner, Steve thought. “I think he’ll just wait for the lease to expire rather than bother dealing with it. I thought…” She trailed off and looked at him, her arms folded over her chest. “I thought it would be slightly more private than the house. It can get…”

“Hectic,” he finished when she paused, searching for words. “Okay, sure.” He shrugged and stared at her expectantly.

The slight frown of disapproval made its return as Diana gave him a measured look.

“What you did last night was reckless,” she said. Not angry, but there was a sliver of frustration simmering right under her skin, close enough for him to catch a glimpse.

“Driving in the rain? I doubt it,” he brushed her off. “I mean, statistically speaking….”

“You know what I mean,” she interjected, not falling for his attempt at deflecting. “The electric doors were the only thing keeping those people contained.”

“I don’t think it stopped that guy that leaped out of the window,” he reminded her, his heartbeat stuttering just a bit at the memory of expressionless face and dead eyes staring at him.

“He was the last one. What if they--”

“But they didn’t,” Steve countered. “They shouldn’t have been created in the first place.”

“That is not the point,” Diana shook her head and leveled him with a gaze. “You could have been hurt,” she added softer.

“I wasn’t.” Steve stuffed hands into the pockets of his pants, wishing he knew where this was coming from.

She couldn’t argue with this logic and they both knew that they would drown in what-ifs if they ever allowed themselves to venture there, but there was something else that bothered her that he couldn’t see yet. He watched her try to figure it out for herself, and the possibilities scared him.

“If we’re a part of the team, I need to be able to trust you,” Diana said at last.

Steve glanced away from her. “You used to,” he muttered.

“You were not supposed to be there last night, Steve. If something happened to you--” She took a breath, her voice finding a disapproving edge, and his pulse tripped over itself. “We wouldn’t—I wouldn’t know to help you until it was too late.”

He raked his hand through his hair. “I wasn’t—” he started, trying to focus on the conversation and not her eyes watching him with careful anticipation and the fact that this was the first time in the past few weeks that they were really and truly alone without a mission or anything of that kind looming over their heads.

I don’t need help.

He exhaled sharply.

“You think I don’t understand that this,” he gestured at the two of them, his voice something short of bitter, “is not working? You think I don’t see it, Diana?” He grimaced when she glanced away. “I know that this is not about Amanda Waller or Bruce or anyone else. This is about something more and it will always be about—about--”

Us. He didn’t dare say it.

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.

They should have discussed this a while ago, he figured. They should have tried to maybe find a way to make this work before the situation escalated to a kind of crisis that could have someone killed.

“Look, I wasn’t trying go against your decisions,” he tried again, fighting to keep his voice even. Surely he could lay out the facts without being carried away by… her presence or something. “I just… I saw what you couldn’t see, okay? The building’s power system was overloaded. It was minutes away from going up in flames. And with the storm… If it did reach the critical point, someone escaping that place would’ve been the least of everyone’s problems, believe me. If I could get to Bruce, he’d be the one flipping the switch, but the communication system was down and Victor was out of commission, so…”

He felt frustrated, tired, helpless. And standing before her and not being able to reach for her filled him with such throbbing ache that he felt it deep in his bones. Standing before her and not being able to even hold her gaze because it felt like a sucker punch was even worse, somehow.

Steve shook his head and stepped further into the room, allowing his glance to wander. A distraction as good as any to keep his mind off Diana. She used to trust him, without thinking, without hesitation, and knowing that she didn’t anymore… well, that hurt almost more than everything else.

“What is it that Amanda Waller wanted from you, Steve?” She spoke behind him.

A sharp, humorless laugh bubbled up in his chest, and the sound that escaped his throat was painful even to his own ears. “From me? Nothing. I’m just her means to an end. She wants to control Bruce Wayne and thinks that getting in his good grace will make that happen.” He paused, and then added, “She has some personal information about me, something she should never have found. She promised to erase it if I do something for her.” His lips curled into a bitter something. “Of course, she conveniently forgot to mention a detail or two.”

“Do you trust her to keep her word?” Diana asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted, turning to look at her again. “But I’d like to try and minimize the risk of Amanda Waller or whoever might come after her using it against me.”

A faint frown creased her forehead. “So, this is why you came?”

It didn’t sound much like a question but he still unanswered. “Yes.”

“And why you stayed?”

Steve nodded.

She pursed her lips together. “I see.”

“I know this is not the most…” he started, “…desirable situation for you, and it was your boyfriend’s idea to agree to Waller’s offer – and trust me, I know that we both wanted him not to – but I guess we could figure out how to… maybe stay out of each other’s way without jeopardizing anything for the League.” And added, “It’s the last thing I want, I swear.”

Diana’s brows knitted together in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not trying to—to take over, or anything.” Steve took a breath. “Look, I was only trying to help. I want to help. I really do, and last night--”

“No, what did you say about Bruce?” She stopped him.

Heat crept up his cheeks. Great, now they have to go into semantics.

He kind of figured out that whatever it was, the League was either completely clueless, or suspected something but didn’t know it for a fact. Either way, they didn’t seem to have a particular opinion on it. Not that he could blame Diana for wanting to keep her private life private and everything.

“I mean… whatever it is that you guys are.”

Smooth. Very smooth. Several generations of his spy predecessors were probably rolling in their graves now, watching him crash and burn from the other side.

Diana was staring at him like he was speaking a tongue she could not understand.

She tilted her head. “We’re not anything. Bruce and I, we’re not – did you think we were together?”

He looked away. “I saw you. My first night in Gotham, Waller suggested we meet at the hotel that housed that charity function to give me a crash course on the best and brightest of this city… Which was a smart move, actually. You know what they say about being invisible in the crowd.” Steve trailed off. “And there you two were,” he cleared his throat again, “kissing.”

Her face fell, the defensive lines smoothing out. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” he breathed out.

“It’s not like that,” Diana shook her head. “We’re not… like that. We never were. That kiss was--”

He held up his hand, stopping her. “Don’t say it was a mistake.”

“It was not a mistake. It was nothing.” Her voice was soft but decisive, without a trace of hesitation, and Steve tried real hard to ignore the flutter in his chest. “It was one glass of champagne too many and an impulse.”

“Does Bruce know about that?” He didn’t mean the question to sound so territorial. And yet…

“Of course.”

“—because it sure as hell doesn’t seem so,” he finished. The way he acts around you. The way he is around you…”

“I can’t tell him what to think or feel,” Diana said. “Just like no one has that kind of command over me.”

“And you—you live in his house,” he added, as if not hearing her.

