#constant screaming/fighting and like not a lot but sometimes domestic violence

[nappingpaperclip]

does anyone else feel like they’ve never been not stressed out??

like idk…I’ve been chronically stressed since I became conscious. I grew up in an incredibly stressful environment. ever since I moved out I’ve been stressed about school or work or housing or just finding food . There is always something. I’ve never had a break from stress that lasted longer than a day or two. does anyone else relate? what am I supposed to do about this

[forcefulkitten]

never-ending cycle

[hisoka morow x fem! reader]

summary: you’ve grown miserable due to Hisoka’s absence and decide to leave the apartment that you once considered home. with impeccable timing, he arrives as you’re on your way out and robs you of the only shred of dignity you have left.

warnings: 18+, nsfw, blood and injury, non-consensual sex, domestic violence, mind-break

word count: 2,862

author’s note: if you’re not comfortable reading about non-consensual sex, domestic violence, and mind-break, please skip over this fic.

With all your bags packed and ready to go, you take one last walk through the Heavens Arena suite that Hisoka asked you to move into a while back. This place was once a warm and cozy apartment that you considered home. In the last few months, too many things changed and it’s painful to live in the walls that no longer bring you comfort. Hisoka has always been inconsistent but at one point you were a constant in his life. Now it seems like he only visits Heavens Arena to fight and keep this apartment for you to live in. Sometimes he visits without even saying hi, other times he visits and pays you just enough attention to give you hope that things between the two of you are fine.

He warned you about this. About how he gets tired of people. How he prefers to be alone majority of the time. Why hadn’t you listened properly? Why did you allow yourself to be put in this situation in the first place? You’re pissed off and disappointed in yourself for being so naive. This place doesn’t have a single speck of Hisoka in it besides his belongings. The only reason this place once felt like home was because you added your touch to it. Photographs of you and him together decorated the place, along with pieces of art that you chose. The bathroom, kitchen, dining area and bedroom decor all handpicked by you, but you foolishly believed that Hisoka helped you make this place feel like home.

Before you know it, hot tears are streaming down your face and you let out a scream that rattles the entire apartment. The urge to completely destroy this place consumes you. You start in the kitchen, tossing every glass plate and cup out of the cupboard and onto the wooden floor. Glass shatters against the floor and your sneakers step over the pieces, breaking them into smaller fragments as you walk over to the utensil drawers. You pull each drawer out one by one, throwing them across the kitchen. The sound of metal clanking against the floor followed by the wooden drawers hitting the ground drowns out your thoughts for a brief moment. Your chest rises and falls with every angry breath you take.

You drop to your knees in the middle of the mess you’ve made, punching and hitting the ground while ignoring the glass fragments that are piercing your hands. Anger, resentment and sadness flow through your veins along with the adrenaline that mutes the pain from your wounds. A sharp stinging feeling in your palm makes you pause your fit of rage. Upon further examination, you notice a large shard stuck in the center of your palm and pull it out quickly. Warm blood flows out of your hand and stains the floor. You look at both of your hands that burn when you clench them, taking note of the litter of cuts that they have now. Some are surface cuts that aren’t deep enough to bleed and others are deeper, releasing small amounts of blood. None of the smaller wounds compare to the one in the center of your palm that’ll be sure to leave a scar. You probably should go to the hospital and get it stitched up but you decide against it. Instead, you make your way to the bathroom to pull out some gauze and a bandage to keep the cut closed shut. Looking in the mirror, you look like you’ve lost your sanity. You miss the way your eyes used to have life in them. How your face almost always wore a blush. The way your muscles would hurt from smiling a lot. You wipe the leftover tears from your face, smearing blood over your lifeless features in the process. Quickly patching up your gushing palm, you decide it’s time to leave now that you’ve released some of your pent up frustration.

As you toss your duffel bag over your shoulder and lift the handle of your suitcase up in order to wheel it out, your body freezes when you hear the unlocking click of the door. Out of all the times he can show up, he manages to do so at the worst moment. Hisoka swings the door open so hard that it hits the wall before he kicks it shut behind him. Two brown grocery bags in his hands, he smirks at the sight of you. Face covered in blood, hair messily undone, sweat clothes on and apparently all of your belongings shoved into a suitcase and one overnight bag. He tuts his lips, walking right past you to the destroyed kitchen and places the two bags next to the dining table. He scans over the mess you’ve made while stomping his heel against the larger glass shards on the floor.

“Well, well.. what do we have here? This place is a mess. Care to let me know what’s going on?” The smugness in his tone reignites the flame in your chest. Since you’re going to leave, you might as well get closure. You drop your duffle on the floor and make your way over to him. With your body and face as close as possible without touching him, he can see how truly pissed off you are. “I’m tired of being the only one who cares in this relationship. It’s not like it matters to you if I leave anyway. You’re barely here and when you are, you act like things are perfect even though you pop up for a few days and then disappear again. I’m done with you.”

“Awww. You’re done with me? Oh my, Y/N, you’re so adorable when you get like this. You’ve missed me so much that this is how you decide to rebel?” He brings one hand to rest on your shoulder and the other one reaches up in an attempt to wipe some of the blood off of your cheek. You slap his hand away from your face before he touches you, and his grip on your shoulder becomes firm. “You think I’m kidding don’t you? I’m seriously leaving right now. I don’t need your piss poor attempts of trying to sway me back into this false reality that you like to keep me in.” Feeling liberated, your bandaged hand comes up to his chest and you push him backwards. Hisoka grabs your wrist with an iron grip, squeezing so tight that he could break your bones if he wanted to.

“It’s so cute to see you like this. Really, you don’t know how boring it is to come home to you doting over me. Perhaps I should’ve neglected you more often so that this day could’ve came sooner.” Hisoka rips the bandage off of your hand, bloody gauze falling off of your fresh wound and onto the floor. He squeezes your wrist while examining your wound, blood gushing out because of his tight grip. You wince at the pain and try to tug your hand away from him, only for him to pull you flush against his body. Your good hand comes up and punches him in the mouth which makes his top lip bust open. Hisoka leans in towards you, his mouth right next to your ear. “Are you picking a fight with me? If attention is what you want, all you have to do is ask. Instead you’ve chosen to go as far as harming yourself for some pity. You really should be ashamed.” He grabs a fistful of your hair, yanking you away from him while he moves behind you. With your back facing him, you can feel his erection press against you before he slams your head onto the table with full force. Vision blurry and ears ringing, you feel his fingers slip into the band of your sweats as he pulls them down to your knees in one swift motion. When you attempt to lift yourself up, he tugs both of your arms behind you with one hand.

Hisoka pulls his pants down just enough to free his cock from its confinement. He spits on his free hand and rubs it over his length before lining himself up with your entrance that’s dry and not in any way prepared to take him. “What the hell Hisoka? Get the fuck off of me!“ Your words are followed by him sheathing himself fully into you while his grip on your arms keeps you firmly in place. Your legs try desperately to move away from him, but to no avail. His hand reaches around and searches for your clit and once he finds your bundle of nerves, he circles his fingers around them expertly but it’s doing nothing for you. Tears start building in your eyes and when you scream out, the ringing in your head only gets worse. Every drag of his cock in your walls is painful, it feels like he’s tearing your insides apart from the lack of arousal. You’re petrified, squirming and trying to get out of his grasp. Even though your cunt is the opposite of inviting, he doesn’t let up on his harsh thrusts into you. There’s no escaping the hold he has on you, so you stay still, sobbing to yourself and wondering why you dared to step to a man of his caliber. “You’re hurting me. I want you to stop. Please.” Your voice is low, he can’t hear you over the sniffles and whines in between your words. His hand that played with your clit makes its way to your hair, pulling you up against his body. He licks the shell of your ear before biting your lobe, something that usually drives you crazy but is filling you with disgust right now. As you try to move your head away from him, he pulls you back into place effortlessly and wraps an arm around your torso to keep you close. You internally admit defeat, letting him take you against your will because you’re too weak to fight back. Pausing his thrusts, he coos, “Darling... You put up such a fight before. Where did all that courage go? Don’t tell me you’ve given up already. It’s okay, I know this is all you’ve wanted.” Although he’s mocking you while defiling your body, the syrupy tone of his voice is playing tricks on you.

Hisoka’s words replay over and over in your mind. Is this really what you wanted? Did you throw a fit because you needed him so badly? He came in with a lot of groceries… Was he planning on staying? Maybe he came back for good, to be with you, the one who waits for him all of the time. Are you deserving of this treatment right now because of your impatience? Perhaps you were wrong for acting the way you did.

Your head leans back against his chest and he releases his hold of your torso and both arms before swooping down to lift you up by your knees. He bounces you on his cock while placing soft kisses onto the top of your head, so tender compared to the rough handling from before. You know this is wrong, but you bring your fingers to toy with your clit anyway. You’re sick of the stinging friction from him fucking you, you want to coat him in your juices and have him destroy you like he does to your heart. “We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s the same cycle all of the time. I deserve better, you know.” Your voice is laced with despair and all you hear from him are hums of approval now that your cunt is well lubricated. Your fingers don’t let up against your swollen bud and the tightness in your core is building rapidly. Hisoka quips, “Oh yeah? So why are you playing with yourself right now? It appears that you like what I’m doing to you. You’re about to cum, I know you too well darling.” The knot in your stomach is threatening to snap any second now. After being without him for so long, you can’t refuse the chance to cream all over his cock. Your other hand slips under your sweater to twirl your nipple in between your fingers. The coldness of your hand makes you shudder and your back arches involuntarily. Every slam of his cock hits your cervix, sending you into a state of euphoria. The pressure proves too much, orgasm washing over you in waves while your cunt clenches around his thick length.

Hisoka lets you down and turns you to face him. Against your better judgement you wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him hastily. He doesn’t waste any time and slips his tongue into your mouth, quickly taking over as he lifts you to sit on the table. You take off your sweater, tossing it onto the mess that’s littering the entirety of the kitchen. He hurries to take off his shirt as well while you kick off your sneakers and sweatpants completely. Opting to keep his pants on, he tugs them down to his ankles since they haven’t gotten in the way of him having his way with you.

A wave of sadness rushes through every fiber of your being. The man standing in front of you has been the apple of your eye ever since you laid eyes on him. Deep down you know that he’ll never be consistent. He’ll always leave to explore life however he desires. Not once has he offered for you to come along. Maybe this is all you’re good for, and perhaps this is what you deserve for allowing this to go on. All it takes is for him to come home and reclaim you for you to fall head over heels and believe that this time will be different.

You lay back onto your elbows, legs spread wide showing your glistening cunt. Hisoka licks his lips, captivated by how delectable you look. Ruined mascara adorns your face and blood covers your breasts where your wounded hand brushed against while you played with your nipples. Your appearance lights a fire in his soul, the burning desire to continue hurting you so that he can see you like this more often. He thrives off of being able to manipulate and bend you to his will and your need for his attention helps him rob you of your dignity continuously. As Hisoka bottoms out in your soaking heat, you can’t stop the tears that flow down your face. You lie to yourself, living in reverie by believing that this is just another hurdle for you two to overcome. You’re just the shell of the woman you once were and he sees that. Your soul is exhausted. Before today you lost the strength to even argue about his absence. Your threats to leave and the brazen decision to punch him in his face makes him regain some interest in you. He’s close to his end, his grip on your hips is painful while he thrusts slowly so that he can prolong this moment. He looks down at your fatigued body that lets him take advantage of you over and over again. If he were someone else, he would feel bad for sucking the life out of you, but there’s no time for him to do that when your cunt milks his worth similarly. A familiar feeling courses from Hisoka’s stomach, tightening until his orgasm hits him at once. An insufferable guttural moan leaves his mouth while he smiles down at you. Pulling his cock out, he lets the remaining cum paint your clit while he rubs the tip against your bud.

After he comes down from his high, he pulls his pants up and walks off. You take the opportunity to get up, grimacing at the feeling of his seed in between your legs. You quickly get your clothing back on and go to the bathroom to bandage your wound again. With all of your supplies laid out, Hisoka enters the bathroom and offers to patch you up instead. You allow him to help you, watching him while he works quietly. Afterwards, he grabs a broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass that’s scattered in the kitchen. You turn your attention to the groceries, putting them away and being careful not to get in the way of the areas that he’s cleaning. “Hisoka, are you staying this time?” Your voice is void of any emotion, having already accepted that he’ll probably be gone before you blink. “Sweets, don’t ask such a silly question.”

Hisoka eventually left, much to your dismay. You bought into his charm and allowed him to entertain you while he was around. Your belongings and the photographs of you two were put back in their respective places, exactly as they were before you packed them away. You’re too weak to leave. Your feelings for him are too strong to make the decision that would save you from this misery. These days you wish that he would kill you just like he does to every other feeble person he crosses.

[glitxhwayventeen]

Lonely Together

Jihoon: Chapter 1 (Perfect)

Characters: Jihoon x female reader

Genre/Warnings: multi-member au (different scenarios), werewolf au, fantasy, smut, angst, fluff, potential blood mentions, genocide, runaways, domestic violence, child abuse, abandonment, homelessness, hunger, violence. Any others will be put as warnings when future chapters are thought up/written.

Author’s Note: I recommend listening to Perfect by Ed Sheeran before reading this. That’s the song I thought of while writing this because it makes me feel some type of way you know?

Please remember that all of these chapters and the content within them are a work of fiction! They’re just for fun/entertainment!

Bold= Dialogue Italics= Thoughts

🥀 & ☁️

Lonely Together Master List

Chapter 1: Perfect

It had been so long since you’d been around so many people. It made you antsy. You didn’t understand a lot of what was going on in the house. The constant noise scared you. It had you on such an edge that you nearly screamed everytime one of them coughed.

To be fair, before you had met them, you’d honestly jump at footsteps. Because footsteps meant humans, and humans meant danger. Not to mention that you were still not used to being in your human form. You preferred to stay a wolf, you were stronger when you walked on all four legs, and you weren’t as noticeable.

Your human appearance was… striking to most people to say the least. Your bright eyes and darker skin with salt and pepper curly hair made everyone around you always stare at you. You understood it somewhat, you didn’t match everyone else’s looks in Korea. But that didn’t mean you liked people watching you all the time, you hated being the center of attention. So to say you were still adjusting to being around people after having lived alone for centuries was a bit of an understatement. It was all so new to you. You had a new feeling now too. You just weren’t sure what it was…

At first, you thought maybe it was hope. You hadn’t hoped in such a long time, it would bring tears to even the most hardened criminal’s eyes. But you weren’t that good at trusting that human part of you. So you decided to go off of what you knew. And, even though you hadn’t been there long, two weeks at the most you thought, you learned a lot of things about them. You knew all but one of the wolves had a mate. You knew that two of the alphas butted heads on how to lead the pack a lot and that one just watched from the side and did everything behind the scenes without causing too much distress to the others. You knew they all loved each other, no matter what they said or how much they fought. You also knew that, being around them made you feel more alone than you’ve felt in decades.

When you were younger, you didn’t mind being alone. It meant that you didn’t have to rely on anyone, it meant you only had to look out for yourself. And as you got older, it just felt… right. But being around this house full to the brim with people, you started to realize just how much you missed being part of a big family. They treated you like you were one of them. Which was weird to you… because they didn’t really know you. I mean sure they saved you from imminent death, but they didn’t know you from Adam.

The more you thought about your current situation, the weirder the feeling got. The closer you got to each one of them, the stronger the feeling got. And when you got close to one of the quiet ones in particular, you swore it felt like your heart was singing to you. It was something you weren’t sure you’d ever get used to, but it wasn’t something you necessarily hated either. Whatever the feeling was, you’d figure it out eventually or it would go away on its own… right?

Still, You got to eat first with the other mates, well the mates minus Soonyoung. He may have been Seungcheol’s mate but 1.) he was a wolf unlike the other mates and 2.) he was a male wolf so he ate just as much as the other boys did. So they didn’t think it fair that he get to eat with all of you. Or them…. Or-whatever. You didn’t know, you just knew they offered you and the other girls food first and, considering you used to have to hunt for your food or you didn’t get to eat, you were definitely NOT complaining. Soonyoung though, you learned, had a tendency to whine about any and everything that he didn’t like.

“Aww come on again! No fair! (Y/N)’s just as much of a wolf as I am! Why does SHE get to eat first when I don’t??” Soonyoung decided to voice aloud, grabbing his plate with both hands and semi-patiently waiting for his turn to grab food.

You didn’t mind of course. You did think he had a point. It didn’t seem fair to him. Either he should be eating with the other mates, or you should be eating with the other wolves. So you agreed.

“He’s got a point. I should be eating with the other wolves. I eat more than the other girls after all” you shrugged matter of factly to the lead alpha, who was also his mate, who was hunched over the stove making said breakfast.

The thing is, Seungcheol did understand the argument. And he personally saw merit to the concerns, whether it was because it was a genuine point or whether it was just from months of his mate complaining about it, he didn’t know. Still, he saw it’s reasonings and thought they could be sound.

BUUUT, he also knew that SOMEBODY would definitely NOT be happy if you had to wait and fight the boys for food. It seemed everyone, wolves and mates alike, but you understood that Jihoon had imprinted on you already. Maybe you just didn’t know much about it, or maybe you knew and just decided you didn’t want to know, either way, it wasn’t for him to decide or judge.

So, as he looked over to the table of boys who were ACTUALLY patiently waiting their turn to dig in, his eyes landed on Jihoon, who shook his head and narrowed his eyes at the older wolf in return. Of course you didn’t notice this action, you were always more in your own head than you were in conversations.

“Sucks to suck kids. I make the rules and I say you eat with the mates. End of story. Sorry love!” he declared, once again moving his eyes ever so slightly to Jihoon, who nodded his head slightly as he smiled triumphantly.

He was NOT about to let his newfound mate eat the other mates leftovers with the other wolves. No. That was absolutely NOT happening. He may not have “officially” expressed that you were his mate, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t gonna do everything in his power to make sure you were happy, healthy, and well fed.

“But-” you argued, trying to bring your point’s validity up to him again.

“But nothing (Y/N). Sure you eat more than the other girls. But you DEFINITELY don’t eat as much as the boys do. Even if you are a wolf. Besides you’re one of-” he trailed off just as someone around the room hit the table slightly and coughed. Everyone but you realized where he was going with that sentence, and Jihoon wasn’t ready to face that just yet.

“-One of our guests.” Seungcheol thought after a moment, clearly lying his ass off but hoping he did a good enough job that you didn’t notice. Luckily for him, you weren’t all that great at social cues. “Therefore you shall not be eating whatever’s left, you’ll get first dibs with the other girls.” He said as he sat one of the plates of remaining food left from what the mates couldn’t eat down on the table, kissing his pouting mates forehead in the process.

“Don’t worry about Soonyoung. He’s just a baby. He’ll get over it. You deserve to be eating with the mates.” Spoke the smallest boy of the pack with a smile that seemed to light up as bright as a bonfire whenever you looked him in the eyes. He was the one that had your heart singing whenever you were in the same room. His little declaration made your cheeks heat up.

“O-Okay, I guess. I still don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve the special treatment… but thank you” you resolved with a polite smile back, doing your best to hide the pink covering your face. His heart rate sped up to jackrabbit speed as his inner wolf seemed to beamed at your answer.

“No (Y/N). Thank YOU.” Hansol retorted with a shit eating grin on his face. What he wanted to say was “thanks for helping one of the assholes in the group become juuuuust a little less of an asshole by being his mate,” but obviously he couldn’t do that without getting his ass beat.

“Thank me? Thank me for what?” You questioned, genuinely curious as to what he was thanking you for. You hadn’t done anything to warrant a thank you… had you?

“Oh nothing. Don’t worry about it. You’ll find out… eventually” He let out, looking at Jihoon, earning a smack from the older wolf and a small growl. Though he whined for a second, Hansol still began to laugh at his actions.

“…Okaaaay…” you said, trying your best to forget the conversation as a whole so you could eat the remains of your pancakes. Man these guys are weird.

-

Jihoon wasn’t sure exactly what he should do. He knew he couldn’t deny his instincts forever. But he wasn’t so sure about this whole “mate” thing. I mean, who was he kidding, he got along better on his own. He survived on his own for his entire life, at the orphanage, at school, even in his pack. For the most part, he kept to himself. He was SEVERELY independent, and he liked it that way. People just always managed to bring attachments and strings. Even still, He couldn’t cut off his pack. I mean don’t get him wrong, he loved those idiots and would do anything for them, but fuck, if they didn’t have the dumbest ideas and get themselves into the stupidest shit sometimes.

He knew his survival instinct told him to just ignore the feelings he had for you and act like nothing happened to protect himself. It’s not like you had noticed anyways. But the wolf part of him loved the idea of having a mate. For the longest time, he had to sit around and watch his brothers find their mates and fall in deep love. He watched Seungcheol find Soonyoung first a few months after he had met him. Then Joshua found his mate, Mina, after a few weeks of knowing him. Even little Channie imprinted on his mate, Somi, after just two days of Jihoon being acquainted with him.

Before he knew it, it was just him left without one. They always seemed so… happy and he just… wasn’t. He didn’t mind of course. He was glad his brothers found happiness. But he soon came to realize how lonely being alone truly was. He’d see his pack and their mates do cute things and, his heart was struck with a dull pain that never seemed to lessen, and at the time he didn’t understand why that was. But when he saw you, he knew the whole time he was yearning for you. When he saw you, for once he didn’t completely loathe the idea of taking care of or protecting another person. Even if it meant becoming one of the “lovey people.” He saw you and, one bat of your beautiful eyelashes and he knew, he would gladly lay his life down for you. How could he not?

You were caring and kind, even if you didn’t like to show it. You held yourself high, even if you were small. You were little, but you were mighty. You were smart, yet funny. You hardly spoke, but when you did, it was always something memorable. You never seemed to hold your true self back. He already knew that you were Perfect for him, even if he’d hardly spoken to you. He just couldn’t help the sane part of him that was very weary of the whole situation.

As Jihoon debated his true feelings for you over his breakfast, the other wolves went and conversed with each other. They tried to speak to you too, but you never really had a lot to say. You preferred to listen, which they weren’t all that surprised at. Jihoon was the quiet, calm, smart wolf, so it’s no surprise that his mate was the same way. You’d both always seem to get lost in thought almost simultaneously. You’d both come back to Earth at the same time too, always with very similar excuses.

Though everytime your eyes met, you’d both look away, trying your best to hide the blushes that spread across both your cheeks. It was kind of cute and the pack loved that their brother wouldn’t have to be all alone any longer. He’d no longer have to just sit on the side lines while they all had the time of their lives. He now had you, even if you didn’t realize it yet. You could both be Lonely Together.

Another Author’s Note: I know this chapter is relatively short compared to the others I’ve written so far, but honestly, your girls tired as fuck. I work a full time job, go to school full time, and take care of a lot of my family’s household. Let’s just be lucky I can write at all. Plus, I wrote Wonwoo’s story earlier today too. So let’s just call it a success and I’ll write a better chapter for him next time!

(Updated 9/6)

[jinmukangwrites]

Whumptober Day 7

Support | Carrying

Ao3

Warnings: Gunshot wounds, blood, canon typical violence

-o-o-o-o-

Here was the thing about fighting crime in Gotham. Well, or just fighting crime in general. Sometimes things just went wrong and there was nothing you could do about it. You could be the most powerful superhuman in the world, or the most skilled martial artist, or have a reputation to the moon and had the documentation to prove that reputation wasn't complete bull. 

No matter who you were, sometimes you got hurt from a dumb thing. A thing you could have avoided. A thing that you most certainly will beat yourself up over in the coming weeks. 

Sometimes a stray bullet just happened to ricochet juuuuust right off the concrete walls and into the back of your hip while you were fighting crime in the streets. 

When Jason felt the intense pain of the aforementioned stray bullet entering his flesh, it took every ounce of will power he had to not cry out or fall down. 

"Hood!" 

He heard Nightwing call his name. The idiot practically begged for tonight's brotherly bonding session and Jason wanted nothing more than to look up and glare at him. Saying: "let's patrol together, Jason! It will be fun , Jason!"

