#but I didn’t want this to just keep sitting in my WIP folder

[thatsrightice]

Hi, please have this thing I wrote on February 23rd, SIXTEEN DAYS before Part 8 came out where we saw Crosby neglecting his own wellbeing.

how do I know I’m still not hallucinating?

words: ~2k

main themes: entirely self-indulgent, Croz doesn’t take care of himself, POWs are back in Thorpe Abbotts, Croz & Bubbles, Croz & Rosie, basically implied Croz & everyone, the very definition of hurt/comfort

summary:

Harry Crosby becomes so sleep-deprived from constantly overworking himself that he hallucinates seeing friends who have gone down. He startles the first couple of times because they look exactly the same, as though not a day has gone by since he last saw them. He quickly recognizes them for what they are, soft smiles reminding him to get some sleep. Amidst a particularly stressful couple of weeks organizing missions to shuttle POWs out of Germany, the hallucinations become more frequent and he's not sure how much longer he can take it.

Harry Crosby becomes so sleep-deprived from constantly overworking himself that he begins to hallucinate seeing friends who have gone down. He startles the first couple of times because they look exactly the same, as though not a day has gone by since he last saw them. He quickly recognizes them for what they are, soft smiles reminding him to get some sleep.

He looks up from the map in Group Ops and Bubbles is leaning against the table listening intently, nodding and smiling in encouragement like always. He could have sworn that it was the Bucks who nearly ran him over with a jeep. One time an entire group of them were in the Flying Mess, laughing and pounding on the table as Curtis spun another one of his tales. He stops and listens for a moment before promptly turning around and heading straight for his bunk, all with a smile on his face.

He finds comfort in their presence, a hopefulness that they’ve found the path to Valhalla. He can’t help longing to join them but knows that his work isn’t done here yet.

And so he pushed on.

It’d been a long week for Crosby. Even after they’d shifted away from bombing runs towards supply drops and shuttling POWs, there was still plenty of work to be done and little sleep to be had. That’s why he’s not surprised when he passes Bucky standing with an arm around Buck’s shoulder. Crosby does nothing more than give a polite smile and a tired nod; he was already on his way to bed.

Of course, suddenly those two, along with some others, just keep showing up around base no matter how much sleep he gets. They all look a little worse for wear but Crosby decides it must be some sort of projection of how he feels. They try to talk to him but he can’t respond. To get diagnosed with Combat Fatigue and sent home after he’s been so unbelievably careful about not letting anyone find out about the hallucinations for so long would be a disgrace.

It all comes to a head after he’d been awake for far too long even by his standards. He discovers his chance and slips out of Group Ops for a brief moment of reprieve. He jumps into the front seat of his jeep taking off down the road. He drives to the Flying Mess without even really thinking about it and takes a seat at an empty table with nothing but a coffee in hand. He tells himself that coffee here tastes better than whatever shit they serve at Group Ops.

“What? The food here not good enough for you anymore, Croz?” Bucky grinned, taking a seat at the table across from him with Buck at his side. Crosby said nothing, eyes cast down as he stared into his cup. The table began to fill with more old faces among the likes of Brady, Hoerr, and Hambone. Murphy and DeMarco, too.

“Bingo’s too good for us now that he’s runnin’ with the high mucky-mucks,” Ham teased.

“Croz!” Bubbles greeted cheerfully, taking a seat on his left side. Though he finds himself surrounded, it’s like there’s a buffer between them, no one coming close enough to touch let alone brush against him.

“Hey Bubbles,” Crosby mumbled softly into his cup as he took a sip to avoid looking at the man.

“So he speaks,” Buck drawled, raising an eyebrow and smirking at him with that all-knowing look of his.

“You know, Croz,” Bucky began, pointing at him with his fork.”In the Stalag they got us eating nothing but spuds and slop.”

Crosby recognized it as a reminder to eat, but he wasn’t too sure he could stomach anything solid. He used to find comfort in their presence, but as of late, it felt as though his chronically optimistic demeanor was turning against him.

He set down the cup and bowed his head, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes in an attempt to quell the building emotions. The table goes quiet.

“Croz? Are you-“

“Major Crosby will report to Group Ops,” the Tannoy called, echoing over all corners of the base. It was like a switch had been flipped and he was immediately running on autopilot.

He downed the rest of his coffee and quickly strolled through the mess to his jeep. He remembered walking into Group Ops and holding a conversation with one of his assistants, but everything faded to black as he walked up the handful of steps to his office.

Bubbles is sitting at his bedside when he wakes up, staring down at his hands. He let out a shaky exhale and focused his eyes up at the ceiling.

Bubbles’ head shot up.

“What the hell happened, Croz?” he scolded. “You’re dehydrated, malnourished, sleep deprived–”

Crosby doesn’t have the energy to fight it anymore and allows himself to look at Bubbles, to truly look at Bubbles for the first time since the hallucinations had begun. He examined Bubbles’ face closely. He looks over every wrinkle in his brow and every freckle on his cheeks.

“God, I miss you,” Crosby rasped. Bubbles’ face fell.

“I’m right here, Croz,” Bubbles reassured. And now that Crosby could see his face in full view, vision no longer blurred and the room no longer spinning, the other man looked as awful as Crosby felt.

“It’s not fair,” he babbled, staring up at the ceiling and blinking away his tears. “It should have been you here and not me.”

“Don’t say that,” Bubbles chastised.

Crosby swallowed a sob. “I can’t do this, Bubbs,” his voice cracked.

“Hey, it’s almost over,” Bubbles soothed, scooting his chair forward. “We’re so close, Harry. We just gotta stick it out a little bit longer.”

Crosby shook his head, tears falling down his face. “I'm sorry, I just- I can’t do this anymore, Joey.”

“I am so incredibly proud of you, Binger, and don’t you dare think otherwise. You are the smartest, most selfless person I know. You give and you give until there is nothing left,” Bubbles spoke firmly. “But you're not in this alone, alright? There are so many people outside right now who care about you and are worried sick; Blake and Doug and Rosie. The Bucks, Ham, Brady, Murph, and DeMarco. We’re all here for you,” Bubbles grabbed his hand.

Crosby couldn’t help but jerk out of his grasp, staring in fear at his best friend.

“Harry? What’s wrong?”

“You touched me.”

“Do you not want me to?” Bubbles questioned, concern and worry replacing his confusion.

“You’ve never been able to touch me before,” Cdosby fiddled with the edge of the blanket.

“Course I have,” Bubbles smiled softly, moving to sit on the edge of the hospital cot.

Crosby reached out and hesitantly placed a hand on the other man’s cheek. When his fingers made contact he couldn’t help but throw himself at Bubbles. “I thought you were gone,” he cried. His arms were wound tightly around Bubbles’ neck, the other navigator’s arms circling his waist. “I thought I was hallucinating. How do I know I’m still not hallucinating?”

Bubbles was too shocked to speak and Crosby took that as his queue. He spilled everything and Bubbles listened, rubbing the man’s back gently as they embraced. He hid his face in Bubbles’ neck, crying and apologizing profusely for ignoring them all. Bubbles whispered reassurances while he wept, murmuring promises that no one was angry with him. Bubbles was equally mortified that none of them had done anything to step in. They watched from afar as the navigator worked himself to the bone. They kind of picked up on the fact that he was ignoring them, but they were too afraid of interrupting his extremely busy schedule. Bubbles began to tear up as he replayed every interaction he’d had with Crosby over the last couple of weeks. He couldn’t help but blame himself for not doing anything sooner.

Bubbles pulled away, thinking carefully as Crosby’s words sank in. He separated from the man and came around to the other side of the bed. He put Crosby’s arm around his shoulder and helped the man stand up. He led him to the window.

“Do they look like hallucinations?” He questioned, gesturing out the window at the grounds out front.

A group of men occupied the space in front of the hospital. Douglass stood close to the front door of the hospital deep in conversation with Blakely. Blakely took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair before securing it back on his head. Buck stood with his hands on his hips, looking out across the base. Murph was sitting on the ground leaning against the tree beside Hambone. DeMarco and Bucky stood a little off to the side throwing a ball back and forth with Meatball darting between them.

“Blake and Dougie don’t,” Crosby answered, seemingly avoiding the subject. Bubbles sighed, resting his head against Crosby’s as he became lost in thought.

Crosby glanced down at Bubbles’ watch and nearly jumped out of his skin. “Bubbles, I need to go. I’m flying with Rosie today,” he quickly pulled away from his friend and stumbled towards the bed.

“Croz, no!”

Crosby and Bubbles grappled, Crosby fighting with all of his remaining energy as he tried to escape Bubbles’ hold. A jeep screeched into the grass off to the side and Bubbles was incredibly thankful for the pilot’s timing.

“Croz! Harry, look!” Bubbles grabbed Crosby’s head and forced him to look out the window. “He’s right there.”

“Rosie?” Croz murmured questioningly. His struggles slowed as he watched the pilot hop out of the jeep and make a beeline for Douglass and Blakely, faces pinched.

“Blake rang ‘im up a bit ago, said this would probably happen.” Bubbles explained. “You want me to bring him in? You have to sit down, though.” Crosby scrunched his nose, face flushing slightly out of embarrassment. The navigator nodded, allowing himself to be helped back to the edge of the cot.

He watched Bubbles exit the infirmary, craning his neck to look out the window. Much to his relief, he watched Bubbles jog out the front door towards Rosie, Blake, and Doug. Bubbles put an arm on Rosie’s shoulder as he talked, the others making their way over. Rosie nodded and immediately turned to go towards the front door, but Bubbles remained outside talking to the others. As Bubbles continued to speak to the rest of the flyboys, Crosby could tell exactly when he broke to them why he’d been so distant. Before Bubbles even finished, Hambone broke off from the group and stalked back towards the tree, shaking his head. DeMarco crouched down, busying himself by burying his hands into Meatball’s fur. Bucky’s face twisted into a frown, eyebrows drawn tight together and looking ready to argue. Buck put a hand on his shoulder, still listening intently but not looking any more pleased than the others.

Crosby slid down in the bed onto his back, the shame of everything starting to overwhelm him again. He brought his arms and covered his eyes with the back of his hands. The door swung open, followed by soft, but quick footsteps. The bed dipped and a hand carded through his hair. He dropped his hands down to his stomach and peered up at the pilot with lidded eyes. Rosie smiled and Crosby could only blink heavily.

“Go to sleep, Croz,” Rosie murmured. “Everyone’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Everyone?” Crosby mumbled. He glanced up towards the window, but all he could see was the blue of the sky.

“Everyone,” he reassured. His voice was firm and all-encompassing, leaving no need for any follow-up questions. Yet, Crosby still needed to ask one more.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | oneshot angst [18+]

title. let me be free of you

He would live in this lifetime of hell over and over again if it meant that in some other one, there exists a world where he never hurts you.

ᰔ pairing. friends to strangers au - best friend!gojo x reader (f)

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru, your love of a lifetime, tells you he’s engaged to another woman. inspired by the novel & netflix series “one day” created by david nicholls

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem!reader, angst, mentions of sex/explicit content, coming of age themes, reader & gojo are in their 30s, mentions of pregnancy, mentions of alcohol, cheating, lots of mutual pining & longing, bittersweet ending

ᰔ word count. 4.8k

a/n. hellooo! i've had this finished in my wips folder for a long time but never got around to posting it sooo just wanted to let it see the light of day haha. hope you enjoyyy <33

➸ masterlist

“I’m engaged.”

The words leave Gojo’s lips as much less of a confession and more like a blabber, like a toddler desperate to keep conversation going in the face of a disinterested adult. Wasn’t how he expected to share the news of a lifetime to the love of his lifetime, but he hopes it breaks your heart to hear it. 

He watches your eyebrows flatten from the crease that was bothering them before, and then slowly raise into soft arches above your eyes–those damn beautiful eyes that, even when they twinkle with hurt, still make his heart skip a beat in his chest.

He recalls for a moment the night the two of you met, drunk and dizzy from drinking out of a shared bottle of Prosecco, which only had half of the liquor left in it to start when he had first found it bleeding out to dry on the grassy lawn at the front of your university. It was graduation night, the last day to celebrate finishing four years of hell, and he had nothing to his name other than a rolled up diploma shoved in the pocket of his suit pants and the charm left in the youth of his smile. He wanted to spend the night with Aiko Rei, which was not a unique desire as most men on campus did, and he had a fair shot of getting into bed with her just like all those times before. But instead he was sitting at the top of a staircase inside the campus’s English literature building, making history in the crisp year of 1986 by being the first man of the robust age of twenty-three to pass up sex with the school’s lady heartthrob for–well, conversation with a sort of ditsy girl that he just met a half hour ago.

“What do you plan to do with your life?” he heard you ask him, a hard enough question to stomach when one is sober, and an impossible question to stomach when one is already trying not to puke flat Prosecco.

“Pardon?” he asked, in hopes to dissuade you from the question. In hopes that you’d get the hint. But you don’t. And he’d soon learn throughout the years of your friendship to come that you never did.

“Your life!” you exclaim, “we’re graduates now! What do you want to do with it?” You pat harshly at his thigh, closer to his groin than to his pocket, most likely because you’re tipsy too, but he realizes you’re referring to the rolled up paper protruding at the pocket. 

Truthfully, Gojo had never thought much about what he wanted to do after graduation. Hell, he didn’t even think he’d make it this far. Not once since he got here, not once since he flunked out of first-year history, not once since his father passed away during his third-year final examinations, and most certainly not after he got caught having “unethical affairs” with his communications professor just two months ago. And yet the esteemed board of scholars decided he was fit for a diploma anyway, and now he’s answering to, effectively, a stranger what he plans to do with said piece of paper.

“I don’t know,” he says to you, “I’ll do whatever.” 

Gojo Satoru could get by with doing whatever. He was good at everything he did. But his teachers and mentors and his own father would always warn him– son, it’s better to be an expert at one than a half-assed show-off in all. Well, they wouldn’t use the expletives, but that’s what it had sounded like in his head.

His dad would’ve liked you. He was always telling him to find a girl that challenges him, asks him the right questions, and pushes him to become a better man, the kind of woman his mother was to his father. Much opposed to the airheaded girls of Gojo’s college campus he would sneak into the house and forget to shoo off before sunrise, an occurrence that happened enough times for the respect in his father’s eyes to dwindle with each woman he’d watch his son dispel from their residence. Until eventually, Gojo started paying rent as punishment.

So, twenty-three year old Gojo, what do you plan to do with your life? Or do you have no idea of anything that extends beyond where you are right now, sitting across this strange girl you’ve just met on the death of your educational youth, at the top of a stairwell lined with passed out, drunk newly grads at nearly 4 in the morning? Right now, he’s eyeing the hem of your dress, the way it’s ridden up slightly but the mesh overskirt still tickles the skin of your thigh. He’s certainly able to picture what’s beyond that fabric, and maybe imagine the color of your panties, but what’s to come for his life? No. As previously mentioned, he never thought he’d get this far.

Gojo is thirty-four now, eleven years since that night the two of you met. And he sits next to you on a garden bench under a pitch black sky with stars speckled across, but only dimly visible. 

It’s been years since he’s seen you. You two had a “falling out” at the cusp of thirty, almost a decade of friendship fizzled away, because of his selfish actions. He couldn’t let you go, but he couldn’t want you the way you wanted him either. He didn’t feel like he deserved to have you. You were too good for him, and he knew it. So he wasted a decade chasing after other women, and in return, he lost the one he knew he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with.

It’s the night of your college roommate‘s wedding, all gathered here today to celebrate their love, and he knew he’d run into you here. You were the bride’s maiden of honor, and you looked beautiful. With your hair half tied up, a pretty clip twinkling with every movement of your head, and with strands falling down over the smooth curve of your neck, bare skin of your chest tightly covered by the nude fabric of your dress. He was fully lusting after you, and he has been all night, the picture of beauty and grace, and it was wrong. Because, again, he’s–

“You’re engaged?” you finally break through his thoughts, break through the trance that he was lost in by the sea of your eyes. Forever pulling him in like you were a wicked siren for his soul, when all you’ve ever wanted from him was his love.

He shifts a little, the thick fabric of his navy blue suit stretching with the movement as he fidgets with his hands in his lap. He’s sitting close to you, his shoulder brushing against yours, the contrast of his broad masculinity so evident against the feminine curve of your bare arm, the thin strap holding up your dress threatening to fall down the hill. His thumb twitches, because he wants to pull it back up into place for you like a gentleman, but he’s not sure if that’s what his hand would actually do. Because all he really wants to do is peel the dress off of you. 

“Yes,” he says, still tantalized by the glow of your skin under pale moonlight, “engaged.”

“To be married?”

“Well, what other kind of engaged is there?”

“You’re not allowed to get married.”

He snorts. “Says who?”

“Says me!” you exclaim, sitting up straighter, "I turn my back for one moment, and you've gone an got engaged? You're awful!" The strap of your dress falls down over your shoulder, his eyes immediately darting to it. He sees you pull the strap up back into place, and a flit of his eyes to your face reveals to him the slight dusting of an embarrassed pink to your cheeks. 

There’s a silence that settles between the two of you. Distant commotion is heard, likely from the wedding venue as people engage in reception activities and dances and cheers, while the two of you remain in this garden escape, the wall of primly trimmed bushes sheltering you two from having to pretend to be people you’re not amongst a crowd.

“Aiko…” he hears you say beside him, and although the name of the woman that has rolled off your tongue is the name of the woman he’s supposed to love, it only makes him feel sick to his stomach to hear you say her name. “She seems lovely.”

“She is,” is all he can manage to say. And he also knows this seemingly lovely woman is probably drunk off her face back at the reception hall, giggling at all the men that approach her from the sight of her flushed face, and he should feel some sort of jealousy or possessiveness over that, but he can’t seem to muster any. Unlike the grit he had to his jaw an hour ago when he saw you dancing with a man he heard you introduce to your friends as just an “old friend” of yours from college. He felt more anger in that moment than he’d ever felt watching his soon-to-be-wife getting talked up to by the sleazy men twice her age. 

“She must be very rich,” you say. “She looks it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Her family’s very well off,” Gojo says.

“So will you become rich too?” you ask him, “when you marry her.”

His eyes flit to the sky briefly. “Doubt it.”

“How come?”

“The old man doesn’t like me very much. I imagine he’ll cut ties after the wedding.”

“Her father?”

“Yes.”

“And why is that?”

“Well. I guess it’s not every father’s dream to find out his prim and proper daughter’s been knocked up by the good-for-nothing boyfriend he’s been threatening her to say good riddance to for months now.”