“So do other people,” she pointed out. “I am only ever in Gotham on the League business. Staying at Bruce’s house is merely a matter of convince.” God, he hated the logic that he couldn’t argue with. She paused. “So, all this time…”

“Well, to be fair, I had no reason to think otherwise,” Steve admitted. His gaze skittered around “I just thought you weren’t too… demonstrative in your--” passion.

He choked on the word that opened room to the kind of mental images that were to drive him insane if he let them loose. He had already spent too many a night, thinking of her in another man’s arms a few walls away from him.

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

He rubbed his eyes, wishing that they never started this conversation at all. Wishing – shockingly – that he was at the lake house, listening to Arthur and Victor debate something or other, to Barry argue with a video game and Alfred telling them to please not put their feet on the antique coffee table, thank you very much. The list could go on and on and on. Anywhere but here, really, if only because he didn’t want to think of what Diana’s admittance meant and that wild satisfaction that it stirred inside of him. The one that he had no right to own.

“I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean to pry,” he added lamely, for lack of better ideas. “I… I respect your privacy, and if that was something that you wanted to keep to yourself…” he trailed off, all too aware of sounding more or less like a moron.

“You weren’t prying.” Her voice was soft. “And I told you that there is nothing happening between me and Bruce. I’d never lie to you, Steve,” she said earnestly.

A laugh that escaped his mouth was short and harsh, grating even to his own ears. Steve hated the sound of it.

“Like you never lied to me about the fact that I died in Paris?” The words came out of his mouth before he knew to stop them, and now that the wound was cut open again, he couldn’t help but keep twisting the knife. “On that day after liberation, when a German bomb hit out hotel. That kind of thing?”

Diana froze, all colour draining from her face.

“Because you didn’t.”

He met her gaze, adamant. “But I did, didn’t I? I was dead when you found me.” He watched anguish cross her features like a shadow. “Until I wasn’t.”

In the silence that fell between them, he could hear the clock ticking on the wall in the kitchen and a car honking outside, and a whirlwind of her thoughts that she couldn’t structure into anything coherent. And suddenly the air was so thick he couldn’t take a proper breath.

“How did you…” Diana started.

Steve looked away from her.

There was a snow globe sitting on the shelf right before him. He doubted that it was Clark’s. Probably some other tenant forgot it here a lifetime ago and no one who came to live here afterwards had the heart to throw it away. It was small, the size of a tennis ball, and inside of it was a village – a church and a several buildings sitting around a town square with a fountain in the middle of it. Steve stepped toward the shelf and picked it up. He shook it, setting a snowstorm into motion, white flakes circling above the buildings and falling on the roofs and the cobbled street and windowsills.

It looked so much like Veld that he almost felt the chilly November air biting at his cheeks as they sat on the ledge of the fountain, watching the celebrations. Could hear the music spilling through the open café doors and Charlie’s unsteady voice that tried to find itself again after all the time when Charlie had nothing to be joyful about. He could smell the chimney smoke and the snow, and in contract to it, the touch of Diana’s hand to his felt hot as fire. There was wonder in her eyes, unadulterated curiosity the likes of which Steve couldn’t remember seeing in his entire life. And his heart was beating so thunderously in his chest that he was certain she could hear it, too.

“Your mother told me,” he said after a few moments, his eyes still glued to the dance of plastic snowflakes. “When we went to Themyscira.”

“My mother…” Diana echoed, confused. “I don’t understand. Why would she…” She paused, her breath hitching. Steve could feel her eyes on him, burning right through him, and he knew that he was cornered. That there was no way out this time.

He was so sick of lying.

He turned to her, meeting her gaze and holding it despite the fact that he could barely stand it, shame and guilt making him want to fold in on himself and cease to exist. She deserve more. So much more. More than the world itself. All the things he couldn’t give her because he was not enough, it was simple as that. But he could give her the truth, at least. Maybe he could make it count for something.

And so he told her everything. About his conversation with Hippolyta and Diana’s mother opening his eyes to his miraculous survival in not one, but two explosions that would have killed anyone else. About how Diana was the one who made it happen and how it came with a price neither of them had bargained for.

He had imagined that conversation thousands of times over the years, playing out his words in his mind, a smooth flow of the story that was meant to fix everything. But now that he was speaking the truth, the words kept jamming in his throat, squashed by the look of utter incomprehension on Diana’s face.

She was listening to him silently, her eyes disbelieving and her posture rigid, shocked. He could hear her try and put two and two together in her mind, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, her logic fighting a losing battle with her heart. He could see it all in her eyes, betrayal and hurt, not only his but her mother’s as well, again. How many times could one person go through something like this before they couldn’t do it anymore?

Steve wondered what kept her fighting after all this time when he’d come so close to giving up. He feared that this might be the last straw. He loved her for her goodness and kindness and compassion above all else. But how much of it was still there to keep her going after mankind had let her down over and over again for a hundred years?

He tore his gaze away from her, unable to stand the things that he was seeing, feeling exposed and all the more at fault for everything that had happened between them, for having done this to her and still doing it. The air felt charged between them, thick and heavy. Like it was a living thing in and of itself, breathing and pulsing around them. Steve felt his skin prickle under her scrutiny when he spoke of the day when he walked away from her, his voice not nearly as measured as he wanted it to be. And he knew the exact moment when she couldn’t stand looking at him as well.

“This can’t be…” Diana whispered when he fell silent. “My mother… she ought to be wrong, I couldn’t—I can’t--”

“You told me you couldn’t shoot lightning from your gauntlets until a certain point, either, but you’re a daughter of Zeus, Diana. Is it really that much of a stretch to believe that you can grant life?”

She was shaking her head. “But why would she tell it to you, and not me?”

He paused. “She thought that it was my life, and my choice to make.”

“It wasn’t.” Her voice was laced with accusation and contempt now.

“She thought that if you knew, you would have tried to save everyone. And if you did, it would destroy you,” Steve breathed.

“How could you not tell me?” She whispered and pressed her hand to her lips.

“How could I do it?” He turned to her. “You… you gave me my life back at the cost of—of yours, your strength. And all I could do in return was take from you, giving nothing but pain back?”

Diana’s brows knitted together. She rubbed her forehead. “How can you even know that it’s true?”

He did think of that. He had spent years thinking of that, hoping against all hope that Hippolyta was only half-right, the good half. The one that meant that they could be together for the rest of eternity without either of them having to suffer the consequences of this decision.

Steve ducked his head and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, willing the right words to come. At last, he had a chance to do right by her. And he needed her so desperately to understand.