He didn't for a number of reasons. Mostly because he couldn't say his real name out loud; though he supposed he could say 'Hood'?. Anyway, it was also kinda because he had his helmet on and it was sorta hard to glare through it unless he had the helmet literally sculpted into a glare. Partly because the pain was muting even though the bullet couldn't have gone that deep. It should have lost power while bouncing off the stone bricks, and the material of his jacket and under armor should have stopped it a little . All the way if it hit right. But it didn't hit right. Somehow, it came at him in that very specific angle that Kevlar didn't like. 

He had a bullet in his hip. He could feel warm blood pouring out of a hole in his body, trickling down the back of his legs and ever so slowly becoming painfully stabbing. 

So while Jason wanted to joke, look up at his dumb older brother and tease that this is why they don't do things together, it was all he could do maneuver his arms so he didn't faceplant when his hip eventually gave out. 

And oh yeah. The pain was definitely settling in now. It forced his eyes to widen and tear up, his hands to clench, his arms to twitch as his body desperately tried to figure out what to do without his consent. He wanted to grab at the wound, which was good right? Stop the blood flow? But it was at an awkward position behind him, and he was sure there were still thugs in the alleyway; he kinda really didn't want to be seen clutching his ass in front of them all. 

So he sorta just... laid there pathetically, hating how a simple patrol turned out like this; with Jason laying in a growing puddle of his own blood.

This was Dick's fault. Jason was sure. When he got the medical treatment he needed, he was definitely going to hold this above Goldie's head for the rest of time and eternity. 

Although, quicker than what he expected, Dick was by his side with eyes comically wide behind his mask, hands hovering over Jason like he wasn't sure what to touch or where to apply pressure. Jason had just the presence of mind to remember that he was hit by a ricochet bullet, shot in the back by a projectile that should have, by all means, missed. Dick wouldn't have seen him get shot, just the aftermath. The poor idiot was babbling like a soaking wet domesticated house cat, probably thinking he was shot somewhere much more important than his rear end. Like his heart or something. 

"Hip-" Jason gasped, and then groaned when hands immediately landed at the area just to the side of the small of his back. It hurt like a bitch, that was for sure, but it really couldn't have gotten that deep. It probably just entered him at an angle instead of straight on. More torn flesh that way. And Jason knew from experience that the pain of a wound didn’t necessarily correlate with how deep the said wound ran. It could be how long it was. How gaping. How beaten and bruised. 

It seemed silly to drop from a wound such as this. He could hear Dick muttering about how it didn't look horrible and that Jason probably didn't need a hospital and most likely didn't get hit in the bone, but it still hurt. A lot. 

He sucked in a deep, lungful of air, then forced his head to turn towards where they had been previously fighting a group of thugs who thought they could mug some beanpole old man. Confusion washed over him slowly. The thugs… they were so determined to fight Nightwing and Red Hood when they showed up. One of them was even bragging about having fought one of the bats before. Which Jason doubted. They probably ran away from whatever illegal activity they were doing before the bats actually arrived, but put that little white lie on their criminal resume to get hired for big gigs more easily. If they'd fought a bat before, they wouldn't be so excited to fight them again. 

Regardless, the guy was excited and trigger happy, even after the man they were trying to mug managed to escape. You could probably guess who managed to get a one-in-a-million shot on Jason without having to be told.

That all added up to why Jason was confused at this moment, laying on the ground, hands on his back that pressed down with way more force than Jason thought necessary. The alley was empty. Not a thug in sight. No unconscious bodies with hands restrained and a note taped to their foreheads for the cops. Nada. Goose Egg.

"Wh- where-?" Jason tried, but talking made everything hurt . 

Thankfully though, Dick knew what he was trying to ask. "They ran off after they realized they shot you. Got cold feet."

Jason opened his mouth, but ground it shut as Dick increased the pressure with one hand and removed the other to probably get some bandages going. Jason just breathed for a moment. Catch his breath. Bring the focus of his attention away from the hole in his back to return to the matter at hand. 

When Dick pressed a thick sheet of cotton over the wound, Jason knew the next few minutes would be agonizing; as Jason would soon be sat up to allow bandages to be freely wrapped around his hips and stomach. He opened his mouth before Dick could begin the process and forced the words out.

"You let them run?"

"Of course," Dick grumbled, and Jason wasn't sure if he said it as a “ yes Jason, because I love you I let the enemies go so I could take care of you !” or a “ of course you'd ask this, geeze, so annoying…” kind of way.

Jason was offended either way. 

When Dick forced him up so he's sitting and leaning heavily against the older hero, he was positive he saw stars. Bright, flashing starts shining through the constant murk that was Gotham's sky. Or maybe he was just in intense pain. 

Oh well. 

Dick wrapped the wound—working with way more clockwork and practice than what any normal person without a medical degree should be able to do—then, at the count of three he lifted Jason by grabbing the arm of Jason's good side and wrapping it around his shoulders. Jason could barely contain a yelp as he was lifted to his feet. His hip screamed at him, trying to get him to fall back down and just lay there. Probably just die there. He had to force every ounce of his willpower into moving his good leg, dragging his bad one behind him, as Dick struggled to carry his weight out of the alleyway. 

Not so happy to be small and quick now, huh Grayson? Rethinking those offers Jason had made months ago to teach you how to go make more muscle and maybe even get a little taller? Pathetic. Can't even drag Jason's injured ass out of an alleyway without breaking a sweat on your forehead. 

"M'not that heavy," Jason grumbled anyways though when Dick began to release small, panting puffs of air.

"You're heavier than B," Dick wheezed, "so shut the fuck up."

Jason lifted an eyebrow under his helmet. He was sure Dick could sense his amusement, if the twitch of his lips were anything to go by. "How do you know how heavy B is?" 

"Oh you know," Dick said in a mock-sigh, his voice almost singsong, "I'm always saving everyone's asses. Drag each of you to a med bay at least once a month. Did you know Orphan is heavier than Red but not as heavy as Spoiler?"

"Do you want Orphan and Eggplant to kill you?"

Dick let out a bubbling laugh, which made Jason wonder if Tim, Cass, then Steph was really the order of that scale. Jason wouldn’t linger on it for long though, because they've finally made it to where they've parked their bikes. Jason immediately began to plan on how he was going to ride to his nearest house without passing out in Gotham late-night traffic. The dead-hours of night always brought out the best and worst in Gotham drivers. He'd have to manage. He did it before. 

However, all of his plans suddenly flew out the window as Dick disregarded his own blue and black bike and proceeded to try and force Jason into the passenger seat of his own bike. 

"I can-"

"I'll cuff you if I have to Hood," Dick snapped, though there was mirth and amusement in his tone. "I'm driving you."

"You're not ," Jason grunted though clenched teeth as he inevitably lost the battle with Dick and was forced into the passenger space. "You're gonna take me to the manor if I let you drive."

"Yeah?"

" No ."

Dick sighed then stepped away from the bike, planting hands on his hips as he gave that disappointed older brother pout he'd been working on and improving for the past decade. It worked on most everyone except Jason and maybe Cass. Jason was immune to the Older Brother Pout��. Still didn't stop Dick from giving it. 

"Little Wing, you have a bullet in your back."

"Woah, thanks for telling me, I didn't know!" 

Now Dick looked a little annoyed. Good. "Jay-"

"No," Jason snapped, desperately wanting to stand up and cuss him out like he deserved. "We'll go to my safehouse."

"What one?" Dick argued and angrily Jason threw his hands in the air on instinct. 

The action sent bolts into his back, making his brain short circuit as his body tried to figure out if it wanted to bend forward or back. In the end, it didn't matter, because like the absolute bastard he was, Dick used his pain as a distraction to jump onto the sitting space in front of him. He turned on the engine and Jason felt himself go boneless, the pain of the wound on his back ate up his energy more violently than a crocodile. His metal helmet slammed against Dick's back, and when he felt the bike jolt with motion, he angrily, carefully, and reluctantly wrapped his arms around Dick's waist. 

"'ny of them," Jason mumbled, blinking blurry shapes from the corners of his eyes. "Ju's don' take me t'the manor…" 

"Alright," Dick chimed, revving the engine. He sounded too happy about something, but Jason was too focused on holding on and ignoring the pounding hole in his back to question it too much. 

Dick drove with more caution than what he normally did. Jason had ridden with Dick on bikes and in cars before, and the guy is borderline psychotic while driving. Jason supposed it was because his adrenaline junky tendencies mixed with the famous Blüdhaven road rage to create a man to be feared on any sane roads. Or as same as Gotham got. Jason swore Dick was always on the horn, always looking for that split second window to speed up and get to where he wanted as fast as possible. He wasn't a dangerous driver, just one that wasn't one to trifle with when in the zone of driving. Yet now, while the speed was fast and the spaces between cars was utilized to get the cycle through quicker, there were hardly any other risks involved. No running lights, no cutting it close between cars, no sharp and split second turns. Everything was calculated and smooth, and Jason made a mental note to mention it to him later. 

So you do know how to drive?

With the hum of the engine and the warm body in front of him, it became rather difficult to keep his eyes open. A weary cloud had slowly begun to settle around him, probably not because of any blood-loss but because of falling levels of adrenalin and perhaps mild shock. He squeezed his arms tight around Dick's chest—he silently promised that if Dick mentioned this as a hug he would lose it—and let his eyes fall shut. He would just rest them… for a little while. He had a long night ahead of him. One of digging out a bullet and stitching the wound shut. He should guilt trip Dick into going out to buy ice cream or takeout chinese later.

And thankfully, focusing on the sounds around him by having his eyes closed helped him ignore the pain. Well, not all of it. It was there. Just… muted. 

He could relax to this. 

It was a pity all the peace and relaxation left the moment the bike suddenly dipped in altitude, the sounds of the city becoming the seemingly endless echoes of the bike itself. Jason snapped open his eyes, recognizing the dark tunnel around him. A growl escaped his throat. 

"Dick," he hissed. Or well, grumbled. His voice was slurred and definitely sounded as tired as he felt. 

"Yup?" Dick replied like he was innocent. Jason will kill him. 

"Safe. House."

"Yup." He popped the "p" on that one. Alright. Jason will definitely kill him. 

"This isn't my safe house," he growled, putting as much force as he could into each syllable. " No manor."

"Kay," Dick hummed, "but I don't know where any of your safehouses are. So I thought, Jason doesn't want the manor, so where's the next best place?"

"The manor includes the cave, Dickhead!"

"Y'know, everytime you insult me with my own name it just gets more and more sad."

Jason wanted to scream. "I'll show you what's sa-"

The tunnel opened up, revealing one of the last places Jason was in the mood to be at. The Batcave was just as large, impressive, and condescending as ever. Dick came to a stop near where the rest of the vehicles in the cave were parked, killed the engine, then stuffed the keys into his gauntlets so Jason couldn't snatch them and drive away in a pain filled haze and probably crash in the straight and narrow tunnel used to get here. Dick looked up from the bike, smiled, and waved. 

Jason wanted to shoot something. With rubber bullets, don't worry, but he still wanted to shoot something. 

Of course Batman and Robin couldn't be out in the city right now. Of course they were right here, a good distance away near the batcomputer, both standing up to curiously regard their guests. 

"Don't tell the truth of how it happened," Jason said quickly.

Dick scoffed and dropped his hand, using the other to tear off the edge of his mask. "I don't even really understand what happened-"

Jason glared. "Just make me sound cool, alright? I have a reputation. Can't have them know I was taken out by street level thugs."

"Don't worry, Jay," Dick assured, jumping off the bike and grabbing Jason's arm again, grunting under the weight to eventually help Jason to his feet. "I'll make sure your ego isn't bruised."

"Ya better."

"Richard," came the voice of the most tater tot boy to ever tater tot. "… Jason." There was only one kid that could say someone's name like it was a poison that tasted good. Jason looked up from where he'd been focusing on his feet to see the kid had ran up to get ahead of the big man.

He grinned wickedly, because he loved watching the kid be a little unnerved by him. Not in a rude way. Just in a " hell yeah, little man, I'm your second eldest brother and you gotta respect me " kinda way. 

"Hey, short stack," Jason waved half-heartedly as Dick began to guide him over to the medbay. Alfred, who was standing by the computer, looked Jason up and down, sighed, then walked over to the medbay as well. "How's the cow? Ready for the grill yet?"

"Batcow is fine," Damian replied civilly. Jason wondered why that was. Normally the kid was ready to throw down at the slightest tiny itty bitty inkling of a suggestion of cooking any of his pets. Jason wasn't even subtle about it this time. And Damian also had issues with comments of his perfectly normal for a thirteen year-old shortness. Jason honestly expected reddening, bloating cheeks and narrowed eyes. Instead, Damian looked him up and down, his green eyes calculative and his posture looking oddly like he was trying to convince himself to say something more.

Luckily, or unluckily in many cases, Bruce came up before this odd little exchange could be explored more. 

"What happened?" He demanded in that worried-but-constipated-about-it way of his that he was always so good at.

Jason saw Dick open his mouth and he prepared himself for the coming lecture. Always be ready for an attack, Jason. Be prepared for anything. Even if the enemy is low level street muggers who barely even know how to hold a gun, Jason. Ugh. 

"I shot Jason."

Aaaand Jason now remembered that Dick was literally the worst liar in the whole entire goddamn world. Alright. Jason could work with this. 

"Yup. Dick shot me," Jason agreed, probably enjoying Bruce's frown way too much. Bruce walked around towards their backs and Jason fought a tense as a hand barely even brushed across the bandage around his lower abdomen. 

"Richard wouldn't shoot anyone, even someone as annoying as you," Damian argued, looking genuinely outraged and confused. 

"I'm sorry, Dami," Dick continued, sighing in mock apology as he continued to drag Jason closer to the medbay. "I finally snapped."

"No you didn't!" 

"I did, and I'll do it again!"

Jason tuned out the coming shouting match between a literal child and Damian. That would keep them occupied. He side-eyed over to where Bruce was walking besides them, looking torn between walking ahead to the bay or helping Dick carry Jason. It was times like these that Jason found himself more grateful than ever for his helmet, it allowed him to watch as Bruce has a whole mini crisis, trying to decide what to do with his hands, without Bruce actually seeing him paying attention to that stuff. 

"B," Jason tried, and somehow his voice carried over regardless of Damian's shouting about how Dick wasn't secretly a murderous psychopath who had been repressing his violent urges up until this point. Dick really was going to stick with that story huh?

Bruce's eyes flickered up towards Jason, looking immediately guarded. Jason knew it was a front. So he reached up with his free hand and took off his helmet. He proceeded to look Bruce directly in the eyes. 

He tried a smile, even though he really didn't want to be here in the cave right now. He'd rather be at home, watching replays of Harry Potter and stuffing his face with chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. But, he supposed, if he was going to be forced to be here via one stubborn prick of a brother, pun intended, then he was going to do his best to be as civil as Damian was a moment ago. 

He had a reputation to keep up, after all. Jason didn't get gunned down by street muggers, and he didn't lower himself below the only kid in the cave. 

"Why don'cha help out, yeah?" Jason asked, "Dick is tiny and slow and my back hurts."

Dick squawked. "I take offence to that! I might just shoot you again, Hood!" 

"Stop it Richard! You don't shoot people!"

"I can't help it, little D! The urge to shoot people is stronk ."

Damian groaned at the horrible attempt at gen z slang while Bruce slowly and almost... timidly grabbed Jason's other arm and immediately sped up the process of getting him towards the ever awaiting Alfred and the cot behind him. 

Jason tried to not focus too hard on that. Of how far they have fallen from when Jason was still young. Robin. Full of magic. 

He tried not to think about how far they have come from when Jason was stuffing heads in duffle bags. 

He just allowed Bruce to take him to the cot and gently set him down, shooing Dick and Damian away as Alfred approached with the tools he needed. 

Dick was correct in saying that the bullet didn't go in far, and Jason was right that it went in weirdly and that was why it was so painful. After an excruciating makeshift surgery and a stitching session, Jason reluctantly allowed himself to be lowered into the cot. He was all tuckered out. He was so tired from the entire night that he couldn't keep his eyes open, even though Bruce was in the same room and Jason still didn't feel comfortable being vulnerable around him. 

He might have imagined it, but when he was a sliver away from falling fully into a deep sleep, he might have felt something warm and calloused grab his hand and stroke the joint of Jason's thumb. The hands holding his own were easy to recognize. Bruce had unique hands. He might have felt weirded out by that, that Bruce was holding his hands as he fell asleep, or maybe annoyed. But like he said, he was too exhausted to really… care. 

Too tired to know if it was real. 

"I'm glad you're safe, Jay-lad," Bruce whispered. Or maybe he didn't. 

Jason was too far gone by then. 

[artistic-writer]

The Paradox of Light :: CS AU : Rated E :: Part 1

Title: The Paradox of Light by @artistic-writer​ Summary: Imagine having one person, one constant, one love in your life that holds your head when you go under the surface. They will be there forever, holding your hand through everything life can throw at the pair of you, but what happens when a crack forms? What happens when it grows into something neither of you can control? What happens when the one person who was there to guide you becomes an obstacle and rather than hold you up, they pull you down? How do you find your way out of the darkness without your light? Rating: E Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, alcoholism/alcohol abuse, sexual addiction, domestic violence, fighting, choking, erotic asphyxiation (use in a non-informed manner), depression, death of Liam Jones, panic attacks, PTSD, attempted rape/non-con/dub-con, stab wounds, bar fights, rehab/AA meetings

- but there is a happy ending to this story, i promise.

Author’s Note: I missed this ficversary because of everything that is going on in the world right now, but its been in the plan to re-release it as a multichapter for some time.  It’s A LOT otherwise and whilst I initially always intended this to be a one shot, because I wrote it in one go, its not logical to expect people to stop and read so many words in one go.  The lovely fanart by @itsfabianadocarmo​ features in all chapters, so go show her some love!

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS!!  This fic has a lot of them for a reason.  If you want to ask about any, please don’t be afraid to message me.

Part One [ below the cut ]

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At first they had hated each other, with Emma setting her sights on the older Jones brother. Killian was nothing more to her than a thorn in her side. Cocky, arrogant and with a boyish smile that she wished she could slap right off his face, he was not for her. No, Emma Swan wanted Liam Jones, the stronger, more level headed of the two, but with a decade between them, by the time Emma had worked up the courage to tell him how she felt, Liam was announcing his marriage.

When Liam moved from their sleepy little hometown, leaving Emma’s teenage heart in pieces and Killian to continue his roguish antics unchecked, was when Emma began to notice him. He had a certain appeal. He had a car, would take her anywhere at the drop of a hat and puberty had been kind to him, with unblemished skin and a dashingly handsome growth that sprouted from his chin. The more Emma looked at him the more she felt that the bravado and confidence he exuded was more for just show. In private, when it was just the two of them, Killian was different.

One day in high school, they had decided to skip their respective classes and hang out at the edge of the school field. Killian was kind, less presumptuous and respectful when it was just the two of them and Emma liked it. He gave her his jacket when she was cold and his smell made her feel safe, like she was home, which considering she was adopted, was huge. Even the Nolans, her adoptive family, couldn’t completely fill the hole in her heart left by being abandoned, but somehow Killian could.

Killian’s senior prom was the turning point for her. He was a few years older than Emma and had promised to take her to both his and hers. He insisted because if nothing else, attending his with her would be a dry run for her own. Killian taught her to dance that night, holding her close, splayed hand pressed delicately to her lower back, the tips of his pointed ears turning red when Emma had pressed her body further into his, her early teenage yearning for Liam Jones long since gone.

“There’s only one rule. Pick a partner who knows what he is doing.”

Emma had often thought about his words, long after her prom and into her college years, but whilst she had attended a local one, Killian had followed in his brother's footsteps and joined the Army. They never lost touch, sending letters to each other that mentioned everything and anything they could talk about. It was no substitution for the lilt of his accented voice, or the smile on his face that never failed to pick up her mood, but it was all she could get between his visits home.

When he was on leave, the first place he always went was her house. It was familiar to have him near her again, laughing and joking as they did silly things like play cards and swim in the lake. Emma knew he never wanted to talk about what he did in the line of duty, she could only imagine, so she never pressed him and knew that if he ever wanted to, he would tell her. Instead they spent their time poking fun at each other, acting more like a couple than most couples they knew, but with an annoyingly platonic and chaste intimacy that left Emma pining each time he deployed and left her with a seared cheek from his kiss.

But he was a gentleman, and she expected nothing less from him.

Five years went by between Killian joining the military and the day he came home. He was a ranger, the most elite sniper in his class, able to hit a target from over two thousand yards away, but his career had ended when he had been injured in the line of duty and subsequently medically discharged. Shrapnel now littered his torso, had embedded itself in his shoulder joint and had ripped through the muscles of his left upper arm like it was paper. A sniper with the inability to fire a weapon was useless, and rather than push paper for the rest of his life, Killian had come home carrying more than just physical scars and it was the wake up call Emma needed.

She had been beside herself to learn of his injuries. Her heart had skipped a beat in her chest and her blood had run cold through her entire body when she had been informed by Liam via an early morning phone call.

“He’s okay, he just wanted you to know that.”

That was the exact moment Emma Swan vowed to share her feelings that she had kept locked behind closed doors for so long. She loved him and needed to tell him lest she risk losing him with him never knowing how she felt.

The day he arrived home, waiting for him on the military airstrip in her senior prom dress was Emma, hair blowing in the warm breeze that whipped across the tarmac. There was a brief silence between them and people stared at her attire, but Emma did not care. She had finally realised what she had been fighting for so many years. Killian Jones, her best friend and confidant, was the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. So she had told him.

“I’ve been thinking…”

“In your prom dress?”

“Shut up and listen.”

“Okay, love.”

“I love you, Killian. I’ve loved you since I was sixteen and you held me at your prom. ‘Pick a partner who knows what he’s doing’ you told me…”

“Aye, Swan, I did…”

“Then I hope to God you know what you are doing because I am petrified.”

“I’m sure we can work it out.”

“Together?”

“Together.”

Eight years later and they shared everything. The transition back into civilian life had been hard on Killian, but Emma was always there for him. She watched him cry, watched him scream and watched him fight with the demons inside of his head on a daily basis. It never went away, but it got easier, and on more than one occasion Killian had told Emma that she was his saviour. Only she knew how to help him, calm the beast and soothe his soul, but Killian’s descent into darkness had only just begun.

The day Killian’s phone rang and a police officer informed him of his brother’s demise was the day that would haunt Emma forever. Liam had been killed in a car accident on his way to visit them, the car having rolled along the highway so many times they had struggled to free his body. Emma would never forget the blood curdling sound Killian made as he screamed Liam’s name, collapsed to the floor and curled into the childlike ball of sobs. She let him cry, she let him shout and she let him smash every door in the house in his rage, and then after everything, she let him drink.

Killian Jones had lost count of the bottles he had seen the bottom of since the death of his brother. Each rum laden glass cask gradually weighed less as it emptied but the sorrow that felt like it was crushing him only got heavier. Liam had died quickly, in a car accident with no clear person to blame, and it had changed Killian forever. Whatever demons he carried from active service were amplified, the voices in his head taunting and eating away at his resolve.

There were no answers to his pleas to God at the bottom of the bottles, and even worse, there was no absolution.

  Six months ago

It had been only a short time since Liam’s death, but Killian had spent every second he wasn’t at work at the local bar. He always shot Emma a text letting her know where he was for which she was thankful. His drinking was starting to spiral and it had become pretty apparent that he was drinking more and more to try and quell the voices in his brain. It was wrong, Emma knew that, but it calmed him and helped him sleep, and despite her brain telling her it was wrong to enable him, her heart ached each time he sobbed himself into a slumber, so she let him drink to forget.

Or at least she thought she was. There had been a shift in his behaviour recently and whilst Emma figured he was starting to sober up, clear the niggles in his brain and finally begin to accept his loss, Killian was in fact becoming a functioning alcoholic. His breath reeked of booze each time he returned home, sometimes with bloody knuckles and sometimes with a glassy stare, but each time he was the same. Drunk, and the more he needed to drink to forget, the more frustrated he was becoming with being without his brother.

That night he came home, stumbling through the door and groggily mumbling to himself as he toed off his shoes at the door, Emma simply greeted him as usual without judgement. She was hurting as well. Liam had been her friend too, but as much as she was hurting, she could never compare to how hard Killian had fallen into the darkness of sorrow.