The silence finds the two of you again, but this time haunting and gutting. That was a blabber, if anything. So nonchalantly said, with no emotion or spirit, to the one person in this world who he’s always felt like he can be himself around.

“She’s pregnant?” you say beside him, voice breaking slightly at the end, and he can’t bear to look at you for some reason. Some sort of admission of guilt, but what for? What exactly was he repenting for?

He lets out a small laugh, like the absurdity of the situation finds him all the same. “Yeah.” 

“That–” you start, stiff next to him, before he feels the tension relax but only rigidly, “that’s wonderful, Satoru. I’m–...I’m really happy for you.” You turn your torso to wrap your arms around him, and his lips brush the sweet skin on your forehead as you bury your face in the crook of his neck. He wraps one arm around you, a sort of friendly hug as he rubs the skin of your arm soothingly, and his heart aches from the emptiness when you release him. 

“Wow…” you say, looking up at him with pretty eyes, eyelashes fluttering as you blink rapidly to process the information, and he wonders if you really are happy for him. He doesn’t want you to be. He wants you to be furious, to tell him off for getting another woman pregnant after leading you on for so many years, maybe he wants you to slap him, or grab him by the collar of his shirt and shake him until all he sees is a million of you through dizzy vision like some paradise. He wants you to be mad, because it’d mean that you still care. It’d mean that you still think there’s something here to salvage between the two of you. 

But he’s engaged. And he’s having a baby. What was more final than that?

“So…are you marrying her because of–”

“The wedding is in four weeks,” he cuts you off, but he knows the statement answers your question regardless.

“Satoru…”

He leans off to the side a little to reach into the pocket of his suit pants, and he pulls out what is now a slightly bent envelope and he hands it to you. You take it from him gently, holding it weakly like it was something beyond you. Like something distant and foreign and strange. When all it was, is a wedding invitation. 

“Listen…” he starts.

He sees your eyes dazed as you stare at the lettering on the outside of the envelope.

“We’ve been friends for a long time, y/n. And I know the last time we saw each other was–” Hostile. Angry. Disappointing. Ended with you cussing him out on the street and then saying you never want to see him again. “...not ideal, but I still care a lot about you, and, uh, so, it would mean a lot to me if you came to the wedding.” For fucks sake, even on the brink of losing you forever, he still can’t find the right words to say. “Aiko, she–” He tastes bitter in his mouth, “well, I’ve told her a lot about you, and she’d really love it if you came as well.”

You’re silent as you gently peel back the opening of the letter and then pull out the small card stock invitation. The gold printed letters shine as you inspect it, fingers tracing the patterns of words that profess the Rei family’s intent to wed their daughter to Gojo Satoru. Your Gojo Satoru. Your best friend in this whole wide world. He watches your eyes carefully, but he can’t discern what he finds in them.

“Gojo Satoru…” you drone off, “to be wed. And to be a father.” Years of late night talks of the future, of kids and Christmas and love, with reality seemingly sly on the horizon only to have crept up so abruptly. It was pinched between your fingers right now. That reality.

His shoulders sulk slightly. And when you look up at him again, there’s a sheen of tears in your eyes.

“I can’t come to this,” you whisper, “and you know that, Satoru.”

His heart breaks. A physical pain that twists in his chest so tight at just the sight of seeing you sad. Sad again over the actions of his own. They say you always hurt the one you love, and he had always wondered what sort of evil person would do such a thing, only to find out he’s only ever hurt you this entire time. 

He should’ve kissed you that night the two of you met at graduation. Should’ve shut you up and all your existential questions by pinning you to a wall and pressing his lips against yours. He should’ve taken you to bed and fucked you, and then held you in his arms until you woke up in the morning. Should’ve listened to you talk his ear off about how he’s just like all the other guys, who pretend to care, but only want to have sex and then never to speak to the girl ever again. And he should’ve laid there in bed, nose nuzzled in your hair, taking all the scolding despite having no intent to ever leave you.

Instead, he wasted so much time. Sure, he had your friendship. His best friend for years, but the two of you could’ve been something more. Could’ve spent the years together, instead of writing stained letters or leaving messages on answering machines while the two of you were miles away. He could’ve been waking up with you every morning with the scent of your shampoo on his sheets, instead of clinging to pillows in foreign motel rooms. He could’ve been engaged to you, and he could be whispering sweet nothings in your ear of how much he wishes the baby will have your eyes. 

But his thoughts are lost in fantasy. He is what he’s done, nothing more and nothing less. His eyes fall to your lap, the invitation still held loosely in your hand, and then a droplet of water falls onto it.

“I–” you stutter, wiping at the tears spilling down your cheeks with a hesitant swipe of your hand, “I need to go.”

You stand up off the bench and he quickly stands up with you, grabbing your wrist to keep you here with him, and you halt but only with you facing away from him. He yanks at your wrist harshly, pulling you into him so his chest is flush to your back, his arms wrapping strongly around you and his nose nuzzling into your hair, breathing you in greedily like it’s the last time he’ll ever get the chance.

“Satoru–” you gasp, your hands immediately grabbing at his forearms that are tightly crossed across your collarbone. “What are you doing–” 

“Say it,” he whispers, gruff and impatient, “tell me to do it, and I will.”

“T-Tell you to do what?” you stutter, struggling a little in his hold but he only holds you tighter.

“Tell me to leave her, and I will,” he says, his lips brushing at your ear now, the scent of your perfume maddening to his senses, and one of his hands slowly trails down and the knuckle of his thumb presses into the softness of your breast.

You squirm, a small and soft moan leaving your lips.

“T–” you breathe in harshly, “this is wrong.” 

“I don’t care,” he growls, arms sliding lower to hold you under your breasts, so tightly that your heels lift off the ground. “Just say the word, and I’ll leave everything behind for you. I promise,” he breathes in deep, the desperation making his head hazy, “that I’ll do things right this time. Just you and me–” 

“You’re going to be a father,” you remind him, and he shuts his eyes closed tightly, the responsibility of the word bearing on his shoulders but his desire for you overshadows every shred of sense or dignity or integrity he has left in him, because he felt like he was losing his mind after wanting you for years just to never have you. 

He turns you around in his hold so that you face him, and he crashes his lips to yours, muffling the surprised mmf! that dies in your throat in surprise as his hands hold your waist, relishing in the feeling of satin fabric pulled taut over your curves.

Forbidden, yet a taste that he’ll risk because there was no curse that was worse than the fate of having to pine after you for years.

Ah.

But.

But it was all fantasy, this moment in his head, where he takes you on the freshly cut grass of this garden. 

Something that only briefly flashes through his mind as his warm hand wraps around your wrist, from where he was still seated on the stone bench, and not on his feet holding you like he dreamed for. Like he longed for.

He feels the weight of his arm so heavily, as if it weren’t his own, and he slowly lets go of your wrist.

When he looks up at you, there’s longing in your eyes. A hurt that he didn’t even know he was capable of causing, just for him to realize that you’ve always looked at him that way, and he’s never been keen enough to know it until now. He grew up too late. He took too long.

His phone starts buzzing in his pocket, and he reaches in for it, then flips it open and sees his soon-to-be-wife’s name on it. He feels nothing at the sight.

“Hello?” he speaks into the device when he holds it to his ear, and he sees you take a couple steps away, rubbing anxiously at your elbow as you pretend to busy yourself with the study of the lamp. “Yes, I’ll be there soon. I, uh, I’m just with a friend. A couple of friends, actually. We’re having drinks by the pond. Mhm. Yes. I will. Okay, see you soon. I—…I love you too. Bye.” And then he snaps the phone shut. 

“Heading back?” he hears you ask.

He stands. “I’ve got to.”

“Okay.” 

You two walk down the shrubbery of the garden that was arranged like a maze, him a few paces behind you, and he watches the delicate line of your posture as your hand brushes against the green walls of foliage that encase the two of you, the feeling of wanting to touch you and hold you almost suffocating. 

“Hey,” he calls out to you, and he shoves his hands in his suit pockets. You turn around immediately to face him, like his voice was permission to do so.

“Yes?” you ask.

He blinks up at the starry sky, and then looks at you again. The soft cast of distant warm lighting falls over your face, making you appear like a renaissance painting, similar to those that you would point out to him at museums when you two would see each other on holiday back in your early twenties. He could never understand the charm of those paintings, no matter how many times you tried to explain it to him, but seeing you in this light right now, he finally understands the beauty that you saw. 

“I’m, uh,” he rubs at the back of his neck, and then scoffs out a small laugh, “I’m a little drunk right now, but–” He stops himself. What was he trying to say? And was it of conscious mind? “I just need to tell you that…I really regret…not speaking to you. I mean, for letting the silence drag on for years. You’re my–...my best friend. We’re a pair, you know? The two of us. For years, people would ask me where you were. And why they haven’t seen us together at all recently. And it was hard to admit that we hadn’t spoken in years.”

You take the smallest of steps towards him, and look up at him with empty eyes. 

“What I’m trying to say is, is that, well,” he finds himself tripping over his words, “I miss you. And I miss our friendship. And–...I miss having you around.” He glances down at his shoes, polished and reflecting off the moonlight directly above him. He rocks back and forth on his heels ever so slightly. “I know you said that I piss you off to lengths unimaginable to my tiny pea-sized brain, but I can’t help myself, y/n,” he admits, “I think you and I, we’re just meant to always be. In some how, or some way…”

You purse your lips together, gaze shifting lower to eye at the silk of his tie. 

“Can we be friends again?” he asks, the words feeling juvenile on his tongue. Like whispered apologies between children on a playground after shoving one another onto wooden chips, except the wounds he’s left on you run much deeper than a superficial scrape. 

You blink slowly, tilting your head up at him. “Friends?”

“Friends.”

You wipe your palm off on the satin of your dress. “I missed you too, you know.”

His eyes widened slightly.

Your hand finds its way up your arm, until you weakly cup your elbow with your palm and look off to the side, avoiding eye contact with him. “There were so many years where I thought that there was something between us. And maybe I was foolish for thinking that way, that you would ever see me that way–”

“y/n,” he tries to interrupt you. 

“But…the pain of not having you the way I wanted to was much less worse than the pain of not having you at all,” you say, your gaze finally shifting towards him. “But, the thing is, I needed to feel that pain to get over you. I had to.”

His heart stills at those words.

You glance down at the ground now. “I missed being able to tell you things. To laugh, and cry, and argue. I miss humbling your stupid ego. I miss being able to call you at any time, knowing you’d pick up when I needed you.”

His heart aches so much he wants to reach into his chest and hold it.

“The thing is,” you continue, “you would’ve been the first person I would’ve run to to tell them that I lost my best friend.” There were tears shining in your eyes. “But what could I do when you were the one that I had lost? Who could I have turned to then?”

He lets out a shaky breath, and in a swift motion, his arm wraps around your waist and he pulls you to him in an embrace.

You’re stiff in his hold, mechanical and rigid, so contrary to the soft tears you leave behind on the fabric of his sleeve, but slowly and surely, you warm and thaw. Your hands slide up past his shoulders, linking behind his neck. And his head drops to the curve of your neck, swaying you with him slowly as if it were a first dance.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “for hurting you.”

You breathe out slowly. “Just let me go, Satoru. Let me be free. Let me be free of you.”

He feels the air knock out of his lungs, and the two of you slowly pull your heads away from the embrace to look at one another, although your hands still find a place on his shoulders, and he still holds you close to him by a delicate hold of your waist. 

He wonders if in another life, you two were happy. He wonders if he could ever take back all the decisions he made, and start all over again. On that day the two of you met on that staircase in the west wing of the literature building, he would make a different choice. If he could, he would live in this lifetime of hell over and over again if it meant that in some other one, there exists a world where he never hurts you. 

“It’s time for me to go,” you whisper, eyes darting across the features of his face, studying them but with a familiarity that only you know, because you held his entire life in your palm. Your gaze meets his again, faces just inches apart, and the sweet curl of your eyelashes makes him weak in the knees. “It’s time.”

He nods slowly, his own eyes studying your face as well, except it looks foreign to him now. 

It’s all been said and done. There was nothing he could do to right the wrongs, or undo all the pain. He was to be a father now, and his duties were now towards his wife and unborn child. And no longer to the woman he holds in his arms, one he’s sure he will never stop loving for as long as he lives. 

It’s a sweet moment, the two of you gazing at one another. You look so pretty from this angle, looking up at him with the smallest tilt to your head and round searching eyes. His head subconsciously dips down towards yours in the second that he glances at your lips, but he stops himself. And when you make no move to create distance, he finds himself closing it again, until his lips brush against yours ever so softly. And then he captures them in a kiss, firm and unmistaken, finding solace in the way your lips move against his too, unsure yet passionately at the same time. Your fingers ever so slightly dig into his shoulders while his thumbs soothe at the skin of your waist, the two of you savoring the last moments of a kiss that’ll be the sweetest one you’ll ever know.

You pull away first, a small puff of air leaving your lips as you glance downwards. He rests his forehead against yours, never once looking away from your face. And you both breathe slowly, the soul of the chaste kiss entirely vanishing into the air along with all the hope that the two of you had left to make anything of the way you feel about one another. It was a kiss that almost disqualified any level of sin or guilt or wrong, because it was like one you two owed each other, after years of familiarity and longing. It was the goodbye that the two of you deserved.

His hands slowly let go of your waist, and he takes a step back away from you, softly clearing his throat. The distance feels like a galaxy away, and he briefly runs his thumb along his bottom lip, because the ghostly feeling of your lips on his still remains. 

“Shall we head back?” you ask him, prim and proper in posture and eyes widened in a formal gaze.

His lips are parted, and he finds that he’s panting slightly. And then he slowly nods his head. “Yes.”

.

.

.

[the end] 

a/n. i am sooooo freaking obsessed w "one day" by david nicholls and really wanted to write something inspired by it!! the book literally ripped my heart out and stomped on it like there were so many scenes where i just longingly stared out the window because of how shattering it was but dear god i really enjoyed it, and the show was also so dfkjhsfkhs i had sm feels watching it. so yea this was fun to write!! i hope you enjoyedd n thanks so much for reading :)

➸ masterlist

[applesontheground]

some of my lies are true 💼

KINKTOBER 2024 | DAY TWENTY ONE - BATH/SHOWER SEX

been reading the novelization recently, as i've mentioned, and being reminded of the one scene with him telling christie to wash herself before fucking her was calling to me when i was mapping out this month and saw the bath prompt...

and come on now, like i wasn't going to set aside at least one day for him, right? revisiting him after starting the book and getting even more of his character than i once thought possible with me has been nuts.

p.s. this reader is a returning PR agent from this fic since i liked that setup a ton. she's slowly becoming an OC in the back of my wip folder, but i have a lot of other things going on so she's not 100% there. (yet.)

NSFW | Word Count: 988 | Patrick Bateman x Female Reader contains canon typical/mr. bateman is his own warning, fingering, mild asphyxiation, biting, two weirdos kissing 🎼: x

Keeping up with multiple affairs had been exhausting since meeting Patrick. That was in both personal and professional lives, and you weren’t being paid to keep up with your personal ones, so that was the one that took the fall.

Visiting on a night he was able to clear the evening from his usual rendezvous, endless business lunches and nights out, he asked if you’d come over, bathe yourself, and then see what the two of you would want after. Gladly, craving that harsh love only he seemed to give, the perspective so cold and yet so tempting, fascinating – especially after you had garnered his attention, his need to have you becoming too intense to tease any more without getting your throat cut over it should his fantasies prove larger than life – you accepted, even worked with him and his schedule. It wasn’t like you needed the plans yourself, also having to be up in the morning for a meeting with your manager.

When you had made your way over, he was already running the bath, and the second the door was closed he had given you a couple love bites around your neck in greeting. Leading you into the bathroom, he talked about what new CD he had bought that day, and also what wine the two of you would be drinking. Even while you undressed, hoping he’d notice you shaved, but not anticipating anything outside of what he wanted to focus on, he was talking about his disappointment with the day's episode of The Patty Winters Show.

“You took my advice.” He then observed when you finally stretched out in the milky water of the tub, a hand on your collarbone and feeling the skin of your chest with a warm hand, “You have a much clearer complexion, and I assume that’s from the cleanser I recommended.”

You nodded, “And the lotion. Great combination, I see why you were swearing on it.” He beamed at that, and then commented, “I want you looking pristine, especially if we’re going to be seeing each other more often.”

“You almost make me sound impressive,” You found another word, sitting up more in the bath with a sarcastic tone, “Exclusive.”

“You are." He corrected, speaking more heavily, "and I’m thinking that you’re playing dumb with me. You know that you are.” He reminded with a hand ghosting around your neck before pulling away. “Especially now that no one else besides me is going to be sleeping with you.”

That was a work in progress, knowing he was still engaged to Evelyn, having a sidepiece discussion with Courtney…and you didn’t believe he was done with any other hookups outside of that. His friends were just as messy and scandalous, and considering you always had a project open at his office, it was a hopeless game to try and fight over. That was something you were going to ask regardless, and even if he lied you knew that he didn’t really care about how you felt now that the two of you were in a comfortable attachment, knowing you wouldn’t resist if he asked you to come over next week despite the truth hanging in front of the both of you.

You then looked up and asked, “I feel selfish, are you getting in the bath too or is this just to watch me?” He stared through you, letting the silence and the sound of the water against the tub fill it, before finally standing up again with another drink from a whisky tumbler. He shouldered his robe off, showing his body to you and satisfied with the way you sized him up.

“Normally, I don’t join with the prostitutes I bring home. The washing is solely for them,” He explained, one leg in the tub and you taking in his physique while listening, “And I don’t think it’d be smart to be in the same bath as them. Don't you think, [Y/N]?”

You grinned, tipping your head as you amicably replied, “Sure.”

“Good.” He lowered in, and then gestured, “Sit between my legs.” You did as you were told, sliding in and letting his arms come around your sides, a casual hand touching you and the other running along your body, soaked in warm water and making you sigh deeply.

“Is MacDermott still picking up trash off the streets at Tunnel?” He asked, and you replied, “Yes. Caught Chlamydia sometime last month, and now it’s my job to hide the break his wife wants to take, keep him from losing composure at work.” Bateman laughed in your ear, breathing against your shoulder as he scrutinized, “Dumb bastard.”

“And what about you?” You then asked, his finger trailing up your sternum now, probably imagining what it would look like if he dug inside with a knife to see it for himself. His morbid thoughts couldn’t help but become yours some nights, especially when he wasn’t indulging you by telling you.

