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writersdrug · 8 months ago

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Ghost x Reader x Konig: I Don't Need You (Ch. 10)

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Summary: Thankfully, things have been resolved between you and Konig. You start to settle in more with your team, and Roze shares a few thoughts with you over a smoke. The memories are still there, but just like the winter around you, they're cold and unwelcoming. You and Konig open up to each other a bit more, more than you had ever opened up to anyone.

WARNINGS: implications of masturbation, cursing, angst (if you squint?), plot building, graphic depictions of animal torture and death (PLEASE CONSIDER ALL WARNINGS BEFORE READING THIS, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MEDIA YOU CONSUME thank you kindly)

Notes: Yes! Hello! I exist!! I've been in a slump, and I really do apologize for that. Many of you have been very patient with me and I love and appreciate you all for it! I had to intake as much CoD literature as I could in the past few weeks to get me motivated, which helped a LOT (not to mention I discovered no fewer than ten works that currently have a hold on my heart). But it's here! I forced myself to write over half of the following chapter so that it would be less daunting to finish up. I also plan to make a wip post for yall, just to share will everyone what goes on in my rat brain.

This was edited at 3 am (god it's 4 am now, i just saw that), so if there are any grammatical or spelling errors you have my full consent to call me out on it! Please enjoy!

(sidenote, I completely didn't research how old you need to be to become a navy SEAL, so reader's age is a bit inaccurate in regards to that. pls ignore lol)

(last sidenote then you can read, does anyone have tips for customizing the layout of their fics? I see so many cool ways to style the font and cute banners and errything but I have no idea how nor what to do)

- - - -

The sky hung low with a blanket of gray. It looked like it was about to snow, although the threat was soon dismissed when noon came around and there wasn’t a single flake. The air was cold and dry, forcing me to zip my jacket up all the way and tuck my nose into the collar. I blew steady, warm breaths into my jacket and tried to soak up the heat into my bones.

It was as if the incident had never happened.

Konig and I ended up driving to the liquor store, which was a blessing, since I had run out of Yeungling (and I didn’t understand enough Turkish to converse with the clerk, nor did I have any of the appropriate money – Konig was graced with both of those necessities). We talked like there had never been a week and a half of silence between us. He talked about how he had nearly forced Ridgeback to drag me out of my room and into the common area, “… but it would have been too early for that.” He commented. That, and I would have rather died.

So life went on as normal: dreary, aside from shooting people and getting shot at. Nonetheless, it was normal, and there was a peace to be found in that.

I leaned against the building to the training room, with Roze to my left. I had intended to come out and soak up whatever natural light I could – when I saw her standing there, possibly trying to do the same, I felt the instinct to play it off as if I was just leaving the building. But she cocked her head in a greeting, and a part of me took an interest in her worry-free aura. Out of everyone, she always seemed to be the least-stressed person in the room, even in the middle of a warzone. It was the balm to my anxious mind that I never knew I needed, but gratefully stood by.

We remained together in a comfortable silence (one I would most definitely would not have been comfortable with a while ago), staring ahead, watching the indecisiveness of the brooding clouds above. I wondered what the rest of the world was doing – if they might have been as calm and carefree as us, or if they were in some kind of peril, and the horrors of it were blocked out by the clouds.

I was drawn back to the present when I heard the click click click of Roze’s lighter. I turned my head and watched as she shielded the weak flame from the wind, lighting the cigarette that hung loosely from her lips.

“You smoke?” I asked.

“Sure do.” She replied nonchalantly. “Want one?” she extended her pack of cigarettes towards me.

I glanced at the box, feeling a sour taste in my mouth.

I lay on my stomach, my muscles still twitching and shaking as I tried to even out my breaths. Ghost had tossed a thin blanket over my lower half. I hadn’t even moved from the position he had ruthlessly fucked me in – my body ached too much to even try, and my mind was still recovering from the past hour.

I watch Ghost as he reclined next to me, pushing the bottom of his mask up to place a cigarette between his lips. It was the first time I had seen any part of his face all day. He grabbed his lighter from the pocket of his pants that were discarded on the floor, lighting the end of the cigarette and inhaling. He tossed the lighter back down to the floor as he tilted his head back, exhaling a long stream of smoke. I watched it swirl in the lamplight, settling in a cloud around us. He continued puffing, staring at the wall across from the bed as I lay beside him, although I felt worlds away from him.