“How was work?” Emma asked, the question becoming somewhat of a code between them. It was something she had devised in order to gauge his level of inebriation and also work out how bad his mentality had been compromised during the day. She shifted her weight, resting a hand to the kitchen island as she watched him struggle with the zip of his jacket.

“It was unusually dull,” Killian slurred sarcastically, his balance suddenly compromised as he tried to pull his arms free from the confines of his sleeves. He stepped sideways, foot landing heavily on the hardwood floor with a thud as he tried to keep himself upright. Finally freeing his arms he staggered backwards into the lounge and sank down onto the arm of the couch with a sigh when the back of his thighs hit the solid mass.

“And your colleagues?” Emma prodded, moving to stand before him. The voices in his head were something he dealt with every day, sometimes successfully blocking them out, but it seemed the demon of drink always gave them free reign to torment him before he had consumed enough to silence them.

Killian screwed up his features, the rosy tint in his cheeks from too much rum hidden under a swipe of his hands as he covered his face with a wavering nod. “Chatty,” he whispered into his palms, inhaling deeply and letting his body hunch over as tears sprang from his eyelids.

“Hey,” Emma soothed, stepping between his parted thighs and pulling his hands from his face. His face was warm beneath her hands as she cupped his head, tilting his head back so he was looking up at her. “I’m here,” she told him softly, searching the clouded grey hues of his eyes with her own. “I’m here.”

Killian couldn’t stop the sound he made escaping his throat as he cried, the wail cutting straight through Emma’s chest and splitting her heart in two. He buried his face in the softness of her sweater, muffling his cries against her body and wrapping his arms around her, desperate to hold onto anything. “Don’t go,” he sobbed. “I need you.”

“I’m here,” Emma repeated, her voice watery from the lump that had begun to sting the back of her throat. “I need you too,” she whimpered, pinching her eyes closed just enough to let a single tear roll from her eyelid and scorch a line down her face. It fell from her chin and down the back of Killian’s shirt, his cries subsiding as he pulled his head back to look up at her.

It had taken weeks for her own grief to manifest enough that she had cried for her friend. Emma wasn’t sure where rock bottom actually was, but she was pretty sure they were both there at this exact moment in time, the silence between them echoing with the words neither of them needed to say. Killian had cried a literal river for his brother, but this had been the first time Emma had shed a single tear, and it had somehow ignited the need within both of them to feel again.

“Emma…” He gulped after her name, his voice raspy and gritty, the emotion in his words all he needed to tell her exactly what he needed as he rested his hands to her hips and gently pushed himself to his feet.

“Killian…” Emma sighed his name, looking up at him through her eyelashes with a prickle of heat that surged over the skin of her neck and through her entire body.

“I want…” he began nervously, unable to stop the way his gaze lingered over her body and his hands toyed with the hem of her sweater. His fingertips barely brushed the surface of her exposed skin but Emma gasped audibly, her eyes fluttering closed and her hand grasping the fabric of his shirt between shaking fingers.

“I know,” Emma said softly, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips as she watched her hand against his chest, the quickening heartbeat beneath her fingertips matching the pounding in her ears. Emma lifted her gaze, blinking away more tears. “I want to feel too.”

The first thing they both felt again was softness of lips slightly salty from tears, mouths sliding against each other haphazardly and clothes being discarded with abandon. There were no words, only the soft pants and heavy breathing that accompanied their ascent to the bedroom, a trail of clothes in their wake. It was like a bright light in both of their lives, neither having made love since Liam’s death, and they savoured every second.

Even drunk, Killian knew every inch of her body, every curve, dip and patch of silky skin committed to his memory. And he knew exactly how to make Emma feel, how to excite every cell in her body the way she needed in that exact moment. Killian never stopped touching her, taking his time to make sure that every hair on Emma’s body was standing to attention for him before he dipped his head between her thighs and finally gave her what she needed.

Emma’s cries were like music to his ears and Killian lapped at her essence like he was hearing her moans for the first time. They urged him on, his own need growing hard between his legs with every gasp she emitted from her slightly parted lips. He didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t need to, because the sounds Emma made as she writhed beneath his assault told him everything he needed to know.

The first time she came, her body stiffening as he relentlessly flicked his tongue over her clit, Killian felt something other than his own arousal surge through him. It was like a drug, a calm washing over his woes and guiding him from the depths of pain. He needed more and when Emma’s cries subsided he surged upwards and impaled her in a single thrust of his hips, watching the way her features twisted in pleasure and loving the feeling of being whole.

“I love you,” he whispered, stilling inside of her and stroking the side of her flushed face with his fingertips.

Emma could barely focus, her eyelids rolling open and fresh tears stinging her eyes once more. She blinked them away and Killian wiped them from existence with a gentle swipe of his thumb over her cheek. “I love you,” he repeated, holding her gaze as he angled his hips a little and sank into her further. Emma’s back arched off of the bed, her body yearning to feel more of the light that only Killian could shine on her.

“Oh God, I love you so much,” she gasped huskily, finally releasing the breath she had been holding and almost losing herself once more with the barest of movements. When Killian began to move and her walls fluttered around him, Emma groaned, more symphonic tones that made him want even more than before.

Killian’s hand found hers, their fingers lacing together and their palms pressing together so firmly that Emma almost couldn’t feel her fingertips anymore. He lifted their joined digits above Emma’s head, increasing his pace as he pressed the back of her hand into the bed, his grip like a vice, tethering him to her and both of them to reality.

Killian’s other hand found Emma’s hip and his fingernails dug into her skin, a sensation she didn’t find unpleasant because like the burning between her thighs and the increasing pressure in her stomach, it made her feel, and that was all she wanted. She wanted the light once more, to bathe in its glow as she lost herself and fell from grace at the hand of the man she loved, the swivel of his hips and the drag of his length along her inner walls delicious and torture at the same time.

Emma was so close it was almost painful, the room filled with the stench of sex and alcohol fading away as the pin pricks of white began to flicker behind her eyelids. She felt Killian’s forehead rest against hers and the warmth of his rum laced breath invade her nostrils as his own body shuddered, his knuckles turned white with his grip and he whimpered her name like a prayer.

“I’m here,” Emma panted hoarsely, her hand finding the side of his face and her lips ghosting over his.

It was enough to send them both into oblivion, their bodies basking in the rays of euphoria and numbing the sting of pain they both felt in the very depths of their hearts. They were lost in each other, swaying in an ocean of pleasure that they would quite happily have drowned in should the waves become tumultuous, but they didn’t, instead gently lapping at the edge of their subconscious, chasing away the agony.

For now.

[casimania]

YOU KNOW ITS GOTTA BE THE OT3 FOR THE ASK GAME 😍

Yessss! Domestic ship meme for Chloe/Dan/Lucifer below!

who reaches out to new neighbors: Unexpectedly… Maze! She keeps tabs on who comes and goes even better than Lucifer and is even faster than him at going for a snoop, it was her job to watch his back for a long time after all, ansd she watches out for Trixie too now (does the same for Linda and Charlie). The neighbors are probably confused and concerned like “is the scary lady part of the family??”. Chloe then makes Lucifer, Dan and Trixie come with her do a normal greeting-the-neighbors thing. But because Lucifer is Lucifer it turns out in another interrogation without the neighbors noticing (Maze is good at figuring out if they’re shady but Lucifer finds all the juicy, dirty little secrets). Chloe and Dan have to steer him away.

who remembers to buy healthy food: Since Dan started working on the abs he’s been keeping an eyes on his food more carefully and trying a healthier eating pattern too, except he tends to forget a lot when it’s time to restock. Chloe is better at remembering the list they make in time and following it so Dan writes down the stuff and Chloe reminds everyone when it actually has to be bought. Lucifer just wants to order whatever they need. But they want for Trixie to grow up doing normal stuff like groceries runs. They probably regret it when Lucifer turns out to be just a very tall Trixie and they just try shoving whatever they fancy inside the cart and it’s a constant battle (but he’s also easily disarmed by like, hand holding. Chloe reaches over and grabs his hand and he just spends the whole time looking down in wonder at their hands and looking up at Chloe with a big grin. Dan pushes the cart with Trixie balances either in front of it or between it and Dan and occasionally getting him to speed down an aisle). He does win them over some times they’re all ran to the ground by a case and the idea of crawling out of the house is physically painful.

who remembers to buy junk food: Lucifer, Trixie and Dan have the biggest sweet tooth ever (Lucifer has varied tastes while Trixie inherited Dan’s more focused tastes except it’s chocolate cakes instead of puddings, they sometimes vary but those things reappear frequently) and Lucifer and Trixie like junk food in general so no one ever forgets about restocking it. This time Lucifer definitely orders it (especially the pudding, between all the stealing it runs out fast at the precinct).

who fixes the oven when it breaks: Dan is that Dad™who insists on trying to fix things himself to teach Trixie to be self-reliable except sometimes it’s stuff he doesn’t actually know how to fix so he googles it or asks around and it’s a hit or miss. He either patches it up until the next break or fuckign destroys the thing (with familiar things he’s better). Also I like to think it’s a Dan thing in general, like “I can do this myself!!” except sometimes he overestimates and it ends up with a “oh no. oh fuck” (he gets steadily better at accepting help). Chloe is like, “Baby please just call a professional, they exist for a reason, you can teach Trixie how to fix a shelf or something” and she’s got 4 numbers ready from the start. Lucifer is a “throw the whole thing away” guy because he uses it as an excuse to renovate and add something new. But he lets Dan huff around because it’s amusing (and seeing Dan get to work reminds him he’s seen a few pornos starting like that, so another thing to add to his fantasies fodder) but he’s also curious about any parent-daughter interaction. So the whole thing takes a turn for the wholesome seeing Dan trying to explain stuff to Trixie (he still fantasizes about sweaty Dan in a tanktop grunting and wiggling his ass in the air to check inside the oven later).

who waters the plants/feeds their pet(s): Their lives don’t really match up with a pet but they’ve got plants and Chloe is their lifeline. She goes away for a fun Tribe thing and tells everyone to water the plants. They all forget. The day she’s scheduled to come back they panic, “Can’t we just put a lot of water all at once??”, cue Trixie accidentally making a few vases overflows and Chloe comes back to them frantically mopping the floor (it gets funnier the smaller number of plants they have).

who wakes up earlier: Lucifer can’t not sleep but he can get by on minimal sleep, so he often wakes up and lays in bed blissed out enjoying snuggling with his loves. Wake up as in up and leaves the house, it’s Dan. He either hits the gym or the beach for surfing most mornings before work so he’s up real early. Chloe and Lucifer roll around and go back cuddling.

who makes the bed: Lucifer always neatly tucks it in before leaving the house if he’s the last one to go (very fussy devil, he likes making messes but he also likes having everything restored to tidyness after). Chloe is more of the ‘just haphazardly pull the covers up’ before leaving type (mostly to set  somewhat of a good example for Trixie). Dan barely bothers and is the one that always forgets when it’s actually time to change the covers.

who makes the coffee: Lucifer is the one cooking most times so he also makes breakfast and has always coffee ready for Dan and Chloe when they wake up. He’s neutral on it but he starts drinking it regularly because he enjoys when they’re all standing against the counter and Chloe and Dan have these sleepy expressions with half lidded eyes but they sip on the coffee and smile or hum happily against the mug (it’s small cozy moments like these that make him feel all fluttery and content inside, the Devil likes to be painfully domestic). He knows exactly how they take their coffee but he’s also real good at figuring out what else they’d like so he’s always making them trying fancy new stuff for fun and he basically always hits the mark).

who burns breakfast: Chloe and Dan try to make something extremely elaborated for Lucifer because he’s always cooking for them but they have it in over their heads (and are trying to be quick and silent) and end up burning something while. When Lucifer smells burning stuff he comes barrelling into the kitchen ready for a fight and Trixie trails after him. He’s like, very touched. But then either stirs them away so he can whip up himself the thing they botched, or they still sit him down and feed him waffles or pancakes or something else they know how to do with thier eyes closed. Lucifer loves the idea of preparing stuff for them and surprising them with new things, but also just kicking back, eating whatever they set in front of him and licking syrup off his fingers while one of them stands nearby and absentmindedly runs a hand back and forth through his hair and down his neck… is very nice. He probably falls asleep like that at least once. He doesn’t faceplant in a waffle just because he’s seeking out the hand even in his sleep and doesn’t slump forward too much. It reminds Dan and Chloe of Trixie when she was very little.

how do they let each other know they’re leaving the house: Dan bellows everyone’s names and then “I’M LEAVING! BYE!” from the door loud enough to wake the dead. Answers vary gretly depending on the hour he does it (from loving responses from around the house to threats of physical violence if he tries breaking the sound barrier one more time at the ass crack of dawn if he leves early). Chloe pokes her head in whichever room they are and “Guys I’m going!”. Lucifer forget to say anything sometimes but never leaves without a kiss or some nuzzling.

how do they greet each other when one of them gets home: Dan bellows (again) “I’M HOME” as soon as he opens the door. Chloe just says “Hi!” at a normal volume once she’s fully inside. Lucifer barges in screaming “DeeeTeEECtiIIVeeeES” until he finds some of them to kiss. It’s a Thing for him apparently, goodbye kiss and welcome home kiss.

who brings home little gifts like flowers/chocolates more often: Lucifer is always getting Dana and Chloe little trinkets and gifts. He started out with more extravagant stuff but they managed to get him to tone it down a little. They vary from sweet or funny to “I know this must be a sex toy but what the hell is it supposed to be exactly??”.

who picks the movie for movie night: They wrote down a ton of movies and put them in a bowl to avoid bicker over it for an entire hour. If Trixie partecipates they let her choose something age appropriate she likes.

their favorite kind of movie to watch: Dan and Lucifer love action flicks (the bloodier and full of ridiculous explosions, one-liners and half naked people the better). Lucifer gets into cheesy romcoms with Chloe (it becomes a shared guilty pleasure, they look for the very outrageous ones). Trixie becomes a sci-fi buff growing up.

who first suggests a pillow fort: Oh man Dan and Trxie are all over it (personal hc that is was sometimes Dan always liked but in his family he got at a certain age where they decided he was too old for it, so they didn’t make them with him and he was embarassed to do one by himself and get caught, so he’s the most enthusiastic next to Trixie and never makes her feel like it’s a thing just for little kids). And angels nesting is a thing in every fandom with angels so it reminds Lucifer a lot of a nest so he gets a little weird about it at first because it reminds him of his sibligns and the Silver City, but gets very into it after a while (which later brings him to feel a little dristessed when they bring the whole thing down, which leads to them helping him build an actual nest).

who builds the pillow fort: In the Decker-Espinoza family Trixie gives directions and Dan and Chloe are the certified builders. With Lucifer thrown in the mix he goes for the aesthetics and so the first color coordinated pillow forts are born, he adds some flair.

who tries to distract the other during the movie: Lucifer with Trixie present = constant running commentary and continuous “pet me” requests (he loves his cuddles but if they get distracted and stop he prods at them until someone starts petting hair or running their hands over his back again, like excuse me! attend to me!). Lucifer without Trixie = naughty wandering hands (he’s very good at multitasking and will try to offer commentary of a movie in the middle of giving oral).

who falls asleep first: When she has a case Chloe is always very keyed up so she drops as soon as she hit the pillow. Lucifer makes an effort to wait for Dan to also fall asleep. He likes knowing they’re all safe and comfortable dozing off near him, and likes falling asleep to the sound of that deep breathing of the dead to the world sleeping.

who is big spoon/little spoon: Lucifer absolutely craves the shit out of being in the middle, something about having someone on his back and front makes him feel incredibly safe and loved and makes sleeping so much easier. Chloe and Dan are very versatile on that front so they swap a lot between being big and little spoon when it’s comfortable to be all squished together.

[catsandstrawberries]

Real Family: Final Chapter

Pairings: BTS x teen female reader, platonic love

Warnings: Gun violence, triggering actions and words, domestic violence, language, fluff and angst 

A/N: This is the last chapter of the series. I really appreciate everyone who commented on past chapters and gave me words of encouragement. 

Summary: It’s not blood that makes a family, it’s love. 

Masterlist 

The next morning, going to school was surprisingly different, but in a good way. I was able to laugh with Amber, she even drove us to school. I also had time to think about how I should approach Zara and reconnect with her without both of us getting angry.

Once inside the school, I rushed towards Zara's locker where she would usually be found before the first period. "Zara!" I shouted when I was in arms reach, standing in front of her so she couldn't run away.

"What do you want now." She sighed in aggravation,

"I love you." I rushed out, ignoring her shocked expression. 

"Wha-" 

"I love you. I adore you. My life without you has been miserable. You have become my best friend Zara, and I haven't had a lot of those. My life feels like its been going to shit, and I miss you, Zara." She looked as if she wanted to protest at my words, "and I'm sorry. But, both you and Amber are my friends now. She’s changed." Just as I said that Amber appeared from behind me, 

"Zara, can we talk." Zara glared at the girl but nevertheless nodded, the two of them walked towards the other side of the hallway. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I saw the two of them in the conversation, talking and then finally hugging. A smile spread onto my face at the interaction, watching the two walk back over towards me. Zara launched herself into my arm as soon as she got back and I gladly returned the hug. 

"I'm sorry, I might have overreacted." Zara laughed then turned to Amber, "and I'm happy we're friends again." The bell rang signaling first class, and sadly we parted ways. The two of them heading towards their honors abstract algebra class while I left for my pre-calc class. 

It felt strange for everything to be working out, at least with the school. Now I needed to tackle the problem with the boys. It wasn't like I could ignore the constant texts, voicemails, and calls forever. Whether I liked it or not they were still my legal guardians. A small part of me, well-big part of me hoped that things had changed. That despite their original intentions of using me for their own benefit, I had become something more to them. 

"(Y/N)." My eyes lifted from my desk towards the teacher, "could you run to the office and grab me some papers from the printer?" I nodded at the teacher and left the room, walking down the hallways towards the office. The hallways dead quiet until a crackling noise split through the air, similar to a thunderstrike before the storm. Confused, I looked around the hallways before another strike erupted causing my entire body to stiffen. My skin prickled, and at that moment I forgot to breathe. Screams erupted from down the hallway, and rapid footsteps pounded into the polished floor. The overhead speaker flickered on, static filling the hallways by a frightened woman's voice, 

"We are now in Lockdown mode, an active shooter is inside the school." The speaker flickered off and I instantly reacted, running into an empty classroom and pushing the door shut. Why was there a shooter in the school? Before I could catch up with my own thought process the speaker was sending static into the room once again. Except for this time instead of the woman's voice, it was a breathy, hesitant male. 

"If I don't meet (Y/N) (L/N) in the office in five minutes then I'm going to shoot every student in this building until I find her." A chill ran down my spine at his voice, the very voice that gave me nightmares, and haunted my childhood. I hadn't heard my last name in so long, the only person who ever used that name with me was my mom, and,

"dad?" 

~

What the fuck was I doing? 

From what I could tell I was searching for a man, my father, abusive if I might add, who had a gun. Not only that, but he was threatening to kill people. Why now? I hadn't seen this man in years, and now he was threatening to kill people if he didn't see me. 

I slowed down once I reached the main office, the sound of the AC, fan in the ceiling, and hushed whispers were all I could hear. I whipped my head around at a clocking of a gun, a black handheld being pointed straight at my head. A middle-aged man, balding and yellow tooth smirked at me, his breath reeking of alcohol. 

"Hey sweetie, you've grown up so much." 

~

Jimin had been the closest to the school when it happened. He had been out grabbing a coffee at a nearby cafe when a woman rushed into the store, hair a mess and breathing frantically as if she had been running. Jimin hadn’t been paying all that much attention to her until he heard what she had to say. 

"Someone, help! There's a shooter at the high school!" Jimin was rushing out the door as soon as the words left her mouth, his mind racing as his coffee cup was disregarded. The hot liquid falling to the floor, spilling on the tile, but he paid no attention. All Jimin could think about was what he would do if he lost her. He hadn't seen her in two days, and after Namjoon explained what happened when she came to visit them at bighit, he knew she didn't want to see them. He wouldn't know what he would do if she got shot. If her last memory of him, and the other six boys was that none of them even wanted her in the first place. Jimin, after seeing the flashing lights on ambulances and cop cars decided it would be best not to take his chance on the streets. He didn't know what he would do, how he would do it. But he knew he was going to save her. No matter what it took.

Namjoon had been the first one to get the call. At the time he was in a meeting with the other boys and Bang, while Jimin went on a coffee run. Not so much because they needed coffee, but Jimin had stated that he needed to clear his head before the meeting. 

"Where the hell is Jimin," Yoongi scoffed looking at his watch just as Namjoons phone started to buzz. Usually, he wouldn't bring his phone into these types of meetings, but he hadn't heard from (Y/N) in almost 48 hours. He was worried about her. They all were. 

"Is that her?" Hoseok asked as Namjoon picked up the phone. Instead of the girl's voice, however, he was met with a police officer. All five boys watched as Namjoons face paled, his eyebrows scrunching together in confusion, as he pulled the phone away from his ear.

"Namjoon," Taehyung asked, standing up from his seat. The words seemed to knock him out of his shock as he motioned to all the boys, 

"let's go." Bang stood from his chair, 

"Wait! Namjoon you can't just leave." Namjoon turned to his manager just as he was about to step out of the room. 

"There's a shooter at the school. The same school (Y/N)’s at right now. We’re leaving." Without another word Namjoon was gone, a series of shouts came from the other boys, but nevertheless, they all followed Namjoon out of the building. Once the boys had gotten to the school Taehyung was jumping out of the car before Namjoon could even park. Countless parents and a few students who were able to escape stood outside while police ushered to the crowd to stay calm. Tae rushed towards the police line only to be stopped by an officer. 

"Sir, you can't go any further, there's an active shooter inside." Taehyung tried to swallow his comment, he really did. But she was inside, and he could feel his mind start to cloud over with anger at the mere thought of her getting hurt. He didn't know how to handle it, so he projected it onto the best person to blame. 

"You know who else is inside? My kid. Why are you outside instead of in there?" The officer glared at the man as Taehyung motioned towards the school. 

"Sir, that's not my job. I'm in charge of establishing a perimeter while the first response team can only go inside at the moment." Yoongi appeared at Tae's side once noticing the fight. 

"Where is the first response team?" Yoongi asked fist clenched in anger. 

"They aren't here yet. They're on their way." The two members both started shouting separate profanities at the police officer. Both mad, angry, and frustrated with the prospect of the situation. Jin at the moment was doing his best not to cry, desperately gripping onto Namjoons hand as he watched students rush out of the school. Hands over their head to show that they weren't a threat. Every time a student left the doors he prayed one of them would be her, but they never were, and with each passing student he could only think of the worst-case scenario. If only he had stopped her at BigHit. Little did he know Namjoon was thinking the same thing. Blaming himself for not telling her the truth, blaming BigHit for manipulating a child for the boy bands popularity.  Hoseok was furiously texting and calling Jimin, sometimes shouting into the phone to get his ass over to the school. Why the hell wasn't he picking up his phone? Jungkook quietly stood by himself. Not knowing how to process the events unfolding in front of him. He was so worried about you and overwhelmed by this scenario. Yet there was nothing he could do but wait for you. He knew you'd come out okay, you had to.

~

"D-Dad?" The words felt so foreign on my tongue, and calling the man in front of me such a term made me want to gag. Especially when he had a pistol pointed at my forehead. "Wha-what? Why are you here, why now?" He smiled at me as if this was a normal situation for him. 

"Really honey? Nice to see you too.” He remarked, the gun shaking slightly with his body as he chuckled. “As for your other question, I thought you would have figured it out by now." I looked at him in confusion and he shrugged, the gun tilting with a shake of his shoulders. "I sent you clues and everything doll." My eyes widened at his statement and I took a hesitant step back, 

"the messages? Those were from you?" The edge of his lips rose in a smirk, his cracked teeth parting as he talked in a sing-song voice. 

"There's more." More? What more could there be? Why would he even come here, risk everything and get brought to jail, and the boys were rich they could win any court case and put him behind bars for life. As if a lightbulb went off in my head I looked up at the man, hurt evident in my eyes. 

"You're here for the money. You started messaging me after I got adopted, you want ransom?" He smiled, 

"ding, ding ding. That's my girl. Always knew you were smart." I backed away slightly despite the gun pointed at my body. 