“Evelyn asked me if I would accompany her to a live show, even though she knows I hate it.” He started to rant, splashing you with the water but you digressed in favor of simply listening, “I can’t stand her friends, and of course she invited them too so they can cluck like hens all night, already shrieking about how much she’s always loved George Michael. I could care less.”

You looked up behind you, “Since when did you hate George Michael?”

“Since I first heard him.” He gritted, the hand returning to your neck. He then leaned in with access to your lips from your turn, kissing hard and making sure to bite your bottom lip in a red hot pressure before releasing. The idle hand went back down, once again prodding your entrance and slipping inside when you showed a sign of discomfort.

"Nice of you to shave," He commented, kissing you again as he finally turned the water off.

[noforkingclue]

Desperation

Summary: The end times are near and Crowley has come to you with a proposition.

Author's Note: decided to publish this as it was sitting in my WiP folder for too long and since I've also started re-watching Good Omens I thought now was as good as time to publish it!

You always knew when Crowley and/or Aziraphale were in your flat. Call it an instinct that developed from knowing them for over thousands of years. Which was why it was so surprising to see Crowley standing in the middle of your flat without any prior warning.

You paused when you saw the demon standing there and you carefully shut the door behind you. He twitched at the sound but didn’t turn around. You slowly made your way towards him, nervous about what was going to happen. You frowned briefly at the unfamiliar feeling coiling in the pit of your stomach, it had been years since he had made you feel like that.

“Crowl-“

“Everything’s fucked.”

You blinked at Crowley’s sudden outburst. While you’d heard him swear before it wasn’t that usual. You winced as you heard the sound of cracking wood and looked down, realising that he was gripping your table so hard that he was splintering the wood.

“Why don’t you sit down?” you suggested, worried about your friend as well as the future of your table. It was an antique after all.

“Have a cup of tea and tell me what’s happened.”

“What’s happened?” Crowley let out a bark of laughter, “What’s happened is the world’s ending and Hell knows that all of this,” he spun around and waved his hands about, “Is because of me! I misplaced the antichrist and now they’re coming.”

“Oh.”

“So I’m leaving.”

“That’s sensible.”

“And I want you to come with me.”

You froze, midway through making that cup of tea you promised. You looked at Crowley out of the corner of your eye. He walked over to you and put a hand over yours, forcing you to lower the kettle.

“It isn’t safe anymore,” he said, “Everything is going to get destroyed. Hell and Heaven are going to war and it isn’t going to be pretty. We can escape. Be safe.”

“What about Aziraphale?”

Crowley, who had rested his forehead against your shoulder, tensed behind you. His arms wrapped around your waist as he pulled you against him.

“He think he can stop this,” he muttered, “He isn’t coming.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly you were spun around and pushed roughly against the counter. You gasped in shock and Crowley tilted your chin so you were looking directly into his eyes. It was the first time you had properly seen him and you could see the desperation etched across his face. His sunglasses were gone and you were forced to look into his yellow eyes. He grabbed your chin and forced your head in place.

“Come with me,” he said quietly, “It’ll just be the two of us.”

“But what about-“

“Shh, don’t think about him.”

You opened your mouth to protest but Crowley seized the opportunity to press his lips against yours. You squeaked in surprise as Crowley wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you roughly against him. You put your hands against his chest but found them trapped between your bodies. Crowley broke the kiss but remained close. You felt his lips brush against yours and he said,

“Just think about me.”

“And the world.”

“We’ll be safe.”

“We’ll be on the run.”

“We’ll have each other.”

“And Azira-“

Crowley covered your mouth with a hand. He pressed his forehead against your shoulder.

“I thought I told you not to think about him.”

He removed his hand and brushed your cheek with the back of it. He smile softly and his gaze dropped back down to your lips.

“If Zira thinks that there’s hope then there must be.”

“So you’re choosing him?”

Crowley shook his head and gave you a bitter smile. He stepped away and you gave him a pained look. You took half a step towards him but he put his hands up to stop you.

“I understand,” he said, “one last hurrah.”

“Crowley-“

“It was fun while it lasted.”

“We can still beat this.”

“No we can’t.”

And with that you were once again left alone with only your hope to keep you company.

[wsdanon]

little fic of Arthur and Rubens and nightmares which was meant to be much longer, but the middle was giving me issue so I figured I’d start in a different place, and I didn’t want to try making it longer because I wanted it out of my wips folder \o/ pfft

spoilers all the way up to the end of Calamidade. putting some little explanation below the cut before we get into the fic itself

taglist (ask to be added or removed): @routeriver @echotunes @saiiboat @lil-lost-mind @humanaaa @factorialsotherfandoms @iridescentpull

reblogs appreciated \o/

okay some little explanation: due to Johnny not being in the apartment anymore Rubens finds it hard to sleep there sometimes. He’s been taking naps in various places around the Order base instead

there’s a bit of Arthur/Rubens here and it’s all me expanding on a little clip of Guaxinim saying he almost had Arthur flirt a little with Rubens during that snooker game between Rubens and Balu at the end

I think they’re sweet and I think everyone should be in love with my specialest guy so it’s here. please if you’re interested ask me about my headcanons for them \o/!!

——

Rubens is asleep on Arthur’s couch. He’s sitting upright, still—head lolled back against the cushions. This is technically what Arthur had in mind when he offered for Rubens to come over, but he was expecting Rubens to make it to the bed first. 

It makes sense he didn’t, though. He had seemed hazy their whole conversation—coffee the only thing keeping him awake. And if he was desperate enough to try napping in his mum’s bar…

Well, Arthur certainly isn’t surprised when he looks over to see Rubens asleep after he stopped responding. His answers had been coming out fairly detached just before that, too. Like he wasn’t fully aware of what was being said to him—one foot already in sleep. 

Whether it’s sheer exhaustion or whether being at Arthur’s is actually helping, Arthur doesn’t care. He’s just mourning that he needs to wake Rubens up to make sure he gets into bed properly. 

He leans closer and shakes Rubens—who startles awake shockingly easily. A hand comes up to clutch at his chest as his eyes dart around the room. They land on Arthur and he lets out a sigh, relaxing. 

“Sorry, Rubens.” Arthur gives him an apologetic smile. “Now—I’d carry you to bed, but it’s a little hard with just one arm, you know?” 

Rubens nods absentmindedly, maybe too tired to process the words properly. But he lets Arthur help him stand, and doesn’t protest the arm around his back to guide him to the bedroom. 

And it was easy enough to be clinical about it when he first put himself in this situation, but the closer they get to his bedroom the harder it is to ignore the feeling of Rubens’ body tucked under his arm, and leaning into him. 

It’s not like they’re even going to be sleeping in the same bed. All Arthur will do is make sure Rubens is comfortable, then grab a spare blanket to sleep on the couch. But the implications spin through his mind, anyway. 

What started off as simple attraction for some guy he saw across the base once is really starting to be a thorn in his side now that they’re on the same team and not actively fighting for their lives anymore. Ever since that snooker game with Balu where he had to bite back playful flirtation, it’s like Pandora’s box has been opened. 

He hopes the hallway is too dark for Rubens to notice the red that’s certainly on his cheeks, but Rubens has always been observant. 

“Here we are.” Arthur declares. 

And he has to let go of Rubens to open the bedroom door. Which would be a perfect out. Except Rubens sways on his feet, and Arthur figures a few more steps of close contact just to make sure Rubens makes it to the bed before collapsing probably wouldn’t hurt either of them. 

“Thank you.” Rubens murmurs, sitting down on the edge of the bed. 

“Ah, it’s no problem, Rubens.” Arthur waves him off. “Don’t hesitate to make yourself comfortable, okay?”

Rubens nods. 

“Okay, well—sleep well.” 

Arthur turns to leave, but Rubens catches his sleeve. 

“Where will you sleep?” Rubens asks. 

“Just on the couch, I was thinking.” Arthur shrugs. “I have some spare blankets in the closet.”

“It’s your bed.” 

“I don’t mind, really.” Arthur insists. “You haven’t been sleeping in a bed at all the last few nights, I can manage one.”

Rubens is silent, but he’s still holding on to Arthur’s sleeve, so Arthur waits. 

“The bed is big.” He says finally, looking at Arthur like he should be able to fill in the rest. 

And Arthur probably could, but in the interest of not appearing presumptuous, he just stands there and stares at Rubens. 

“We can both fit…” Rubens continues. 

God—where’s Dante when Arthur needs him? He could really use some fucking guidance right now. Just… someone else’s opinion, at least. It feels like his brain is screaming at him to do two different things. 

Rubens is a sweet guy, who doesn’t really like to take up space. It’s more than likely that he just doesn’t want to kick Arthur out of his bed. And Arthur should—and can—respect that. 

So, does he say yes so Rubens doesn’t feel bad? Or does he say no because of this stupid little crush of his? 

And Rubens is starting to look uncomfortable, so he really needs to say something soon, so—

“Uh, yeah, sure! If—If you don’t mind.” 

Half his brain continues screaming at him for the answer. 

But Rubens doesn’t seem aware of his dilemma. He gives Arthur a thumbs up—letting go of his sleeve—and then shrugs off his jacket. 

In the dark—and because Arthur knows to look for it—he can just barely see the glow of the cables stitching Rubens’ chest together peeking out over the top of his shirt. And then he quickly tears his gaze away before Rubens can catch him looking. 

“Oh, I forgot to ask—do you need pyjamas?” Arthur asks. “I’ve probably got something you can use if you want.”

Rubens shakes his head no. 

Arthur heads to the other side of the bed so he can get changed into some sleepwear. When he looks back, Rubens is buttoning up that green shirt he always wears around his waist, his other shirt discarded to the side. 

Rubens turns so they’re facing each other again, and now Arthur can fully see just how big the shirt is on him. He’s practically swimming in it. It’s… really cute, if he’s honest with himself. It makes him want to see what Rubens will look like in one of his shirts.

“Do you just carry around your pyjama shirt every day in case of situations like this?” Arthur jokes. 

“No.” Punctuated with a shake of his head. “It’s… Johnny‘s.”

“Oh.” Well that explains the size of it. “It’s, uh… nice to have something, isn’t it?” 

God knows Arthur hasn’t touched Kaiser’s room. 

“It is.”

Arthur climbs under the covers, and Rubens does the same, shifting around a little to get comfortable before relaxing. Arthur’s sure he isn’t going to sleep through the night, but he hopes a proper bed helps a little. 

“Goodnight Rubinho.”

“Rubens.”

“Sorry.” He bites back a smile. “Goodnight Rubens.”

“Goodnight.”

Arthur can’t really say who falls asleep first, even though he tries to make sure it’s Rubens. All he knows is that he’s waking up to the sound of coughing and gasping. 

“Rubens?” 

There’s no answer, but Arthur’s not exactly expecting one. He blearily blinks his eyes open, and skips turning on the bedside lamp entirely to sit up—already reaching out for Rubens as he does. 

Rubens is sitting up, too. Curled in on himself, his hands at his neck.

“Rubens, hey.” Arthur grabs his shoulder. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

The coughing has stopped now at least, but Rubens is taking in shuddery, deep breaths that wrack his frame. Arthur runs his hand back and forth across Rubens’ shoulders to hopefully provide some comfort. 

“Rubens?” He ducks his head, trying to catch Rubens’ gaze. “It’s okay, you’re okay. I’m here, I’ve got you.”

Rubens stares at him—eyes wide with panic. Then, slowly, he shifts until he’s leaning against Arthur. Arthur wastes no time pulling him into a hug, and tucking Rubens’ head under his chin. 

“It’s alright.” Arthur murmurs. “You’re okay, everything’s okay.” 

They stay like that for a while. Arthur murmuring comforts, while Rubens gets his breathing back under control. Then Rubens squirms out of his grasp, but stays close. 

Now that his hands aren’t covering his neck, Arthur can see frantic, messy scratches—some of them deep enough to bleed a little. 

“Rubens—“

“Air.”

For a second, the request doesn’t process. 

“I, uh… I can open a window?”

Rubens nods, and gives him a shaky thumbs up. 

Arthur scrambles off the bed, trying to open the window as quickly as he can. He can hear Rubens following after him. When the window is open he steps back to let Rubens lean his head out and breathe. 

“How are you feeling?”

Rubens gives him another thumbs up. 

“Okay, uh… I’m going to get a cloth for those scratches on your neck, okay?” He waits for Rubens to give him some sign of agreement before continuing, “I’ll be back in a second.”

He takes a detour to grab the first aid kit, too. They probably aren’t deep enough to need it, but… just in case. It doesn’t take long to find, anyway. In this line of work, it’s not the kind of thing they keep at the back of some cupboard with small injuries in mind. 

Rubens is still at the window when Arthur g enters the room again, but he seems more relaxed. 

“I’m back.” Arthur announces before getting too close. 

Rubens doesn’t react. 

Then, he leans back into the house, and closes the window. 

“Do you want to sit on the bed?” Arthur suggests. 

Again, Rubens doesn’t respond. But he heads to the bed, and sits down on the edge. He’s not looking at Arthur—eyes trained on the ground. 

“Here we go.” Arthur dumps the kit next to him. “You can tell me everything I’m doing wrong, huh?”

Rubens is still mostly looking down. And when Arthur reaches out to tilt his head up so he can get to his neck, he flinches. 

“Sorry.” He holds the washcloth out to Rubens. “Do you want to do it?”

Rubens takes it, and Arthur sits next to him so he can clean without being stared at. 

If Arthur had to take a guess, he’d say the nightmare was probably about what happened with Kian. But he’s not confident in that. There could be any number of traumatic experiences bubbling in his mind for his nightmares to take inspiration from. The glamorous life of an order agent, huh?

Rubens finishes up, and hands the washcloth back to Arthur. Arthur moves to stand in front of him again.

“Can I see?” He asks. “To make sure you’re not still bleeding anywhere.”

Rubens tilts his head up, gaze pinned somewhere above Arthur’s head. 

It doesn’t look like he’s bleeding anymore, but Arthur’s sure the marks will still be there in the morning. 

“Okay. Looks alright.” Arthur gestures vaguely with the washcloth. “I’m going to go put this away. Do you want some water while I’m up?”

Rubens nods, and stands. It isn’t until Arthur’s nearing the door that he realises Rubens is following him instead of just going to his side of the bed. 

“Hey, it’s okay.” Arthur says, stopping them both in their tracks. “You go lie down again, I’ll get it.”

Rubens shoots him a vaguely annoyed look, and brushes past him. 

Okay. Well… he’ll leave Rubens to it, then. 

He throws the washcloth in the sink to be dealt with in the morning. The first aid kit he’ll leave in the bedroom, though. Just in case. 

Arthur finds Rubens standing in the kitchen and nursing a glass of water—the lights left off. Arthur gets one for himself, too. For the lack of anything better to do. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Arthur offers. 

Rubens looks at him. Opens his mouth as if to speak—then shuts it, clears his throat, and tries again. 

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t have to, of course.” Arthur says. “And it doesn’t even have to be with me, but… it does help. From my experiences, at least.”

He doesn’t think he would’ve made it through losing Joui and Cesar if not for Dante. 

Rubens nods absently. Then, “Bed?”

“Sure.”

They don’t talk as they get ready for bed again. Arthur puts the first aid kit next to his glass of water on the bedside table, and climbs under the covers. 

Rubens is closer to him than he was last time. More in the middle than on the side. 

“Do you… uh…” Arthur doesn’t really know how to ask, though, so he just lifts his arm up in silent invitation.

Rubens stares at him for a moment. Quietly assessing. Then he shuffles closer, hesitantly pressing close to Arthur. 

And… Arthur may not know exactly what the nightmare was about, but he still has his guess. He lets his arm lie loosely over Rubens’ waist, his hand on his back. He doesn’t hug tight and he keeps away from Rubens’ neck. 

What Arthur really wants to do is bundle Rubens up close, and keep him safe. Protected. To lean into the childish belief that as long as he holds tight enough Rubens won’t slip away from him like almost everyone else in his life. 

But more than that he doesn’t want to make Rubens uncomfortable, so this will do.

“In the games.” Rubens whispers—quiet enough that Arthur almost misses it. “In Italy. Mine and Balu’s. There… were these coffins…”

And now that he mentions it, Arthur is starting to remember. 

It was such a long day, but he’s kicking himself for forgetting. It was bad enough that the two of them needed a moment to collect themselves. And the picture the room painted wasn’t pretty—even thousands of years after the event. 

“I remember.” Arthur says. 

Rubens nods, and doesn’t continue. 

“They, uh… filled with blood, right?” Arthur prompts. 

He nods again, but it’s curter. And he’s tense in Arthur’s arm. 

“We don’t have to talk about it right now, Rubens.” Arthur rubs circles into his back, trying to soothe him. “You should try to get some sleep.”

“Can still… taste it.” Rubens mutters out. “Still feel it. And Kian…”

Arthur grasps at Rubens’ shirt in an attempt to stop himself from hugging Rubens too tightly to him. 

God, it was terrifying—seeing Rubens a hair’s breadth away from dying at Kian’s hands just like Joui had. They were all scrambling to do everything they could. If it wasn’t for the heart… if Dante was just a second too late… 

He buries his face in Rubens’ hair, and tries to banish the images from his mind. There’s no point focusing on what else could’ve gone wrong when Rubens is alive and breathing in front of him. 

“It’s okay, it’s over.” Arthur murmurs. “He’s gone now, he’s locked away. And if—if—he comes back—he’ll have to go through me first before he can even try to get to you again.”

“I…” Whatever Rubens was going to say, he doesn’t continue the thought. He wraps an arm tightly around Arthur’s waist and tucks himself closer. “Thank you. For everything. But be safe. Please. I can’t…”

“I’ll try. Don’t worry.”

Arthur wishes he could promise. But the truth is—standing over Rubens’ body to protect him from Kian was one of the easiest decisions of his life. And it’s a choice he will keep making if he needs to. 

“Okay.”

It takes Rubens longer to fall asleep this time, but he does manage it. And if it’s fitful, he doesn’t wake up like he did before again.

Small mercies. They take what they can. And Arthur’s happy to offer his bed for as long as Rubens needs it. 

——

okay hope you enjoyed \o/!!! I don’t have much else to say about this right now. In my mind I was going to do a scene of them waking up in the morning but this felt like a good place to end it—maybe I’ll write it later

[magpiepills]

Thanks for tagging me, @mermaidgirl30 💜💜💜

I was prepared this week! I’ve got a few things cooking and a few things I’m trying to wrap up before I start something I’m really excited about. I’m going to talk about that at the bottom, but first here are some peeks at what’s in my WIP folder. MDNI 18+ only below!