“Because I had the goddamned nightmares every night after the war, everything that I’d done, everything that was done to me. All of it on an endless loop because I couldn’t scratch them out of my head.” He pinched the bridge of his nose until it hurt, until he couldn’t stand it anymore and had no choice but to look at her. “Every single night, Diana. Until you came back, and then they were gone. Until you started having them instead.”

She was staring at him in stunned silence.

“The things that you didn’t understand, but I did because I lived them.” He whispered, begging her to see and knowing that she couldn’t. “How could I keep doing this to you?”

“You lied to me, Steve,” she started and stopped, pressing her lips into a thin line. He wondered what words of blame she was trying to swallow back. “You promised you would never lie.”

He felt his shoulders slump.

“What would you have done, Diana? If the situation was reversed, what would it be?”

“I’d talk to you,” she said forcefully, heatedly.

“Talk to me?” Steve echoed, a sharp pained laugh clawing its way out of his throat. “Like you talked to me that time when you snuck out in the middle of the night and disappeared for 16 years?”

Her face fell. “Is that why… why you did it? Because I--”

“Christ, no,” he breathed out and scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t a payback. I wouldn’t, no--” He took in a shuddered breath. “I didn’t know what else to do,” Steve admitted, his voice dropping in defiance. “But I couldn’t stand hurting you any longer. I couldn’t stand holding you back and thinking that if something happened to you, it would’ve been my fault.”

“But it still hurt, Steve,” she whispered. “Every day when you were gone.”

She might have as well slapped him. God knew he deserved it.

“And if I told you? What if I did, what would…” He trailed off, not sure how to put it into words. Not sure if he wanted to hear her answer.

“I wouldn’t care,” she said simply and without hesitation. “I loved you. If what you’re saying is true, if my mother was right…” The words sounded odd and foreign on her tongue as she tried to believe him, not yet succeeding. “If I loved you enough to keep your heart beating, what would any of this matter? All I ever wanted was to be with you.”

Steve felt his body deflate.

It occurred to him that they both completely lost track of time. The soft light of the afternoon turned honey-gold as the sun started to dip toward the horizon, flooding the room with the kind of warmth that he wanted to bottle up and hold on to, the old rug striped with the shadows that painted an entirely new story beneath their feet.

All this time in this world, and the one thing that never ceased to amaze Steve was that time stopped for nothing. Someone’s life might be falling apart, people’s joys and tragedies morphing seamlessly into one another, mind-shattering and breathtaking, but the Earth would keep on spinning, not pausing for anyone. Never allowing them to catch on.

“I know,” he breathed, feeling so drained all of sudden that his very bones ached with it. “Because if it was me, I wouldn’t care, either. But how could I keep doing that to you, Diana? How could I save you from myself if I stayed?”

“I didn’t need you to save me,” she argued, looking at him like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I needed you to want me.”

I did, I do, he thought watching her, relieved to finally have the weight of this secret lifted off his shoulders, and loathing himself beyond comprehension for having done this to her, for the unshed tears in her eyes.

“If you wanted to go, I would never have forced you to stay,” Diana added. “I would never have made you do anything against your will, least of all be with me if you wanted something else for yourself. But you still should have told me. You had to have told me, Steve.”

He ran his hand over his face. “What difference would it make?”

He flinched when the hurt lurking behind her eyes flared up with startling intensity.

“Well, maybe then I wouldn’t have to spend nearly seventy years of my life certain that the only man I’ve ever loved thought that being with me was a mistake.”

There was no anger to her words, no resentment, no accusation, but Steve would have preferred them to disappointment and weariness. To the bloody acceptance.

All air wheezed out of him. “I never said that it was a mistake.”

“You said that we had nowhere left to go, that we couldn’t have ended otherwise. What else could it possibly mean?” She looked away from him, staring instead at the floor and the ornate carpet under their feet. “If all of this is true, if you were so adamant to leave then, why would you stay now?”

“I thought that you were with Bruce,” he responded softly. “I thought that you’ve moved on and none of this would matter anymore. You didn’t want me here anyway.”

Her expression hardened when she lifted her eyes again. “Don’t put it on me, Steve. I waited for you, and all you have wanted since the moment when you walked through Waller’s door was to escape again. I merely didn’t want to be reminded of everything I wished for us to have but that we never did.”

“I don’t--” Steve rubbed his eyes. “I’m not trying to—it’s not what I meant.” He shook his head. “Do you think I wanted to be here and watch you be in love with someone else?”

“I’m not. I wasn’t.” She trailed off. They stayed quiet for a few moments – him running his thumb over a worn wood of the bookshelf because it made for a great avoidance technique apparently, and Diana staring at the wall because it probably beat looking at him. And then he heard her inhale shakily. “None of this matters, right?” Her voice was hard and clipped behind him. “You’ll get what you want from Waller and be on your way.”

Steve swallowed and turned to face her. “Yes.”

And then he would spend the rest of his days thinking of how spectacularly he had screwed up the one good thing that ever happened to him and knowing exactly how much he hurt the only woman he was ever crazy about. Who still, despite everything, was his entire world.

She nodded. “I see.”

Steve’s gaze skittered past her.

“You know, when you called me a liar and a murderer, it was a spot on. It’s all I am, all I ever was.” His voice dropped. He glanced out the window because the words came easier that way, when he didn’t feel as exposed as when he wanted to cross the damn room and kneel before her, taking back every hurtful word that ever fell between them. “You think I didn’t know that? You think I don’t know that I never deserved you? You’re a princess, for heaven’s sake. You’re a goddess, Diana. What did I ever have to give you?”

A car drove down the street, swerving to avoid a cyclist. A gust of wind picked up an empty coffee cup and chased it down the pavement. Even with the windows closed, he could smell wet soil and fallen leaves and the cold that was yet to come.

“It wasn’t your decision to make. Not like that.”

“I’m not going to stay at the lake house,” he murmured without arguing. Maybe it wasn’t his decision to make, but someone had to make it nonetheless. “I’ll find—I’ll find a place and get out of your hair. I’ll figure out how to take care of Waller.”

Diana nodded again, lips pressed together.

“It’ll be better that way,” Steve added even though she didn’t protest.

He could barely look at her, shame and resentment eating him up from the inside. Everything that was good in the world, everything that was worth saving – it all lived in her soul, a little weathered and frayed after her time in man’s world but no less brilliant regardless. She deserved the stars from the sky, but there was only so much that he could offer.

“Very well,” Diana said quietly after a moment.