"Don't call me that. You gave up any right to even associate yourself with me when you left me to fend for myself." 

"Stop moving, and don't be so childish." He hissed out, "let's go, we're leaving." I scoffed at him as he pushed me by the shoulder, turning me around so the gun was directly hitting my shoulder blade. "We? The whole school is probably surrounded by police, what are you going to do." He pushed harder with the gun and I whimpered at the added pressure but clearly noticed his lack of a plan. "You wouldn't shoot me. You need me alive if you want money." He harshly spun me around, his nails digging into my shoulder blade while he glared at me with dark eyes. Before I could react, his flaky hand was wrapped against my throat, cutting off my air-flow. Despite the fight, I pulled my pushing and clawing at his skin doing little to slow him down. To stop my fighting he roughly slammed my back against the closest wall, the shock reverberating through my chest and all of the wind being knocked out of my lungs. "You've got this all wrong, dear daughter of mine. I have nothing left to lose." A dark tint glinted in his eyes as he spoke, one of pure manic and madness. "If this goes south, I'm killing the both of us. Your mother would be so proud." He pushed the gun toward my face. "Open your mouth." I rapidly shook my head, water droplets forming in my eyes as I realized the severity of the situation. "Open!" He screamed, shaking my body and squeezing my neck harder making it difficult to breathe. As if on instinct I opened my mouth and he pushed the barrel past my teeth and deep into my throat. I sobbed at his actions, choking against the metal of the weapon. "Don't do anything stupid, I won't be asking nicely." He seethed, dropping my body as I collapsed to the floor, coughing and gasping for air, rubbing at the bruise starting to form on my neck. "Get up," He grabbed me by my ponytail, pulling me up from the floor and dragging me with him. Regret instantly washed over me like a tidal wave, I shouldn't have run from the boys. It was stupid and childish I should have talked to them, but then again they could have told me the truth from the beginning. The idea of him killing me started to sink in, I might actually die here. I'm so sorry Namjoon, I'm sorry Jin, Yoongi, Hoseok, Taehyung, Jimin, Jungkook. 

A plan started forming in my head, and I knew what I was doing was stupid, but if I was going to die, he was going to die too. A loud sob interrupted me from my thoughts as the grip on my hair loosened. "Did you hear that? Is it one of your friends?" He turned down a corner and placed his ear next to a closed-door were the sobs were coming from. "Let's pay them a visit." In an instant, he threw his body at the door, shot the door handle, kicked the wood until finally, it collapsed. He ran into the room in a wild frenzy and started blindly shooting. I gaped at the scene in horror, my fight or flight instincts taking in as I grabbed the closest thing next to me and threw it at him. Thankfully my aim wasn't as bad as I thought because the stapler hit him square in the forehead. Shocking him so much that he fell to the floor and dropped the gun. 

"Go!" I shouted, towards the students, most of whom were unharmed except for one boy who was clutching at his bleeding shoulder. I rushed forward towards the groaning man laying on his back, grabbing his gun and running out of the room. Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I saw the exit, but something in the back of my brain was screaming at me. Zara and Amber! Without a second thought, I ran towards the math wing running into the classroom for abstract algebra only to find it empty. Thank God. I rushed out of the room into the hallway, my shoes squeaking down the polished floor, breathing unsteady as I looked left and right for any search of him. Palms clammy around the black weapon in my grasp. A separate crash made me jump, and I rapidly searched the hallways, gun pointing in all directions. As the hallways went quiet, I dropped the gun, holding it at my side as I rushed around the corner. Before I knew what was happening an arm had wrapped around my throat, a pathetic scream filling my ears, and I realized it was my own. The gun flew from my hands as I clawed at the muscle restricting my airways. 

"You're a little cunt you know that?" He harshly threw me to the floor, my head smacking the floor with a harsh, thud! "I don't know whether to be proud of your aim or to kill you for attacking your father." I gathered up my courage, pushing myself up on my knees hissing out, 

"you aren't my father." His body stiffened as he grabbed the gun, 

"I'm going to fucking kill you." He pulled me up by the scruff of my black sweater and on instinct, I sunk my teeth as hard as I could into his hand. His grip loosening enough so I could push his hand away. If there was anything I learned from living with a monster like him, it was that he hated spit. I gargled as much fleam, and saliva into my mouth as possible then spit right onto his face as he shouted in disgust. I grabbed the gun out of his grip as he screamed and as if on instinct I blindly shot. The pressure of the gun sending me falling onto my butt. My ears ringing, and head pounding as all of my senses started to blur. I looked up at the man to see him gripping onto his shoulder in pain, "you shot me?" he spoke almost as if it was a question, crimson blood leaking through his hands and shirt. Oh my God, I just shot someone. "You bitch," more tears started to form in my eyes and I couldn't move. Despite watching him lunge at me, all I could focus on was the blood gushing from the wound that I caused. I shot someone. He lunged at me, bloodstained hands reaching out to grab at me, just before he could someone rushed at the man. A blurry mess of two people entangled in a struggle until the stranger gave him a swift blow to the cheek, his body flopping to the floor. More people started to rush by me, blurs of blue and black, more men with guns. It wasn't until warm hands were wrapping around mine, gently taking the gun away from me that I noticed I was shaking. Tremors causing my hands to barely even stay still. 

"(Y/N)," I looked up and make eye contact with hazelnut orbs, pink lips parted as if he was about to cry.

"Jimin?" A choked sob escaped my throat and before I knew it I'm launching myself into his arms. Desperately clutching onto his shirt as tears track onto his skin. I was being picked up off the ground practically effortlessly by Jimin, my legs wrapping around his waist at the movement. 

"I got you," he muttered and I peeked up at him from his shoulder, watching as his pupils started to water, heavy lights fading into his eyes. A sudden pain hits my head as if a hammer was being slammed against a glass ball. Immediately I start whimpering, digging my face into the crook of his neck. 

"Jimin, everything hurts. My head." Another set of choked sobs escapes my mouth however that only causes a feeling of burning liquid acid in my throat. Before I know it, I’m outside, still being carried by Jimin. "Jimin put me down please," I mumble and he reluctantly does so, staying close by my side as I travel down the steps, six boys rushing at me despite the angered shouts of the police. Yoongi gets to me first, his arms wrapping around my torso, the familiar scent of mint and cinnamon engulfing my senses as I wrap my arms around his neck. My body racking with sobs as several other pairs of arms join us before I finally go slack in their arms. Rapid mumbles, shouts, and cries are going through my ears. ‘We’re never leaving you alone again,’ and ‘i’m so sorry.’ The latter was said a lot. My body relaxes against the boys, just as they start to pull away I stumble and lean against Tae.  

"I hit my head," I mumble barely above a whisper and just as I spoke the words he scoops me up bridal style, yet I'm too tired to care about how embarrassing it is. I'm sat at the edge of an open ambulance, a woman examining me. Rubbing at my forehead, asking what hurts, and repairing some minor cuts and bruises. She stops at my neck however, her hands becoming softer as she grazes the skin. 

“She most likely has a concussion, and her esophagus is damaged so she might have trouble talking. I can't do much, but you should bring her to the hospital to get her head checked.” The boys let out a chorus of thank yous, but I wasn't paying any attention to her. Rather the bloodshot men in front of me, eyes beet red and swollen from crying, hanging on to every word the woman said. The woman wraps a blanket around me then leaves as she’s called towards another student. I catch my reflection from the back of a parked car. I'm a mess. Dried blood streaks painted randomly across my face as if someone had given up on trying to wipe them away. My neck looks swollen, and there's a constant pain in the back of my throat. 

Gentle, calloused hands are wrapped around my face, rubbing circles at my cheeks as Namjoon places a kiss on my forehead. I'm too tired to move away from the gesture and instead relish in it. 

"I'm so sorry," Namjoon says once again, rubbing gentle circles on my cheeks. Blurry eyed I look up to Namjoon then the boys, a sudden burst of energy clouding my ability to reason. 

"Th-” I'm shocked at the sound of my voice. Broken, cracked, and unwanted pain makes me wince. 

“Hey, it’s okay. Don't talk if it hurts.” Hoseok is at my side, gently rubbing my back while I clear my throat and speak barely above a whisper. 

“That was my birth father. He shot up the school. He wanted to use me, to get money from you." Suga sits on the opposite side of Hobi, a gritted look upon his face.

"He's never going to get anywhere fucking near you when we're done with him” The venom behind his tone was noticeable but what surprised me was when Jungkook spoke up. 

“That bastard will be rotting behind bars for the rest of his shit life.” I nodded and slipped the blanket off, 

"please, can we just go home. Together."

~

Apparently, there are these things called laws that frown upon citizens shooting a gun. So instead of going home, I was sent to the police station, a young police officer interviewed me, his nervous voice sounding almost as anxious as my own. Namjoon was instantly calling his best lawyer, and it felt nice to have another person helping me out with the questions, and advising me what to say. Huh, I guess rich privilege is nice sometimes. The officer after questioning me labeled the scenario as one of unavoidable danger but did warn me that I would be called into court for shooting a firearm whether or not it was out of self-defense. Either to stand up for my actions, or testify against my fathers. 

After what felt like hours, I was finally back to the comfort of the soft, plush couch. I was sandwiched between Jimin and Hoseok, the five other boys surrounding us. I huddled myself into a ball, a fluffy grey blanket wrapping me up into a makeshift baby burrito. 

"I'm sorry." I finally spoke up, getting a strange look from Jimin who was sitting next to me. 

"For what? Almost dying?" Jimin aggressively asked while I downcasted my eyes. 

"For running away. For not telling you about the messages. I should have seen this coming, he gave me so many warning signs-."  Hobi gently grabbed my arm, turning me to face him. 

"What messages?" I bit my lip, turmoil, and regret spreading through my stomach and up my throat. 

"I kept getting anonymous messages, saying things like, see you soon, and I'm coming for you." Namjoon instantly was perking up from his seat across the room. 

"What? Why didn't you tell us?" 

"I don't know. It's just that I've always felt like such a bother my whole life, and you have so much on your plate. I didn’t want to bother you. It's hard to adjust from being nothing to having someone care about you so suddenly. " I paused, questioning my word choice. "Or at least, I think you guys care." Jungkook gently grabbed my hand turning me to face him, 

"(Y/N), last week you asked us why we adopted you. It’s because we love you. We want you here." The dripping tears start to form before I can even stop them, yes from his words, but he was also looking me straight in the eyes as he spoke. I had no doubt in my mind he was telling the truth. 

"Adopting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, to us," Yoongi spoke up while the other boys nodded in confirmation. 

"(Y/N), when we found out about the shooter. We were all horrified. I don't know what we would have done if you got killed." Taehyung vocalized, 

How did I get so lucky to have this group? Despite the ups and downs, I trusted them, Jimin practically saved my life today. Taehyung treated me like a daughter, Jungkook not only picked me up from a party at a ridiculous time but let my friends puke in his car. Yoongi formed a real relationship with me, Jin always treated me with kindness and gave me an extra sugar rush, and Hoseok never failed to lighten up my day. Namjoon since the beginning had always tried to help me fit in, to help me feel welcome. 

"I never knew what a real family was like. Until I met you." A chorus of awe’s erupted from the group and before I knew it I was being squished between the seven boys in a group hug. Warm arms enveloping me in a loving embrace. At that moment I fully understood what it meant to have a family, to be loved. 

"Alright who forgot to put on deodorant this morning?" Hoseok shouted, accusingly sniffing at Jin who smacked him on the back of the head. 

I wouldn't trade these seven idiots for the world. 

Taglist: @xxqueenwxtchxx @ayyeaestheticgirl18 @im-emo-motherfuckers@kamirichibi  @officiallyza @treetops68 @there-could-be-stairs  @acklesgold @bisoo-ausucre @bts-edits-bitch @celestial-m00n @springdayblink @joyful-jimin @vannilacake  @youcantbesiriusremus @i-like-puppy-mg@namjoonsslutakakoreanmanswhore  @officiallyza@odditiesanddeities

[icariamusing]

CHARACTER BASICS

FACECLAIM: Sebastian Stan

NAME: Wesley Sullivan

AGE: 31

BIRTHDAY: September 27, 1989

OCCUPATION: Coding Engineer

HOMETOWN: Icaria, Greece

PETS: 

POWERS

The ability of strength manipulation. He can enhance someone’s strength or decrease it. 

BIOGRAPHY

(Trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence).

Childhood wasn’t something that Wesley really liked to look back on much. His mother Meredith had honestly done the best that she could, but she was a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage due to her foolish notion of love when she was eighteen. Like many young relationships, when the stress of adulthood hit, the passion was lost along with understanding. Sacrifices and compromises had to be made which made both young adults bitter about dreams they had to push off or cut out all together. It was this unhappiness that led Meredith to cheating on her husband with Ares. He looked like a regular, attractive male in a dive bar, but she would eventually discover that he was a Greek God that was now the father of her child. Not ready to deal with the repercussions of her actions, Meredith lied to Gregory that the baby was his. Elation and excitement once again filled their marriage, and the young mother thought that maybe a baby would get them on the right track again. She silently thanked Ares for his unintentional gift.

That was until around the time Wesley was four and Gregory was laid off from his job. Since he was a man with no college degree finding a job that met his inflated sense of self worth was nearly impossible. Instead of being a man of the house and taking anything he could get in stride to provide for his family, Greg turned to alcohol which made his already nasty temper worse. For the first two years it was just constant yelling in the home. Wesley quickly learned after a string of insults floated his way when he tried to show his father that he could not only spell his name perfectly but count all the way to twenty all on his own. Most fathers would be impressed at this skill being displayed by such a young age, but Gregory just called him a nuisance.

There wasn’t much time for tears though because by six things escalated from screaming to violence. Wesley as a small boy would do all he could to protect his mother, but she either made sure he left or he was easily pushed aside. It was during one horrible night in particular that Wesley discovered just how different he was. His father was belligerent again and ready to start his weekly terror on Meredith. That night Wesley refused to go away and instead firmly stood in front of his mother glaring at the man he long ago stopped calling dad unless he had to. When Gregory tried to push his son away, it felt like a feather tickling Wesley’s skin. Although he wouldn’t understand it until much later in life, that moment was the first time the young boy manipulated someone’s strength.

Fortunately Ares found them again by the time Wesley was seven and helped get them away from Gregory. It didn’t take long for Meredith to become pregnant again, and her son was so excited for a younger sibling. There was anger deep in his heart, but the boy refused to let it show after seeing it so often from his father. Instead he focused on using it to protect his family as much as possible.  When Gianna was born, Wesley tried his hardest to be the best big brother he could be. Sure, they had sibling squabbles sometimes, but the boy always looked out for his sister as much as he could. Life once it was just the three of them turned around drastically. Wesley was able to grow up like a normal kid. He became a great football player, excelled in school, and even got a side job at a pizza place to help his mom with bills from time to time.

Things were going great until his mom died when he was eighteen. Right then, Wesley’s life stopped. Instead of going to Ohio State College on a football scholarship, the boy quickly learned that he was going to Icaria to take care of his sister. Instead of being angry or bitter about it, Wesley just listened to Ares and planned to do whatever he could to give Gianna a good life. So, he went to Icaria University while working at Icaria Books to make sure they had enough money for every day things. They’d gotten a some money from their Mother’s life insurance which Wesley used to cover rent in the small apartment and gave them emergency funds.

Since he spent a good amount of his nights at home watching his sister, Wesley was able to really focus on coding. Computers were always something he loved being on for gaming, so when he learned in college that he could major in coding engineering the boy jumped at the chance. Little did he know just how good he’d be at it. Wesley wound up being one of the best coders in the industry and many application developers were wanting to hire him.

Life was going steadily as he got older. While he loved his sister, he understood her need to leave the island, so he just funneled her money as often as she’d accept it while continuing his own life. He traveled a lot between Icaria and California and was happy being a desirable bachelor until he met Raye. For two years Wesley enjoyed being in love and was so happy that he asked the woman to marry him. Like many previous times in his life though reality pulled him harshly back down to reality. His fiancé not only broke his heart by ending the engagement but cheated on him. After a bad fight, Wesley left in anger and wound up in a car accident which was what brought his sister back home.

I take being a big brother very seriously.

LEX | SHE/HER | 30 | EST

[icarialex]

(Sebastian Stan, CisMale, he/him) ⌇ have you seen Wesley Sullivan around icaria? they are the 31 year old child of Ares. they remind me of computer screens, the smell of sandalwood, dad jokes, and a nicely fitted suit. ( Lex / 29 / EST / she/her )

I refuse to become anything like you. 

Full Name: Wesley Sullivan

Age: Thirty-one 

Birthday: September 27th 

Parents: Meredith Sullivan 

Godly Ability - Wesley possesses the ability of strength manipulation. He can enhance someone’s strength or decrease it. 

I will live up to the reputation of my name. 

(Trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence). 

Childhood wasn’t something that Wesley really liked to look back on much. His mother Meredith had honestly done the best that she could, but she was a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage due to her foolish notion of love when she was eighteen. Like many young relationships, when the stress of adulthood hit, the passion was lost along with understanding. Sacrifices and compromises had to be made which made both young adults bitter about dreams they had to push off or cut out all together. It was this unhappiness that led Meredith to cheating on her husband with Ares. He looked like a regular, attractive male in a dive bar, but she would eventually discover that he was a Greek God that was now the father of her child. Not ready to deal with the repercussions of her actions, Meredith lied to Gregory that the baby was his. Elation and excitement once again filled their marriage, and the young mother thought that maybe a baby would get them on the right track again. She silently thanked Ares for his unintentional gift. 

That was until around the time Wesley was four and Gregory was laid off from his job. Since he was a man with no college degree finding a job that met his inflated sense of self worth was nearly impossible. Instead of being a man of the house and taking anything he could get in stride to provide for his family, Greg turned to alcohol which made his already nasty temper worse. For the first two years it was just constant yelling in the home. Wesley quickly learned after a string of insults floated his way when he tried to show his father that he could not only spell his name perfectly but count all the way to twenty all on his own. Most fathers would be impressed at this skill being displayed by such a young age, but Gregory just called him a nuisance. 

There wasn’t much time for tears though because by six things escalated from screaming to violence. Wesley as a small boy would do all he could to protect his mother, but she either made sure he left or he was easily pushed aside. It was during one horrible night in particular that Wesley discovered just how different he was. His father was belligerent again and ready to start his weekly terror on Meredith. That night Wesley refused to go away and instead firmly stood in front of his mother glaring at the man he long ago stopped calling dad unless he had to. When Gregory tried to push his son away, it felt like a feather tickling Wesley’s skin. Although he wouldn’t understand it until much later in life, that moment was the first time the young boy manipulated someone’s strength. 

Fortunately Ares found them again by the time Wesley was seven and helped get them away from Gregory. It didn’t take long for Meredith to become pregnant again, and her son was so excited for a younger sibling. There was anger deep in his heart, but the boy refused to let it show after seeing it so often from his father. Instead he focused on using it to protect his family as much as possible.  When Gianna was born, Wesley tried his hardest to be the best big brother he could be. Sure, they had sibling squabbles sometimes, but the boy always looked out for his sister as much as he could. Life once it was just the three of them turned around drastically. Wesley was able to grow up like a normal kid. He became a great football player, excelled in school, and even got a side job at a pizza place to help his mom with bills from time to time. 

Things were going great until his mom died when he was eighteen. Right then, Wesley’s life stopped. Instead of going to Ohio State College on a football scholarship, the boy quickly learned that he was going to Icaria to take care of his sister. Instead of being angry or bitter about it, Wesley just listened to Ares and planned to do whatever he could to give Gianna a good life. So, he went to Icaria University while working at Icaria Books to make sure they had enough money for every day things. They’d gotten a some money from their Mother’s life insurance which Wesley used to cover rent in the small apartment and gave them emergency funds. 

Since he spent a good amount of his nights at home watching his sister, Wesley was able to really focus on coding. Computers were always something he loved being on for gaming, so when he learned in college that he could major in coding engineering the boy jumped at the chance. Little did he know just how good he’d be at it. Wesley wound up being one of the best coders in the industry and many application developers were wanting to hire him. 

Life was going steadily as he got older. While he loved his sister, he understood her need to leave the island, so he just funneled her money as often as she’d accept it while continuing his own life. He traveled a lot between Icaria and California and was happy being a desirable bachelor until he met Raye. For two years Wesley enjoyed being in love and was so happy that he asked the woman to marry him. Like many previous times in his life though reality pulled him harshly back down to reality. His fiancé not only broke his heart by ending the engagement but cheated on him. After a bad fight, Wesley left in anger and wound up in a car accident which was what brought his sister back home. 

I take being a big brother very seriously. 

Wesley is a huge goofball. While there is heaviness in his heart from events in his life, he doesn’t like to let anger or bitterness overtake him. He saw what that did to Gregory, and instead just puts his energy in trying to pick things back up again. 

He didn’t have much of a young adult life. Going out drinking with college buddies or partying wasn’t a thing because he was taking care of Gianna. It wasn’t something he really desired though. He found watching his sister grow up and making her happy much more rewarding. 

Wesley is very successful professionally. His work allows him to make a lot of money which he used to buy a large house in Icaria. He also sets money aside for those that he loves whenever possible. 

He’s definitely a guy who likes looking good. He loves a good tailored suit and looking hot whenever possible, but he isn’t a guy that acts like he knows how hot he is. It’s more something he does to make him feel good about himself.  

[a-tragedy-told-in-metals]

A Tragedy Told In Metals: Gold & Lead Chapter 2: Even While Terrified

Chapter 2 Link on AO3

Playlist (Youtube) Playlist (Spotify) Songs 3-5

CWs: Child abuse, domestic violence, unintentional ableism, kidnapping, panic attacks, & grooming

Chapter 1

When Toni was seven years old she found herself in her father’s office. she looked at his face he looked so scary framed in the backlight of the window. Toni babbled to him about something to do with an idea about smaller processor chips.

“Antonia!” He shouted her name then his voice got very tired, “You seem to think I care what you theorize. If you don’t actually do something useful what is the point, you have to be productive get it? Every day.”

Toni was shocked. The dismissal was normal, she expected it. But yelling was usually only for her mother and sometimes Jarvis. But she just nodded. And that was the norm after that. Apparently, Toni thought now she must be old enough to handle it. She just had to work harder so he wouldn’t have a reason to yell.

Her mother was never the same day to day. Some days she would hold Toni tell her stories, tell her about her family, let Toni tell her about whatever science thing she was into. They would watch crap tv and eat food, not on a diet plan. Other days she was cold and didn’t talk at all. Then there were the nights her mother would cry and yell and cry. But after the crying stopped she put her makeup back on. Fixed her hair, and smiled. “Sorry Antonia bad day sweetheart.”

The only thing that stayed the same was a small bracelet it was made of some cheap alloy metal that isn't even shiny anymore, it had a small bead with the word home on it it was from her parents the only thing she still held on to from her childhood. She never took it off and Toni always held in her hands the days her mom remembered children liked to be held. The bracelet was special, one constant thing.

That year was also Toni’s second Kidnapping well one where they actually got her long enough to seek a ransom. They wanted weapons. Toni had found herself in one of the family cars but Jarvis was not driving. She had screamed to stop but they had never listened. They took her a warehouse and tied her down. Toni was never able to get a real breath in no matter how much air she sucked in the whole time. It hurt her chest too much. But Toni had also been quiet and still so they ignored her. The kidnapper's talked about how they wanted to bomb Congress and other important people.

When they finally put her back in the car and took her home Toni after what she later learned was four days she had been in darkness the light all seemed too bright. Toni was allowed to see a therapist for a few months after that. Her father seemed genuinely pleased Toni had paid attention to what the terrorist said, all plots were stopped.

“You were just like Captain Rogers. Helping get the bad guys, just like we do” Howard said.

That made Toni blush, she had finally done something good.

That didn’t last though

One day Toni had come to them and she started to cry she didn’t want to be in the dark anymore. Her father had rolled his eyes “turn the light on for now?”

“I'll come to lay with you now,”  her mother said, “But sweetheart you have to grow out of it.”

The lesson her parents wanted to teach was clear, no matter how much you hurt you just move on. You shut it down. But she couldn't, Toni didn’t know how. So she cried. She cried when her dad ignored her. She cried when her friends broke her things. But she did it in her room with the door shut.