Cobra- Part 3 of yoga neighbor/creep Joel. I kind of forgot about this one and didn’t know how I wanted to wrap up this failed one shot. But thanks to @arcanefox207 I think this finally has some direction and I’m going to work on it tonight.

Joel groaned, he looked to the sky for a lightning bolt to strike him. When none came, he went into the house, trudging across the yard. He went to his bedroom, stripped off his clothes, soiled with earth and cum, and tossed them in the direction of the laundry basket before getting into the shower.

The water was scalding hot, a taste of the hell he had surely just damned himself to. He let it pour over him a while, groaning in undeserved relief at the way his muscles relaxed in the heat. He washed his hair, then soaped his body. Suds dripped down the wide expanse of his back, rinsed away when he turned his back to the spray and turned his attention to his cock.

The Man From Rio Tinto- my western! I’ve been working on this a while! I want to make sure it’s how I want it. I always worry that if something takes me multiple days to write that I’ll lose the tone I’m trying to convey. This is kind of a learning experience for me. Honestly, I’m not sure what sort of appeal it’ll have, but it’s fun and it’s something different than I usually do. It’s a challenge for me to not jump straight into vulgarity.

You shake your head. You aren’t hurt.somehow you’d gotten away with a knot on your head and an ache in your arm. “Well, my arm…” you gesture to your left arm and your aching wrist. The stranger gives you a sympathetic pout as he gathers your skirt into his strong, rough hands and rips off a long strip of fabric. His eyes don’t linger on your legs, he’s a gentleman, but still you blush when he uncovers your legs. His touch is gentle and light when he fashions your torn skirt into a sling and guides your arm into it.

He looks over his work and the shy bewilderment marking your face. “That’ll hold you til we get back to town. It’s too late to ride out now. Well camp here tonight and head back in the morning.”

“Who are you?” The question comes out as weak and breathless as you feel.

Untitled pervert Joel who abuses a position of power- this one is slow going I need some inspiration. If you liked Coach Joel you’ll like this one. I don’t have a snippet, because I don’t want to give too much away.

Untitled self indulgent multi parter! I’m going to try my hand at doing weekly posts for this one once I get a bit more written. The outline is done, most of the first chapter of 6ish is done. I really want to take my time on this one. I’m really excited about it.

Lately I’ve been having fun just writing quickies whenever a thought leads me to them. That’s generally how I like to write, but it’s not disciplined or structured or anything. It does get smut on the dash, though! I hope everyone enjoyed the two I posted this week, I promise there will be no more pregnant Javier Penas. Even if I do want to see him sitting and scowling t a clipboard while he sits on a metal folding chair at an abortion clinic because there’s no way he’s keeping that baby. I do not subscribe to the notion that Javi is a family man in any way.

Tell us about it, @exquisiteserotonin @youandmeand5bucks @for-a-longlongtime @arcanefox207 @syd-djarin

@aurorawritestoescape @milla-frenchy @604to647 @luxurychristmaspudding @schnarfer

If you haven’t already. 🥰

[physalian]

Writing with Executive Dysfunction (or how to lower the barrier of entry)

So you want to write a book, but all you have is a cool one-liner, a niche super power you want to explore, and the blurry image of a love interest with a two-syllable kind of name. You don’t know where to start, what to tackle first, how to jump in the deep end.

Can you write the ending first? What if you want this really cool gimmick in a fight scene but can’t write action to save your life? Do you start in media res or with a prologue, or with the character starting their daily routine? Do you write the villain’s POV first?

Or do you start with an outline, character sheets, a title, summary, your themes and motifs? How many pages and pages of worldbuilding notes should you have built up before you’re good to tackle the first page? You’ve heard time and again the critical importance of the first three sentences. The first chapter if your audience is generous.

The pressure mounts to be unique, but not try-hard, descriptive but not flowery, intriguing, but not confusing, all in the first hundred or so words. You sit there staring at the little blinking black line on your blank page… and the idea gets shelved for another day. It collects virtual dust in the backlogs of your computer, forgotten until you have to clear out space on your hard drive and stumble across unspent potential.

Everyone and their dog has their own bits of writing advice and I’m sure I’m about to echo tips that have been around the block once or twice, but there are a few I don’t see talked about enough.

Whether you suffer from severe procrastination, fear of failure before you even begin, the overwhelming limitlessness of choice, or just can’t sit down and dedicate any time to see what happens, this list might be for you.

1. Write Every Day

This is nothing new, but I’m going to tackle the implementation of such a habit over why it’s important. You already know why it’s important. Writing every day doesn’t demand a full page of a Word doc, or 200 words before you can get up and do something else. Sometime a witty dialogue exchange comes to mind while you’re doing dishes – write that down.

Or you saw a cool name for a character in a commercial – write that down.

Or you had a dream about your characters in a high-octane street chase – write down the synopsis.

Personally, I use Apple Notes. It’s free, I can log-in to iCloud through a browser and keep writing, and my phone is always with me. I have dedicated folders to sort which notes belong to which concepts.

Disclaimer: Apple Notes is meant for exactly that: Note taking. I take it to the extremes, but it’s not a word processer. It’s not meant for anything more strenuous than putting virtual pen to virtual paper.

I build up so many variations of scene ideas and concepts for character arcs that my ‘notes’ for any given book can be as long as a full-length novel. Most of the time, admittedly, those ideas get outdated fast as I move on to bigger and better things, but the point is this: I never would move on to better things if I didn’t have somewhere to start.

I have a personal grudge against OneDrive for a sync failure losing 20k words of a WIP, so most of my writing is done through Google Docs and saved to Google Drive. It’s not the most powerful word processor, but you don’t have to worry about formatting until the very end and can export later. It’s free, like Apple Notes (assuming you have an iPhone), and the smart phone app for Google programs works phenomenally better than the MS Word app – so once again, the barrier for being within reach of places to jot down ideas is lowered. My phone is always with me.

It doesn’t have to be digital – carry around a journal or a notebook or a legal pad if you want. Whatever gets your creative juices flowing. The point is to have somewhere to take all the ideas you have in your head and get them onto paper the moment inspiration strikes.

2. Writing is Supposed to be Fun

The dreaded writer’s block, scourge of authors everywhere. You’ve reached the point in your manuscript where you’ve caught up to the epic adventure you’ve written in your head. The little writer in your brain has gone on strike and you’re left in the doldrums of how to transition from one chapter to the next. One idea to the next. One scene, one line of dialogue.

Answer: Skip it.

Unless you have a hard deadline to make, writing is supposed to be fun. Your best work comes when you’re passionate about doing it, not when you’re holding your fingers hostage to put something on the page or else.

When you start getting frustrated, walk away. When you get stressed, walk away. The manuscript will still be there once you’ve slept on it for a day or two and you’ll be glad for it. Or, write a different scene. Write a hypothetical scene (more on this point later). Write anything you want and come back to the hard parts later. The gaps will fill eventually, and if they don’t—consider what about that transition or scene is so hard and consider axing it entirely. If it’s frustrating for you, it’s probably boring or unimportant to the reader.

3. Script it

My favorite writer’s crutch is to make a skeleton of the scene I want to have, fill it with dialogue, and move on. The pretty thematic narrative can come later. It’s halfway between an outline and a first draft and, for me, someone to whom dialogue comes easier than narrative, this is another barrier removed to letting creativity flow.

I don’t have to think about dialogue tags or movement of a scene or how exactly I want to structure a sentence or describe the setting. Scripting lets me sus out the pacing of a given scene, test run a conversation I have in my head to see if it might really work before investing all the time and effort of a fully fleshed out first draft, only to erase it all later.

You can do this mid-narrative, too. If you just want to skip over a couple lines that aren’t coming naturally to you, script a vague sense of stage directions until you get to easier narrative and come back later.

When I say scripting, mine look something like this:

Character A (ChA): [position within the setting, tone of voice, any notable gesture or action that enhances the dialogue] “Dialogue.” [specific dialogue tag, if necessary] … (often a paragraph break) … “Dialogue.” Character B (ChB): “Dialogue.” [emotion, reaction, details about the setting that are now important, new revelations by the narrating POV] … “Dialogue,” [action. Tonal shift. Movement] ChA: “Dialogue.” [action] … (scene continues)

In practice:

… ChA: [kicks back against the wall of the room, arms crossed. Annoyed, waiting for ChB to speak first, but they don’t] “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to leave?” [head tilts, still waiting on an answer ChB isn’t giving] “All you had to do was ask.” ChB: “You were having fun,” [quiet, wringing their hands in their lap on the edge of the bed] “You wanted me there. So I was there.” [huffs, flips their hair back. Not sure how many times they’ve had this conversation. Will always hate parties, not going to suddenly like them just because ChA is there] “You can either have me there, or make sure I’m comfortable. You can’t have both.” ChA: “So now I’m the bad guy.” [foot thumps on the floor like a judge’s gavel] …

Scripting also lets you fill a scene with multiple new characters before you figure out their names or descriptions, tagging their lines with the bare minimum. I often test out entire action scenes (which I loathe writing) in script form, so I know I’m satisfied with the pacing, blocking, and amount of movement before I lock it in and write the first draft of actual narrative. It also forces you to make sure your characters are taking actions and not just sitting at a table like talking mannequins.

Transitioning from script to narrative can be mighty tedious sometimes if you try to fit in chunks of narrative in the exact places you left on your initial pass. Fictional prose is organic, so let it breathe.

Maybe you let a character monologue for too long, or they have too much movement in a scene that becomes unnatural and clunky. Or the entire scene ran away from you because the conversation was just that good. Whatever the case, a script, bare minimum, gets your foot in the door.

4. Write Fanfic

I like sci-fi and fantasy. I also like taking my sci-fi and fantasy characters and throwing them into ‘fanfics’ to test out relationships and start to get a feel for what makes them unique from the rest of the cast.

Sometimes the setting changes to something mundane, sometimes it’s a hypothetical scene that the current pacing of the narrative just doesn’t have room for, or it’s a flashback you’ll never include but want to have written so it’s concrete when you reference it in the present.

It also helps you fall in love with your characters when you can write them without consequence, doing whatever, doing whoever, saying whatever, going wherever. In fanfic, their personalities can start to write themselves and you discover them as you write them. And, hey, sometimes you come up with a concept so good, you change the entire real narrative around to fit it.

All your attention doesn’t have to be on the story you’re actually writing.

5. Keep All of Your Deleted Scenes

I keep so many of mine, the ‘deleted scenes’ doc of one book is 40k words longer than the actual manuscript, filled with numerous variations of the same scene written over and over again in vain trying to keep something that no longer works.

Keep them for several reasons:

It reminds you of how far you’ve come.

You can pick through the bones for bits of dialogue and setting descriptors even if the majority is trashed.

You remind yourself of what didn’t work before, so you don’t fall in that same trap again.

If you change your mind, all you have to do is copy-paste it back in.

6. Remember First Drafts are First Drafts

Let the word spew flow forth from your fingers and don’t look back and start questioning every decision and all its flaws until your creativity tank starts sputtering on empty. It’s supposed to be messy, it’s supposed to have plot holes and typos and inconsistencies and things to fact-check. If you start hyper-fixating on making sure your manuscript has absolutely no errors before moving on to the next chapter, it will never get written, and you’ll convince yourself you’re a terrible writer.

Writing is easy. Revisions are hard. Just as storytelling doesn’t have to be linear, neither does the writing process. If that critical first line just won’t come to you, stuff a mediocre one in its place and move on. Write the ending first. Write all the romantic entanglements first. Write the big climactic argument first and figure out how the rest falls into place around your beautiful centerpiece.

But remember: You do, at some point, have to write the hard stuff. Hopefully, when the time comes, you look at all the rest you’ve written and are proud enough of your progress that those daunting scenes that looked impossible before become much more approachable now. Do it for your future readers who want to know how it ends. Do it for your characters. Do it for you.

[lil-ms-darkness]

A Treasure Not Worth Finding - Bigby Wolf x Goldilocks!Reader

A/N: Okay, so here's the next part! Sorry it took so long, I had it sitting in my WIP folder for quite some time, just needing to be edited and instead of editing it, I started working on my manuscript. But, it's here now! Slightly based off Faith from TWAU video game. The music playing in the apartment can be anything you want, as it's technically YOUR apartment haha

Content Warnings: Mild angst, description of death and dead bodies, perceived reader death.

That about does it, hope you enjoy! Feel free to comment if you'd like

𝕷𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖘 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖘 🥀

“See you again, soon.” 

That was the last thing she’d said to him. Her voice was soft, light and her eyes matched. It unnerved him, but it was also a welcome sort of discomfort, a kind that he’d come to appreciate. After he caught the asshole trying to poison Snow White - weirdly enough, it was Leland Mouse, of the Three Blind Mice, glamoured into a man [Y/N] wouldn’t recognize, nor would she have suspected to be one of the mice. She had helped him find the perpetrator responsible for trying to take Snow White’s life, purely for greed and satisfaction of being the one to kill the Deputy Mayor for not prioritizing his cases, and for not bowing to his whim when he wanted. And, as she had asked, Bigby had returned to visit her. But, it didn’t become a consistent thing. He mainly visited for information, and was met with some kind of story, a conversation, a muffin or a slice of banana nut bread, she’d offered him a brownie once but he’d denied it. 

He hadn’t expected to see her again so soon, especially not like this. He had gotten a call from Jack about a body dumped into a back alley dumpster. He was nervous, having seen only a leg hanging out. 

Bigby arrived on the scene quickly and found the dumpster, a leg hanging over the lip with the lid flattening it. He grabbed the edge and lifted the lid open, looking down to examine the victim. He felt his mouth fall open in surprise, shock, and pure white hot rage. It was her. 

“See you again, soon.”

He carefully fished her out of the dumpster and laid her down on the rough asphalt of the street, hidden in the darkness away from the street lights. Her hair was soft in his hand as he held her head to lower her.

Now, he looks down at her face, her once golden hair is messy and pale as it cushions her head like a pillow. Her eyes are half lidded and lusterless in death, her skin lacking the warmth- her hands clenched tightly in fists. He notes the deep purple and black bruising on her throat, so thick that it couldn’t have been a cord. He crouches next to her, noting the various wounds around her body- she had fought back. 

He closes his eyes for a moment before he hears footsteps shuffling towards them and he looks up, spotting Jack at the mouth of the alley. The blonde man approaches him, a solemn and uncomfortable look on his face. 

“Any luck?” He asks

Bigby sighs and looks at the body again, 

“Did you see anyone around when you found the body?” The words felt like bile in his throat as he speaks them

“No, I didn’t.” 

Bigby isn’t surprised to hear that, Jack was about as observant as a thumbtack. He examines her hands, noting the clean fingernails, but there is bruising underneath- someone made sure to clean up any DNA traces. 

Damn

He takes a closer look at her throat, finding the rope burns in between the bruises and the broken veins underneath. He can feel his claws threaten to elongate and he actively keeps them retracted, turning his attention to her face, his eyes linger on her swollen, bluing lips. He can’t help but feel guilty, wondering if she’d been murdered because she was helping him. Whether it was to keep her quiet, or for some other reason, he’ll be sure to get to the bottom of it. He will find the bastard that did this.

 Bigby looks back to the body and notices her clothes now. She’s dressed in her Trip Trap uniform, an emerald green dress that was similar to Holly’s, with black wedge heels secured with a strap around the ankle. She had told him how she loved the dress, because it was high quality material without being too expensive and felt nice on her skin, but he can’t recall what material. Now that he can touch it, it’s smooth under his rough hands, thick but not scratchy at all- and it’s dirty from the garbage she was thrown into. 

“What were you doing over here, Jack?” Bigby asks, cautiously. 

“I was coming to visit a friend of mine.” Jack says, shifting from foot to foot.

“A friend?” 

“He said he was going to give me $1,000.”

“What a generous friend, what are you up to?”

“Nothing, honest!” Jack holds up his hands in surrender. 

Bigby looks from him, down to the body, then Jack again. He doesn’t have time to deal with the get rich quick fails of the century.

“I need to go see Holly, she should be working tonight, and Jack? Stay out of trouble.”

Bigby walks down the concrete steps to the heavy door of the Trip Trap, pushing it open and stepping through. Holly stands behind the bar, dressed in her brown dress. She lifts her gaze to look towards the door, preparing to greet a customer, but her face sets into a flat glare when she sees Bigby. Gren glances over his shoulder towards the Sheriff and shakes his head, looking back to his small glass of rum on the countertop. 

The sheriff approaches the bar and looks at Holly, 

“I’m not here to start problems, I just need to ask you some questions.” He says, simply and sits down at the bar a few seats away from Gren.

“You’re always here to start a problem, even when you don’t try to.” She digs her nails into the bottom lip of the bar. 

Bigby shakes his head, “When was the last time you saw [Y/N]?” 

“She was here for her shift the night before last. Why? What do you want with her?” Holly’s eyes narrow.

“She’s dead…” Bigby wills his face to be emotionless, as he watches Gren drop the glass to the counter, tipping over and spilling onto the bartop as Holly stares at him with wide eyes. Bigby couldn’t hope to understand what she was feeling- first, her sister was murdered, and now her friend was dead, the friend who was working with her so that she could grieve. 

“How?” Gren growls, fists clenched tightly on top of the bar

“She was strangled.” Bigby says, impassively, but inside he is anything but. Inside, he is raging and tearing apart all of New York to track down the next murderer, because who knows who may be next. And if [Y/N] was a target, with how likable she is- was- who knows who else may be on a list. 

“DAMNIT!” Gren  stands and turns on Bigby, who only regards him with a stoic guise, “How many have to die before you do your damn job?!”

“I am doing my job.” It’s all Bigby can do not to slam his face into the bar- his patience is fading, and quickly. “I’m trying to find the person that did this, and I’m starting by finding out the timeline of when she died, and where she was taken from. If she hasn't been here since two nights ago, then there’s nothing else that I need.” He stands and Gren steps in his way. Bigby squares his shoulders.

“Knock it off,” Holly snaps, and Bigby looks her way. She sounds sad, “just go, Sheriff. I need…need to figure out what to do.” She sighs and walks out from the bar, vanishing into the back room. Bigby notes a missing attendee-

“Where’s Woody?” He asks, still looking towards the room Holly escaped to for a moment longer before looking back to Gren’s fury laden face. 

“How the hell should I know?” He growls, “I ain’t his dad.”

“For someone claiming to want me to do my job, you’re making it awfully difficult.” 

Gren’s eyebrows twitch and his jaw sets, Bigby prepares to dodge a punch, but it doesn’t come, to the Sheriff’s surprise. “He hasn’t been here in a couple days. He left with [Y/N] after her last shift.”

Bigby’s not surprised that Woody left with her, but the fact that he left with her the same day she was last seen….