This is it, Steve thought. He had finally hammered the last nail into the coffin of everything that had ever happened between them, the good things and the pain laced through the moments in time when it was too big to contain. He broke every promise he had ever made to her, except for the one to love her until his final breath, and even though his chest felt lighter somehow with the words spilled out and shared at last, it seemed like a small consolation for what was yet to come. His relief over the fact that he didn’t have to watch her be happy with someone else quickly replaced by the sad truth of not being the one by her side either.

Steve stepped away from the bookshelf and the snow globe and willed himself to bottle up the memory of Veld and every day that he’d spent with her since then as tight as he could, and tried not to think of how his world was tearing at the seams all over again.

Diana turned around without a word, reaching for the car keys still sitting on the counter, and Steve followed her in silence. There was nothing else to say, and filling the silence just for hell of it felt cheap. He bet that this wasn’t how she expected their conversation to go.

At the door, she reached for the knob, twisting it, but the old lock jammed, refusing to turn. Behind her, Steve stopped abruptly not expecting her to pause, nearly stepping on her heels, so close to her now that he could hear her breathe. Could catch the smell of honey and flowers on her skin and the faint scent of her leather jacket.

Diana stilled, her grip on the doorknob so tight that her knuckles had gone white, unmoving and aware of his sudden proximity, and all he could think of was how much he missed the unobstructed closeness of her. Not accidental, not the one that he tended to avoid, but her presence in its purest form.

“Did you mean it?” Steve asked quietly when several moment had passed and yet none of them moved.

She half-turned, looking somewhere past her shoulder. “Did I mean what?”

“That I was the only man you ever loved.”

“What does it matter?” She whispered, still not looking at him.

His gaze followed the slope of her forehead, the flutter of her eyelashes, the line of her nose and down toward the curve of her mouth, seeping her in. Allowing himself to do it on the off chance it wouldn’t happen again any time soon.

He closed his eyes.

“Everything,” he said at last, a whoosh of breath that fell on her neck.

Diana turned slowly, still caught between him and the door, and looked up. He opened his eyes and found her gaze, deep and so damn beautiful that he forgot how to function. He could feel her search for words, studying him from this close – something she’d done thousands of times, but never like this. Like she was trying to reach for something deep inside of him. Steve’s heart had never felt this heavy in his chest, as though his very soul was bleeding.

She reached tentatively for his face, her thumb brushing against a small faint scar on his chin underneath the faint shadow of stubble, a thin pale line – two wars and numerous battles, and he somehow managed to cut himself while shaving. God, there was so much irony to it – he remembered laughing at it as he held a towel to a careless nick that was stinging from the remnants of the aftershave on his skin and she was smiling at him from the bathroom door, no less amused than he was.

“Diana.”

“I remember this,” She whispered. Her fingers stroked his cheek gently as blood roared through his veins. “I remember everything.”

“I’m sorry. I am so sorry…” Steve started and stumbled, a hot lump lodged in his throat and panic rising inside of him in waves. “For not knowing how to fix this mess back then… and for not knowing how to do it now.”

The words were tumbling out of his mouth, frantic and hurried like he was running out of time, and his heart was hammering so fast in his chest that he could barely hear himself speak. There were words perhaps that could make her understand and he was desperate to find them.

“I didn’t know what to do—I still don’t, but if I stayed… if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. And if—if I told you everything, and you’d asked me not to go, I would never--” Steve swallowed, his mouth dry. His voice was tight and hoarse, and the touch of her hand burned on his skin. “I thought it would be easier to make you hate me, I wanted you to hate me, but I can’t—if I could take it back, take it all back and redo the past, I’d do it right. Somehow, I’d find a way to do it right.”

Diana bowed her head when he fell silent, looking away from him, and Steve felt the ground swim beneath his feet. The urge to reach for her was unbearable.

“When you left, it felt like something tore me in half,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry.” The apology fell from his lips again, earnest as it could be. “I missed you… every day, every moment,” he murmured, scared to touch her even though he could all but hear her heartbeat next to him, so close she was. “I wish I knew how to make it better, how to fix it all. How to…” His mind was running in circles, making him faint. “I never thought those things that I said, that… that there was nowhere for us to go because the only thing I ever wanted was to be with you. But not like this, not that that cost--”

She lifted her face to his, tilting her head, and then she closed the distance between them. Her mouth brushed to his, soft and familiar, effectively rendering Steve completely and utterly speechless.

“I’d do it again,” Diana whispered against his lips. “To have you with me, I’d do it a thousand times.”

She kissed him again, her mouth moving slowly over his, breathing for him when there was no air left between them, their memories chasing one another and blossoming into something new. Her hand curled over Steve’s jacket, fingers pushing into his hair, and it was all the permission that he needed to kiss her back. His palm cupped over her cheek, his hand on her hip pulling her closer still, and Christ, he missed her so much.

“Diana…”

“I never stopped waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured once more, not certain what else to say, his words punctuated by her lips touching to his. I’m sorry. He might say those words for a million years and it still wouldn’t be enough. His hands curled over her wrists, pulling her hands down from his face and holding them against his chest. They were both breathless, dizzy. “Diana… you can’t…”

“Can’t what?” Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up. “Can’t love you still?” She freed one of her hands from his grasp and curled it over his jaw. “Why?”

Because you’re better than this, he was thinking. Because you deserve more.

This close to him, she was so impossibly beautiful that all he could do was stare, drinking her in.

“Because… I told you why,” Steve shook his head as if there was a chance in the world that either of them could forget the past couple hours. “How can you say this after… after everything?” His voice cracked, and he sucked in an unsteady breath. He dragged his gaze away from hers and focused instead on her fingers curled over his and pressed right above his heart. “I lied to you. I hurt you. And I know my ‘sorry’ is not enough, can’t be enough…” He started and faltered, no longer certain where he was going with this. “Surely after all this time--”

“Steve.”

He wasn’t sure why he was trying to convince her to push him away when the only thing he ever wanted was finally right there at his fingertips, but he certainly deserved her rejection more than her grace and the kind smile that made his heart ache.

“You are so much better than me,” he added quietly. “So much more. How can you--”

Her hand swept his hair back from his face, making him still under her touch, her eyes searching his, studying him like she’d never seen him before.

“Because I’d choose it,” she responded at last so softly that he barely heard her over the blood rush in his ears.

“Choose what?” Steve blinked, failing to follow.

It was getting decidedly hard to keep track of their conversation with her fingers brushing absently against his skin, making his pulse stutter with every touch. For all he knew, they could be talking about the weather, and he’d still be lost.