Sometimes Jarvis would come in and he would sit next to Toni bring her candy he’d ruffle her hair and let her cry. Ana Jarvis would even send over baked goods for Toni when she was having particularly bad weeks.

One day the sound of the locking door sent shivers down her spine. Her breathing caught and her hands shook. Curled halfway on the floor her breath never reached her lungs.

“Toni” Jarvis said keeling down.

“Jarvis” Toni huffed out between gasps.

“Your okay, you’re safe here. It’s okay”

“Mhmm” Toni nodded.

“Breath deep with me okay, come on, that's it”

Toni breathed eventually it reached her for lungs real, she didn’t feel better just exhausted.

“You're okay. Just a bit of shell shock, you’ll be fine.”

Toni just nodded.

~~~~~

When Toni was eight Maria’s episodes started. They were super scary because nothing Toni said her mom really seemed to hear. She would ramble about things, and run around and seemed really excited about things but Toni couldn’t really follow. Most of the time Jarvis would let her leave and he would handle it. Her dad never helped when it happened it was Toni’s job to “deal with your mother’.

“Young miss, she is ill,” Jarvis said sighing for the second time that month he had to try and convince Toni it was okay when it wasn’t. Jarvis wanted to try and convince Maria to get help but he knew she never would. He looked at Toni who looked too tired for eight.

“I know,” Toni said staring at Jarvis wishing he could make it all go away.

One of the episodes that could never leave Toni or Jarvis’s mind was when Toni had found herself pinned to the bed by a pillow shoved into her chest. It didn’t matter when she said stop or how she wiggled her mom wouldn’t let her up. Toni had smiled though because her mom was trying to be nice of course, she just didn’t understand that it hurt Toni. At least that’s what she told herself over and over, her mom didn’t know so it was okay.

Toni had to start going to all the garden teas, the parties and the holiday balls for the whole time now. She used to get to leave partway through with Jarvis but now she had to stand around smiling watching the dizzying display of fancy dresses and handshakes. Her Father would discuss business deals and Her mom would laugh funny. Whenever Toni came up they said how bright she was and how she looked just like her father but cuter, then they would do that funny again.

The worst part of the parties was her mom looked fake like she had painted on a new person made of sharp edges and red lips, none of the good parts of her mom left. The only real thing was the bracelet all cheap metal and scuff marks.

Toni also mastered the skills of eavesdropping this year. There were two ways you could do this. One was to let people forget you were in the room, this was most effective when the other people had been drinking. The other was to stand to the side of a door, then you could hear but the didn’t know you could. This is how she learned that Peggy was part of a group called SHIELD, another was that her Father made bombs that had accidentally killed a bunch of kids. Toni had to admit she didn’t like the idea of dead kids much.

~~~~~

When Toni turned nine the went on a trip to tour Stark Factories. Toni was in love with all the machines. They whipped around in circles assembling all kinds of tech. She liked to watch the techs as they went over every inch of the new products, or read the formulas behind different types of plastics and alloys.

Seeing new places was also cool, she had been on vacations before but they usually to other Stark houses. This time she got to go to huge hotels in all kinds of places. The crowds were a lot but it was so cool to be in the thick of life.

The worst part of all of this was her father's business partners. Toni decided on this trip she didn’t much like the military, and that most men are just like her dad. One day she had been in a factory with her dad discussing some new weapon.

“You know when made the atom bomb I thought that would be the end to this General. But no! we keep having to fight forever”

“If you ever make that weapon we might not even need us anymore I’d be out of a job” The general joked.

“It’s sad that civilians must deal with the destruction, but collateral damage is what it is.”

The other military men nodded their heads. Toni felt ill how was it fair to kill people who had nothing to do with it. She understood her dad wanted what was best, but why did the have to hurt people.

One of the army men turned to face Toni. Her face went pale and eyes wide.

“Our talk scare you?” Army man asked.

Toni nodded.

“Yeah, I guess you’re just a little girl. You’ll get it one day. But for now, stay out of my goddamn way” The man shoved Toni aside and left with the door Toni had pinned herself against.

After they returned from the trip Toni followed Howard into his lab.

“Why are you killing innocent people?” Toni asked straight to the point.

“You wouldn’t understand. You have never seen a war child. You don’t know that we do what must be done.”

“But dad couldn’t we do something to help them without killing them!”

He raised his face from the papers he was reading eyes filled with anger.

“Look if you are really worth the gift you were given you would suck it up. You are no Stark if you are led by idealism. Life isn’t nice or fair, we have to be made of iron to rule it”

Toni looked blankly into his eyes. Toni decided he didn’t deserve a nickname. So from then on, he was just Howard.

Toni was glad that Aunt Peggy still came pretty frequently with her spy friends.  Every visit included new steve and bucky stories, Aunt Peggy always had gifts. Her armour fell when they sat in her room and looked at Aunt  Peggy’s journals or Toni told her about the kids harassing her at school. But Toni watched the armour rise when Aunt Peggy met Howard and any SHIELD people following her. Never let them see her break.

That summer Howard's’ business partner Obadiah Stane seemed to be an ever-present face in the mansion. He bought Toni lavish gifts. He even told her to call him Obie, inviting Toni to use a nickname which made her stomach do flips of excitement.

Between Obie and her mom someone who was now generally willing to pay attention to her. Which was new. Obie bought ice cream, and much to her Mother's disapproval they ate quite a bit of it. Obie told her she was beautiful, which made her blush. Anytime he was there he never yelled, he never checked out. He drank like Howard did but never got loud or mean. Toni even liked it when he called her Antonia. She lived for his visits as much as Peggy’s. She had hope, Maybe Obie would love her, all the time.

One night they were playing chess in one of the parlours. Music drifted from the walls and Maria hummed along with it.

“Check,” Antonia said with a smile

“You know Antonia?” Obie said

“What?”

“You may be better than Howard at this game.” He said “checkmate” and knocked his king over.

Toni smiled and flapped her hands up and down, then quickly stopped glancing around for Howard.

“You win honey?” Maria asked.

“Yes, mom,” Toni said.

“Good,” Maria said turning her gaze away.

Toni sighed She turned back to Obie her hair falling in front of her exasperated face.

He brushed it off softly. They both smiled Toni pressed her face into his hand. Warmth running through her at the kind touch.

~~~~~

The end of the school year when she was ten was one of the better ones. Toni had tried so hard to do everything right and it actually went okay. The classwork was easy. Howard did like this Straight-A report cards and suggestions at the end of the year to skip another grade got her a real smile that wasn’t followed by yelling for a whole day. Her mom bought her toys, and they weren’t even Captain America.

The third night of that summer her mom had a particularly bad episode rambling about scissors and yelling, trying to make Toni do something. Once she had finally gone to sleep. Antonia stood on the balcony outside her room her head burned but she also felt incredibly numb. She was ten and she was already so tired. A few days had been good and then this.

Jarvis came out He looked at her she was staring out into the long drive and ice burned in his heart. Toni’s slightly vacant eyes and nervous hands made her look much to like her mother. He cleared his throat and placed his hand on her shoulder she jumped.

“You were very brave Tonight young miss” he praised passing her a bag of Haribo Gummy bears.

“Yes, Jarvis.” She said.

He walked back inside.

She sat and ripped open the bag and placed one into her mouth she cried softly as she prayed for Steve to be found, maybe he could help her.

~~~~~

That December at school she was still majorly unpopular but at least they called her Toni or Stark now proving the kids actually listened to her and remembered what she said.

That day she sat humming at her desk when a tall boy a few years older sat on her desk, he was Tiberius Stone his dad built army things just like hers. He was super popular everyone wanted to be his friend.

“You the Stark girl right?” He said voice smooth.

“Yeah, what do you want?” Toni asked everyone at school hated her, why would he talk to her?

“Your father is very important.” He said.

“Yes,” She smiled as gracefully as she could trying to will him to go away.

“Well, I have to go to your Mother and Father’s Christmas ball.”

He dramatically rolled his eye Toni’s smile became more genuine at that gesture.

“I was wondering if you would be there. Your too young to do any side partying but my general crowd aren’t invited to this one.”

Toni scrunched her eyebrows confused,

“Aww don’t worry. I just want to know if you’ll hang with me, I doubt you actually enjoy these balls?”

“Course not.” She said.

“Well then, look for me around we can mock the silly ways the adults' act”

Toni felt excited he actually wanted to talk to her, maybe the ball wouldn’t suck.

The Christmas ball was generally a dull affair. But this year was much better. Obie had been there and had bought her earrings that glittered. Toni got dressed in a red dress her long hair was braided down her back. Her family smiled and looked as important and put together as possible. As her parents wined and dined their so-called friends.

Toni found her way over to Justin. He was watching the assembled people mill about.

“Want to guess how many of them are drunk or high already?” He said

“Sure.”

They spent the rest of the night together. Able to avoid total boredom by mocking the fancily dressed bores that populated these events.

At the end of the night, he sighed,

“I’ll tell people to back off you know? I only really have sway with some of the kids but it might help.”

“Thanks,” Toni said,

“It’s a shame if you were a little older ya know? But you too young for my kind of party.” He trailed after his parents who were shouting his name.