“And he hasn’t been back since?”

“No.” Gren bites out through gritted teeth, “Now if that’s all you need, get the fuck out.”

Bigby walks out without much of a fuss, and pulls out his pack of cigarettes. He lifts one and lights it, walking down the street towards [Y/N]’s apartment.

He walks down the hall and stops in front of [Y/N]'s door, but something isn't right. He presses his ear to the door- music? 

That can't be right..[Y/N]'s time of death was hours ago, why was music still playing? 

He hears shuffling, and his teeth grit together. He grabs the doorknob and very slowly turns it- it's unlocked. 

He throws the door open and rushes inside, seeing the silhouette and diving on him. He shoves him face down into the carpet, wrists behind his back. 

"Hey hey hey!! GET THE FUCK OFF ME, WOLF!" 

The Woodsman

"Not until you tell me what you're doing here." Bigby digs his knee into the big man's spine as he squirms. 

"I was helping [Y/N]!" 

"Don't lie to me, Woody!"

"Fuck you, I ain't lyin'!" 

"What's going on- Sheriff! Get off of him!" Small hands grab Bigby's shoulder and he turns, ready to push them back; and he stops. 

He climbs off the big man and stares- 

"[Y/N]?"

"You listen here, Sheriff," she warns, her honeyed eyebrows furrowed in concern and anger as Woody stands up behind her, "out there you might be Sheriff Bigby Wolf and think you have to be mean to get your way, but not in my home! If you lay a hand on my guests again, you can forget about my offer to help you!" 

She's angry, so very angry, he can see it in her eyes, in the way the wrinkles between her brows crease her skin. The fire in her eyes. But she's here, standing, yelling, breathing.

"We found your body," Bigby says, carefully and the crease between her eyes lifts. "We all thought you were dead. And I came by to see if you'd been murdered here. When I saw Woody-" 

"You thought Woody killed me?" She frowns, incredulously, "He'd never." 

Woody puts a large hand on her shoulder. She looks over at him, then at Bigby again. 

"I'm not dead..." [Y/N] muses. 

"Clearly." Bigby huffs and can feel pressure forming behind his eyes. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes when her small hand covers his holding the pack. He looks at her. 

"I'd rather you didn't smoke in here. What with my work and all..." She says, quietly. 

Woody snorts and Bigby considers lighting one anyway- 

"Bigby does whatever he wants." He grumbles. 

Woody was right. Bigby did do whatever he wanted. But one look into her kind eyes and he resigns with a sigh, tucking the pack back into his pocket. He feels naked, and uncomfortable. He ignores it. 

Woody casts him a quirked browed look and Bigby ignores that, too. 

"[Y/N], where were you last night?" 

"Home? Asleep?" She shakes her head. "I finished dropping off orders early, stopped by the store to pick up some more fabric and flour, then came home and went to bed."

"And you, Woody?" He asks, moving his gaze to the bearded man. 

"I was at the Trip Trap."

"Really? Because Gren says he hasn't seen you in a couple days.."

"Bigby," [Y/N] warns and he casts her a cold look, warning her in turn not to interfere with his investigation. He watches her brows slacken a bit as her expression becomes one of concern. He looks back to Woody. "Let's try that again, where were you?"

Woody sighs,

"I was with a woman..." He grumbles. 

"Who was it?" 

"Can't a man keep his personal affairs personal?" 

"Not when he's a suspect in a murder." Bigby says and folds his arms. 

"I told you already he didn't do it." [Y/N] pipes up again and he ignores her completely. She was kind to him, but she is trying his patience. 

He looks at her, "[Y/N], a woman is dead. She could have been you-"

"But she wasn't.." she interrupts, her frown deepens, her look of concern deepening the wrinkles in between her brows and on her forehead. 

"-but it could have been. Doesn't matter that it wasn't, a woman is dead. Dead and gone. And I need to find the one responsible. Now you offered your assistance, but so far you've only made my investigation harder. Either keep it down, or I'll take him in to question him at the Business Office." 

Her eyes widen and she looks at Woody, then Bigby again. The hurt in her eyes was clear as day. She steels her expression and nods, once. She looks at Woody before she walks over and sits on the love seat, legs folded and looking out the window. 

Bigby feels a little guilty, but only a little. He shoves it aside and focuses on the task at hand. 

Woody looks at [Y/N], then Bigby again, a look of anger in his eyes.

"You're a piece of shit, Wolf."

"I hear that a lot, now who were you with?"

[dispatchvampire]

Accidentally In Love (Chapter 2)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes x FemaleOC

Warnings: Potentially lethal levels of fluffiness right now, potential for smut later. A little blood, canon levels of violence potentially. Plus size female OC, body descriptions.

Rating: PG-13 (right now for language, but look for this to change)

WC: 2600-ish.

Summary: 

Echo's living a normal life in NYC, a 911 dispatcher, the most excitement she gets is from the calls she takes. And then love comes crashing in one day when she's riding her bike through Central Park.

Steve and Bucky weren't looking for anything on their daily run around the park besides fresh air and exercise. The streak of purple eye candy on a bike that lapped them pretty regularly was a nice addition but not mandatory, at least until some impromptu roughhousing results in some civilian casualties in the form of the most beautiful woman either of them had seen in a long, long time.

A/N: AU, Post CACW, Bucky’s Chill and we have always lived in the Tower. Just call this a throwback to the found family, everyone lives in Stark Tower fics.

This is supposed to be a super-fluffy love story. Still undecided if I'm gonna keep this one going but posting now for giggles and grins. It's got some CSI:NY characters crossing over because why not.

I'm just messing about and playing in my WIPs folder. Not Beta'd: we die like men! (honestly, I tried but if you catch something I missed, let me know)

Chapter 2

Blinking, Echo arrived back on the current plain of consciousness in a very bright room that smelled vaguely of antiseptic and orange slices. Blinking, she groaned a little as she took in her varying pains that hadn’t been evident before, including the stiffness in the elbow where her IV was installed. 

“There she is.” 

She turned her head toward a voice she recognized very well. Lindsey Messer, Danny’s wife and her friend from the job and her building, sat at her bedside holding her hand. In her pants suit and fuschia blouse, wearing her work badge, it was clear the tiny blonde had come straight from the crime lab. “Hey Linds. I hope Danny didn’t make you worry. I’m fine. My head’s too hard for any lasting damage.”

The blonde snorted and slid a plastic cup with a straw in it over to her. “That’s what I told them.” 

It was good to know her friend had her back. “What am I doing here?”

“They said you had a concussion and lost consciousness at the scene. Apparently you hit your head when you went into the stream by the bridge. Plus you got some stitches in your nose and chin and have a hairline fracture in your wrist.”

“Oh.” It was so much worse than she feared. Looking down at her wrist she saw the bandage and closed her eyes on a sigh. “Well, this sucks.”

“It does,” Lindsey agreed. “It seems you have some interesting friends, though.” 

Echo sipped her cup of water as she mulled over the strange transition. “We have the same friends, Linds.” Working in law enforcement made for a large extended, and occasionally dysfunctional, family, and since they hung out together, the majority of the people in their lives were shared friends and acquaintances. 

“Funny, because I don't remember you bringing those two superheroes you crashed into on the bike path today out for drinks with us.” She leaned back in the chair, looking nonchalant as she pulled a bottle of water from her purse to sip. 

Superheroes? What? “What are you talking about?” Shifting to sit up further in bed, she found herself tired and reclining back on the pillows behind her. She had one thing she wanted to make clear, though. “And I didn't crash into anyone. I ditched out so I wouldn't crash into anyone.” 

Lindsay smiled slyly. “You’re too nice, that’s why you crashed.” 

Looking around to make sure there were no little ears to overhear she snarked at her friend, “Vaffanculo,” complete with the associated hand gesture. 

Of course that's the moment when Danny decided to come into the room carrying a bottle of water and some white daisies he laid on the table next to her drink. “Ay, yo! You kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked with his ever present grin. He’d clearly cleaned up and changed into one of his signature tight t-shirts and jeans. He made hipster chic look good with his wire-rim glasses and skinny jeans.

Rolling her eyes hurt but she did it anyway. “Whatever, Danny. When do I get outta here?”

The thin man winced and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well, see that's the problem. Both the girls have ear infections, and they’re with my mom right now, but there's nobody to look after them for us, so we can look after you. And well unfortunately, between us and Flack, Donnie is going outta town with Trish for the weekend. So the docs wanna keep you overnight.”  

“But…” she whined pitifully. The idea of spending the night alone in the hospital sounded as appealing as shaving her legs with a dull razor and lemonade shaving cream.

Lindsey’s lips twitched. “You know we have toddlers, right? We’re immune to such things,” she laughed.

Lower lip in full pout, she replied, “And that's just unfair.” Echo reached onto the table and then rummaged around in the sheets over her before reaching into her bloodstained bra and the pockets of her bike shorts. “Where's my phone?” Surely she could find someone to look after her at her place so she didn’t have to stay in the hospital.  

Danny cringed as he grabbed the other visitor’s seat in the room. “Yeah, about that... your phone’s out getting fixed right now. Unfortunately it and your sunglasses met the creek bed and experienced a similar fate as you.”

“Oh no.” She winced and reached up to touch the bridge of her nose involuntarily as her hopes for escape dwindled in front of her. “This is bad.” 

He nodded, conceding her point. “Yeah, yeah it is, kiddo.”

“So, I have to stay.” It was a statement of resignation more than anything and she was beyond displeased, but knew two things: first, this wasn’t her friends’ fault, and second, she couldn’t do anything about this.

“Unfortunately.” Messer nodded again. Seeing her dejected expression, he rushed to assure her, “Just for tonight though. They’ll let you go in the morning. Hopefully your phone will be back here by then, good as new.”

“Wait…” Her mind was still a little fuzzy, but Echo was pretty clear that phone insurance wasn’t nearly that prompt. “Who's got my phone?”

Lindsay looked at Danny with a pointy glare. “You didn't tell her?” 

“She just woke up! You were here!” Danny held out a hand hoping to show that he was unarmed and not one to take her fire. He pulled the chair over to the bed to be closer to Echo. “Do you remember the two guys you crashed into?” 

“I didn't crash,” she corrected, rolling her eyes coming much easier this time.  

“Your face and bike would disagree,” he supplied diplomatically, with only the barest hint of a grin.  

“Whatever.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her, assessing. “You really don’t remember?” 

Shaking her head hurt, but she tried anyway. “Help me out here, Messer. I got nothin’.” She had vague recollections of the two hot guys from the path, but considering she saw them daily, those were not memories she trusted. “Were those the ones you and Flack had your guns on?” 

Lindsay's eyes grew very large and she pinned Danny down with a very pointed glare. “You had your gun on Captain America and Sergeant Barnes?” 

“It was a very fluid situation,” he gritted out through his clenched jaw. “It took a minute to get it all untangled.”

“I'm sorry, what?” The headache that had been dancing around the edge of her vision grew to full force causing her to rub her face. “What? That doesn't even make sense.” How in the fried fuck did the fricking Avengers figure into this? “How—? What—? I don’t understand—”

Danny cringed at her questions and pushed to his feet. “Well I think we've done enough damage here. Linds will get the girls and we'll see you tomorrow morning.”

Echo’s eyes popped open as she reached for him when he stepped away to put the chair back. “Wait! No! You don't get to just drop a bomb and leave like that.” 

Likely attracted by her beeping monitor, the nurse came in to see her blood pressure spiking. “You have to go now. The patient needs her rest.” 

Lindsey and Danny leaned over for quick hugs before heading toward the door. “This will make sense in the morning, E, okay? You’ll be fine,” he assured her. 

She whined again, dropping her head into the pillows. “Okay. I'll see you tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, you will,” he replied with his trademark toothy grin. 

Right before he and Lindsey walked out the door, she asked, “Hey, who has my bike?”

“Hopefully that’ll be here with your phone.” 

The way Danny’s smile turned secretive before the nurse closed the door was concerning, but her head hurt too badly to really give it too much thought. Honestly, she was tired again and since it seemed she had nowhere else to be, she figured it was a good moment to take a nap. 

“We should have brought the bike up.”

“And put it where, genius? In the hallway where it’d just be in the way? In here? It’s a hospital, not a subway platform.”

“I just think—”

“And that’s your problem right there, Stevie.”

“I just don’t want her to think we took it or anything.”

“Steve. Really. Come down off the cross; we need the wood.” 

Echo woke to the sound of grumbled whispers and some sort of mechanical noise. Her dark eyes opened to the overly bright room, only to slam shut again at the vision before her. It was clearly a concussion-generated hallucination, because there, seated at her bedside were the two sexy mofos from the bike trail. A flimsy wisp of a memory danced across her mind of the blond one fetching her from the creek by picking her up, but… that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be; she was too heavy for that. She hadn’t been picked up since childhood, and certainly was not one to invite the casual touch of strangers.  

Cracking her eyes open the barest hint, she watched the two men, giants, both of them, arguing back and forth softly beside her. She’d never given thought to their size before beyond their muscles, considering her bike gave her a height advantage, but damn if they weren’t enormous, still dressed in their too-tight t-shirts and jeans that encased their thighs closer than clingwrap.  

Her soft whimper at the sight brought their argument to a halt as both of them reached for her hand. 

“Hey, beautiful,” the longhaired one greeted her with a soft smile as he delicately touched her fingers. His own fingers were cold, and when she looked to see why, it appeared they were made of some kind of metal. In her mind, she’d always assumed it had been some kind of tattoo when she’d seen him in passing, so the metal was a bit of a shock. 

“Howya feelin’, sweetheart?” the blond one asked as he laid his hand over her same wrist. 

She closed her eyes for a moment, just absorbing the absurdity of this moment. “Best. Hallucination. Ever.” 

Her eyes snapped open at a bark of laughter followed by the mostly silent wheezing giggles that overtook Hotness 2. He threw his head back, shaking out his unbound hair in full chortle, a bubbly infectious sound that made her feel like she’d been infused with sunshine. The way his nose crinkled made her want to hug the hell outta him. 

“Babydoll,” he choked out as he brushed away tears from his cheeks before patting her knee with a warm smile. “We’re as real as it gets. I promise.” 

Blondie’s grin at his friend was a mix of affection and unruffled resignation. “Ignore Chuckles over there. How are you feelin’?”

“I’d feel better if I knew who you were,” she said softly. It was a strange feeling, a sensation of familiarity and absolutely no idea why she might know them. Not that she didn’t appreciate the attention, but it was disconcerting that they seemed to know her and she had no active memory of them beyond their occasional encounters on the trails and paths in Central Park.

“I’m James and this is Ste—Wait, you really don’t remember us?” The brunet went from amused to stricken in a breath when she shook her head, his free hand—it was a metal hand—scrubbing down his face and pulling his features taut before clapping his hands. “Right then. I’m James—my friends call me Bucky, and this is Steve. I ran into you on the trail yesterday.”

Eyes rolled to the ceiling, the giant blond then directed an annoyed glare at his compatriot before folding her hand in both of his massive paws. “What Buck means is he ran into you on the bike path. By the Glen Span bridge.”

“Oh! Jeez!” Thinking back, all she could see in her mind was the blue shirt and then everything goes kind of hazy until… “Guns? My friends had their guns on you?” 

They both held their hands up, shaking their heads. “A misunderstanding. It all got sorted out pretty quickly, despite Smartass over here trying to get us killed,” James grumbled in Steve’s direction, even as a smirk curled around the corners of his mouth. 

The blond winced at his friend’s description of the events but didn’t correct him. “Anyway, we wanted to come and apologize for all the upheaval we caused for you.”

“And your stitches and things,” the brunet added as he tucked his long bangs behind his ears. Looking down in his lap, he jerked as he noticed the bag by his feet. It was purple and glittery and had tissue paper sticking out of the top and he pushed it into her hands like it may be virulently contagious. “Here. From us.” 

Immediately suspicious, Echo held the bag at arm’s length. “Okay? What is it?”

Steve rolled his eyes with a little huff of impatience. “Telling you ruins the surprise. We went to the trouble of wrapping ‘em—”

“Well, Wanda did,” Buck leaned over to stage-whisper conspiratorially. 

“We went to the trouble of having ‘em wrapped,” the blond corrected with an impatient glare at his friend, “so open it.” 

A little embarrassed at having their eager eyes track her every move, she dug past the mountain of glittery paper to pull out a shrink-wrapped, brand new Stark Phone in the signature red and gold box which she set on the bed next to her. Everything about this situation was so goddamn weird, it was hard to make all the pieces fit together in her head with any kind of coherence. 

“Tony promised me he got all your stuff transferred over,” Steve offered eagerly as he poked the box a little closer to her. 

“Pictures and things,” Buck clarified over his friend’s shoulder. They both seemed greatly invested in her taking the gift.  

She held the box up in one hand while pawing through the bag with the other. “Okay?” Her fingers brushed against another box, this one textured and obviously expensive cardboard and almost as hefty as her phone box. 

Echo’s eyes widened as she pulled out the black box with the distinctive gold writing on it. “Is this…?” she trailed off as she observed the two men closely. Steve nodded encouragingly, so she opened it, almost afraid of what could be inside. Inside was a hard leather case, with gold lettering that matched the exterior box. “You got me Versace sunglasses?” She couldn’t decide if she was happy or mildly horrified. 

The blond nodded vigorously. “Yeah, yours were in pieces from where I stepped on them getting out of the water.” His cheeks flushed as he looked more than a little ashamed. “Tony assured me that you’d be okay with the replacement.” 

“Stevie’s underselling it. Stark said you’d appreciate the upgrade.” 

Upgrade? Shit… she was a city employee and made nowhere near the kind of money that this pair of sunglasses cost. They were likely more expensive than all the clothes in her closet. “I… thank you?” 

“Here.” James nodded at the bag next to her. “There’s more in there.” 

At the expectant looks on their faces, she set the black box aside and turned her attention to the bright yellow envelope just inside the bag. “‘Sorry we broke your stuff, please accept these replacements with our humblest apologies,’” she read, wary of their hopeful expressions when she finished. “'Replacements?' Plural? There’s more?”

[urrone]

wip amnesty - jordan eberle/taylor hall

Full disclosure, I think I've posted this before, but I'm officially posting it again just to get it off my chest and out of my active fics folder. It's never getting finished. At the end I will include my notes for how I would have ended it if I had the willpower to do so. I created this document in the year of our eldritch horror TWO THOUSAND THIRTEEN so that's how long it's been muddling through existence.