He'd started off the night with a mountain of stress from a mission gone sideways. Instead of the usual slow build, where he would run his hands under my shirt and kiss my lips slowly and tenderly – he had walked in and immediately demanded I remove my clothes while he began stripping out of his. I had assumed tonight was going to be a passionate one, until he threw me onto my stomach and shoved my face into the pillows. It wasn’t the first time he’d been rough with me, but it wasn’t just rough – it felt dehumanizing. An hour of constant, merciless thrusts, and a hand around my neck that restricted both my blood flow and my oxygen, and I had fallen into a state of shock.

But, in the end, I was happy to be caged in by him again.

I was happy.

He turned his eyes towards me, seeming to sense that something was off. He exhaled another puff of smoke. “Everythin’ alright?” he asked, completely void of any genuine concern.

I met his eyes with my own. I felt like I shouldn’t have to answer the question, and it stirred up a bitterness in me. But I didn’t feel like arguing with him, and I certainly didn’t want him to leave – so I nodded my head, slowly blinking my eyes. “Just tired.”

He hummed and faced the wall again. He brought one of his knees up and rested his arm against it. “Want a smoke?” he asked, still looking away.

I shook my head as much as the pillow beneath me would allow. “No.” I replied.

He sighed disappointedly. Apparently, my lack of enthusiasm after being used like an old fucktoy was irking him.

To be fair, I never spoke up about how I felt.

He grunted and rose from his position, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray by my bed, and picking up his clothes and pulling them on. My heart ached slightly as I watched him slide his shirt over his torso. I felt the threat of tears sting in my eyes as I wished his hands were holding me instead, keeping me warm and grounded. He pulled his jeans on and fastened them, buckling his belt rather quickly; and all while he faced away from me.

“Well, I know you probably need some alone time.” He muttered, sliding the skull attachment over his mask. “So I’ll get going. I’ll see you around.”

He grabbed his tactical vest and jacket and slung them over his shoulder. He paused by the door. “Thanks for tonight.” He mumbled, before finally leaving the room and softly closing the door behind him.

My eyes lingered on the ashtray with the half-smoked cigarette. A thin trail of smoke plumed into the air – I wanted to throw the tray across the room and shatter it. But it was Ghost’s, so I couldn’t; I couldn’t regardless, because it was a piece of him that remained with me, even when he left.

That, and the smell of smoke.

“Nah, I’m good.” I replied, facing the cold, empty base ahead of me.

“Good.” She said, pinching the cigarette and blowing a stream of smoke. “Stay that way. Did you know these bastards give you cancer?”

I chuckled into the collar of my jacket. “Do they, now?”

She hummed affirmatively, sucking another breath in through the cancerous bastard. “Who would’ve thought…”

We fell back into silence. I continued watching the stillness of the base, trying to see if the sky would follow through with its promise to fall. Now that my free time wasn’t spent holed up in my room, it somehow felt like there were fewer ways to spend it. With another mission on the horizon – a simple recon, yet dauntingly close to a heavily-guarded compound – no one was out and about when they usually were. Finding Roze outside and seemingly not worried was usual, however, and a warm sight, compared to how the rest of the team was on edge. Even Askel seemed grumpier than most days.

I hadn’t been seeking out someone to spend time with, no… that I would never do (or admit). But talking to a familiar face provided a comfort I had grown to need over the past couple of months. And, frankly, I felt like Konig might be getting tired of how much I ran to him when I craved social interaction. Though he had never said anything about it, I felt like I needed to branch out to other team members than just my Colonel. One might think I was trying to kiss his ass (I knew the accusation had already crossed Juno’s mind, but the young soldier was good at holding his tongue – when Konig was around, at least).

“You ever think about how ‘little girl’ you would react to this?” Roze asked, and I turned to face her. She had her nose scrunched, and a tinge of pink dusted over her cold cheeks. “Guns, war, no playdates or days at the beach…”

I sighed. “Probably would have cried.” I replied, allowing my freezing nose to poke over the collar of my jacket. “Especially if I had known that being a princess now adays meant spending more time worrying about becoming a hostage than anything else.”