Diana’s lips quivered, a smile that didn’t quite come. “If someone asked me, I’d choose to bring you back to me. I’d choose to take your pain away,” she said. “Of course, I would.” Her thumb ran over his chin again. “I would always choose you.” She hesitated when an afterthought dawned on her. “If you still want me.”

If he still wanted her?

She was looking at him with such tenderness that he was scared to so much as blink for fear of missing even a second of it, her skin soft and warm beneath his touch and her pulse a rapid staccato under his fingertips. He thought of the first time he had laid his eyes on her and how she smiled at him in relief and wonder, so radiant that it was brighter than the sun. Thought of every morning that he’d got wake up next to her and every single thing they had ever said to one another. And he wanted more of all of that now, as much as his life could fit, be it another year or a thousand.

Steve nodded. And then again, frantically, confused by her implication – how could he not want her?

She tugged him down by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him once more. It was hasty and breathless, and he could taste tears on her lips, although there was no telling who they belonged to. He thought he was dreaming.

“I love you,” Steve muttered against her mouth. “I love you, Diana.”

Her breath hitched, a low sound forming in the back of her throat nearly undoing him in the best way. His hands slipped around her, snaking underneath her jacket to touch her the way he wanted for so long. He pressed her flat against the door, kissing her with reverence and urgency and some serious desperation. Lithe and languid against him, she wound her arms around his neck, her fingers tugging at his hair as she dragged her mouth along his cheek, nuzzling into the soft behind his ear.

“Diana.”

He name fell from his lips like a curse and a plea, fingers flexing on the fistfuls of her clothes.

When she drew back for a shaky inhale, her eyes were glazed-over with want, meeting his briefly before she pressed her mouth to his jaw, inching it slowly toward his heck, her breath of on his skin making him weak in the knees. Desire tightened in his stomach .

Her body pushed against his, and he took a step back, and then another one, and another one into the late afternoon light of the living room. And then her mouth was on his, plying his lips open and the crazy collision from a few minutes ago turned into something purposeful, deliberate. She arched into him, and for a long, endless moment all Steve could think was finally.

There was a time quite a while back, maybe twenty-something years ago when he stopped being able to summon her voice as clearly as he used to in his mind, when the taste of her was but a ghost in his memory and the way her laughter resonated deep within him carried none of the weight that he loved so, and he wondered not without dread about the day when she would only remain in the periphery of his recollection, incorporeal. Kissing her now, though, feeling her respond to the slightest of his touches, Steve wanted to laugh at the idea of being even remotely capable of forgetting her even after a millennium. Of letting go.

Suddenly, her touch was gone, and when he opened his eyes, half-panicked and dazed in equal measure, she already let her jacket fall to the floor at her feet. He looked at her, a silent question in his gaze, a hesitation to allow her to change her mind, but she was stepping toward him and nodding and reaching to push his jacket down his shoulders and allow the gravity to take it.

“Diana,” he muttered hoarsely.

His hands on her hips, he drew her to him as the fear of this moment shattering before his eyes pounded in his mind. The only man I’ve ever loved. The words resonated within him with achy longing. Diana’s fingers brushed to his lips, skimming over his face as if she was reading him in Braille. And then they dropped to his chest, dark eyes watching him.

“I still want you,” he said hoarsely, honestly.

Her gaze traveled over her face and down his body, palms running over his shoulders, and then she was tugging at his shirt and inching it up until Steve raised his arms over his head for her to pull it off and toss it aside.

She smiled, hand smoothing his rumpled hair, but her eyes were hungry and wanting. Desire careened through him with all-consuming intensity. His awareness tunnelled, zeroing in on what little space was still there between them as he drank her up with his eyes, needing to touch her, to never stop touching her, but needing even more to capture this instant, its fragility slicing right through him.

This was the moment when they needed to pause and maybe talk everything through. She had more questions, he knew it, could see it in her eyes earlier. There were words on the tip of his tongue too, waiting to be spoken. Yet none of them stopped, and when her eyes found his, he forgot what he was thinking.

“Does this hurt?” Diana asked, skimming her fingers lightly over the bruise on his shoulder that had faded from the terrifying purple to faint yellow, still tender but not nearly as bad as it was before. A slight frown creased her face.

Steve shook his head. “No, just looks bad.”

She nodded and leaned down to press a kiss to it, her mouth moving to a scar above his collarbone, as gentle as she could be. His eyes closed, seeping in the feeling of her. Her lips latched on the side of his neck, sucking hard on his skin, and Steve swore quietly, his fingers bunching the back of her shirt that was one layer too many between them.

Impatience surged through him, forming into a low grunt. He felt Diana smile against his throat. She found his mouth again, kissing every promise she could make right into him, her hands moving over his chest, tracing a map of scars – a life lived with purpose. He let her, revelling in the familiar swell of belonging rising inside of him, his muscles flexing under her touch. His hands tugged at her shirt once again, more urgently, and she drew back just far enough away to peel it off before her hands cupped his face again.

“I love you,” Diana whispered, nuzzling into his cheek. She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I missed you.”

“I’m here,” he promised.

His hands slid up her sides, gliding over the smooth skin, palms flat over her ribs. And then they were moving, one stumbling step at a time, turn between desperate urgency and the need to make every touch, every kiss count. Steve hoped she knew where they were going because he sure as hell was too busy to pay attention, focused on her hands on his body and his on hers. For all he cared, they could have just collapsed on the floor and it would’ve been fine with him.

Her hand slipped around his neck, fingers burrowing into his hair and, god help him, he wanted her so badly that he could barely stand it.

Steve’s calves hit the mattress – how they reached the bedroom he had no idea and no time to think about it - and he lowered down to sit on the edge of it, tugging Diana to him by the belt loops until she was standing between his parted knees.

“I have never not loved you,” he whispered, kissing down her sternum while his fingers worked on unzipping her pants and pushing them down her hips for her to stop out of them. “I have never not wanted you.” His eyes dropped shut, his voice hoarse and low as he murmured against her skin, but he didn’t care. She was here. His, at last.

He took a shuddered breath and exhaled slowly, struggling to get his heartbeat and blood flow under control. This was not meant to be over before it even started.

Diana’s breath caught in her throat, a shiver drilling down her body. For a moment, he merely sat here with his forehead pressed to her skin, breathing her in, fearful of his heart bursting right out of his chest. Her hand carded thought his hair, and Steve squeezed his eyes tight, willing himself to remember this second for as long as he existed on this earth.