--

the new normal

It’s not that Taylor hasn’t heard of Oklahoma before, of course he has, though he doubts he could have ever picked it out on a map of the US. He’s just never, like, had to physically acknowledge its existence with his own presence, and it’s weird. 

“Is it as flat as you thought?” Jeff, the intern the team sent to pick him up at the airport, carefully keeps his hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel. Bringing his truck down from home hadn’t made sense given he’s sure he won’t be here long, but Taylor misses driving already. 

“I didn’t really think about it,” he says, and that’s definitely true. Foreign places always resemble a slightly different Canada in his mind until he sees them. And it’s not like anywhere in the US is really that different, not like going overseas. 

And honestly, it does kind of remind him of Edmonton, only with fewer trees. 

Jeff laughs when he says it out loud, and starts pointing out landmarks on the way to the apartment Taylor will share with Jordan. He’s never lost this much playing time before, and he isn’t sure if it’s that or seeing Jordan for the first time since April that has him wiping sweat off his palms every five minutes. 

Taylor lets Jeff’s inane chatter ease him all the way to his new front door, on the second floor of a low rise apartment building that Jeff assures him is only a five-to-ten-minute bike ride from the arena. “It doesn’t look like a lot, but there’s some good stuff in Midtown,” Jeff says, gesturing vaguely to the road behind them. 

Taylor doesn’t know how to respond to this but it doesn’t really matter because Jeff’s already gone.

--

“Are you telling me you actually brought your dirty laundry from Canada to wash down here?” Jordan says, looking at the pile of clothes in front of the washer. “You moved down here just so I'd do your laundry again, didn't you?”

Taylor laughs and chucks the socks he'd been wearing on top of the pile. It’s almost a relief to just fall back into chirping each other like they always used to. It helps him talk through the fluttery bits in his stomach. “Yep, it had absolutely nothing to do with finally being able to play again. I got tired of washing my own socks.”

Jordan picks one of the socks up and flicks it back at Taylor's face. “It doesn’t look like you’ve washed a sock since last season.” 

Taylor bats it away, laughing around the new tight feeling that’s taken up residence in his chest. He'd really missed just being in the same room with Jordan, sitting on their mutually owned couch playing xbox, buying groceries they’d forget to eat, watching Jordan sort their dirty laundry.

“Why aren't you holding up your end then?” Jordan asks. He's given up bitching and started dumping the pile of clothes into the washer. “When's the last time you went grocery shopping?”

“Chill out, I just got here.”

“We can't eat at Earl's every day, dude.”

It's weird that he can eat at a place called Earl's in two different countries. Did they run out of restaurant names? The one down here doesn't have the variety of Edmonton’s, but their brisket is delicious, and Taylor doesn't see why they can't eat it every day if they want to. He says as much.

“The nutritionist might object.”

Fair point to Jordan. “Do you think Tubes would let me borrow his car?”

Jordan snorts. “No.”

Taylor flops down on the couch. “Well do you think he'd give me a ride to the grocery store?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether or not he's already going to the store.” Jordan flops down next to him, and it's not their awesome giant wrap around couch that Jordan’s mom bought them when they moved in, so next to him is kind of on top of him given the way that Taylor's sprawled, but Taylor doesn't mind. He likes Jordan's warm weight against him, even though it's kind of hot in their apartment, despite the air conditioning. It's weird that it's 30C in late October anywhere in the world.

“If we had Vespas we could go to the store.”

“How is grocery shopping with a Vespa different than grocery shopping with your bike?”

Taylor tries to shrug but his shoulders are stuck to the leather. “I'd get there faster?”

“Do you even know what a Vespa is?” Jordan nudges Taylor with his foot. “You still wouldn't have anywhere to put the groceries.”

Taylor doesn’t want to admit that no, he still doesn’t know. “I wouldn't get much. It's not like you're going to cook it.”

“Can't fit a lot of coconut water on a Vespa.”

“I could fit enough.” He nudges Jordan back with his knee, since his feet are currently trapped under Jordan's calves.

“Hey, Cheds.” Sometimes Taylor regrets ever telling Jordan about that nickname, but sometimes he likes that Jordan is the only one to use it anymore.

“What?”

Jordan won't make eye contact with him for a minute, which is weird because it's Jordan and Jordan has never been uncomfortable around Taylor, not even when they first met. “I just. I really missed you.”

It's weird to say his heart flips in his chest, because hearts don't actually do that, really, but Taylor might finally know what people mean when they say that, like this sick warm weird feeling right there behind his sternum. It's awesome and terrifying and he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He waits until it passes and pats Jordan's shoulder, because Jordan's still looking weird. Which, granted, they hardly ever talk about their feelings for things other than food or hockey, but still. “I missed you too, you non.”

Jordan doesn't even smile at that, and Taylor suddenly feels like they're having two different conversations. “No,” Jordan says. “I mean. I missed. Jesus, Taylor, it was like <i>six months</i>.”

“No it wasn't, I was back in Edmonton that whole time. I mean, except for the surgery.”

“Not on the ice.”

“Well no, but—”

“Not over the summer.”

“We never spend the summer together.”

Jordan's looking at him now, but it's with the distinct impression that says Taylor's missing something big, and fuck if Taylor knows what it is. He kind of does though, because even when he'd been out with his ankle his rookie year, they'd still been around, and it hadn't been some planned thing like his shoulder where they knew it'd go through next season. 

The shoulder thing had kind of scared him, and he guesses it must have scared Jordan a bit too. He puts his hand on Jordan's shoulder again, but leaves it there and holds on. “I get it,” he says, even though Jordan's still looking at him like he really doesn't. “I really did miss you too. And playing with you. And winning with you.”

Jordan looks kind of okay with that, and he reaches up to pat Taylor's hand.

“You want to hug it out?” Taylor asks.

Jordan laughs at that and smacks his hand away and things feel normal again, but a different kind of normal. “Fuck you, turn on the TV.”

If this is going to be their new normal, Taylor could be okay with that. 

–

Practice is weird and it isn’t just because he hasn’t actually had a team practice since last season.  Jordan and Ryan have been down for a month already, since before the home opener, and Taylor hates feeling a step behind. He knows some of the guys from training camp last year, but Schultz is new and Ryan follows him around like a duckling. 

He’s also missed out on several months worth of inside jokes, which he hates almost more than feeling winded after sprints. During practice Justin hip checks Jordan and they both say “sauce” and crack up laughing. Taylor doesn’t feel bad at all when they both land on their asses and get yelled at. 

Tubes laughs at Taylor when he mentions the grocery store, but Hamilton takes pity on him. (Taylor hadn't really planned this well and asked in the locker room. If anyone chirps him about it, he's totally throwing Jordan under the bus about the laundry. Cereal is way better than socks.)

“We can go after practice,” Hammy says. “I've gotta go anyway.”

They end up driving way further north than Taylor's been before, he hasn't really made it past 23rd St on his bike, and stopped there because there wasn’t a bike lane. He figures if it isn't in the confines of downtown, he doesn't really need it.

“But you do,” Hammy says. “Because they don't have a Whole Foods down there.” He then spends about fifteen minutes bitching about the grocery store situation in Oklahoma, because apparently the liquor laws in the States are different than Canada, and for some reason that means no good grocery stores exist in this state. “It's a big fucking mess,” Hammy finishes, just as he parks. He catches Taylor giving him whatever look must have been on his face, because really, <i>grocery stores</i>. “What?” Hammy asks.

“I had no idea someone could have so many feelings about grocery stores.”

Hammy just pushes him into a parked car, and they both run when the alarm starts blaring.

–

“Did you know it's not even called KD down here?” Taylor asks, neatly arranging the offensively labeled blue boxes in the cupboard.

“I did, actually,” Jordan says, not even looking up from the TV.

“You could have warned me.”

“I'm sorry, was it a shock to your delicate nature?”

Taylor lobs one of the wet sponges on the sink at Jordan's head, and fuck yeah he's got excellent hand-eye coordination, it hits Jordan right in the ear. Jordan yelps and comes at him, and Taylor barely gets out “I'm sorry, was it a shock to your delicate ear?” before Jordan has him pinned on the kitchen floor, laughing into the tile. 

Taylor gets his hands under him and shoves up. He's got height and weight on Jordan, which has always made wrestling pathetically unmatched, especially when Jordan forgets to do shit like pin his hands. He gets Jordan wedged into the corner between the cabinets and the floor, and even with Jordan squirming and kicking his truly massive thighs around, he can't dislodge Taylor. Taylor is the fucking master of pinning people.

“Say it,” he says. It's unfortunately a little muffled because he's got Jordan's shoulder pinned with his head, and his mouth is full of Jordan' shirt. Still, it's a familiar enough routine by now, and Jordan's face is free and clear.

“No.”

Taylor presses down harder, his feet hooked over Jordan's legs and their arms tangled. It'd be horrible form if either of them had ever actually officially wrestled in any kind of formal manner, but there aren't any rules here. They're touching knee to head and it’s apparently part of the new normal that Taylor notices this time. Notices exactly how they line up, how Jordan's thigh flexes between his, how Jordan's breath pants across Taylor's forehead as he struggles. He doesn't know why he's never thought about this before, how good everything feels. He's missed it. They've had to be too careful about Taylor's shoulder for so long.

“Say it,” he says again, and hopes his voice doesn't sound as wrecked as he feels.

“You're better than me!”

“At what.”

Jordan sags against the floor and Taylor finds himself resisting absolutely nothing, and then they're just two guys, cuddling on the kitchen floor. “At literally everything,” Jordan says.

Taylor lifts his head. “That escalated quickly.”

“Fuck you, don't quote <i>Anchorman</i> at me.”

“Don't say ridiculous shit.”

Jordan shrugs and Taylor feels it with his whole torso and remembers that, oh yeah, he's still basically laying on top of Jordan, and it isn't for wrestling reasons anymore. He gets up and offers a hand to Jordan. “NHL 13?”

He laughs when Jordan slaps his hand away. “I'm gonna kick your ass,” Jordan says, levering himself up against the cabinets.

“Yeah, we'll see.”

–

Taylor's first week playing with the team for real and not just practicing involves a road trip down to Texas. On a bus. Taylor remembers taking buses to games, it honestly hasn't been that long, but the drive from OKC down to Houston is going to be like eight hours. And because he’s who he is he decides to complain about it out loud in the middle of Earl’s. “Welcome to the AHL,” he mutters.

“It's not that bad,” Jordan says.

“You're like a foot shorter than me, of course you don't think it's that bad.”

Jordan flicks a fry at him. Taylor tries unsuccessfully to catch it in his mouth. “I'm like inches shorter than you,” Jordan says. “Very few inches.”

“At least two,” Ryan says helpfully.

Justin nods. “But not more than six.”

“Fuck you both, it's not six inches.”

Taylor flicks a pickle at Jordan. Fries are too precious to waste, and he's really not a fan of pickles. “I can see over your head without even trying. It's enough.”

“You cannot.”

“I can.”

“Prove it.”

“Right now?”

Jordan gets up from their booth and stands next to it, hands on his hips. “Yes, right now.”

“You look stupid.” Taylor looks at Ryan and Justin, but they're both concentrating really hard on eating right now and are exactly no help. “Seriously?”

Justin looks up from his barbecue. “It makes Nugget really uncomfortable when his parents yell at each other,” he says, with a truly impressive deadpan expression. Taylor is forced to begrudgingly admit, only to himself, that Justin could teach lessons.

Taylor sighs heavily and ridiculously and throws his napkin down. “Fine.” He knows he's exaggerated his and Jordan’s height differences. Jordan knows he's exaggerated their height differences. Literally everyone knows he's exaggerated their height differences, and he stands up and his eyes are right on Jordan's forehead and of course he can't see shit over his head and he hates that he had to stand up and leave his barbecue behind. “Whatever, you non. Fine.” He sits back down again. “Two inches. Why were we talking about this again?”

Jordan is insufferably triumphant with his shit-eating grin. “The bus,” Jordan reminds him. “It's not that bad, so quit your fucking whining.”

“Language, Ebby,” Taylor says. “This is a family establishment.”

Jordan kicks him under the table, and it's really fucking hard actually, but then he leaves his leg pressed up against Taylor's until they leave.

–

Taylor shifts around for the millionth time in as many minutes. The bus is too hot and too cold and too cramped and too . . . everything. He's got his iPad out and has Dexter queued up but can't find a good position for the iPad and his legs and his shoulders. Jordan shotgunned the window seat on the way to the bus and at first Taylor thought that the aisle would be awesome, more room for his legs, but then Arco spread out a blanket, grabbed his pillow, and camped out in the aisle. It's a mad genius idea and Taylor wishes he'd thought of it first, but now he's got nowhere for his legs except under the seat in front of him.

“Stop squirming,” Jordan says, shoving at his shoulder. “I can't sleep when you squirm.”

“I can't get comfortable,” Taylor says, shoving back. “This is the worst.”

House kicks his seat. “Tell us again how wonderful the Oilers plane is, seriously.”

Taylor hunches down in his seat. This is the worst, the absolute worst, but he might be down here for the whole season, given the way the negotiations are going, and he doesn't really want to be <i>that guy</i>.

“Here, just.” Jordan starts manhandling him a bit. “Sit up a minute, will you?” Taylor does and Jordan pulls his leg up behind Taylor and Taylor does not at all see how this is going to be comfortable? But then Jordan grabs his shoulders and turns Taylor away from him and pulls his back into Jordan's chest, so Taylor is basically reclining in a Jordan chair. Taylor tries really hard and really unsuccessfully to not think about every point of contact between them. 

He swings his legs up onto the armrest across the aisle, basically right over Arco's head, but he's asleep and Danis is all alone across the aisle and sleeping with his face mashed against the window and obviously not using the arm rest right now.

“Better?” Jordan whispers, and it's right in his ear and that's definitely what makes the goosebumps spread across the back of his neck. He wonders what Jordan will attribute his full body shudder to, but Jordan doesn't actually ask. Also is it better? No. And yes. 

“Yeah,” he says, just as quiet. It really has no business being comfortable, because they're still two tall, muscular dudes shoved into a seat made for people roughly half their size, but somehow it is, and it’s weird that it is. 

Jordan slings his arm over Taylor's shoulder, because it's that or leave it mashed between Taylor and the seat. He can feel when Jordan falls asleep again, because his breath gets deep and even against Taylor's shoulder.

Taylor puts his earbuds in, props the iPad against his knees, and hits play. He’ll deal with how good all of this feels later.

–

It’s Justin’s idea to go see Cloud Atlas. Taylor doesn’t really like going to movie theaters, he gets bored just sitting there trying to follow along with a plot he doesn’t really care about. He relents when Jordan tells him to stop being a non and promises to buy him a popcorn and lemonade, so he gets on his bike and follows them all down the street to the theater. 

Somehow, when they all go to sit down, Taylor ends up on the end of the row next to Justin, and Jordan’s on the other end next to Ryan, and all Taylor has is his watery lemonade. Ryan and Justin do this thing during the previews where they do a thumbs up or down on whether or not they’ll go see the movie. Jordan starts giving his opinion after he sees Ryan and Justin doing it. 

Taylor keeps his thumb down the whole time and eventually Justin stops turning to ask. 

He only makes it thirty-seven minutes into the movie. By the sixth time a new storyline is introduced and he’s leaned over again to Justin to ask if that’s still Tom Hanks under all the makeup and Justin has shushed him yet again, he just gets up and leaves. He waits in the lobby to see if anyone follows him but eventually Taylor has to concede that they might not have even noticed he’d left. Or maybe they just thought he was taking an extended bathroom break.

The lobby of the movie theater is boring and doesn’t have any couches and he’s actually pretty close to home because everything is pretty close to their apartment, so he just leaves.

He bikes around downtown. There’s a little canal area near the theater and a big statue of a covered wagon. He likes the canal. It’s absolutely nothing like the river in Edmonton but whatever, it’s trying. He stops outside Toby Keith’s restaurant to tweet about the movie and laughs at Whits’ response. 

Most of the time he’s not sure if it’s Oklahoma City that he likes or his anonymity. No one recognizes him here. No one stops him on the sidewalk to ask about their Cup chances. No one laments to him about their godawful power play, or how long it’s been since their last playoff run. No one gives him their insider tips or advice on going top shelf or five hole. He hasn’t been this anonymous in a really long time. 

If he’d stopped to think about it, and he never had, obviously, he’d have assumed he’d find it lonely, isolating. The first time he’d left the country, to go someplace that wasn’t the United States, he’d gone all the way to Russia for hockey. They had people to help them around, translators assigned to help them order dinner and find their way to the bathrooms. And, other than thinking they were obnoxious tourists, the Russians hadn’t really cared much about who he was. He keeps thinking about that time, about being in the middle of a crowd of people and completely unable to communicate with any of them unless they spoke English. 

They speak English in Oklahoma but it’s the same feeling, like there’s something lost in translation between him and the people strolling along the canal. 

He’d never been alone in Russia though, Jordan had been with him. He wonders why he feels more alone now, and he kind of hates it. 

As he’s contemplating that feeling, he realizes he’s hit the highway. And because he’s hit the highway, he doesn’t actually know where he is. It should be easy just turn around and go back the way he came, plus all the streets in Oklahoma City are numbered, but he can’t figure it out. He lets Siri direct him back to the apartment.

-

That's where it ends, these are the notes:

Lockout ends and they go back and Taylor is still pissy and doesn’t know why

Jordan confronts him about it

Taylor finally says that OKC was balls but he missed feeling like they were about to start something, like they were removed from their normal lives in a place where anything could happen

Jordan calls him an idiot and kisses him

“It was like. Anything could happen there. We could have just been two normal guys. And it made me think, if we were just two normal guys, what would I do.” 

“But you didn’t do anything.” 

Taylor shrugs. “We still weren’t normal guys, even though it felt like it.” 

“What’s normal? Nothing’s normal. There’s no such thing as normal.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

“So we make a new normal,” Jordan says, and kisses him. 

Okay but now that I’ve been reminded of it I need to add something in there about bonking their heads together as they kiss. 

[satashiiwrites]

Hmm... for the WIP ask game either your current NaNo project, Stay, or Afterthoughts (or all 3 of them if you want lol). Your choice! <3

Sure, we can do all three.

Choices and Regrets is a 911/Buddie version/fusion of the novel Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (which is one of my all time favorite books and Apple is making into a TV series). I’m doing this fic for November’s Rough Trade using the second chances part of the prompt as well as a NaNoWriMo because I have the feeling the ending word count is going to be north of 70k. I weirdly have a bunch of November off because I’m switching jobs so I HOPE to have most of the fic written/out by the end of the month. We’ll see how i’m doing. It’s the 8th and I’m at 14K written out of a goal of 50k.