Toni smiled. She guessed she did look like a baby to a fifteen-year-old, but he was still impressed enough with her to do her a favour.

~~~~~

In late January Obie came to visit but the first night he went right to his room. Antonia was sulking in her room wondering why he ignored her this time, had she done something wrong?

Jarvis came in sat next to her on the bed.

“I am sorry young miss.” Jarvis breathed pulling a small box from his pocket

“For what?” Toni asked meeting his eyes.

“I’m not going to be able to save you.”

“From what?”

“I...” Jarvis started a sad smile crossing his face as he squeezed Toni’s shoulder unable to get the words out.

He opened the box and clasped a necklace around her neck. She held the charm it was a locket. Jarvis was holding her in his arms on one side and the other was Toni with her Bucky Bear. heat stung her eyes, she didn’t know what was wrong, but the fear choking her was strong.

“I love you.” He said and pat her head. He stood up to his full height looking down again at the poor child.

She nodded and stared at the floor. She wasn’t even sure when the tears started to fall, but Jarvis had never said he loved her before. She wanted to scream. She was so alone, even with the heart on top of hers the love seemed hollow. And she was filled with dread unbefitting for someone so small, the words were haunting ‘I’m not going to be able to save you.’ She went silent, too scared to move too scared to even breath.

[xwomanscornedx]

TW: domestic violence, assault, gas-lighting, trauma

I officially “met” my ex fall of Sophomore year.  We knew “of” each other before hand, but had not really had any reason to hang out or talk prior.  We had both won lead roles in our high school play, and ended up having a few scenes together.  During the several months of rehearsal, we learned we had a lot in common and were “sympatico” in many ways.  He would start a joke, and I would finish it. In improv, one of us would begin a scene and the other could pick it up perfectly. We both sang and played guitar.  He started a band.  I started an entertainment company, ect.  At the time, he was dating a friend of mine so obviously we never went past casual acquaintances because I’m not the type to interfere in a relationship – but I did develop a light crush.  After high school we stayed in contact. Sometimes he would stop over, have a beer, and watch something stupid or play video games. Other times, we just shared memes on Facebook. Two years ago, we reconnected while we were both going through hard times. We had hung out before, so I didn’t think anything of him inviting me over to hang out and have a beer.  We walked to the store, and on the way back he gently held my hand.  We got back to his place, and he pushed me against his van and kissed me hard.  From then on, we were inseparable.  After only a few months, we officially moved in together and for a while, everything was great.  Honestly, the best relationship I’ve ever had.

We were intense.  He confessed that he’d had his eye on me for quite some time, and it was like all the pent up feelings between us were coming out in full force.  Being with him felt so good, almost intoxicating.  We had plans to buy an RV when we both retired and travel the country. Hell, we were even at the point where we were looking at houses together.  He wanted his own shop, and the plan was for him to take care of the technical aspects (lead mechanic, hiring, orders) and I would handle the business aspects (payroll, customer service, bookkeeping).  I truly believed that we were each other’s happy ending.  Sadly, this was temporary.

The abuse began gradually.  I have compared it several times to a frog in boiling water.  If you put a frog directly in boiling water, it will jump out and run.  However, if you put a frog in luke warm water and slowly turn up the heat, it will eventually boil to death before it realizes it’s in danger.  Things started small:  Little comments about my weight or abilities, drinking more and more, taking the change from my change jar, ect.  Over the next year and a half, things got worse. Eventually, he was breaking things and punching walls. He would get so drunk that he couldn’t form complete sentences.  During this time, I was trying desperately to help him.  I had known him for so long and truly believed that if he just quit drinking, everything would be fine.  

Then the physical abuse began.  He broke my rib trying to crack my back, even though I begged him to stop.  He tried to set me on fire in our bathroom.  He would wake me up by pissing on my face when he was angry with me. Once, he got so mad at me for taking too long in the bathroom that he busted the door open, grabbed me by my hair, and threw me out.  I landed on my tailbone and cracked it.  To this day, I still have issues.  I performed in the Vagina Monologues with two black eyes because he was mad I was acting again and he wasn’t.  By our two year anniversary, I had quietly accepted that I would die in this apartment.  My friends had all but stopped talking to me, he cost me every job I had either by forcing me to quit, making it impossible for me to sleep, or showing up drunk and causing a scene so I couldn’t afford to leave him.  

This next paragraph is very triggering.  If you are sensitive to topics of violent rape, please don’t read this  Move on.  Scroll down.  Because yes, he did.  Sometimes, it wasn’t that “bad” I guess.  He wouldn’t allow me to sleep on the bed if I wouldn’t perform for him.  He would throw my pillow on the floor and make me sleep there, and sometimes if I was lucky I could just opt for the couch instead.  One thing was for sure, when he was in those moods it was my choice to either have sex with him or find somewhere else to sleep in my own home.  Other times, I wasn’t so lucky.  The worst one I only have vague clips of memory from.  I can’t even remember how we got to this point.  But I do remember him on top of me, spitting in my face, and screaming how much he hated me.  I started to cry because it hurt.  I was bleeding.  I was begging him to stop and praying for it to be over quick if he didn’t. And he just hawked a loogie in my eye and put a pillow over my head so he “wouldn’t have to look at that (my) ugly face”.  I cried so hard I eventually just went out of my head.  I wasn’t there, mentally, and honestly don’t remember much after that moment.  I know he was eventually tired of me and pushed himself away from me to sleep.  In the morning I was so sore it was hard to walk.  Hard to pee.  Hard to wear underwear.  I wanted to die.  

Honestly, there’s more abuse than even this.  Some things, however, are still too painful to discuss and some I am remembering slowly.  As anyone who has worked with trauma victims before will tell you, our brain blocks out some things that are just too much for it do deal with.  It’s known as cognitive dissidence.  

On July 25th, we had another fight.  I wanted to go to bed early because I had a 9am interview.  He wanted to stay up, listen to music loudly, and have sex.  One thing you may or may not know, I am sterile.  I can’t have kids.  I tried to sleep through him, but about an hour after I laid down he barged into the bedroom, turned on all the lights, and began grabbing at me and telling me how he was going to “breed” me.  I pushed him off of me, which made him very angry.  He was already close to two six packs in by this point.  He immediately jumped on the bed and began punching me repeatedly.  Somehow I managed to grab my mace and sprayed him with it.  All this seemed to do was make him angrier.  He jumped me again and rubbed the mace on my eyes and inner thighs before finally collapsing from pain by the back door.  I managed to force my eyes open enough through the pain to reach the kitchen, grab the milk, and lock myself in the bathroom where I called 911.  

The entire time I was waiting for the cops, he was pounding on the door threatening to bash my head in with a hammer.  Since he had used a hammer multiple times to beat down the back door or put holes in the ceiling, I 100% believed that if he got that door open before the cops got there, he was going to kill me.  Thank God the cops got there quickly and he was arrested.

Between that day and his trial at the end of October, he broke the no contact order repeatedly with phone calls, voice mails, texts, and even emails. Hearing him tell me time and again that he loved me and wanted to change for me was heartbreaking, because I was (and still am) madly in love with him.  But trauma bonding is real.  I managed to stay strong and move forward.  It was hard.  The first few months I didn’t even know where rent would come from.  But my friends and family came together and kept me afloat enough that I made it through.  

Money issues aside, I started playing Minecraft while watching PewDiePie Minecraft videos.  It may seem dumb to some, but it made it feel like I was playing games with someone.  Like there was someone always with me so I wasn’t so alone.  I slowly fixed all the holes and broken things in my apartment, and even repainted some of the furniture to make it my own style.  I called my mom daily (Mom, I’m so sorry.  I know how annoying I was) and slowly went out more to see people who cared about me.  I even managed to get a job in the warehouse of [REDACTED] and found solace in the manual labor I did there.  I became the second best truck thrower in the building – second only to my boss’s boss.

I’m also still learning just how deep this has broken me.   A friend recently asked everyone to comment one of their talents, and I honestly couldn’t come up with anything.  I feel like I have no talents or anything special that makes me worthy of existing.  I still say things like “I know I’m not a catch or anything...” and think that when guys are nice to me, it’s because they pity me. It’s like this constant self doubt – even self hate – that taints every aspect of my life.

So that’s it. That’s why I’ve been so quiet.  He took a plea deal and will have to complete intense addiction therapy, and be on probation so strict he won’t even be able to fart without [REDACTED] County’s permission. But as for me, I’m damaged right now, but filling my cracks with gold one day at a time.  I’m in therapy and planning my first vacation since being free.  I’m getting my entertainment company back up and running. But every day I fight his voice in my head telling me I’m not smart enough.  Not pretty enough.  Not thin enough.  Wondering what I did to make him so mad?  Wondering why he stopped calling me his “sweet girl”.  He used to ask me to get him coffee in the morning before work.  I would smile and say jokingly “And what makes you think I’ll do that?” and he would reply “Because you’re a sweet girl” and kiss me on my forehead. I miss that, but not enough to go back to a place where I looked at death as my only escape from him.

[theconservativebrief]

“I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: It was full of violence.”

So says narrator Elena Greco near the beginning of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. The bestselling novel is now an HBO series, and the screen adaptation drives home one of the book’s core messages: For Elena (Elisa del Genio), her best friend/double/nemesis Lila Cerullo (Ludovica Nasti), and all the children growing up with them in working-class postwar Naples, violence undergirds every interaction. (Spoilers for the first two episodes of the show, and mild spoilers for the books, follow.)

It’s not just the violence of the men in the neighborhood, who beat their wives and battle each other for dominance. As the show’s first two episodes, which aired on Sunday and Monday, make clear, Elena and Lila are involved too, fighting with boys and, later, conducting a war of words with one another that stretches across decades.

“While men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end,” Ferrante writes; “women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”

My Brilliant Friend and the other three novels in Ferrante’s wildly popular Neapolitan series have been hailed as modern-day feminist classics, telling the often forgotten stories of girls and women. But as the HBO series makes clear, these are not uplifting tales of female empowerment. The story of Elena and Lila is a story of friendship, yes, but also of hate, and of anger that’s not always righteous. The novels, and now the show, remind us of an uncomfortable truth: Girls and women have always been just as capable of violence as men and boys. It’s just that for a long time, nobody was watching.

HBO’s My Brilliant Friend begins, like the novel, with Elena, now a woman in her sixties, receiving a call from Lila’s adult son: Lila has disappeared. The story then flashes back to the 1950s, when Elena and Lila met as girls living in a drab Naples neighborhood.

The Neapolitan novels center on the evolution of Elena and Lila’s friendship across time and place, and the novels are famous in part for the way they probe a complex and tumultuous relationship between two women. But the novels — and, presumably, the series, which so far hews to them very closely — make clear that even as the girls become women and grow apart and together again, they are never far from the influence of their Naples neighborhood and its feuds, both petty and serious.

As many reviewers have already pointed out, the ever-present violence of this neighborhood is evident from the show’s first episode. The streets where Elena and Lila play and the shops where their parents buy food are controlled by small-time criminals, and their power struggles are a constant undercurrent in both the show and books.

In part, the violence of Ferrante’s stories mirrors the real-life rise of organized crime in Naples beginning in the mid-1950s. And, in part, it’s a kind of anti-nostalgic approach, as Elena might put it, to a coming-of-age story. Ferrante shows us childhood as it is for many children: not idyllic, but often frightening and sometimes bloody.

In the first episode, the neighborhood squabbles turn physical again and again. After the carpenter Alfredo Peluso publicly criticizes local strongman Don Achille Carracci (by yelling about him in the street), Carracci drags him out of a funeral and slams him against a wall. Women feud too — Melina Cappuccio and Lidia Sarratore get into a fight over Cappuccio’s love for Sarratore’s husband, and Cappuccio ends up tumbling down the stairs.

The neighborhood children, meanwhile, play out their own versions of their parents’ quarrels. When Lila beats Alfonso Carracci in a school competition, his brother attacks her. And in the episode’s climactic scene, Enzo Scanno (also bested by Lila in the school contest) and his friends hurl stones at Lila, knocking her over and bloodying her head.

In the show’s second episode, violence erupts in the Greco household, as Elena’s mother beats her savagely with an umbrella for skipping school. When Elena’s father comes home, her mother demands he beat Elena too: “You don’t even know how to hit your daughter,” she says, challenging his masculinity. He snaps, savagely slapping Elena while shouting at her mother — the whole episode is a power struggle between the two parents, who have been arguing about whether Elena should be allowed to take the admissions test for middle school. In the end, she is — but her parents’ battle leaves her with a face full of bruises.

The language of the show is violent even when its action is not (the actors speak Italian and the Neapolitan dialect, and the English subtitles draw heavily from the English translation of the novel by Ann Goldstein). Lila describes Don Achille as having “sucked the blood” out of another man, presumably with his predatory lending practices. And Maestra Oliviero, Elena and Lila’s teacher, warns the girls that they must prove themselves against their male schoolmates intellectually: “If we don’t start showing the boys now that you’re like them, better actually, they’ll crush you.” In the context of the neighborhood, this feels both literally and figuratively true.

The violence around the girls clearly affects them, and not only when they’re being actively bloodied. As Hillary Kelly writes at Vulture, “Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo’s loud, crowded lives are small and insulated, and they’re always seconds away from a tragedy around which the entire town will gather to gawp.” Their world, as she puts it, “clamors and echoes with shrieks, bellows, and the sounds of violence.”

In director Saverio Costanzo’s imagining, even the colors of the neighborhood hint at the emotional effects of constant violence — everything is dull, dusty, and dark. The dangers of their neighborhood limit Elena and Lila’s lives, and seem to limit even the spectrum of their vision.

But the girls aren’t passive victims of the violence around them. They’re active participants, as when Lila hurls stones back at the boys who attack her — and Elena steps in to help. Lila isn’t merely defending herself in this scene; she’s fighting back with gusto. The whole episode, as Sonia Saraiya writes at Vanity Fair, “seems to have built the scene around showcasing her indomitable will.”

Even when they’re not fighting, the girls are always watching violence unfold. When the adults in their world beat each other up, Elena and Lila look on in open fascination. Del Genio and Nasti, both newcomers, can communicate a lot with a gaze. Elena is more of a blank slate, her wide eyes taking everything in — Saraiya calls her “open and vulnerable, like a cracked-open raw egg.” Lila, meanwhile, has already developed an opinion on — even an appreciation for — the violence of her neighborhood. As she watches Cappuccio and Sarratore scream at each other, a smile plays across her lips, though it disappears when the fight turns physical.

Later, Lila appears to lay a trap for Elena, luring her to skip school in the hopes that Elena’s parents will get angry and bar her from taking the middle school test. Lila must know that her friend will probably get a beating, and yet she’s willing to take that risk. It won’t be the last time Lila tries to manipulate someone else to get what she wants, regardless of the consequences.

If the show continues to stick close to the books — one season per novel is planned — Lila and Elena will experience, in ever more serious ways, the brutality of their neighborhood. They’ll survive domestic and sexual violence, and their clashes with the men who rule the neighborhood will come back to haunt them in devastating ways.

They won’t commit the same kinds of violence they experience, but they will wage other kinds of warfare. This future is evident from the very beginning of the show. As Sophie Gilbert notes at the Atlantic, we learn as the series opens that Lila hasn’t just quietly disappeared. She’s vandalized her own past, cutting herself out of all family photographs, even those of her and her son as a young child.

Elena, meanwhile, isn’t sad to hear that her old friend is missing. She’s angry, and as revenge, she decides to write the story of their childhood together. The very narration we’re listening to is a form of emotional violence, the forcible documentation of someone who wanted to be erased.

Part of the popularity of the Neapolitan novels has to do with their close and clear-eyed examination of women’s inner lives. Men’s thoughts and feelings have always been presumed to be an interesting subject for literary fiction, but women’s stories have frequently found themselves shunted into a variety of genres that tend to get less acclaim.

Ferrante’s work has been groundbreaking in that it has been received around the world as a literary triumph, even as it chronicles the lives of people often pushed to the side in art and history. At the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg recommends watching My Brilliant Friend alongside the Godfather movies in order to appreciate “what we gain when we see the world both from the center and the margins.”

What we learn from My Brilliant Friend, though, is that the margins can be just as brutal as the center, if in different ways. Ferrante pulls back the curtain on the inner lives of girls and women, and what she reveals is dark — just as dark as anything perpetrated by men.

“Lila appeared in my life in first grade and immediately impressed me because she was very bad,” Ferrante writes. And Lila is bad — not badass, though she is that too, not plucky or feisty or spirited, but hateful and spiteful and sometimes cruel.

Costanzo’s adaptation makes even clearer what already came through in the books: that one of Ferrante’s greatest skills lies in showing us the full range of women’s emotions and all they are capable of — love and friendship, but also destruction.

A certain kind of feminist criticism once focused on whether a particular artistic creation was empowering to women. (The Onion perfectly skewered this tradition in 2003, with the headline “Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does.”) More recently, female characters in fiction have been given the freedom to be “unlikable.” (Earlier this year, Vox’s Tara Burton deconstructed the entire question of likability.) What Elena Ferrante has done is to create characters who are hateable — who sometimes hate each other and sometimes deserve to be hated — and to remind us that women are worthy of depiction in art not because they are better than men but because they, too, are human.

Original Source -> My Brilliant Friend pulls back the curtain on women’s lives. What it reveals is dark and violent.

via The Conservative Brief

[fapangel]

And what is your take on the media finally reporting on Antifa, and the people who have gone strang my silent while comparing them to Indiana Jones or th soldiers of Notmandy

It's a perfect time to answer this question,because in the last few days, the media has begun to tentatively trydigging up Charlottesville again, such as this utterlybugfuck headline in the Atlantic, lastweek's WaPo op-ed digging it up again, and CNBC's horrifiedscreeching over Trumppointing out how his comments on Antifa were vindicated. Thusthere's no better time to stuff this narrative right back down thebastard's throats by reviewing how they went from praising anddefending violent anarcho-communist insurrectionists as freedomfighters to condemning them as thugs in the space of only two weeks -all because of Trump.

Nobody seems to have grasped the significance ofwhat happened in the last two weeks of August. It's high time thatchanged.

The Power of the Media

It all started, of course, on August 13th,when Trump's initial statement on Charlottesville pointed out thatthe IllinoisNazis weren't the only ones that came to Charlottesville looking tostart trouble. The ensuing savage attacks by Democrats and theirmedia establishment was routine and expected - as was the usualgibberingpsychopathscalling Trump a jackbooted Nazi - but then theestablishment GOP rushed to gore him in the back in a veritableRINO stampede, followed by CEOs on his “advisory councils”resigningwith grand flourishes of self-righteous back-patting. The“mainstream” media and associated attack dogs had been callingTrump Hitler from day one, andyet people that had stuck by himthrough monthsof that unrelenting slanderwere now running scared.

The biggest tellwas Trump himself - the man who'd weathered over a year of beingcalled a racist, homophobe, Islamophobe, sexist, and rapistwithoutoncebacking down, flinching or even blinking, utterlycaved after only 48 hours of constant attacks. Thethorough shredding of their own credibility and the democratizationof information has stripped the media of most of their onetime power,but their ability to tell lies of omission - to exclude entire topicsof conversation from the public sphere - was still enough to sendTrump's most loyal admirers and the majority of the establishment GOPrunning in a panic,andbring to heel a man that'd shrugged off a 13-month campaign ofnonstop hate, character assassination and viscous slander. Thisis also the power of the label “Nazi:” once the media finallymanaged to make it stick - even a little - they got exactly what theywanted; Trump standing before the nation reinforcing their narrativethat Illinois nazis, and onlyIllinoisnazis, were the problem.

Itwas a mistake, of course - the media rewarded Trump by squealing withdelirious glee, then attackinghim allover again with twicethe frothing, foaming-at-the-mouthsavagery, as anyone with a brain could've told him would happen.

Trumprealized his true error almost immediately - andsaid so in as many words on Twitter, stating the obvious: Thatthe Fake News Media were malicious bastards that would never, ever besatisfied by any capitulation he made. Thatpublic tweet was a harbinger of things to come - but not even Iexpected the sheer brass balls Trump displayed when he walked intothe next day's press conference swinging.

The Absolute Madman Actually Fights Back

On August 15th, Trump walked into aTrump Tower press conference and didsomething no careerpolitician would've had the sheer steel balls to do -he stared down the mainstream media jackals that had routed hispolitical and social allies in only 48 hours, and calledthem out as the partisan, lying bastards they were. Thetruly incredible thing was that he didn't walk in with preparedstatements - he counterattacked into the inevitable bad-faithquestions that had fuck-all to do with the point of his pressconference (infrastructure.) He started by calling out the fleeingCEOs out for being job-exporting thieves putting their personalprofits before the national interest, pointed out the partisanship ofreporters and their penchant for timeliness over accuracy, and thenhe dropped the bomb.

Hecalled out Antifa and theblack bloc.

Hechallenged their never-questioned blanket slur “alt-right,”demanding they define it, hepointed out that there was an “alt-left” at Charlottesville thatcharged into the fray swinging clubs,he called a reporter Fake News, like it was their name, (whiletelling them to shut their yap,) and nailed the media for theirdeliberate omission of truth regarding “both sides” atCharlottesville. He even got digs in at McCain and Obama withoutbreaking stride - all of it completely unscripted and in full-contactconfrontation with a hostile media gaggle.

Butby far the most important thing he did was call out the black bloc:

“Now, in the other group also, you had somefine people but you also had troublemakers and you see them come withthe black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.”

It was arguably betterthan calling them out by name - because he was describing whathe'd seen, as he said, “in the same pictures” we'd all seen. In afew minutes, Trump had blown months of willful media silence andconcealment wide open.

The media did what theyalways do, of course.

They doubled down.

Withindays, the WashingtonPost was stridently defending Antifa, painting them as heroic“anti-racist” activists, their savage violence, oppression anddomestic terrorism as self-defense, and comparing them to WWIIfreedom fighters. That boot-licking pack of lies - written by self-admitted Antifa ally and apologist Mark Bray (a Californianprofessor, of course,) was regurgitatedad nauseum by this long-winded screed as well. Then there's thisalleged “news” story painting Antifa as mostly a fantasy oflunatic right-wing media, (including those dreaded murders theNRA!) and thisopinion story striving to deny any moral equivalency between onegang of race-obsessed, club-swinging totalitarian thugs and theother. Oh, andthis opinion story which shed more whiny bitch tears thanHillary's campaign staff on Nov. 8th. And thislong-winded pile of lies again trying to label antifa thugs asinnocent “protesters,” offering as evidence a twitter video clipby “Unicorn Riot,” a packof left-wing propagandists who leaked the Denver PD's riotmanagement manual, an especially helpful bit of intel for theviolent assholes in Antifa who's black bloc tactics revolve aroundfighting, assaulting, and escaping police riot control techniques.Theyhave a complete fucking tactical manual for such things. (It'sa real scream to read, too.) Therewas also thisarticle claiming Trump was foolish to try fighting the media -this one, as they say, “didn't age well.” Andif all of that wasn'tenough, havethis stirring call from another extremist professor tellingpeople to “start throwing rocks” to stop the “ancientevil now standing unhooded.”

Andthat was the Washington Post alone.The truly insaneoutlets, like Slate, didn't mince words - outrightpraising Antifa as heroic defenders of the innocents against the eviljackbooted fascist stormtroopers, in addition to thisass-kissing, massive feature article that's little more than amouthpiece for an antifa activist to - and I quote - “explain[Antifa's] strain of left-wing militancy to a fascinated but deeplywary wider world.” Fascinated.You can hearthe drool dripping fromthis writer's slack-jawed, star-struck awe. Thenthere was oldreliable the Atlantic asserting the “no moral equivalence” lieonce again. Time magazineexemplified the standard tack for any media (i.e. most of them) lessbatshit fucking loco than the WaPo inthis article, introducing Antifa as some milquetoast, generalized“anti-fascism vibe, man,” whitewashed their violence and savagebeatings of bystanders as mere “window-breaking” vandalism (alongwith parroting their apologies, “the media's picking on US!” and“but they fight back sometimes!”) and talking about the blackbloc's black clothing without naming the actual reason for it - toevade police arrest via anonymity. (CNN'ssimilar puff piece was so savaged for its “peace through violenceheadline” that they hastily changed it.)And it didn't stop there, of course - theRINOs caved again like the craven cowards they are, Trump simplydissolvedhis business advisory councils before any more CEOs could makeself-aggrandizing shows of their resignations, and the arts committieresigned en-masse completewith grade-school theatrics in their maudlin resignation letter.But the absolute best partwas when they started comparing violent anarcho-communist thugs toAMERICAN SOLDIERS STORMING THE BEACH AT D-DAY.

Yes,really - startingwith the Editor In Chief of the Atlantic himself, butsure as hell not stoppingthere. Even CNN couldn'tresist the dank meme. They had gone all-in, lionizing theseCommunist thugs - adherents of the ideology that'd go on to murdertens of thousands of American soldiers and servicemen in Korea,Vietnam and elsewhere - as American heroes. Within a few days ofTrump's doubling down, the mainstream media was erecting Antifa onthe plinths they'd just torn Confederate statues down from, anointingthem with the blood of fallen American soldiers, and praising them asfucking heroes.

Two weeks later, it blew up in their goddamn faces.

That Didn't Age Well

On August 27th, a small “No Marxismin America” rally in Berkeley, consisting entirely of unarmed,peaceful protesters, weresavagely set upon and beaten by a much larger pack of Antifa blackbloc thugs after Berkeley riot police let the bastards into theprotest site without a fight. Since the violence waswitnessed by an AP wire reporter, even the WaPohad to mostly report the facts for a change. That AP footageshowing single conservative rallygoers being viciously beaten andkicked by five or six masked, black-clad thugs apiece proved Trumpright in dramatic and undeniable fashion - but more importantly, itproved the media absolutely, utterly, and horrifyingly wrong.

After piling thatpack of lies as high and wide as they possibly could for weeks, themedia was forced to swallow every ounce of their own shit.

Amere two weeks after churning out that disgusting pack of lies,apologies and outright praise for Antifa I partiallysampled above, the WaPo had to publish thisofficial editorial board op-ed condemning them. The Berkely PD'swillfully allowing the violence to take place must've been especiallyawkward, given the WaPo's twoseparate articlesblaming the Charlottesville PD's lackluster response for the earlierviolence.

Theshit-eating just kept going and going. Mark Bray, the aforementionedAntifa historian, apologist, and cheerleader, was himself disavowedby his own college's president forsupporting a pack of violent thugs, followed by the WaPo'slengthy review of his book which ended with the telling line“The inherent contradiction of antifa is that, if America isindeed so irredeemable and hypocritical that violence is the answer,then what exactly are you fighting to preserve?” Theyalso ran thiscolumn explicitly refuting their earlier denials of moral equivalencybetween antifa and Illinois nazis, which pointed out that theUnited States defeated Nazis andCommunists (onetime ally of the Nazis) but that only Communists areroutinelydefended by the New York Times. Even this defense of antifa bythe WaPo's own media columnist (which blames antifa's sudden bad rapon a Vast Right Wing Meme Machine) opens by admitting that antifa'snewly-tainted name was suddenly everywhere- anda week later they were running demandsfor specific Democraticpoliticians todo the ritual denouncing of The Enemy,for a change. EvenNancyPelosi herself jumpedon the condemnation bandwagon. Even the Mayor of Berkely, JesseArreguin (opensupporter of one of the most violent and cultlike of Antifagroups, By Any Means Necessary,) whowas responsible for ordering Berkeleypolice to stand down on prior occasions (resulting in violence,)went on-record to demand Antifa be classifiedas a “gang.” (The FBIopted for rather stronger labeling.) Eventhe partisan, serial liars at the Southern Poverty Law Centercondemned them, though they refused to apply the “hate” labelthey rubber-stamp almost everyone else with. Even the Chicago fuckingTribune, one of the most consistently rabid anti-Trump publicationsI've seen this side of the WaPo openly criticized Democratsfor their conspicuous silence regarding the Communistinsurrectionists among them.

Theentire debacle was a glorious comeuppance without peer - the entireDemocratic party and mainstream media smear machine caught dead torights in their ghastly, bald-faced lies and forced to choke themdown again.

Amedia smear machine powerful enough to coerce CEOs of massiveinternational corporations, powerful career politicians and even -momentarily - the most powerful man on the planet.In the waning days of August, two weeks after they bent the Leader ofthe Free World to their will, they weren'tjust humiliated and discredited - they were also forced to openlyacknowledge the violent political terrorists that had benefited sostrongly from their willful veil of silence, de-masking them forever.

Andit was all the work of Donald J. Trump.

Hope Rides Alone

Trump knew exactly what he was doing.

His tweet the night before his bombshell Aug. 15thpress conference proves his (most impressive) loins were well-girdedfor combat before he walked before the cameras in Trump Tower - hewas ready and willing to offer battle. He knewthe press (as they always, always do)would be launching questions at him completely unrelated to the topicat hand, questions calculated to do him the most damage - and hechose that as hismoment to engage, rather than working it into his speech as preparedcomments. He countedon their malice to give him the openings he needed - and in a fewminutes of unrehearsed, ad-hoc debating, gave the mainstream mediathe poke needed to set their zealots fervor ablaze. I hate the mediawith such horrific passion that I've said nicer things about anglerfish and Windows ME andeven I wasleft astounded at the media's rush to lionize club-swinging communistterrorists as freedomfighters and heroes - butTrump wasn't. Thecourage to take on the people - and the lies - that'd sent hispolitical allies running like craven cowards not 48 hours earlier isnothing short of astounding, and the kind of risk no careerpolitician would ever entertain. I could've told you that the mediawould paint themselves into a corner with their hysterical, manicscreeching, and that they'd be proven for fools (again)when Antifa inevitably committed a new act of barbaric thuggery, butTrump hadthe sheer brass balls to bankhis very fortunes on it.