Her hands slid down and under his chin to lift his head to look at her, his face cradled in her palms as her thumb kept running over his cheekbone. Steve swallowed, hard. Heat flared up in her eyes, pouring into him and thrumming in his veins, and when he tugged at her hips, she slid into his lap, straddling his thighs. Her fingers dug into his shoulders for support as Steve’s hands gripped her waist to keep her close.

“If you want to stop--” he started.

Diana tilted her head, her lips curving and her gaze roamed over his features before locking with his. “Why would I want to stop?”

Steve nodded, absently and distractedly, completely at a loss for words. His gaze dipped. He reached to trace the of her pale pink bra with her fingertips, laze and silk clinging to her like second skin, not even trying to stop his blood from rushing south.

Without a word, Diana reached back and unclasped it, letting it slide down her arms and fall to the floor. His mouth dropped a little in a way that went just slightly below dignified. He didn’t care, having to focus all of his willpower on not touching her, yet. His gaze traveled slowly from the smooth expanse of her chest to the juts of her collarbones, up the column of her neck, past the bow of her lips and until it found the fire of her eyes once more.

Diana leaned forward until her forehead rested against his and Steve had no choice but to hold her gaze.

“I have wanted you for so long,” she whispered, her nails scratching through his hair.

“Diana.”

Her palm splayed over his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. She smiled, pressed a kiss to his cheekbone, his temple.

“I love you,” she murmured, marveling in the freedom of being able to say it whenever she pleased.

Steve reached for the band holding her hair in a tight ponytail and pulled it off, allowing the waterfall of it to cascade down her shoulders, soft as black silk. He combed his hand through it, pulling her to him. Her cheeks were flushed, lips swollen with kisses, the heat radiating from her making it hard to think, and he hadn’t even done anything yet but kiss her. Steve tilted her chin to press his lips to her, loving the taste of her, the way her mouth felt languid against his, how she arched into him when he traced his hand up from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.

He kissed the underside of her jaw, moving his mouth to the spot behind her ear. Smiled at the small gasp and a murmured curse that fell from her tongue when his hand traced the waistline on her panties. And then his explorations came to an abrupt halt when she reached for the button of his jeans. Steve sucked in a breath and caught her wrists before Diana had a chance to undo the zipper. If she touched him now—

He shifted her weight in his arms and turned them over, his palm anchored on the base of her spine, lowering her on the bed and effectively distracting them both long enough for him to find his bearings. If she touched him when he wasn’t ready he would probably - most definitely, surely - disintegrate. Except Diana was kissing him again, and he was more than eager to give her that. And so he did.

When he pulled away, breaking the kiss to look at her, Diana was dazed and more than a little desperate, her chest heaving with each ragged breath.

“Steve,” she mouthed soundlessly, a plea and command rolled into one.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, dipping his head to press a hot kiss to her neck, making her breath catch in her throat and shudder unsteadily out when his mouth moved down, marking a slow path along her clavicle and across her chest.

He didn’t even notice her hands giving his jeans another push to slide them down to his thighs. He smiled, pausing just long enough to discard them and his boxers – an afterthought that didn’t really matter at the moment. And then he leaned over once more to kiss a path between her breasts and down her sternum, pausing just below her navel to hook his fingers into the waistband of her panties and slide them down her legs in one swift motion.

When he looked up, he found Diana watching him, her eyes dark with want.

“God, I love you,” he breathed, allowing his gaze to travel along her body from the ankles up to the slightly parted lips.

He had wanted her before. He’d wanted her pretty much non-stop from the night on the boat when they left Themyscira nearly a hundred years ago, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember the last time he wanted her this badly. To the point of a dull ache in his solar plexus and tremor in his hands.

Steve bent forward, picking up from where they had left off a minute ago, tattooing a trail of kisses from her navel down, nuzzling into the silky skin between her hipbones.

“Steve,” she sighed, the sound of his voice scattering around them.

It died on her lips with a soft gasp when his mouth closed around her, her back arching, fingers gripping his hair. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bunch the sheet with her other hand, her knuckles white and her breath nowhere to be found.

“Angel,” he murmured, into her skin.

He was slow and thorough, and he knew exactly what he was doing. It might not have been a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but Diana was a goddess, no less. Knowing how to coax the sounds that she was making out of her left Steve stupidly pleased with himself as he worked her up with deliberate dedication, stopping just short of pushing her over the edge until a curse in a language he didn’t understand fell from her mouth and her fingers gripped his hair in a soundless command.

Steve chuckled and pressed his lips to her just the right way. Her breath stuttered, morphing into a whimper, muscles shuddering, and he was rising above her, kissing whatever skin he could reach. There were words on her lips that he didn’t know, her skin slick with a sheen of sweat. He traced his tongue along her collar bone, teeth grazing gently against her throat. She smelled like sex and he was drunk on her, his own unreleased pleasure pulsing in his fingertips.

Barely coherent, she nuzzled sloppily into his cheek, kissing his jaw and pulling him down to her.

“Diana,” he groaned, one hand tangled in her hair.

“I want you,” she whispered almost soundlessly.

He swore, feeling her smile against his skin, her hands moving over him with impatience and urgency. She wrapped one of her legs around his hip, reeling him in – a demand that he couldn’t resist, not anymore. Steve shifted against her body, pressed a kiss to her temple. She gasped into his shoulder when he pushed inside of her, hot breath on his heated skin sending a shiver down his spine. I love you, he thought. I love you so fucking much.

His fingers flexed on Diana’s flesh, moving along her thigh as he kissed her throat, trying to focus on going slowly for fear of making this end too fast. Beneath him, he could still feel faint shudder of aftershocks shooting through her, her muscles spasming wonderfully around him. Steve weaved his fingers through hers and stretched her arms above her head, pressing them into the sheets and feeling her grasp tighten in agreement.

“Look at me,” he said, desperate to see her. “Diana… Look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, hazy and heavy-lidded, hungry in the way that he liked best. Her gaze swept over his features and dropped to his lips, and it was just about enough to end him if he’d only let it. She pulled one of her hands from his grip and curled her palm around his neck. Her mouth found his, her hips rocking slowly beneath him to push him into motion.

Like earlier, Steve took his time, building up the heat between them until it was nothing but a hot coil somewhere deep inside of him and then easing away, moving above her as he whispered breathless confessions into her skin, peppered with promises and the words of love until she was frantic and barely coherent and his own pleasure took over reason. He could feel her teeth grazing over his shoulder, nails digging in frenzy into the skin of his back as his pace picked up, the need to feel all of her so overwhelming it was unbearable.