Roze chuckled. “It’s a good thing we didn’t know then.” Her face was mostly blank, but I thought I noticed a hint of bitterness in the way her gaze landed on the ground. I watched her flick her cigarette with a bit more aggression than usual. “I would’ve tried to convince my entire family to run away to Scotland, live in hiding and pretend the rest of the world was a dream.”

“Scotland?” I asked. Soap’s cocky grin and heavy Scottish accent stirred in my mind, but it felt like nothing more than a small cloud of dust.

“Yeah – heard it’s fucking gorgeous over there.” She waved her cigarette in no particular direction. “Now, I don’t know how peaceful it is in terms of politics and war, but it’s pretty spacious. Simple, too. I feel like if I talked about throwing all my shit away and becoming a fisherman for a living, I wouldn’t get people trying to talk me out of it like I would in the States.” She took another drag, and laughed out the smoke.

“Fisherman?”

“Yeah.” She chuckled, a hardened smile gracing her lips. “I don’t know why it sounds so appealing… it just does.”

I hummed and looked back out at the compound. I wondered about Roze’s past; she had never said or done anything to indicate that it was particularly rough, as it was for the majority of us (us – I still wasn’t used to including myself, but it was becoming more of a habit each time), but the weariness in her eyes when she spoke about her younger self made me question what that girl had been through. Maybe it was just nostalgia. A yen for simpler times. Roze seemed to appreciate the simple things in life.

“You know Askel goes ice fishing?” she said suddenly.

I smiled underneath my jacket. “Seems like something he would do.”

“Every winter.” She continued. She dropped her cigarette to the floor and crushed it into the gravel. “He takes about three weeks of leave, if we’re lucky enough to get it, and goes to Norway. Sits on a frozen lake for hours a day, just waiting for a fish.”

“You make it sound like he’s never caught one.” I point out, my eyes lingering on the cigarette.

She shrugged her shoulders. “So does he. Every time I ask him what he caught, he just laughs. Says he’s never expects to get a bite.”

I closed my eyes and hummed in response. It was easy to picture the scene – Askel, sitting on a thick layer of ice, nursing the hoppy beers that he and Konig loved so much and waiting for a fish to bite. I wondered if he even bothered to reel the line in when he did catch something. Or if he even went fishing at all. Maybe he just went out there to get a sense of peace, to pretend that war and death didn’t exist.

The motion of thick, heavy snowflakes falling from the sky caught my attention. They landed on the skin of my nose, resisting the warmth for a few moments, before they eventually melted into trickles of water. A sudden gust of wind blew a flurry of them towards us, making the both of us flinch.

Maybe fishing doesn’t sound too bad.

- - - -

The shooting range was mostly silent, save for the occasional conversation between me and Konig. The lights were low, easily illuminating the gunpowder and dust swirling in the air. Konig and I stared at the paper target as we analyzed my shots. A few hit dead center, although most of them were clustered around the lower left of the bullseye. My lips were pursed into a scowl as I glared at my sub-par aim – it wasn’t typically so awful, but of course it was while Konig had been watching.

“Eh, are you sure you didn’t lie on your paperwork about being a sniper?” Konig asked as he stood behind my left shoulder, taking the target from my hands and looking at it closely. “You weren’t even ten yards from it. This is very poor marksmanship.”

I scowled in embarrassment, taking my pistol to the counter and pulling out the mag. “Rough day.” I answered bluntly as I started packing more bullets into the small compartment. It wasn’t a lie – I had barely gotten any sleep the night before. I was in the middle of a rather interesting dream involving me and Ghost, until my alarm woke me up before anything of importance happened.

“Very bad…” he mumbled to himself. I clicked my tongue in annoyance.

“Y’know…” I grumbled, loading the mag back into the gun and shoving it in my holster, “I don’t like stereotyping, but the boot really does fit you.” I walked past him and out into the hallway, not waiting for him to follow.

“Hmm?” he made an indignant noise, momentarily stuck in his spot, before he came jogging after me. “What does that mean? What stereotype?”

I chuckled. “Haven’t you ever how Germans are extremely blunt?” I asked.

“Austrian.” He retorted. “Do I need to brand that onto my face for you?”

“Wouldn’t do me much good, with the mask ‘n all.” I replied.

He laughed – rather snorted, as usual – “Ah, you’re right. Maybe I am blunt – just as much as you are defensive.”