The basic premise is do you like the choices you made in your life or do you have regrets? I’m setting this in 9-1-1 post lightning strike in season 6 and ignoring almost anything canon after that point (no Natalia or Marisol). We start the fic with Buck being invited to go out for celebratory drinks with Connor as he managed to get his wife pregnant without Buck’s donation. Buck is maudlin about how he hasn’t found someone to settle down with and have kids with. He’s pining over Eddie but doesn’t want to upset the apple cart. Eddie talks him into going to have a drink and to close that chapter of his life then come back for a late dinner at Casa Diaz.

Buck is then kidnapped by a stranger who doesn’t tell him want they want from him. When he wakes, he’s in a different, parallel universe where the him in that universe made much different choices. Nobody he considers found family knows him. Meanwhile, the parallel universe’s Buck is taking his place and makes a move on Eddie who has also been silently pining over Buck (they’re two halves of the same idiot).

What will Buck do to get back home and to his Eddie? Will Eddie be happy with the alternate Buck or does he figure out that something’s not right?

The novel this is based on is a thriller but I’d also say it has a romance side to it. What would you do to get back to the one you love?

I am planning on putting Buck and Eddie through the wringer. All the angst and then some smex.

To read what I’ve currently got yeeted, read chapter one and two here on rough trade

And for a little spoiler, this is a line i’m wanting to use in this fic that i came up with a few months ago and has been sitting abandoned in my tidbits folder:

“You told me once to not go chasing waterfalls and I didn’t know what you meant at all. And i did. I chased the damn waterfalls big time and I’m in trouble and I think I need your help. That you’re the only one who can help.”

Stay is another one of those tidbit folders. It’s got… not much in it. Just a bit that i thought of randomly. It doesn’t belong to any fic at the moment. Could become a full fledged one-shot character study, could end up co-opted into something bigger. This is all in the head/POV of Eddie Diaz from 9-1-1. First draft.

Stay. Please stay with me.

Eddie’s used to being left behind by people who are supposed to stick with him. The army? He’d managed to pull his entire team out of a burning helicopter, taken three bullets and they’d forced him out, telling him thanks for his service but he can’t stay with them.

Nowhere to go but home, right?

Texas wasn’t home anymore. Home shouldn’t itch under your skin like a three day old bruise. Adjusting to civilian life after being dumped by the army… he hadn’t handled it well. Eddie could say that not that he had distance and time to reflect on that period of time.

No wonder Shannon hadn’t stayed—he’d been a mess.

Still was, actually. He’s just better at hiding it.

Afterthoughts is a series of codas I’ve been doing while re-watching 9-1-1 during hiatus. I’ve been doing a bad job of keeping up with it and most of this is angsty as hell.

Testifying in court is actually pretty rare for firefighters and if anything, Bobby usually is the one who gets put on the witness stand as captain.

Not this time though.

This time, Buck was the one who got the gun pointed at him and he’s being called to testify because even Chim didn’t hear quite everything Lola said to him.

He told the DA that he wasn’t going to be very helpful. The news camera footage should be enough to plead her out but evidently Lola’s traffic disturbance had upset some important people and they didn’t want it to become a regular occurrence so they wanted jail time.

Jail time for rescuing your marriage? The romantic in Buck actually thought it was kinda sweet—even if he hadn’t enjoyed having a gun pointed at his chest.

So Buck was being called.

As a hostile witness.

Why were they actually going to trial about this again?

Lola had been charged with a PC 647c, aka Obstructing Movement to a Public Place—also known as the freeway. It was a misdemeanor but carried up to 180 days. The DA wanted those 180 days. Was practically salivating over them for some reason. So they were calling Buck and Athena to testify.

If anyone wants to read the posted codas, I’ve broken them into fics by season. Read the completed season one here on AO3 or the partially posted season 2 here.

[darlingamidala]

Obianidala Week 2023

Day 1 prompt: Canon Divergence

First of all, thank you so much to @obianidalaevent for putting on this event!!! I've been waiting for an obianidala event for literally years, so naturally I wanted to post something for every day. Unfortunately due to life/work, I was only able to do one new piece for it. But thankfully, I have a years long backlog of WIPs that have been lurking in my drafts folder, so this is the perfect opportunity to let some of them see the light of day!

I wrote this scene in 2018, which is part of an AU that I was never able to fully flesh out enough to write. Basically, obianidala are together during the Clone Wars, but everything still goes to shit in RotS. Padme survives the birth of the twins, and she and Obi-wan, believing themselves to be widowed, go into hiding. You can also read this on ao3

___________

Obi-wan came out of his meditation and pushed himself to his feet. He had a bad feeling about… something. It was ominous, but elusive. But then, the last thirteen years had been full of bad feelings, and for good reason. The twins were safe, at least for now, tucked into their bunks on the ship that they called home.

He sighed as he made his way down the hallway towards the bedroom he shared with Padme. He found her sitting on the edge of the bed in the half-lit room. She was tense, curled in on herself, and looked up at him with wide eyes that glistened with unshed tears. He gave her a sympathetic look as he quietly walked over to sit beside her. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She rested her head against his shoulder, burying her face against the fabric of his shirt.

They both had nights like this, where the loss of their husband would suddenly hit them hard and the pain of what had happened all those years ago felt like a fresh wound all over again. It had been several years since he had seen Padme cry over it though.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Are you alright?” he murmured.

Padme took a shaky breath as she pulled away. She pulled her arms in towards herself with her hands curled protectively in front of her stomach as she tried to blink her tears away. “Obi-wan..” she whispered, uncertainty and… fear? in her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

She said the word like it was a death sentence, as if she had contracted some horrible illness. And it may as well have been, for the way Obi-wan stilled, how he gripped her hands tighter as he looked away with his lips parted in a silent denial of her statement.

“It was a dream… Like the ones I used to have about my mother, just before she died.”

Obi-wan had been silenced by his own guilt about his inaction in response to those dreams.

“And?” Padme coaxed. She had always had such a way of helping where he couldn’t, when it came to Anakin.

“It was about you.”

“Tell me.”

“It was only a dream… You die in childbirth.”

Obi-wan frowned in concern as he stepped over to Anakin and placed a reassuring hand on his arm.

Padme’s hands had come up to cradle her stomach as she asked about the baby. Anakin had said he didn’t know what would become of their child.

Obi-wan opened his mouth to say something, but he still didn’t trust himself to say the right words.

“It was only a dream,” Padme dismissed with a reassuring smile, taking Anakin’s free hand in her own.

“I won’t let this one become real,” he replied with grave determination.

“You’re certain that that’s what you saw?” Obi-wan asked, having finally found his voice.

“I’m certain, Obi-wan.”

Obi-wan reached up and tucked Anakin’s hair behind his ear before resting his hand on his cheek, his thumb just brushing the scar upon his brow. “Then we will do what we can to keep it from coming true.”

It hadn’t come true then, though neither of them believed their husband’s drastic measures had been to thank for that. But now… she was older, more susceptible to complications. And they no longer had access to Core-standard medical facilities; they went to Rebellion medics when they could, but mostly they relied on a medkit they kept in their ship.

Neither of them said anything, but they both knew they were thinking the same thing: Anakin’s vision could still come to pass. She may have survived the birth of the twins, but now... her odds were not as good.

“Oh, Padme...” Obi-wan sighed, gathering her back into his arms, holding her tightly as if that would be enough to save her. One hand came up to cradle her head, his fingers digging into her dark curls, much shorter now than they had been back then.

She choked out a sob as she pressed her face against his chest and brought her arms up to return his embrace, clutching at the back of his shirt.

“Shh, shh, it’s alright,” he murmured reassuringly against her hair, absently rocking her as he stared out into the middle distance. Another sob wracked her body, and he continued to whisper empty platitudes, wishing that he could truly believe she would be okay.

He was choked up as well, a sob caught in his throat and tears threatening to well up in his eyes, but he willed himself not to cry. They had made a silent agreement when the twins were very small, that when the grief welled up in one of them, the other would do their best to give them someone to lean on, to not get dragged under as well. He needed to be strong for Padme.

Her tears began to die down, and she sniffled as she lifted her head to look at him. “What are we going to do?”

“What can we do?” he asked hopelessly.

“I’m worried about the twins,” she confessed.

“They’ll be fine,” he reassured her. That, at least, was something he felt fairly sure of. He did not want to take care of them alone; they were supposed to have three parents, and it would break his heart if they got down to one. But they were growing up. They weren’t babies anymore, and before long they wouldn’t even be children.

Anakin hadn’t been a child when he lost his mother, and it had still devastated him.

“I can take care of them,” Obi-wan promised. “I will keep them safe.” I will love them enough for the three of us. The last thought went unspoken. He wasn’t ready to commit to the idea of her being gone.

Padme slowly returned to leaning against him, until he was supporting her full weight. “Hold me,” she whispered, barely audible, and he did.

They sat silently for a long while, trying to gain comfort from each other’s presence and closeness as they came to terms with their new situation, until Padme pulled away to finish getting ready for bed.

[mysticraven20]

Here’s an unfinished and unedited fic for Valentine’s Day 🤣

I don’t think I’ll ever complete this; but there’s no point in it just sitting in my WIP folder. So enjoy and let me know what you think would happen at the end…

Marinette Dupain-Cheng, 16 years old and feeling incredibly wanted.

She stood over her desk looking at the pictures of the three guys currently trying to take hold of her heart, studying them with skills Sherlock Holmes would be proud of. She tilted her head to the left before swapping it to the right, then again, and again. Nothing was getting clearer. Perhaps she needed a different perspective?

“Hey girl, what are you –” Alya stopped at the top of Marinette’s trap door looking at her friend, who was now attempting (and failing) a headstand on her desk chair.

Walking over to Marinette, Alya looked from the girl to the pictures laying on her desk. Three pictures. Three guys. And an upside down Marinette.

“What are you doing?” Alya asked her friend.

Marinette manoeuvring herself from the awkward position before flopping in the chair with a rather loud grunt.

“Trying to decide.” She said, moving the pictures around as if the order would change her perspective. She moved them, again, and again, and again.

“Decide what exactly?”

“Who I’m going to date.”

Alya blinked once, then twice before opening her mouth and closing it again. Marinette had spoken in such a matter of fact, Alya was… gobsmacked. Was this really the same girl, who only a week ago was giving up on love?

“Your ego’s working overtime I see,” she laughed.

Marinette rolled her eyes, standing up and bracing her hands on the table; one hand either side of the pictures.

“Har har! This whole boy thing needs to end. It’s a distraction which I don’t need, so once and for all I’m making a choice and then making it perfectly clear to the other two that we’re only friends. Just friends.”

Alya picked up Luka’s picture and pursed her lips. “Luka? Really?” She turned the picture around and Marinette shrugged.

“I feel he deserves to be included.” She grabbed the photo and placed it back down beside the other two.

“Whatever you say.” Alya moved closer to Marinette, who once again was frantically moving the pictures around.

Stretching forward, the fox themed hero went to pick up the picture currently in first position only to have her hand slapped away.

“Leave.”

“I’ve just got here!”

“Not you, the picture. Leave the picture where it is.”

Alya looked between Marinette and the picture as the crazy hero girl moved them around again, this time second place swapped with first.

“You do realise you always put Luka last, right?”

“Pfft, no I don’t.” She went to swap him with second position only to stop and try for first, nope couldn’t.

“See.”

“Listen, Alya Césaire, this is an important hero business.”

“Your love life is not hero business.” Her friend snapped back.

“It is when it’s distracting me.” She moved the pictures around again. Unable to decide between one and two, Luka, meanwhile, held his solid third position.

“If this is going to work. You need to make a list.” Alya offered in support. Marinette freezing and raising an eyebrow at her friend.

“That’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re in some weird Chat Noir vs Adrien Agreste battle.”

“And Luka!”

“Marinette, forget Luka. You don’t need to add him because you feel sorry for what you did. You had no choice. Yes you like him, he’s a sweet guy. But he’s not one of these.” Alya picked up Adrien and Chat Noir’s pictures and thrust them in Marinette’s face.

“I’m still keeping him in.” Marinette grabbed the pictures from her friends hands and slammed them on the table. Once again, Alya was getting too involved. She had this covered!

“Okay, then amuse me… how many days, over the past 26 days have you spent with Luka?”

“That’s not important.” Marinette crossed her arms, pursed her lips and looked away.

“Because you know where I’m going with this.”

“Fine, I was with him on the day of Truth, and a couple of the days before that.”

“Okay so we’ll count that as four.”

“Then there was the ‘Crocoduel’ incident, oh and ‘Wishmaker’ and - um - I saw him briefly during our last battle with Chloé.”

“Okay.” Alya grabbed a piece of paper, dividing it into three sections. “So Luka, we can put at what? Four,” she began to use her fingers to count up. “Five, six, seven. You forgot the whole Bob Roth bank akuma thing. Okay, so eight. Eight times in the past 26 days. At least half of those being because of needing his help with an akuma” Alya took the pen and wrote eight below Luka’s name. “Now let’s go onto your current second position.”

At the top of the next column, Alya wrote the name.

Adrien

Marinette brought her hands in front of her body, beginning to play with them nervously.

“What’s wrong?” Alya asked, her voice laced with exhaustion already.

“I just don’t know if he should be in that column, or -“ she moved her hand over to the first, “that one.”

“For the love of all things Miraculous, Marinette! Get a grip!”

“Can’t you see that’s what I’m trying to do!” She hissed back at her friend, causing Alya to roll her eyes. “It’s making me feel insane!” The hold and pull of her hair only added to the theory. Yep, insanity was truly kicking in.

“Chat Noir is going in column one, personally that’s where I think he should be but whatever.”

“Biased much?”

“What can I say? After working with him and spending a little time out of the suit with him I can see what a cool guy he is.” Alya shrugged, scribing Chat’s name at the top of the first column, or at least Marinette thought that was what she was doing.

“My Kitty?” she read, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

“You call him that, not me!”

“Traitor!”

“Anyway back to Adrien. How many days have you spent with him?”

“Well, we’re at school five days a week, two days off for weekends, but I saw him that one Saturday when I fixed his wing. So, um, 26 divided by 7 is around 4, so pretty much 4 weeks of seeing him 5 days a week which is 20 days plus the extra 1, so 21.” Marinette was looking at her ceiling counting on her fingers the different numbers before turning back and seeing Alya’s dumbstruck expression.

“That was extra even by your standards.”

Marinette nodded and pointed to the column, “write it down please.”

“Adrien. 21. Okay so last but not least, Chat Noir.”

Marinette coughed covering her mouth.

“What was that Marinette? I missed it.”

“25.” She mumbled out.

“Sorry.”

“25!” She shouted, Alya flinching at her outburst.

“No need to shout, I’m standing right next to you. Damn, you’re touchy at the moment.” She wrote 25 under Chat’s name. “Pass me your turquoise highlighter.” She held her hand out to Marinette.

“But I like pink.”

“And I like turquoise. Also, I’m in charge of this list and what I say goes.”

Marinette grumbled as she found Alya’s desired colour and slammed it into her hand. “I’m going to let you off for that, only because you’re a mess at the moment.”

“You're a mess.” Marinette retorted, causing Alya to laugh.

“Whatever you say, Bugaboo.”

“Don’t call me that. What’s next then ‘oh mighty highlighter holder’?”

“Looks.”

“Looks? Do you think I’m that shallow?”

“No, but everyone is human and it can make a difference, Marinette.”

“Fine. Luka’s cool. He has his own look and doesn’t seem to care about what others think.”

“Okay. Now imagine you’re 30. Does the look still work for you?”

“Hum, well, I’m sure it’ll change and become more refined. Maybe even more piercings, or even tattoos?”

“Does that do it for you?” Alya asked.

“It’s not my personal preference but people are allowed to do what they want with their own bodies.” She shrugged.

“So what do you want me to put down as his body rating?”

“Like out of 10? I don’t know if I like this.” She bit down on her lower lip, her hands worrying between themselves again.

“It’s for our eyes only, it’s just to help decide.”

She exhaled, shaking her head before looking at the picture again. She really did need to get this sorted. “A solid 8.”

“Really? I thought you’d go for 7.” Alya said, writing it down.

“Nino’s a 7.”

“Excuse me? I’m quite sure Nino’s a solid 10. You haven’t seen under that tee.”

“I don’t want to either.” Marinette shuddered.

“Do you want my help or not?”

“I never asked for it.”

“You didn’t, but you need it.” Alya said, writing Luka’s score before moving to the other two. “Now what about Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?”

“Which is which?”

“Choice is yours really.” Alya shrugged.

“I’d probably say Chat’s more Tweedle Dum, only because of his jokes. He’s actually pretty smart,” Marinette replied.

“We’re not on ‘smarts’ yet, so let's think about his looks.”

“Well, because of quantum masking I can’t really tell a lot about how he looks. But I know from both his stint as Chat Noir and Mister Bug his body is pretty decent. Plus he’s a superhero, and if he’s half as toned from it as I am, then yup… he’s going to look good.”

“What score do you want to give him?”

“I’m going to have to go for 8, only because I don’t know how he really looks. It would be unfair to give him more.”

Alya wrote it down under his name before looking back at Marinette. “Yet you score him the same as someone whose face you can see. Interesting. And last but by no means least, Buttercup.”

“10.”

“At least think about it first.” Alya laughed.

Marinette pursed her lips once more and looked at the few remaining pictures of Adrien scattered around her room. Maybe she was being a little haisty with the 10. She studied his body and face. Face, with that cute lopsided smile, was definitely a 10. Hair, 10. Body? Okay, so maybe he could do with eating a little more? “9 and a half.” She said decisively.

“Fine. As you wish.” Alya wrote the scores underneath Adrien’s name and then turned back to Marinette. “What do you want to do next? Healthy relationship status, or their pros and cons?”

“What’s ‘healthy relationship’ status?” Marinette asked, intrigued by what her friend was going to throw into the mix next.

“Whether you’ve argued with each other, talk it out, have fun, spend time together, get bored of each other, understand each other… you know, just things that make relationships healthy.”

“We’ll do that one next. Can we start with Chat?”

“It’s your list, M’Lady.”

“Honestly, quit it!” Marinette said in a huff, grabbing Chat’s picture from the table and studying it. Oh boy, this is about to open a can of worms.

“Myself and Chat Noir have a complex relationship. We argue, we talk about most things, we understand each other. I just think we’re still too young to understand what we want and what we need from each other.”

“Think of it this way,” Alya interrupted, “if the guys were going to completely disappear from your life forever, how would you feel?”