He dreamed of that, dreamed of making her his again, the bliss of closeness shattered by the light of the morning and the emptiness of his bed, her ghost a constant presence that made him feel like he was losing his mind. But she was real now, her voice and her touch electrifying, and everything he had ever wanted to say to her pouring out of him like he had no control over those words.

And then her body constricted around him, tipping him into a bliss of momentary rapture, her arms catching him, breaking his fall, cradling him close, her name on his lips like a prayer.

Steve drifted back to awareness slowly to Diana’s hand stroking his hair, her lips on his temple and his breath falling on her collarbone.

“I love you,” she whispered when Steve managed to drag his gaze to hers, looking no less pleased with herself than he had earlier.

He smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I missed you,” he breathed.

Her hand closed around his and she pressed a kiss to his fingers. “I’m here.”

---

Afterwards, in the soft evening light filtering through the window, Diana couldn’t stop thinking of his haunted eyes, the vulnerability that he had allowed her to see earlier. Like it was something that was spilling through the cut-open wound.

For Steve, it was a no easy feat, and she knew it. The past couple of hours proved that they still remembered the language of their bodies, slipping easily into the familiar patterns and the smooth touch of their hands – all moves rehearsed and repeated but never lacking nonetheless. He knew where to put his hands to make her forget the world, knew how to kiss her to leave her breathless, how to touch her to turn her desire white-hot and thrumming in her veins. Diana loved that he knew her better than she knew herself, her body coming alive in his arms.

Yet, after all this time she couldn’t help but feel a twinge in her stomach at the thought that at the core, they were strangers now. And she itched to make the feeling go away. She wanted him back, wanted him to be completely and utterly hers again.

Right now, stretched under the sheets beside her, Steve was watching her from all of two inches away, her head resting on his pillow and their legs tangled together, sweet weight and warmth and yearned-for comfort. She studied him back, taking in the tired lines around his eyes, his weary look, the tenderness in his eyes that made her breath catch in her throat. The eyes so blue that Diana couldn’t help but feel like she was in them. No one ever looked at her the way Steve did. In all of her life, he was ever the only one.

She lifted her hand and carded it through his damp hair.

“I need a cut,” Steve whispered, smiling under her scrutiny.

Diana shook her head. “I like it.”

He ran his thumb along her jaw. His skin was a little calloused, rougher than hers, making her wish he would never stop touching her. “You okay?” He asked.

She nodded. Hesitated. And then craned her neck to press a kiss to his brow before resting their foreheads together, crowding his space. He didn’t seem to mind. “I forgot…” she murmured, feeling her eyes drop shut for fear of losing the sensation of this moment, “what it was like to be with you.”

“Must’ve not been very memorable,” he chuckled, a little amused, a little wary of her answer.

Her hand moved to rest on the back of his neck. “No, not that. I didn’t forget,” she said after a moment, searching for better words. “I stopped allowing myself to remember.”

“Diana…”

Her eyes opened slowly, “Because if I didn’t, I’d lose myself.”

Steve’s smile slipped, his expression growing pained. She watched his jaw work, his lips moving without a sound, struggling against the question.

“Will you be able to forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted and regretted saying it the second the words came out of her mouth as he went rigid beside her. From this close she could almost feel his pulse stutter.

“Do you… do you want me to leave?” Steve uttered, his voice low and resigned. “Because screw Waller,” he stroked a strand of her hair, but his hand was shaking and he drew it back. “If this is too much for you, I could--”

Diana brushed her fingers to his lips, silencing him, and then tilted her face up to kiss him. “No.” She shook her head and kissed him again, slowly and lazily, smiling when he responded without hesitation, his hand sliding around her waist to rest on the base of her spine.

She pulled away and lowered her fingers to trail the length of his clavicle. They needed to talk. She had questions still, things that she needed to know and answers that made sense. Everything that he had told her about his conversation with her mother was having trouble settling in her mind, so wild it seemed, and she had seen enough wild in her life to not be easily swayed. But right now his body was warm against her, his chest rising and falling steadily, and she was deliriously happy and sated and finally at peace. He loved her. And she loved him, and somehow everything else lost its importance.

They would talk, she knew that. Eventually, they would figure out how to make this work, but right now she didn’t want to think about that. All she wanted to do was trace the lines of his body as they basked in the lazy afterglow and promise him whatever he wanted so long as he swore to never leave her again.

“No,” Diana repeated, her eyes searching his, back irises darting between the blue ones. “How can I want you gone when I just got you back?” She smiled, but it dimmed almost instantly and his brows pulled together in response. “I just—I need time,” she breathed.

Steve nodded. “Yeah… yes, of course. Anything you want,” he promised quietly.

She brushed her fingertips down his cheek. “And I want you, always.” Another nod, and she felt her body relax. “I love you and I’m done losing you, Steve.”

A shadow that had settled over his face remained intact. She could practically hear his thoughts chasing one another, bouncing against his skull.

Steve drew back from her and rolled onto his back, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling. He tucked his arm behind his head and exhaled slowly. His lips pressed tightly together like he was trying to swallow the words wanting out, his profile a dark outline against the pale rectangle of the window behind which the shadows were deepening.

“You’re doing it again,” Diana whispered, moving close to him seeking his warmth. She kissed his shoulder.

Steve glanced at her. “Doing what?”

“Pulling away from me.”

He didn’t say anything. She could feel his unease with her skin, his fear lurking behind the façade. It was like all the words they’d said to one another, all whispers punctuated by kisses dissolved into nothing. He meant them, she knew he did, but he was also scared of them. She thought back to the time they had spent together, before. Before everything went up in flames. Thought of how careful he always was with his confessions, pouring his soul into every single one of them but wary of making promises he couldn’t keep.

She tried not to think of those that fell through the cracks of their relationship, ground into dust. Life, she had learned, was merciless like that, and promises were not unbreakable at all.

Diana propped up on her elbow and looked down at him even though his eyes never shifted to her, studying him in the dimming light. His chest was rising and falling steadily as he breathed, and two faint concerned lines creased the skin between his brows. Everything about him was so familiar that just looking at him was erasing the time and space between them.

“You’re not less, Steve,” she said. “And I’m not more. We’re just… us. That’s why we work, why we always have.”

“We haven’t,” he reminded her in a whoosh of breath, and for a moment she was overcome with fear of watching him slip between her fingers again.

“You know what I mean,” she shook her head. “We have both made mistakes. It doesn’t mean that we deserve to be punished for them for the rest of our lives.”

“But what if--”

“What if what?” She interjected. “What if the sun falls from the sky? What if I wake up tomorrow and decide that you’re not good enough for me after all?” He flinched. “You think I don’t understand? You once told me you didn’t want me anymore.”