And he hitthe jackpot.

Anyonewho thinks Trump isn't playing “4D chess,” or that he's “cavingto pressure” after the lastweek of August is either a boomer crewman, Amish, or a raging idiot.The metric asston(ne?) ofshit the media was forced to eat was absolutely, entirely thanks toTrump's August 15thpress conference. He took their greatest victory over him to-date andturned it into their most bitter defeat in only two weeks time. Onlya fool could doubt the man's brilliance at this point.

Thenext time you hear some Bannonite drone screaming to the high heavensabout DACA, remember the last week of August.

[artistic-writer]

The Paradox of Light :: CS AU : Rated E :: part 6

Title: The Paradox of Light by @artistic-writer​ Summary: Imagine having one person, one constant, one love in your life that holds your head when you go under the surface. They will be there forever, holding your hand through everything life can throw at the pair of you, but what happens when a crack forms? What happens when it grows into something neither of you can control? What happens when the one person who was there to guide you becomes an obstacle and rather than hold you up, they pull you down? How do you find your way out of the darkness without your light? Rating: E Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, alcoholism/alcohol abuse, sexual addiction, domestic violence, fighting, choking, erotic asphyxiation (use in a non-informed manner), depression, death of Liam Jones, panic attacks, PTSD, attempted rape/non-con/dub-con, stab wounds, bar fights, rehab/AA meetings

- but there is a happy ending to this story, i promise.

Author’s Note: I missed this ficversary because of everything that is going on in the world right now, but its been in the plan to re-release it as a multichapter for some time.  It’s A LOT otherwise and whilst I initially always intended this to be a one shot, because I wrote it in one go, its not logical to expect people to stop and read so many words in one go.  The lovely fanart by @itsfabianadocarmo​ features in all chapters, so go show her some love!

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS!!  This fic has a lot of them for a reason.  If you want to ask about any, please don’t be afraid to message me.

Part Six [ below the cut ]

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One Month Later

“Where are you going?” Will asked in a sing song voice, his legs bumping the edge of Emma’s bed as he swung them against the divan base. He fiddled with one of his cars on his lap, his focus on the wheels and how fast they could spin rather than the frantic way his mother was trying to desperately pick an outfit.

“I told you, baby, Mommy has a date,” Emma said nervously. She hadn’t said the words out loud yet, especially not to her son, and as she pulled hanger after hanger from her wardrobe, she felt a little bit hopeless.

“What are you doing?” Will asked innocently, switching his position and rolling the car along the edge of the duvet.

“Trying to pick an outfit,” Emma frowned to herself, discarding yet another on of her dresses aside. She didn’t want to wear anything that would give off the wrong sort of information. She and Killian had met up twice since she had come home four weeks ago, him travelling to New York both times, but they had only been to dinner and a movie, holding hands and agreeing to take it slow. They wanted to start fresh, as odd as it seemed, because they both felt like brand new people with a new outlook on life that they both respected about each other.

“Why?” Will sang, extending the syllable out with a cheeky grin. Emma turned and looked at him, the small child hiding his cherub like smile behind a clenched fist. She pointed an accusing finger his way and narrowed her eyes.

“So I can look good for my date, lightning bug,” she approached him and held out two of the dresses in her hands, laying them over the front of her body one after the other. “Which one looks good? This one? Or this one?” Emma flicked the dresses one after the other, pulling a funny face and twisting her body dramatically until Will was in fits of infectious giggles.

“I don’t know!” He laughed, falling back on the bed and then wiggling upright almost instantly.

“Well, you have to help me pick! How will I know I look pretty if my favourite guy can’t help me decide?” Emma teased playfully.

“You always look pretty,” Will beamed, his rosy cheeks squishing up his eyes as he grinned at her. Emma softened and hugged the dresses to her body, an audible squeak escaping her mouth as she made a cooing noise. She closed the distance between them and sat beside him on the bed, ruffling his hair and brushing his wayward curls from in front of his eyes.

Those eyes. They were the bluest eyes Emma had ever seen with a sea green tint when the light hit them from any angle. They were not like hers, or like his father’s, but instead a whole new shade of azure that she could get lost in for hours, full of kindness and love that she knew would never leave him. He tilted his head back and let her fiddle with his hair, the car on his lap clutched in his hands as he gave her an angelic smile. “Are you okay, Mommy?”

“Yeah, lightning bug,” Emma nodded sweetly, wrapping her arm around his skinny frame and pulling him to her. “I’m perfect.”

“Mommy?” Will asked her, his voice muffled and a little strangled from how hard she was hugging him.

“Yes, baby?” Emma let him right himself, tugging his shirt back into place for him.

“What’s a date?” Will frowned.

“Oh, well…” Emma began but the sound of the doorbell made them both look towards the doorway at the shrill sound echoing through the house.

“I’ll get it!” Will screeched, hopping from the bed and pounding his rubber soled shoes on the hardwood floors as he made his way to the top of the stairs.

“Be careful!” Emma warned him, racing after him and making sure he was grabbing the spindles of the staircase banister with every step. She knew who it was at the door, so she wasn’t worried about Will answering it. She knew he would stop if she had told him to, but she also knew he would be so excited to see who was on the other side she let him go.

“Hey, buddy!” Graham fell into a crouch, arms wide open at the doorway ready to receive a hug.

“Grah-Grah!��� Will screamed, the old mispronunciation still sticking with them both and a kind of in joke that only they understood. Will had never called him dad, daddy or dadda, but through listening to his mom he had managed to form the sound of a ‘G’ and, ever the genius, put his own juvenile twist on it. The kid was smart, and sometimes it was scary.

Will threw himself into Graham’s arms and he picked him up with a growl, rubbing the stubble of his beard into the soft skin of Will’s neck and making him laugh. Will stiffened in his arms, struggling to escape as Graham tickled at his side at the same time, the boy finally turning floppy and dangling upside down.

“What are you doing upside down?” Emma teased him, turning her head half sideways to ask the question when she had finally caught up with them at the bottom of the staircase. Will just laughed, clutching Graham’s hands, his face turning bright red. “Thank you for doing this,” Emma told Graham sincerely, straightening herself back up and pushing her hair from her face.

Graham let Will slip from his grasp and watched him run off, his little legs stumbling over his feet more than once as he giggled and dove onto the couch. “No problem,” Graham smiled at her, pulling his shirt back into position and sucking in a breath. “We are going to have fun,” he announced a little louder so that Will peeked at him over the back of an overly large cushion.

“Really,” Emma reiterated. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Just promise me you won’t bring anyone back here,” Graham said quickly, his voice a little darker. He looked away from Will for a second to meet her gaze and sighed. “I don’t want random men around Will.”

Emma stepped back from him and swallowed hard. “What business is that of yours?” She snipped, folding her arms over her chest and straightening her back until she seemed taller.

“Do I know him?” Graham prodded, ignoring her question.

“Again, what business is that of yours?” Emma repeated with a sarcastic tone, her eyes flitting to the twitch of the muscle in his jaw.

“It’s Killian, isn’t it?” Graham sighed, looking down at his feet and planting his hands on his hips. “You wouldn’t be this defensive over anyone else.”

Graham was right and Emma hated that he knew her better than she gave him credit for. Emma looked over her shoulder to make sure Will was not listening but when she was intent he was otherwise occupied with something on the television, she whipped her head back to Graham with a rage she hadn’t known she was holding in.

“How dare you,” she barked, her voice so low only they could hear it.

“So it is him,” Graham smirked triumphantly. “I knew it.”

“What gives you the right to tell me who I can go on a date with, huh?” Emma poked him hard in the chest until he looked back up to meet her eyes. “We are not together anymore, Graham, you know that. Will knows that. I thought we were past this.”

At the mere mention of Will’s name, Graham ground his teeth and held back the words he really wanted to say. He leaned forward and extended an arm towards the lounge, pointing at the small boy sitting on the couch, eyes transfixed on the TV in front of him. “That boy in there gives me the right, Emma. I’ve been there for him, for you, and I’m sorry that was never enough for you but I love Will and he deserves to know...”

“He knows,” Emma spat, interrupting him and making Graham move back in surprise. She knew exactly what Graham thought he could use as some sort of leverage, but it wasn’t going to work. The second she had found out she was pregnant Emma had vowed to never lie to the life growing inside of her about anything and he might be young, but Will was smart. He understood more than Graham gave him credit for.

“Forget it,” Graham shook his head and held up his hand dismissively. “I tried to be understanding about this. I tried to be the bigger man, for Will, but there has always been this disconnect between us, Emma. I will never understand why, after everything he did to you, you love him so much.”

“No, you won’t,” Emma said stiffly, her entire body rigid with determination. “Now go. If you can’t handle this, then walk away,” Emma told him calmly. She reached behind him and yanked the door open, the wooden door jumping free from the frame with a squeak she had never fixed.

“Fine,” Graham growled. “I hope you enjoy your life, Emma. I won’t be around to pick up the pieces this time.”

When he slipped out of the door, Emma knew it was for the final time. She had expected too much of him for too long, and just like any normal human being, Graham had not been able to handle the friendship that followed a failed relationship. They thought they could be friends, for Will, but it seemed Graham was of the jealous ilk and would never change, only hold a grudge. That wasn’t the sort of person Emma needed in her life, and it was not the sort of role model Will needed.

“Mommy? Where did Grah-Grah go?” Will looked confused, his tiny frame standing in the doorway of the lounge with sadness plastered on his face. Emma pushed the door closed and sighed, turning to face him with a forced smile.

“Grah-Grah had to go,” Emma told him softly, moving to scoop him up in her arms. She held him tightly, kissing his temple and inhaling the scent of his children’s body wash that made him smell like candy.

“He’s not coming back, is he?” Will pouted sadly. Emma hugged him tighter, shaking her head with a sigh.

“It’s just me and you now, lightning bug. Me and you.”

Without a sitter, Emma was stuck. Graham was her last chance to actually go on a date tonight, and since he had decided he couldn’t handle seeing her with another man, she had no choice but to call Killian and cancel. Unfortunately for her, Killian had taken an earlier flight to New York and was already in town, so instead they had decided to spend the evening in and order a pizza.

He had arrived earlier than expected and she was just putting Will to bed. After agreeing to give her a few minutes, Killian had perused the lounge, taking in the decor and looking at the photos that Emma had adorning the mantlepiece. Most were of Will, a small wisp of a boy with barely any body fat who had a brown surfer style hairdo that sat in a heap of curls on his head. His eyes were almost emerald blue in colour, darker than Emma’s but not quite as green as hers and Killian figured he must have inherited them from his father.

As he moved along the photos, there were a few of a trio that caught his attention. Emma was cuddling Will on her lap as a toddler, his hair much blonder back then, and a tall, handsome man had his arm around the two of them. He had a short, cropped hairstyle but his mousy brown locks were unmistakably curly and his eyes a deep blue. Killian felt a pang of jealousy invade his heart, the happy family photograph something he had always dreamed he would have with Emma.

“That’s Will,” Emma said from behind him and Killian jumped a little, mouth open like he was about to say something. “And Graham,” she said a little more darkly.

“I was just looking,” Killian defended his snooping immediately, the warmth of a blush creeping up the skin of his neck.

“I should take them down,” Emma said idly, moving through to the kitchen and pulling a drawer open to fish out a few takeaway menus.

“Did you get Will to bed okay?” Killian offered a change in subject and moved to the couch. He heard Emma clattering around in the fridge, jars and bottles clinking together in the door as she pushed the door close with a click. He heard the twist of a bottle and as she appeared with two beer bottles in her hand, he stared at her in shock.

“Don’t worry,” Emma assured him with a grin. “They are alcohol-free.”

Killian grinned at her, taking the bottle, the outside wet in his palm. He scooted sideways on the couch and Emma dropped into the space beside him with one leg tucked under herself. “And Will went off without a hitch, thanks for asking.”

Killian took a swig of the non-alcoholic beer and savoured the taste on his tongue, the familiar bitterness of hops and bubbles coating his mouth and offering him instant refreshment. He hadn’t had a drink since Emma had left, alcoholic or not, but he had learnt that it was never the taste he had been addicted to in the first place but the freedom to get lost in the effects of being drunk. He didn’t ask why Emma had non-alcoholic beers in her fridge but he figured it was just to avoid the constant reminder of their past from her life.

“We can go out another time,” Killian suggested softly, turning his body sideways so he was facing her. His elbow dug into the back cushions of the couch and he rested his hand to her hand, smiling at her sweetly. “This is nice actually,” he said, reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Just the two of us.”

“You forget the little person upstairs,” Emma rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and pointed to the floor above them, earning her a chuckle from Killian who couldn’t stop his hand tangling in her hair. Their little touches had become more frequent and left her with a greater yearning each time that grew stronger and stronger each time he was in town. Emma nuzzled her face into his hand and turned her face until she kissed his palm.

“Are you okay?” Killian asked her gently.

“Just tired,” Emma assured him. “It’s been a long week.” Killian arched his eyebrows at her in agreement, holding out his bottle until she bumped hers against it. They both took a sip of the ice cold beer and smacked their lips together afterwards.

“It’s over now,” Killian told her in case she had missed the start of the weekend. “And I’m here now, so you know, it’s a million times better.” He grinned boyishly and gave her a wink, earning him a pathetic slap to the chest.

“My hero,” Emma mocked, instinctively leaning into him like old times. He felt softer than she remembered, his chest aged and changed with a weight gain that she didn’t find unattractive at all, and she moved her hand until it was resting against the edge of his open collar. She spied his chest hair jutting out from his shirt and couldn’t stop a giggle as it tumbled from her lips.

“What’s so funny?” Killian wrapped his arm around her, holding her to him and letting his thumb stroke the side of her arm. It was nice to hold her again, her skin so familiar under his touch and yet so different, changed by years of hardship and courage. He tried to look down at what she was seeing, but he couldn’t look past the jut of his chin.

“You’ve gone grey,” Emma teased, plucking at the white hairs erupting from his shirt.

“Not only there,” Killian laughed. “Things are a bit snowy down south too.”

“Oh my god,” Emma cackled, burying her face in his shirt to hide her amusement. Killian laughed with her, unashamed by his admission because it put a smile on her face which was what he pretty much lived for nowadays.

The last three months had been a lot of long distance texting and phone calls late at night, a lot of flirting and even more innuendo that when they were together got pushed aside for a more subtle and intimate time together. They held hands and they snuggled, enjoying the warmth and security of each other’s embrace, something they had never had before. They had agreed to take things slow, much to Emma’s aggravation, but she respected his reasoning and reluctance to make love to her again so quickly.

However, she felt like she was drowning on dry land and if the rains didn’t come soon, she would most certainly would do something drastic.

“I’m scared I am going to end up looking like a polar bear,” Killian said, his thumb poking into the top of his beer bottle.

“Want me to do a quick recon of the situation?” Emma cooed sweetly, lifting herself out of his embrace and taking stock of his almost school boy look of panic. “Purely professionally,” Emma shrugged with a wink.

“But you are the sheriff,” Killian narrowed his eyes at her and tried to force himself not to smirk too excitedly.

“I’ve had special training,” Emma purred, pushing herself up onto her knees and moving to straddle his lap. Killian reached beside them and set his beer bottle on the table beside the couch before planting his cool hands onto her hips and holding her in place across his lap. They had already got to this stage last time, stopping themselves from going all the way like some horny teenagers abstaining from each other, but this time she was ready.

“Are you okay?” Killian asked her softly, resting his head back on the back of the couch.

“I’m ready,” Emma whispered against his face, cupping his scruffy cheeks in her hands and smirking against his parted lips. They were so close, breathing the same air and she felt the heat on the tips of his elfen ears under her fingertips.

“You are?” Killian gulped, his cheeks turning crimson and his hands increasing their grip on her hips as his eyes flitted between hers and her mouth. His tongue darted out to moisten his lips and he sucked in a breath when he felt Emma grind down onto his lap.

“I am,” Emma nodded, rolling her forehead against his. Her voice was deep and scratchy like she had been shouting all day, and she let her hands slip from his face and began to unbutton her blouse.

Killian shivered, his stare glued to her hands as they nimbly worked the buttons through their holes. His heart took off in his chest, racing to keep the blood flowing to his extremities. He flexed his fingers against her hips, thumbs rubbing over the jut of the bone and felt himself get hard as he watched Emma undress. She was going so slowly that Killian had to shift his weight to relieve some pressure in his pants, her weight rubbing the solid length of him through his jeans and making him groan low in his throat.

Emma kissed his mouth, lips sliding sideways across his face and over the apple of his cheek. Killian’s head lolled backwards, his eyes fluttering closed as Emma’s kisses were seared into his flesh, the skin under her lips igniting with every touch. She kissed his ear, nuzzling the skin behind it with her nose and then trailed her tongue down his neck, kissing back over the same area to wipe away the wetness she had left. Emma sat back a little, tugging her arms out of her blouse and Killian gasped, sucking in a quick breath that made Emma stop suddenly and pull back.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked him gently, her finger hooking under his chin and lifting his eyes to hers once she had discarded her blouse. Killian was almost despondent at losing the sight of her ample cleavage, but he did not resist her, nodding with a warm smile.

“Aye,” he croaked.

“We can stop at any time,” Emma told him, her hands moving to the buttons of his shirt. She pulled and twisted the buttons through the holes until she was at the bottom, pulling the edges apart and gasping at the sight she had missed so much. He was just as hairy as she recalled, scattered white hairs intermingling with the black just like on his head, and she felt her core clench at the sight. Killian sat forward and helped pull his arms free from his sleeves, both of them settling back into their original position sans their shirts and hands brushing against bare skin that had been calling out for the other for years.

“I just want us to be happy,” Killian whispered against her lips, their faces almost touching once more.

“I’m happy,” Emma smirked flirtatiously, arching her back so that her breasts were cradled at his eye level once more, the flesh heaving in her bra with each ragged breath she took.

Killian shot a glance down between them to where his jeans were painfully tighter and he chuckled shyly. “So am I,” he growled.

Emma surged forward, grabbing his face and pulling his lips to hers. The kiss was slower than before, soft lips and languid tongues massaging each other as they groaned into each others mouth and hands roamed over every patch of exposed skin they could find. Killian pushed his tongue deeper into her mouth, the vibrations from her groan sending a shiver down his spine and causing his stomach to fall away from him.

“Bedroom,” Emma mumbled and looped her arms around Killian’s neck as he grabbed her ass and lifted her up into his arms as he stood. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her body into his, the planes of his chest and the tickle of his chest hair just as delectable as Emma remembered.

“Which way?” Killian stumbled towards the stairs, almost falling over when he tripped on some discarded toys at the the side of the couch. Emma laughed in his arms, shaking her loosely curled golden locks over her shoulder and sucking on her bottom lip. Killian looked at her, flushed and wanton and knew he needed to hurry before he came from her sultry teasing alone. “Which way, Swan?” He demanded with more haste, his fingers snapping her bra open and pulling the material down her shoulders.

“End of the hall,” Emma panted, holding on to him for dear life as he ascended the staircase, cursing under his breath when he stood on a squeaky floorboard and Emma hushed him midway along the landing. “Careful!” she giggled, burying her face in his neck to try and stifle her laugh.

“Shhh!” Killian paused outside of her bedroom door, slamming her into the wall with a force that made her squeak in pleasure. He dipped his head, kissing the underside of her jaw and leaving hot, wet kisses in his wake as he travelled lower, tongue darting out to taste the swell of her breasts.

“Mommy?” Will called out groggily from his room and they froze. Killian had managed to shake his jeans half way down his thighs and his erection was poking Emma in the inner thigh, the adrenaline rushing through both of them with the fear that Will’s bedroom door was about to open. Emma grabbed Killian’s shoulders and made him stop moving, pressing her finger to his lips as he gave her a wide eyed stare.

“It’s okay, L-Bug,” Emma called out in a soft whisper. “Go back to sleep.”

They paused, waiting for the sound of a small child walking across the bedroom but no sounds came from Will’s room. Killian’s arm muscles burned with the burden of holding Emma aloft, but he couldn’t help himself and pulled one of her nipples into his mouth. The nub pebbled instantly against his tongue like it had never been anywhere else, the taste of Emma’s skin making Killian growl.

“God, Killian…” Emma whimpered, eyes fluttering closed.

“I think he’s asleep,” Killian whispered into the valley of her bosom, sliding his tongue over the plump mounds as he moved for the other nipple. Emma pushed her back off the wall and encouraged him to suck harder, fingers carding in his hair and gently tugging on the soft, dark mass between her fingers.

“One more second,” Emma pleaded, her body betraying her words.

“I don’t think I have a second,” Killian laughed, his voice hoarse and his legs shaking from staving off his release. “I need you. Now,” he grunted into her ear, rolling his hips against hers and pinning her to the wall.

Emma knew as soon as they crossed into her bedroom things would change. They were no strangers to each other’s bodies, knowing each other more intimately and emotionally than anyone could ever have known. They had been through so much, shown each other the worst that they could be and driven each other into the lowest depth of despair, but that would never happen again.

Killian was falling in love with her all over again. The way that she moaned under his kisses, the shiver in her muscles and the breathless way she called his name like only he could make her. They fell into each other, hardness and softness combining in the sweetest ecstasy, their bodies pressed together so closely that Killian wasn’t sure where he ended and Emma began. He would never forget the sounds she made as she came, her fingers clutching the comforter above her head and the gentle waves of contracting muscles rippling up and down his length sending him into the light directly after her.

They were giving each other a second chance to right their wrongs, starting with tonight.

Killian stayed the night, which was odd, waking up with Emma asleep across his arm again. At first he thought he was dreaming and last night hadn’t happened, but then she stirred and raked her fingernails down the expanse of his chest hair, her toes curling over the shape of his calf, and he smirked to himself. There had been no frenzy to the way they made love, each savouring the other like a fine wine or a culinary delicacy that they would only experience once, and with a content sigh, he knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

“What time is it?” Emma mumbled against his chest, her eyes rolling around behind her eyelids.

Killian smiled at her groggy state, craning his neck to press his lips to her hairline. “It’s just after six,” Killian said, whispering because of the early morning. Emma’s eyes flew open in a panic and she scrambled to the edge of the bed, leaning over the edge with a grunt and grabbing his shirt. She pulled herself back onto the bed and tossed the material at him, brushing the hair from her eyes with a heaving breath.

“Get dressed!” Emma screeched in a hushed tone, clutching the comforter to her chest and covering herself up. “Quick!” She urged him with wide eyes, waving a hand towards the en suite.

Killian frowned at her and his hand jumped to the patch of skin behind his ear. He was blushing and he couldn’t hide that it was because she was naked, even more glorious in the rising light of day than he had remembered. “Why? What’s wrong?” He fretted, pulling his shirt on hurriedly and searching the floor for his boxers. They had been discarded in a hurry last night and he wasn’t exactly sure where they had ended up.

“Will!” Emma said quickly, locating his boxers and tossing them across the bed towards him.

“Will?” Killian caught his underwear and hopped from one foot to the other as he put them on. “What does your son…” Killian began but just as he had managed to pull on his boxers, the door flew open and a rather sleepy child barrelled into the room. He was dishevelled from sleep, one of his pant legs caught up around his knee, and he was missing one of his socks. He rubbed his eye with one hand and dragged his bear with the other seeming to ignore Killian altogether as he clambered onto the bed.

“Hey, L-Bug,” Emma chimed nervously, pulling on an old t-shirt she had found in one of her drawers. Killian looked at it hard, recognising it as one of his old college tees that he had lost a long time ago but Emma brushed off his puzzled expression with a nudge of her head towards the door. “Did you sleep well, sweetie?”

The only sound Will made was a grumble, the sleep unsuccessfully rubbed from his eyes as he crawled into Emma’s bed and snuggled down into the duvet. He nodded into her pillow, clutching it in his tiny fingers as he sighed. Killian padded barefoot from the room, mouthing the word ‘coffee’ to her with a smirk. Emma nodded thankfully and perched on the edge of the bed, stroking Will’s hair as he snoozed.

“So, Will sleepwalks?” Killian smirked, fully dressed now and pouring the steaming hot coffees into two mugs he had found in one of Emma’s cupboards. “Right into your bedroom.” Emma let out a breath, settling at the dining table and hanging her head in her hands with a giggle. She was still wearing his college shirt, her pajamas pants hanging low on her hips and exposing a tiny bit of the flesh of her stomach. Her body had changed with pregnancy, her hips a little fuller and her skin a little loser, but Killian found it endearing, like he was getting to know a whole new Emma.

“Every day at six,” Emma nodded once in agreement. “Every day since he was three.”

Killian made a sound in his throat and handed her her coffee, cream and two sugars, just the way she liked it. He stood beside her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, rubbing the curve of the bone through the tee. “I thought I’d lost this,” he said idly, plucking at the grey fabric.

Emma turned and smiled at him sweetly, her eyes still heavy from their lack of sleep and her hair a mess. She looks beautiful, even more than before they broke up, her cheeks still the same rosy softness and her lips still the same, perfectly curved and kissable. Killian matched her smile, his lips turning up on one side before he bent over and gave her a sideways kiss. It was soft and gentle and so slow that Emma couldn’t ignore the ache low in her stomach and the hum of content on his lips.

“What are you doing to me?” She sighed happily, wrapping her hand around his arm and tracing the outline of his bicep with her fingers. Killian simply quirked a brow, a modest smirk on his face. “I mean it, Jones. I’m so confused right now.”

Killian grabbed the chair beside him and slid it across the tiled floor until he could sit closer to her, his coffee sitting next to hers on top of the wooden surface between them. “What do you mean?” He asked her with a frown. “Do you regret last night?”

“God, no!” Emma said with a smirk, recalling the way she had felt with his head between her legs. Killian caught her reminiscing and poked his tongue out to lick at his bottom lip agonizingly slowly, the taste of her still lingering on his lips, his eyebrow jumping up on his face once more. “No,” Emma said firmly when she caught him watching her. “It’s just…”

“Talk to me,” Killian pleaded gently, leaning forward and pulling her hands into his. “We can’t do this again if we are not honest with each other.” His fingers were hot on hers and her palms a little sweaty from clutching the steaming hot coffee mug for so long. His fingers danced up and down her forearms, his touch almost soothing her and chasing away her worries. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can…”

“Mommy?” Will’s voice interrupted them and Killian jumped back, sitting back up in his chair and clearing his throat.

“Hey, baby,” Emma cooed, twisting her frame in her seat and reaching with open arms for her son.

“What are you guys doing?” Will looked between them, eyeing Killian suspiciously. He had only met him briefly before now and Emma wasn’t completely enthused by the idea of him knowing too much at the moment.

“Well,” Emma started, looking to Killian and extending the syllable to give her a little more time to come up with an answer.

“We were talking about breakfast,” Killian offered casually, giving Will a small smile. “What does a growing lad like yourself eat for breakfast?” Killian took a sip of his coffee and awaited Will’s reply.

“Pop tarts!” Will declared with a squeak.

“You do not,” Emma declared, aghast. Will looked at her and hunched his shoulders, hiding his face in his hands as he giggled nervously. Emma jabbed her fingers into his side and he wiggled on her lap as she tickled him. “Nice try though.”

“Oh, you are a scoundrel,” Killian noted, pointing a finger at Will who just gave him a grin. Killian winked at her knowingly. “How about pancakes?” He offered and Emma looked at him surprised.

“Can we have bananas on top?” Will asked excitedly. “And chocolate sauce?” His voice jumped and he almost fell from Emma’s grip when he shuffled to the edge of her knees in his eagerness. Killian looked at Emma who nodded at him, but when he looked back to Will he gave a look of feigned disgust.

“If you must,” he sighed with a dramatic eye roll. “You ever made pancakes before?” Killian asked him and Will shook his head shyly. “Well, in that case, how about I show you?”

“Can he, Mom? Can he show me?” Will screeched excitedly, bouncing up and down in her arms.

“Okay, okay,” Emma conceded and Will shouted gleefully, slapping his hands on the tabletop. Killian leaned forward on his elbow and held out his hand, his palm flat and open. Will grinned cheekily and slapped Killian’s hand with his own followed by a bout of his infectious laughing.

In the time it had taken Killian to rise, Will was at the other side of the kitchen and dragging his stepping stool towards the counter so he could be the right height. Killian gathered the ingredients, some he had discovered earlier whilst looking for the coffee mugs, and some with Emma’s help. Will awkwardly pulled up his sleeves and bobbed up and down on the stool. “Yay!” He sang like he had never been so happy.

“You don’t have to do this,” Emma told Killian on a whisper, snaking her hand around his waist and pressing her body into his side.

“I want to,” Killian beamed at her, cracking an egg into a plastic bowl. No sooner had the yolk settled in the curve of the bowl, Emma’s phone rang and she sighed with a groan. It was her work phone, likely something important even if it was the weekend, so she had no choice but to answer it.

“Do you mind?” Emma asked sorrowfully, nudging her head towards Will. The youngster was watching Killian with a fascinated stare, tilting his head like a puppy at the way the eggs sat side by side in the bowl but did not mix.

“I think we’ll be okay,” Killian nodded reassuringly and Emma gave him a little wink.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she promised, walking backwards from the kitchen and turning at the last second to answer her call. Killian turned back to Will, handing him a sieve. Will took it, twisting it in his hands and inspecting it with a frown.

“What’s this?” Will asked innocently.

“That’s a sieve,” Killian said with a smile.

“What’s it for?” Will looked up to Killian hopefully, genuinely intrigued.

“Ah, well,” Killian began, moving the bowl of eggs in front of Will and helping him to rest the sieve across the top of the bowl. He reached for the bag of flour and shook some of the fine, white dust into the curved sifter, watching intently until he was sure he had emptied enough flour into it. Killian and Liam always made pancakes and he rarely needed scales to make sure his amounts were spot on, instead using his eye and a confidence in cooking he had learned from his brother. Once satisfied with the amount, Killian rolled the top of the bag down and set it aside, giving Will a wooden spoon and pointing to the bowl. “Tap the side of the bowl,” Killian instructed with an encouraging smile.