Marinette’s stomach dropped, and a lump formed in her throat. If they were gone ‘for good’. Memories and tears built in her eyes. This was starting to hit too close to home.

“I - um,” Marinette coughed to clear her throat, closing her eyes to regain composure before attempting to speak again. “I would be sad if Luka left. He’s a great friend.”

“Would you get over it?” Alya’s voice had grown soft, obviously understanding something had struck Marinette deeply.

“Yeah. I mean, I managed to avoid him fine after we broke up. I, oh I’m going to sound like a bitch.”

Alya smiled at her, a smile of understanding and care, helping her to carry on.

“I didn’t miss him. I had no urge to call him, or see him, or anything. I was just sad I broke his heart because he loved me.”

“And Adrien?” Alya probed.

“I was heartbroken when he left with Lila, like, I think I would eventually get over it, but it would kill me at first.”

“And Chat?”

Marinette stilled, placing Adrien’s picture down and selecting Chat’s instead. She ran a finger over his face and her voice became an emotional whisper. “He left me once.”

The statement took Alya by surprise, the girl recoiling back a little. “What do you mean? Left you?”

Marinette looked up to Alya, her eyes filled with tears. “He left me. Handed the ring back and disappeared. Actually he’s done it twice.” Alya gasped as Marinette continued talking. “I went insane. If you think this is crazy, you haven’t seen anything. I couldn’t eat, drink, or sleep. I didn’t get changed or shower. I just tried to figure out who to give the ring to; someone who wouldn’t fall in love with me. Then I had to battle an akuma and… it was hard. I missed him so much.”

“Did you find someone to give the ring to?” Marinette shook her head.

“No. Plagg took the ring to a new owner. He was amazing, his name was ‘Catwalker’, but he was a bit too perfect. He did everything I could have asked. He was professional, and helpful. He came up with plans and ideas.”

“But he wasn’t Chat Noir.”

“Exactly.” Marinette’s words pushed through the thickness in her throat, releasing a tear down her face. “It was like I could only think about him. I even thought the akuma was him. That I was the cause of it.”

“And ‘Catwalker’ helped.”

“Yeah. He did! If I knew who he was I would have recruited him for the team. He was wonderful.”

“Sounds like Adrien.” Alya laughed, Marinette moving like she’d been hit with a baseball bat.

“What?”

“He sounds like Adrien. Perfect, smart, professional.”

Her eyebrows creased together as she once again picked up Adrien’s picture, imagining him in the mask. “Maybe.” She said, holding the thought in the back of her mind.

“Or, Plagg could have just given the ring back to Chat Noir and changed the design of the suit.”

“I know Chat, and this guy, whoever he was, was not Chat!” Marinette announced, squinting her eyes as she looked at Adrien’s picture once more. It couldn’t be? Could it?

“Do you want me to add this mysterious Cat Walker to the list?”

Marinette placed Adrien’s picture down, before picking it back up and turning it around. She looked at the plain back, she looked at it upside down…she grabbed a pen and drew a mask and green hair on the picture, making a mental note to print another later.

“No,” she decided, eyes still scrutinising, “but add Cat Walker under Adrien, I think you may be onto something there.”

“Green hair? Adrien’s got more taste than I expected.” Alya nodded, impressed by this possible turn around for Adrien Agreste.

“Also add ‘Aspik’.”

“He picked what?” Alya shrieked, glaring at Marinette with wide eyes and almost dropping the highlighter.

“Alyaaaaaa!”

“Marinetteeeeee!”

Marinette snatched the piece of paper from her friends hands and wrote two names under Adrien’s:

Aspik

Cat Walker?

“Remember, this is for our eyes only. It doesn’t leave this room, and it doesn’t get mentioned outside of this room.” Marinette said, placing the photos back in order.

Alya snatched the list before Marinette could do anything else and wrote underneath Chat Noir’s name. As Marinette attempted to look over at what Alya was writing only to be pushed backwards and out of the way. She stumbled a couple of steps before her knees met her chaise throwing her backwards over the piece of furniture, a squeak leaving her lips.

“Are you okay Marinette?” Tikki flew down beside her chosen, only for Marinette to respond with a rather fake thumbs up.

The raven haired beauty pulled herself to standing and brushed off her trousers. “What’s next them ‘oh mighty Alya Césaire’?”

“It’s quite simple…what they’ve done for you. I’ve already filled in Chat Noir’s for you.”

Looking over Alya's shoulder she finally saw what Alya had written.

He puts up with all your shit without question.

“I can’t even deny it,” Marinette said, rubbing the join between her neck and shoulders. “What about the others?”

“I don’t know, it’s your life. What’s Adrien done?”

“He’s-um-” her eyebrows almost fused together as she considered what Adrien had done for her.

What had he done?

“He moved me out of the way of the akuma’s during Scarlet Moth,”

“Okay, good start. Anything else?”

“Oh, Kagami, when she was trying to kill me as Riposte, he got me out of the way.”

“That’s brave of him, saving a superhero.” Alya wrote it down in Adrien’s column.

“He is brave! And he trusts me. He dove from a building knowing I’d save him, he believes he’s always believed me about Lila, he made that speech on heroes day, he supports me through everything. Remember the hat? Even though it was made with real feathers he still wanted to wear it. And my lucky charm. He made me a lucky charm for my birthday.”

Alya was struggling to keep up, as Marinette reeled off what she could remember off the top of her head.

“What about the Valentine’s card?” She asked, Marinette taking the poem from her top drawer.

“We still don’t know who that was. He didn’t know Kagami at the time and it’s not like he’s been actively after me, I think I over read into it.”

Alya took the paper from her friend and glanced over it. “What if it was for you? But not ‘you’ you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hair as dark as night, bluebell eyes — they’re both you right? But then let’s look at this next section ‘underneath that strong disguise’ who do we know that looks like you but wears a disguise?”

Marinette bit her lip as she considered what Alya might be hinting at. Would it be too much to wish?

“He couldn’t mean…could he?” she said, praying her friend had all the answers.

“Well, let’s look at it this way. He dived off one of the tallest buildings in Paris trusting you to catch him; if he was this Cat Walker person he obviously wanted to be perfect for you, and I don’t know much about this ass picker character, but I’m guessing he went out his way to save you?”

“Over 25,000 times,” Marinette stated, biting into her lower lip.

“Woah! You ask me, the dudes got it bad.”

Marinette’s heart leapt in her chest. This was insane. After all this time could Adrien be in love with Ladybug? With the other side of her?

“Let’s move on before you go into an Adrien affected breakdown.” Alya grabbed Luka’s picture and placed it over her face putting on her best Luka voice. “Hey Marinette, you’re the sweetest most confusing song I’ve ever heard. You need to let me go so I can discover the notes of my true musical path.”

“Don’t be so mean,” Marinette snatched the photo out of Alya’s hand and lay it smoothly on the table in the number one spot, before moving it to two. Still not happy she shuffled it once more to spot three. “Luka’s a great guy.”

“I never said he wasn’t, in fact, I’m sure he’ll change the world one day, but without you by his side.”

“He wrote me a song, and defended me against Bob Roth, oh and he put himself in the way of the wasps during Miracle Queen.” Marinette said softly, looking at the picture of him on the table. Maybe Alya was right, maybe it was time to let her security blanket go.

“Which is really sweet. He’s a sweet guy. But he’s someone else’s sweet guy, Marinette. Not yours.”

Marinette nodded before picking up Chat’s photograph and holding it in front of her. Her eyes took in his huge smile, and she knew that when he had the photograph taken he was looking at her.

“Can you add Luka’s to the list please?”

“You’ll never learn to take a risk, will you?” Her friend shook her head as she scribed the notes onto the paper.

“Can I ask you something, Marinette? That moment, when you were on the rooftop and had lost all the Miraculous’, when Monarch’s face appeared threatening you and all of Paris, who was it you wanted beside you? Who did you want to hold your hand?”

Marinette switched the pictures around once more before finally releasing her grasp on them. This was the order, this is where they needed to stay.

Adrien

Adrien had been sleeping awfully. Not only were the Akuma attacks wiping it out, but daddy of the year had decided Adrien needed more study sessions now he’d stopped modelling. Oh, yippee do!

The old man was really starting to make Adrien dislike him, if it wasn’t one thing it was another, and to be honest he thought his father might be more fair once Adrien had stopped and allowed him to use his free time like a teen for a change, but oh no, that was too much for cranky pants Agreste.

[ala-baguette]

WIP Word Search Game

Thanks for the tag, @evesaintyves!  I searched through my Work-in Progress folder and wow.  Way to highlight to me that I have a WIP problem.  Gotta get some of these out into the world!  my words: sick | ghost | whisper | sweet | face

Sick- [Found (tentative title), a WIP one-shot companion piece to Knowing Where to Look] Mrs Weasley was on one of her backing stints. No surprises there. No one had the heart to tell her that they were all sick to death of eating turnovers and shortbread and Chelsea buns and lemon drizzle. They all continued to take whatever she gave them without complaint. Because at least baking seemed to keep her brain busy enough to stop her from crying. For a bit anyway.

Ghost- [Untitled Luna Lovegood Left Behind one-shot WIP] “Daddy?” Luna did not look down to see if he was listening.  She didn’t need to.  He was always there when she needed him.  So her fingers did not still, brushing the long red strokes of Ginny’s hair across the ceiling. “Hm?” came Dad’s response.  The soft clinks continued, and Luna doubted he’d looked up from his work. “Why do we never talk about Mummy?” The soft sounds of Dad’s tools stilled then.  There was a long pause.  Luna felt pain and sorrow in that silence.  Felt the comforting ghost of Mum’s presence in the room tugged swiftly away, leaving an empty loneliness in its wake.  They said black was the colour of protection, but Luna didn’t much like that.  She instead dipped her brush in blue and added a cluster of cornflowers to frame Ginny’s face.  It was the meaning she assigned that was far more powerful than superstition.  “What brought this on?” Dad asked at last “I don’t know… I suppose I’ve been missing her lately.  I would like to talk to her.  Tell her about my friends.  About all the amazing things I saw in the Department of Mysteries.  And all the terrible things I saw there.  Tell her about the Christmas party I went to with Harry.  And about the walk around the lake I took with Ginny.  It makes me sad sometimes that I can’t tell her about those things.  Sad that I lost so much time with her.” Her father was silent for a moment more, then he said, “I’ve lost time before.  It’s always in the last place you look for it.”  And the sounds of his tool continued. Luna paused to consider these words quietly.  Then nodded, satisfied. She took up another brush and added a few tiny yellow buttercups among the cornflowers.

Whisper- [Unbuttoned, unpublished and abandoned fic for the teeny tiny Sevenwaters fandom (my one and only time writing outside of the HP fandom, and wowza we're delving deep into the archives with this one. Last time this document was modified was in 2010!)] She reached up, and brought his lips to hers and kissed him softly.  Lovingly.  And like a whisper on the wind, he heard his name upon her lips.  It hurt to open his eyes again, knowing that he would be back on the rocks and there would be no green-eyed beauty looking back at him with adoration.  It hurt, but he forced himself to do so.  For what he wanted did not matter.  He was her protector.  Whatever happened, he was there to ensure her safety.  No matter the cost to his heart.

Sweet- [Untitled Parvati Patil Left Behind one-shot WIP] “Ugh.  Two whole weeks of my parents fawning over Perfect Padma.”  Sitting up straight, she batted her eyelashes, plastered a soppy sweet expression on her face, and grasped her hands together over her heart.  Adopting a high-pitched eager voice, she cried, “Oh yes, Mother dear!  Please let me help you with dinner.   Just as soon as I finish the homework for the twelve OWL courses I’m taking, clean the bathroom, and work up a budget for the Charms Club, which you may remember I’m now treasurer of.”  She let her hands drop to her lap and slumped back into her seat.  “Suck up.” “Oh, come off it,” Lavender said, shaking splayed fingers back and forth to encourage the varnish to dry faster.  With each shake of the wrist, her colour-changing nail polish changed hue wildly in confusion.  “Padma’s not that bad.  You’re exaggerating.” “Easy for you to say.  You aren’t sisters with her.  You don’t get compared to her in every little thing that you do!”

Face- [Knowing Where to Look, upcoming chapter] They were very close now, practically toe-to-toe.  He was not a tall man—half a head shorter than Gawain-- but he raised his chin and met Gawain’s eye defiantly, and he struck Gawain as anything but short.  The silence in the kitchen was deafening as they stared at each other.  Gawain felt the blood drain from his face.  His heart was pounding, his breath coming short and shallow.  But he kept his expression determinedly blank.

I find myself often hesitant to engage in these chain activities because my community is so small and I'm not on Tumblr enough to know who has has already taken part in this. So instead of tagging anyone specific, I will just offer an open invitation to anyone who wishes to take part. Tag, you're it! Your words are: Lost | Glimmer | Fall | Soft | Breath

[trisshawkeye]

Can we hear more about enjolras and his merry men?

You most certainly can! Enjolras and His Merry Men is, as it sounds, a Robin Hood AU for Les Miserables. I wrote the first chapter of it for the Les Mis Across History event back in 2013 (I put it on AO3 later when I finally made an account). I got really into the historical research and planned out a bunch more. I had detailed notes on which Les Mis characters corresponded to which Robin Hood characters, backstories, English history, all sorts of stuff.

The problem was, I was doing this all in Scrivener, which I'd just gotten a copy of and was quite excited to use. I then realised that actually I really bounce off Scrivener as a writing and organising tool (I prefer to keep everything in one Google doc, as bonkers as that is, it's just what works for me). Also, this was at least one laptop ago and now I don't actually have Scrivener installed anywhere. All the notes are there, in the .scriv folder, they're not encrypted or anything so I could just lift them out, or reinstall Scrivener to rescue them and reorganise. I've just not bothered, really. The fic text itself is in a Google doc that I haven't touched since 2014. Oops.

Is it abandoned? Nooooooo... making it my WIP with the longest lag time between updates. I don't know when I'll actually sit down and continue it, but I just really love it as a silly concept so I want to come back to it eventually.

Here's a little bit of chapter 2 beneath the cut, for your patience, everyone. They're not using their French names here, but I think you can tell who's who.

Chapter 2 - The Guide

The Sheriff of Nottingham woke with a startled grunt to the sound of someone putting something down on the table. He snapped upright with a curse, to see that a chunk of bread had been laid on his desk. Across from him sat a scruffy servant boy, chewing on his own breakfast and swinging his legs from the chair.

“Did you stay up all night?” the boy asked.

William Brewer rubbed his eyes, mentally chiding himself for abandoning his usually solid routine of waking and sleeping. He made vague attempt at shuffling the paper on his desk into some form of order, then gave up and reached for the bread.

“Staying out of trouble, I hope, Much?” he asked, suppressing a yawn. “I haven’t seen you in a few days. I hope you’ve been making yourself useful.”

“Mmhmm,” Much replied around a mouthful of bread. The Sheriff eyed him levelly, sighed, and returned to his papers.

“Well, I will be writing a report on these outlaws this morning. I do not wish to be disturbed except for matters of the greatest urgency. I will take dinner here. In the meantime, go see what help you can be in the stables.”

Much scowled. “Can’t I stay here and help you?”

“Not unless you could either read, or tell me in great detail about the outlaw John Little, also known as Combeferre.”

Much cocked his head to one side in thought. “Well... he’s really tall, and he uses a quarterstaff. Also he’s second in command to Enjolras.”

“Where did you learn all that?” the Sheriff asked sharply.

He got a shrug in response. “Folk talk about things around a kid more than they do around the Sheriff,” Much replied with a grin. “I hear a lot, I do.”

The Sheriff of Nottingham narrowed his eyes. “You have told me nothing I didn’t already know. Run along now.” With an exaggerated sigh, Much went to obey. He had pulled open the door when he heard Brewer speak again. “Oh - but keep your ears open,” he said gruffly. Much gave him a wide grin and bolted out of the door. Despite himself, William Brewer felt a smile ghost at the corners of his mouth.

[androxys]

WIP Ask Game

Thanks @havendance for the tag!

RULES: post the names of the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! tag as many people as you have WIPs

I recently posted a WIP Census, which lists pretty much every word doc that I have ever opened. For this game, I’m just going to list out the fics that I’ve actively worked on since compiling the census.

Oracle: Year One (currently 8.6k)

She wasn’t her. That’s what hurts. She wasn’t Barbara Gordon, she was just “the Commissioner's daughter.” She was the girl next door. She was the sweet innocent. She was easy to hurt because Batman wasn’t. She was a way to torture her father. But Barbara Gordon never gets to exist. It doesn’t just hurt, it boils. It’s lava, churning inside her. And it erupts in small ways, over and over.

Ultraviolet (Cover Me Up) (currently 1k)

When he was underwater, he could almost lose himself. In the dark of the moonlight, if he let himself sink, Bernard could forget which way was up, which way gravity wanted to drag him down. He would just float, free, untethered… until he came into contact with Tim again.

Firecrackers (currently 6.6k)

She wished she could talk to Kal-El about it. But he wouldn’t get it. It wasn’t his fault— he was too young when he left. He knew of the ceremonies, even some of the rituals. But he didn’t know what the Jewel Mountains looked like on an equinox dawn, not with his own eyes. He had never heard the hymns except through a recording.

Ghost Dragon (currently 29.6k)

Dick turned back to Tim. “I don’t want to delay you,” he lied. He wanted to delay him forever, to keep Tim perpetually one step behind so that Dick could keep up. “But if we brief the Parisian heroes, or provide any training, I’d like you to be there.”

Morality Bug (currently 1.6k)

“So…” Jean-Paul began. “You can sit down, if you like,” he said, gesturing to the couch. Bruce paused for a beat, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself if not stand ominously in Jean-Paul’s living room, before slowly folding himself down on the corner seat.

Birdseye is technically done, I just keep fiddling with the ending. I need to just bite the bullet and post it, but also I’m not emotionally prepared to have this fic really and truly be done.

And then here’s another passage from Oracle: Year Once since Babs owns my heart:

It’s been a week, and she hasn’t heard from Bruce. No acknowledgement of her trip to the Manor. Alfred had warned her, and that takes off the hardest edge of the sting. But they were supposed to have been friends. They were supposed to be honest with one another. But maybe that was the problem, that Barbara had been too honest. At the hospital, and then again at the funeral. She had done what too few people did—she told Bruce Wayne exactly what she thought about his behavior, his choices, and the way other people had to live with them.

And I feel like half the people I know in fandom have been tagged in this chain, but I’ll tag (and perhaps be double tagging, whoops!) @coyote-nebula @they-reap-what-we-sow @clearbluewaters @yuriinadress and @wildsofmarch if any of y’all want to share!