A shuddered breath broke out of his chest.

“And you told me that you couldn’t forgive me, which, trust me, I get because I will never forgive myself, either.”

“I didn’t…” Diana started and faltered.

It wasn’t that but she wasn’t quite certain how to put into words that it might take her some time to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. That it wasn’t about him but about her as well. The art of healing one’s heartache was never taught in a fight. It was the minefield that she had to cross on her own. There was no armour in that war, no shields and no swords, and every step could chip away just enough of her heart for it to disappear for good before she knew it. She needed time, but in no way did that mean that she was willing to let him go.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she whispered. “I…”

“I know,” he breathed, a small, humorless smile appearing on his face, the jagged edges of his voice slicing right thought her.

He knew.

He’d been there before.

“There is so little I can give you,” Steve spoke after a moment. “You don’t need me to protect you. You’re stronger than anyone I ever knew, in every sense of that word. And it’s not just my ego talking - and believe me, I have a rather inflated one - but facts. You’re…” He paused. “You’re a goddess, for heaven’s sake. You’re divine in every way I can think of, and I-- If leaving was the one thing I could do for you, how could I not--”

“It wasn’t,” she stopped him. “You say that having this… bond with you,” the words still sounded alien to her ears, “was a high price to pay. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. You think I wouldn’t have done it knowingly?” Her voice broke just enough for Steve to turn to her. “You think I wouldn’t have pulled you out of that plane if I could? You think I wouldn’t have shielded you if I saw that bomb coming?”

He glanced away from her and then back, seemingly unable to hold her gaze. “Do you feel it?”

She hesitated as if to have a better look inside of herself in search of something that she didn’t know was there a few hours ago. But what she found there was tenderness and relief and unspoken prayers to all gods she knew for bringing him back to her. All the things that had been there for so long that she had long forgotten what it was like to live without them.

“I feel... I feel scared because I don’t want you to be taken away from me, and it seems like that it’s all that’s been happening since I met you. I’m scared not because I don’t trust you, but because I don’t trust you not to break my heart again for you’re also the only one who can mend it.” Maybe it was good that he wasn’t really looking at her, after all. She wasn’t used to being this outspoken, either. The key to keeping said heart whole, she had learned, was not baring it for anyone. “It frightens me to feel this way, but I don’t know how to make it be otherwise.”

She put her palm on his chest, flat over where his heart was beating steadily.

“Diana…”

“I told you that I loved you. That I always will.” Her voice was soft, but his face contorted at her words nonetheless. Diana watched a storm of emotions sweep over his features. “Didn’t you believe me, Steve? Not once?”

“I believed that you believed it,” he ran a hand over his face. “You can’t know--”

She brushed her fingers to his chin and turned his face to her, catching his eyes and holding his gaze. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. He was not used to letting anyone see him so exposed, not even her because enough time had passed for the old habits to get rusty and what was once a given had a to be a choice again.

There were people in Diana’s life, people she cared about and who cared for her, but the loneliness that followed her across the past decades was all-consuming nonetheless. She didn’t know the whole story about him yet, the questions she didn’t yet know how to ask rolling on the tip of her tongue, but looking at him now she had a distinct suspicion that Steve had put a fair amount of effort into keeping whoever happened to pass through his days at arm’s length as well. She could feel it in the way he carried himself, in the tiny change of his expression when he thought no one was looking.

They were small things she’d seen before, but the time really put them into perspective. All those weeks when she was busy agonizing over him not loving her anymore, and it never crossed her mind that he was thinking the exact same thing. That she had left him behind a long time ago.

Her heart squeezed fiercely, tight with so much affection it almost hurt to breathe.

“How can I ever love someone else when I love you so much?” She whispered, her voice low and earnest as she tried to put into it everything that no words could convey.

Her question wedged itself between them as Steve stared at her. She hoped desperately that it was the right thing to say to smooth out the worry lines that creased his features. Her heart skipped a beat when a moment had passed, and then another. And then—

“C’mere.”

He reached for her and Diana didn’t hesitate, moving to him. She settled into the warmth of his body and brushed her lips to his skin above his collarbone before tucking her face into the hollow of his throat. Steve trapped his arms around her, holding her close. She could hear his heartbeat reverberate into her, could feel his lips press to her hair, and she squeezed her eyes, wanting to never stop feeling any of this.

“I thought… I hoped that you’d moved on,” Steve said a while later. “You deserved love, Diana. You deserved happiness.”

“I tried,” she admitted after a moment. “I have never stopped waiting for you, but I stopped believing that you’d come back. Not after a while.” Diana’s hand twitched a little on his skin. She drew her hand back, feeling his fingers comb through her hair. She kissed the spot right beneath his collarbone. “I tried,” she repeated in a whisper. “But no one made me feel the way you did… the way you do.”

Her words were simple, her soul bare.

“I’m sorry,” Steve breathed.

“Don’t be,” she said, lifting her head to look at him.

Never wanted to stop looking at him, either.

His lips twitched again, and this time there was a familiar spark in his eyes, the one that made her chest constrict and her blood turn into molten lava. She felt his fingers strum along her spine. “No, I’m sorry for being…” Steve sighed, “glad, I guess, that it never worked out. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here with me.”

Diana tilted her head, allowing her lips to curve as well. “Don’t be.” She studied him for a long moment. “Do you remember Veld?”

Vividly, Steve thought. There were a lot of things that he’d forgotten since then – some through the passage of time, others through effort of not wanting to keep carrying the weight of them. But that night and her mouth on his and her body pressed beneath him was bright as ever in his mind, his own beacon of hope. The beginning of life he never knew he could ever imagine.

He nodded, “Yes.”

She brushed her hand through his hair, her expression wondrous and tender. “You’ve made me yours that night, Steve,” she whispered. “I have never belonged to anyone else since.”

“Not even--” He started and cut off. He cleared his throat.

“Not even when I was with someone else, no,” Diana said.

He rose up on his elbow, capturing her mouth with his. Smiled when she hummed her approval in the back of her throat and kissed him back.

“Are you tired?” She asked against his lips, her voice raspy and wonderfully breathless.

Steve cocked an eyebrow at her. He bumped his nose against hers and kissed her once more. “No.”

“Good.” Diana moved to toss her leg over his hips, allowing him to pull her on top of him, his fingers tunnelling through hair and tugging her closer. “We have some catching up to do.”

To be continued....

#wonder woman #wondertrev #diana prince #steve trevor #wondertrevnet #a road paved in gold #this chapter nearly killed me #but it was also fun

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