Will look confused for a second but when he hit the spoon on the side of the plastic and a layer of flour drifted through the sieve onto the eggs below, he shrieked in delight. He tapped again, and again, until the entire amount of flour had fallen through, looking up at Killian with a proud boyish grin. “I did it!” He declared, clutching the spoon in his hands tightly.

“Good lad,” Killian nodded, giving Will a thumbs up.

“What next?” Will asked excitedly, peering into the bowl.

Killian added a pinch of salt, a glug of milk and then he began whisking the mixture, making sure to beat the lumps out with the most effort. Half way he stopped and offered the bowl over to Will, helping him grip the whisk properly and showing him how to hit the side of the bowl repetitively to create a light, fluffy mixture. Will’s tongue poked out as he worked, his little arm tiring quickly and his whole body sagging with effort.

“Come on,” Killian encouraged with a laugh. “I thought you were strong?”

“I am!” Will laughed back, his shoulders sagging as he gave Killian a pleading glance and pushed the bowl towards him. “But you are stronger,” he noted. “You should do the most work.”

Killian couldn’t help but laugh again, the feeling of genuine innocence at Will’s words doing something inside of his heart that he had never felt before. There was a short pause with him just looking at the boy and seeing Emma’s cherub cheeks and her wonderful smile duplicated on the face of her son, the gleeful glint in his eyes the same one his mother had when she was a teenager. “You are a clever lad,” Killian told Will softly, resuming his whisking, checking the batter for lumps periodically.

Will leaned forward on the counter, head propped up on his elbow as he watched the bubbles in the batter pop. “Are you my new daddy?” He asked sweetly, not looking up as he did.

Killian’s face paled instantly and he swallowed a hard lump down his throat. It must have been hard on the boy to see Emma and Graham separate. He remembered how confusing it was for him when his parents decided to divorce, and how he had his older brother to see him through, guide him into adulthood without his father figure. Will didn’t have that, being an only child, and Killian stopped his whisking to turn and face him.

“I’m afraid not,” he told him sadly. “Do you miss your daddy?” Killian asked him softly, dipping his head to catch his eye.

Will nodded without taking his hand away from his face. “Mommy said he had to go away.”

Killian’s heart decided in that moment to split in two, the sadness laced in Will’s tiny voice, not yet old enough to realise how much of an effect what he was saying could have on anyone. “We can be friends, if you’d like?” Killian offered, letting the whisk roll against the side of the bowl and extending his hand out to Will. “I’m Killian,” he smiled with a nod.

“That’s a funny name!” Will chortled, covering his mouth with chubby fingers.

“Well, what’s your name?” Killian looked at Will with narrowed eyes.

“I’m Will,” the boy chirped, taking Killian’s hand and giving it an exaggerated shake. “Nice to meet you!” His antics made Killian chuckle inside and he suppressed a giggle.

“That’s a great name,” Killian told him. “I have a friend called Will. Good people are called Will.” Killian let his mind wander to the number of times Will Scarlett had been there for him. If it wasn’t for Scarlett and his friendship, Killian may never have come home from service, and he would certainly have drunk himself to death by now.

“Thanks,” Will sang, poking at the whisk like he wasn’t supposed to touch it. “It’s short for William, but Mommy never calls me that.” Will picked up the whisk again, poking it through the thickening batter. “I was named after my uncle. Mommy says he was a good person too, like my daddy, but Daddy is away right now because he was sad about Uncle Liam going to live with the angels.”

There were no words to describe the feeling of when the world falls out from under you and envelopes you at the same time, but Killian was pretty sure he had just felt it.

He felt the blood drain from his face, a slight dizziness washing over him as he felt his heart rate pick up in his chest. His breathing became laboured, his armpits turning suddenly hot and damp and every hair on his body standing on end at the same time.

Will was oblivious to how his words had struck him, the finality of what his brother’s death really meant to him hitting home once and for all, and the boy continued to prod the batter in the bowl. Killian frowned at the boy, watching the profile of his face, flashes of Graham from the photographs playing over in his mind. Graham had a round face whilst Will’s was much thinner, and his nose was different, curved rather than pointed. His lips were Emma’s and his cheeks were hers too, but his eyes were a sea green that he knew ran in his lineage. Killian reached out and brushed his hand through Will’s hair, parting the curly brown locks and revealing the soft point of an elven ear, the boy unaware to what he was searching for.

“Uncle Liam?” Killian croaked, his voice breaking a little, his fingers lingering over the back of the boys head tenderly.

“Yep,” Will said with a nod, standing up and turning to rest his behind against the counter. He fidgeted his feet, bumping them together. “William is like Liam, but not the Irish version.”

“How old are you, Will?” Killian asked, forcing a smile. “Do you know?”

Will gave him a wide, toothy grin and nodded confidently. “I am four and a half years old,” he declared happily, holding up four fingers and pinning half of his pinky finger back down. “That’s this many!”

“Okay, boys, I’m done,” Emma called out as she walked back into the kitchen, head down and fingers tapping at the screen of her phone as she set it back to the menu screen. She looked up, Will giving her his best boyish smile that reminded her so much of someone else she knew, but the contrast in his rosy cheeks to the panic and paleness in Killian’s made her freeze. She didn’t have to ask, she knew.

He knew.

“Will, honey, why don’t you go and play with your dinosaurs?” Emma encouraged him, not taking her eyes from Killian’s who was staring at her scandalized. He tore his gaze away the second Will jumped from the stool obediently and ran to his mother, hugging her legs and looking up at her with hopeful eyes.

“Can I help Killian flip the pancakes later?” He pouted, looking back at the man behind him who had turned his back on them both and was hunched over the bowl of batter once more.

“Sure, L-Bug,” Emma ruffled his hair, watching the ripple of muscles in Killian’s back flex each time he clenched his fists and then stretched out his fingers on the countertop. Will ran off, thanking Killian for teaching him how to make pancakes as he thundered up the stairs one step at a time, all the while singing to himself about his dinosaurs.

“Killian,” Emma said softly, his name on her lips full of silent apologies.

“It’s okay,” Killian turned to look at her, his mind reeling. “I mean, I think it’s okay,” he shrugged, moving to sit at the table once more and burying his face in his hands.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Emma joined him, grabbing his hand as she sat down beside him. He was in shock, she knew that, staring blankly at nowhere and the muscles of his face twitching with thought. “I wasn’t sure how you would react, if you would even want a baby,” Emma said, the back of her throat swelling a little with emotion. He didn’t answer her, mouth agape and eyes fixed on the wall in front of him.

“Did you know?” Killian said, his voice breaking a little as his own tears threatened to put a crack in his voice. “When you left, did you know?”

Emma looked down at her lap and sighed. “I was eight weeks pregnant that night,” Emma swallowed hard, her voice echoing with the hurt she felt that night. Killian pinched his eyes closed, a tear finally rolling from his eyelids. He was ashamed beyond comprehension. Not only had he attempted to take Emma’s dignity by force, but he was absolutely sure that back then, the life growing inside of her would not have stopped him even if she had said.

“You did the right thing,” he gulped, finally turning his head to look at her with a nod.

“I wasn’t going to raise a child in that toxic, destructive environment,” Emma justified with a squeeze of his hand. “I wanted to change, being pregnant made me see that, but I wasn’t convinced that you could put a child above everything else.” Her voice broke, the tears finally spilling from her eyelids and the tingle in her nose starting as her sinuses become inflamed.

“I wouldn’t have,” Killian agreed. “I was selfish and despicable,” Killian spat, his words so full of venom for his former self that he could hardly believe how far he had come. “I didn’t even recognise that thing I was, Emma. I don’t hate you for leaving, and I don’t hate you for not telling me about Will. You did what was right by our son, and that is all that matters.”

Emma sucked in a breath, her lips quivering. “Our son?” She beamed at him with watery eyes, her fingers gripping his harder.

“I wasn’t ready to be a father,” Killian shook his head, reaching out to cup her face in his hand, his thumb tracing over the curve of her chin and wiping away her tears.

“How about now?” Emma asked hopefully.

Killian’s breath hitched with a nervous laugh before he moved forward to kiss her, lips shaking against each other, their faces so close that their tears mingled together against their skin. Emma shuffled forward on her chair, her knees bumping his and Killian tangled his hands through her hair, the softness caressing his fingertips and making him feel warm once more.

“Pick a partner who knows what she is doing,” Killian whispered against her lips as he broke the kiss and nudged her nose with his.

“What?” Emma chuckled, stroking the side of his face tenderly, still in a little daze from his kiss.

“Parenting,” Killian clarified, sitting back in his seat. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

“I’d like to think so,” Emma smiled sweetly.

“Then I choose you. I pick you. And if we falter, I’m sure we can work it out.” Killian gave her a happy grin, winking when she playfully tapped his hand with hers. They were the same words he had used when she told him she loved him over a decade ago, but now they were very different people and so much had happened between them. And they had a son, who needed them both to be the best people they could be and make sure he did not stray from the path, like they had.

Emma’s lips twitched into a small smile, the image of Killian in his prom tuxedo still fresh in her mind. He was just as handsome, if not more now, with a silvery edge to all his body hair that she absolutely loved. “Together?” She teased, echoing her teenage words.

“Together,” Killian nodded, squeezing her hand in his. It was the second time he would make the promise, but it would be the last time. Nothing could tear him away from his family now that he knew he had one, and as if on cue, the sound of Will’s footsteps hammering down the wooden staircase roused them both from their loving stares.

“Mommy!” Will called out as he ran into the kitchen. He was waving a piece of paper that depicted some figures drawn in front of a house, one with yellow hair and green eyes, one with black hair and blue eyes and between them a shorter figure who had brown hair and darker blue eyes. “Look!” Will chimed, slapping the paper to the table between them.

“Oh, you drew a picture,” Killian observed with a tilt of his head and a squint. “Of…” He began, struggling to see what he was actually looking at.

Will looked up at him with a frown. “It’s us!”

“Of course it is!” Killian declared, just as jovially and Emma smirked at him over Will’s head.

“That’s Mommy,” Will continued on, pointing to the yellow haired figure who was wearing blue pants and a red sweater or jacket of some kind.

“So pretty,” Killian whispered, keeping Emma’s gaze.

“And this is me.” Will didn’t even stop between breaths, or notice Killian’s attention had changed from his drawing to his mother.

“I thought you were taller,” Killian teased, tearing his eyes from Emma long enough to cock his head to one side and make Will laugh hysterically. “And who is this handsome fellow?” Killian tapped a finger to the tallest figure with blue eyes, black hair and what looked to be cocktail sticks shooting out of the bottom of his oval shaped face.

“That’s you!” Will told him proudly and before Killian had time to question his appearance, Will clarified his thought. “With your spiky beard!”

Emma couldn’t hold her laughter anymore and when Killian screwed up his face, clearly uneducated in the ways of children and how they had no filter, the sound sprang from her mouth making them all jump.

“You did a great job, L-Bug,” Emma said politely, covering her mouth as more giggles threatened to escape.

Killian smoothed his hand over the drawing, the crayon waxy under his touch, until he reached the bottom corner where there was a name. His brow knitted together. It looked familiar, an initial and a surname that made Killian’s lips spread into another smile and his heart swell with pride. “W Jones,” he breathed, not even realising his words were out loud.

“Yup!” Will shifted closer and his tiny body pressed into Killian’s knee, his warmth like a calm that Killian had never felt before. “William Jones,” he smiled up at Killian, both of them looking almost identical with their wide, boyish grins and slightly rosy cheeks. “I can’t write William yet though, so I just draw a ‘W’.”

“L-Bug, do you remember when I told you your daddy went away for a while?” Emma leaned forward, grabbing Will’s shoulders and pulling him into her embrace, hunching over and resting her chin over his shoulder. Will nodded, staring at Killian. “And do you remember how mommy told you that your surname was Jones, just like your daddy’s?”

Will nodded. “That’s why yours is different,” he said confidently.

“That’s right,” Emma said proudly. She kissed the side of his cheek, much to his disgust and then pointed over at Killian who was fidgeting nervously. “Why don’t you ask Killian what his last name is?”

Will paused, looking over the man in front of him. His fingers twisted together, not through nerves, because he was the most confident child Emma had ever met, but because he wasn’t sure how to say what she was sure he had already worked out. “Is your last name Jones too?” He asked softly, hand reaching up to scratch the patch of skin behind his ear.

“Aye,” Killian nodded.

“That means yes,” Emma whispered in Will’s ear. “Killian is your daddy,” she told him softly, the redness around Killian’s eyes unmistakable when Will’s face erupted in the largest of smiles.

“Daddy!” Will screamed, pulling free of Emma’s embrace and rushing forward. Killian was ready, arms open in a second and he pulled the boy into his embrace, holding on like he would never let go. Emma had never lied to Will about his father, skipping over details that a child didn’t need to know, but she had always encouraged him to love his father and if she was completely honest, she had hoped this day would come. “You came home!” Will cried into Killian’s sweater, his voice breaking as his emotions overtook him.

“I’m home,” Killian sobbed, his breath hitching a little as he held his son, tiny arms grabbing onto the material of his sweater and holding on for dear life. “I promise I am not going anywhere ever again.”

There was nothing else left to say that hadn’t already been said. There were no more tears left to cry after that day, only bridges to build and hearts to mend in the only way having a child could. Killian doted on Will and made sure that he felt loved more than anything in the world, giving him everything he could possibly afford and then some. Will returned the favour ten-fold, even if he had no idea how simply being himself had such an effect on his father.

Their journey had been long and the road laid out in front of them had no clear end, but two years later when Killian cradled their newborn son in his arms, he had a different story to tell when he attended each meeting, and he would make sure this one had a happy ending.

[gethealthy18-blog]

Top 12 Reasons For Divorce

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/getting-healthy/getting-healthy-women/top-12-reasons-for-divorce/

Top 12 Reasons For Divorce

Harini Natarajan Hyderabd040-395603080 July 16, 2019

Divorce is the last thing on anyone’s mind when they get married. Unfortunately, it is a sad reality of life that some people have to experience and go through. It not only causes a lot of heartbreak, but can also lead to depression, anger, and resentment. But, you can avoid all that by being aware of the issues that may crop up in a marriage and handle them before they get worse.

Divorces are hardly surprising. You would know when things are not going well in your relationship. Your partner will seem distant or resentful every time you speak to each other. Fights are not uncommon between couples, but when they become a way of hurting each other or causing deep psychological pain, you should take a deep, hard look at your relationship. Here are a few things that can cause a couple to split.

12 Reasons For Divorce You Should Look Out For

1. Cheating

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Cheating or infidelity is often the reason for a couple splitting up, married or not. Most people can adjust to issues in a marriage, but this is an absolute no-no for both partners. Often, extra-marital affairs are the reason that people get into bitter divorce cases. However, the cause of cheating isn’t always so clear-cut.

One of the partners can get into an extra-marital relationship when they feel anger and resentment towards their partner, there are differences in their sexual needs, there is a lack of emotional intimacy, or when one of them feels neglected or insecure. In fact, people have also cited fear of abandonment as one of the reasons they cheated.

The affair usually begins as an innocent friendship. It is basically an emotional affair, which, with time, becomes a physical affair. Look out for signs if you suspect your partner of cheating. Staying out late most days, always being on the phone, being absent-minded and cold, or showering excessive attention on you are all warning signs.

2. Financial Issues

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It is not the lack of money that results in divorce, but the difference of opinions on how to manage the shared finances. People generally get attracted to their opposites and end up marrying them, but when these opposing ideas come up where money is concerned, it often results in a bad, bitter divorce.

There is constant conflict and bickering if one tries to save and the other loves to spend. The practical one wants to save for the future and the easy-going one believes in living in the moment. One of them has a hoard of credit cards, while the other believes in buying what you can afford. The conflict is real and never-ending.

Also, when one of the partners earns a lot more money than the other one, it may result in a power struggle that affects the marriage. It may take up to several years, but if both parties do not draw up rules and stick to them, it can result in extreme resentment if not divorce.

3. Lack Of Communication

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As we are all aware, good communication is the most important aspect of not only a happy marriage, but any strong relationship. People talk, but they don’t always communicate. In fact, people sometimes become verbally abusive when they should just calm down and discuss their problems.

Screaming at your partner, not checking up on them when you both are apart, and making mean comments to make a point are extremely unhealthy ways of communicating that cause tension in a marriage. Poor communication is, and always will be, one of the biggest perpetrators of divorce.

It does not mean that you both lack physical intimacy, so don’t be confused. It is entirely possible that you have a great sex life but horrible emotional intimacy. Sex is very important in a happy marriage, but it is not everything. You need to show and experience affection in different ways as well, such as holding hands, impromptu hugs, and good morning and goodnight kisses. Partners who don’t have an intimate bond through both non-sexual and sexual methods will eventually fall apart.

4. Health Issues And Weight Gain

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Long-standing sickness can cause a lot of stress in a marriage. One of the partners becomes a caregiver, which often results in loss of self, stress, and hard work. It can sometimes create a serious sense of burden and guilt and cause the best of relationships to deteriorate.

Weight gain can also cause dissatisfaction in a marriage. When one of the partners gains a large amount of weight, they may have serious self-esteem issues. They may feel put off by sex because they are ashamed of their bodies. It can also cause the other partner to feel less attracted to them.

No matter what the underlying cause, weight gain can cause difficulties in intimacy and eventually lead to deep dissatisfaction.

5. Lack Of Physical Intimacy

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Sex is important in a marriage. If you or your partner are constantly turning down the other’s advances, it can cause serious issues between you both over time and may lead to divorce. Not acknowledging your partner’s sexual requirement is a major cause of rift in relationships.

It is the responsibility of both the partners to solve whatever may be causing the intimacy issue and make the relationship work. Touch each other often, compliment each other, give massages, and do something nice for your partner – these will build a better foundation for a fulfilling sex life.

Seek counseling if required, but don’t ignore this issue because sweeping the problem under the carpet can lead to a divorce in the future.

6. Domestic Violence And Abuse

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Marriage can be really hard, especially if you get married to the wrong kind of person. Even people who try the hardest and have the best of intentions at heart may end up applying for a divorce when it gets unbearable at home. Issues like domestic violence and abuse should be addressed early on. Ignoring them will only delay the inevitable.

If there is physical or verbal abuse in your marriage, it is best to seek the help of a marriage counselor early on. You should try your best, but if things are beyond control, it is sometimes best to give up. Divorce should be avoided, but if it is best for your mental and physical health, go ahead and apply for one.

7. Substance Abuse

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Many married couples agree that substance abuse is a major reason for marital disharmony. When it gets out of control, people may even get physically violent and hurt their partners. It may be only alcohol, or it may be other substances – the problem is the altered behavior when inebriated.

Substance abuse often becomes a big problem as the years pass. It is very important to seek help early on and manage it in the early stages as it is nothing but a disease.

8. Constant Fighting

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Married partners who keep on having the same fight over and over again do so because the underlying issue is not solved. When people have to deal with the same thing for years, they feel that they are not being heard and eventually shut themselves off. It is often hard to see the other partner’s viewpoint. This leads to arguments and fights that are never truly resolved, ultimately leading to divorce.

It is important to resolve each and every disagreement calmly, or the intensity and frequency of the fights will only increase. The truth is, couples have disagreements. The secret is to develop basic rules so that both partners feel respected, heard, and loved.

9. Unrealistic Expectations From Each Other

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Marriage is a 50-50 partnership. Having unreasonable and unrealistic expectations from your spouse can put a lot of stress on them. Also, if they are unable to fulfill them, you may end up feeling let down. It also sets a person up for failure. Eventually, the person will give up trying and it will end in divorce.

Do not have unreasonable expectations where money is concerned. It is important for both parties to be aware of what the reality is so none of them feel duped. Constant cribbing when your expectations are not met is going to put a severe strain on your marriage even if you can’t see the consequences right now. Issues like these take years to manifest into divorce-worthy problems. But, it all boils down to how we make our spouses feel, and if they are unhappy, it will be hard to maintain a marriage.

10. Marrying Too Early

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Marriage is a hard, hard project. You have to put in a lot of work if you want it to succeed. Many youngsters in their early 20s get swept up by the emotions of love and romance and get married without taking the pains to even know the other person. They don’t think twice even though they are not prepared for a lifelong commitment called marriage.

These youngsters are not mature enough to deal with the issues that come up when living with another person for life. So, they get divorced. This is not true for all couples, of course, but most divorces happen when people are in their 20s. After getting married, they get disillusioned by the realities of life and the marriage starts to seem more like a burden than a gift.

11. Different Priorities, Goals, And Interests

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Even couples madly in love with one another drift apart if they have different life goals. If one wants to focus on their career and the other wants something else from them, it can lead to dissatisfaction and irritation. It can eventually lead to divorce when one feels that the other person is holding them back.

It is important for both parties to feel important and have the same priorities when they get married. Also, if you have no common ground to connect over, you will eventually grow apart while doing your own thing. It is, therefore, very important to have at least one common interest you both can bond over and strengthen your relationship.

12. Not Prioritizing Each Other

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Many couples forget that they are married and become immersed in their lives so much that they forget their partners. This happens especially after couples have kids. They forget their single life and friends completely. It feels as if they have forgotten why they fell in love and got married in the first place.

Also, children need more attention than adults, and many married couples grow apart as they get more and more involved in their kid’s life and get obsessed with their new role as parents. It is important for both to spend some quality alone time together so that the spark in the relationship stays alive.

If you both have decided to get divorced, here are a few things you can do to keep it amicable:

Be respectful. Don’t forget, you loved this person. No matter how tough it gets, never get disrespectful.

Don’t drag your children into the fights. Both parties should sit down and have a discussion with the kids about the divorce because it can affect them deeply.

Keep it private. Don’t discuss personal details with others as everyone will have their own opinion and judgment on how to run things.

Join a support group or see a therapist.

Focus on the future. Don’t let the experience kill your spirit.

Divorce is a one-way street. Once you cross that threshold, there is no turning back. It leaves too many scars and too much pain. That’s why you both should try every single thing before opting for a permanent way out. If there is an ego issue, sort it out, and don’t give up so easily. However, sometimes a divorce is the only thing that can keep you sane. In such cases, make up your mind and go for it.

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[apurgersdilemma]

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My father is a loathsome man. He’s abusive. He’s irrational. Senile. Incoherent. Belligerent. Distant. A fraud and a drama queen. But he’s intelligent and sometimes caring when he wants to be. He’s a father by obligation and throughout all my life, I have never felt any fatherly instinct from him. I have never seen him as a father figure. I’ve never connected with him nor have I ever loved him. I care for him but oftentimes I feel like all those times I spent caring about him were for naught. We don’t have a respectable father-daughter relationship nor do we have any type of relationship. That’s why I want to find a job and move far, far away from him. He’s the main reason why I hate living at home, why I hate myself, why I never experienced happiness, why I have such low self esteem and insecurities. And possibly why I have dsythymia. He’s the reason I have low expectations from men. I understand if that I may be placing all my negative shortcomings onto him but the answer is this, he is to blame. I overcame many of my difficulties but scars will always remain.

I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again but words will always hurt me more than physical pain. As a child, my father verbally abused me to the point where I felt worthless, hopeless, and lifeless. I grew up thinking that I would never amount to anything. That I have a future and that I’m not good enough for anybody or anything. He never wanted me or any of my sisters. To simply put it, he never wanted daughters. But he got them all. His sperm is a partial reason to be blamed on, not us. His other mistake was keeping us all. The ultimate mistake was my mother meeting him. And then marrying him. But this post isn’t about how boy meets girl. It’s about how dysfunctional my family is.

It’s March and my father fucks up an entire month with physical abuse. His birthday is in four days. My eldest sister’s birthday is in five days. He disowned her today. Money problems. He placed his hands on her because of money. And other sister was the first to stop it from escalating. I didn’t know a fight was ensuing because I was busy working. But then I heard it. Low, harsh mumbles that erupted into distorted screams then transitions into intelligible words. Stop. That’s when I stopped working and went into her room. He’s on the ground and my eldest sister is hysterically crying. Initially I was mad at her because I heard him saying that she hit him. I angrily asked her if she hit him and she says she didn’t. So while my other sister is taking care of him, I move on over to her to console her as she sobs, sobs, sobs.

She clarifies what happened and I see who’s really to blame. Our father. He’s threatening to kill her and spouting some other bullshit and I’m telling her to ignore while consecutively yelling at him to stop. My sister and I moved her to another room and stayed with her just to keep her safe from him. I’ve never seen him attempt murder before but he’s a weak man. But for a moment, I was shaken. I thought about him taking a kitchen knife and attacking us. My eldest sister wanted to call 911 but I told her not to because it’ll add more drama to this situation and despite the domestic violence that ensued in this house, it’s best for everyone to calm down before taking drastic measures.

He told her to move out. That she’s not a daughter of his anymore but he never treated her as one of his to begin with. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. He told her she’s on her own; he won’t help her anymore. She’ll have to find her own means of transportation. I told her to start looking for apartments to move into or motels to stay at. I was still quite shaken and anxious. Afraid that he’ll come in and try to murder her, try to do good on his words. Make a threat into reality. He won’t last one day in prison. I couldn’t think straight when I went back to work but I manage to finish the project then I went job hunting. I need to leave. This incident just catalyze my desire to leave even more. It opened my eyes and encouraged me to get the fuck out and never look back. I’ll send money to my mother though. I worry about her.

My mother shouldn’t have married him but according to her, she didn’t have a choice. Bullshit. She could have said no or have told her mother she wanted to wait a bit more or that she never wants to be married. She had a choice but she didn’t take it. He’s a nuisance. He called her after the fight and victimized himself. My other sister had to put the story right when my mother called her and told her who the real victim is. He twisted or popped his knee and now he’s wearing a brace. He doesn’t understand the mechanism of using a crutch and he’s placing all of his weight onto the leg that’s injured. He just will not listen.

Sometimes I wonder if him passing would do a great deal onto this family. I often think about this. I wouldn’t miss him neither would my eldest sister but everyone else will. My other sister would miss him but she won’t miss the drama he brings. I know a sigh of relief would pass onto three of us (my eldest sister, my other sister, and me). Fucked up but true. I didn’t want to start my March like this. No one did. But it happened and now this family will either sweep it under the rug as if it never happened or he’ll make true of his words. This isn’t the first time it happened to my eldest sister. My mother was antagonizing her and she reacted. She kicked my mother off her and my mother slapped her in anger. My eldest sister broke her glasses then and she broke it today again. Both times during the physical dispute. And both times my parents were the one to initiate it and both times my sister reacted in self defense. I was in fourth grade when the first incident occurred and I’m in my early twenties now for the second one. I don’t want to be here for any future ones.

I wished they left her alone. They were never meant to be parents. We were all collaterals to their mistakes. I love my mother though. She sacrificed everything for us and I’ll repay her in the future. But her husband is despicable. I feel sad for him. I pity him. He had a career but cancer stole it from him. Stripped him of his masculinity as payment for drinking and smoking so much in his youth. My mother said liver surgery changed him. That the person he got the liver from altered his personality and made him mean. Bullshit. He was always mean even before his surgery. Mean and distant. And unrelatable.

I don’t know what’s going to happen as of now but I’m going to actively submit resumes now. As for the fate of this family ... I don’t know. I never considered them to be my family honestly. I’ve only enjoyed my sisters’ company and never my parents. I’ve only felt anxiety and uncomfortableness with my parents. That says a lot. I didn’t want to come back to this blog to make this post because I thought domestic violence wouldn’t happen here but I was wrong. Severely, painstakingly wrong. There are people out there who goes through this on a daily basis and I don’t know how they’re able to. It’s bullshit. Today is bullshit too. My life is crippling and suffocating and debilitating and I’m not going to waste it crying over it anymore. I’m leaving. But the thought that, that might be bullshit scares me.

I’m scared. I need a clear sign. A signal. Please point and tell me what I should do. I’m too young to be living in constant fear and anxiety. Please help me.