I stopped at the end of the hall, right in front of the exit. “Defe-“ I turned on my heel to scowl at him. “I am not defensive! Where did you get that idea?!”

He stopped behind me, his eyes widening. He gestured an open palm in my direction. “This.”

I huffed, turning back around to punch the door open. The snow from earlier that day had ceased, blanketing the base in a thin layer of white. The moon seemed that much brighter against the crystalized ground, and the yellow lights scattered across the compound made parts of the snow look like sandy dunes. My nose tingled from the nip of the chilly air, and I pulled my jacket tighter around my body as the door fell shut behind me and Konig.

“Well, what am I supposed to say when you call me defensive?”

“You could agree.”

“But I don’t.”

“Which proves my point.”

I huffed in frustration, despite the smirk curling on the edges of my lips. “So, either I have to agree with you, whether I really do or don’t, or you’ve corralled me into a paradox.”

I can practically hear the gears turning in his head. “A what?”

“A paradox, like a – y’know, never mind. It’s too difficult to explain.” I let him fall in step next to me, although he was the one who needed to slow down to match my pace. “We can just agree to disagree, how’s that?”

“Agreed.” He nodded, and I chuckled. “It won’t change the fact that I’m right, you know.” He added.

I bit my lip and tried to keep my smile from growing ridiculously larger. I looked up at him and patted his shoulder – he looked down at me, and the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled back. A stray, reddish-brown curl poked through the side of his balaclava, and I found the miniscule detail warming my heart through the cold air. He felt real, and in this moment, too human for this kind of life.

“Why did you choose the military?” I asked, turning back to look at the ground as we walked.

He hummed. “Isn’t that every boy’s dream?”

“Well, yes – but most of the time, it never becomes more than that.” I responded.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, mimicking my own position. “I’m not really sure what made me push so much for it. I almost didn’t make it, for obvious reasons.”

I chuckled. “Size does matter, huh?”

He looked down at me with a deadpan gaze, one that I refused to meet. “It almost did, in a bad way. And I almost backed out before they could be the ones to turn me away. But, of course, they knew they would find some use for my size – so they took me in.”

“And what did they do with you?” I asked, looking back at him.

“A ‘human battering ram,’ as my superiors had so nicely called it.” He framed the description with his hands in the air, as if it had been written on a plaque. I laughed and looked back down at my feet.

“Seriously?” I asked. “So they just had you breaking down doors, and then what?”

Konig laughed with me. “Well, I still had a gun, so I was able to shoot, thank goodness. And I had a bit more gear so I wouldn’t break my bones against the doors – I still dislocated my shoulder a few times, however…” he rolled his left shoulder, as if there was still a lingering pain from how often he had thrown himself at doors. “It was actually during a period of recovery when I proved that I could still be a sniper. My shoulder was still healing, so I had to give up being a battering ram for a while. I was sat with Horangi on the side of the mountain to give him cover. Of course, he was ambushed – he had to fight the Arschgiege right when we were given the order to shoot, so I had to take position behind the gun.” I noticed that his chest was puffed out a bit from pride. “That really knocked their pants off.”

I chuckled, choosing to ignore the inaccuracy of his phrase. “Did it now?”

“It did.” He replied, then looked at the ground. “For a moment. I got a good earful for overstepping boundaries that day, but it’s what ultimately landed me here – so I’m grateful for it.”

I nodded and hummed. “What was Horangi picked for?”

Konig shrugged, his hands now back in his pockets. “He never said what he and Commander had spoken about in his office. But, even if he wasn’t chosen – I like to think we come as a package. If I go, he goes, if he doesn’t, I don’t.”

I felt my heart warm at his words. The memory of how Juno had described Konig couldn’t be farther from my mind. It almost felt like I was talking to someone I briefly crossed paths with in my youth – not a war criminal, not the bloody and stiff soldier who had stepped onto the heli after our first mission. I envied his ability to separate his work stress from the time he had in between missions.

“Why did you decide to join?” He asked, catching me off guard.

It was only fair that I opened up to him, since he was so willing to do the same. Always the one to go first, too. But I had to be careful. I didn’t want this to turn into a pity party, and I didn’t want to dig anything up that I had worked so hard to bury deep beneath my subconscious.

“I was… a weird kid. Like you.” I said, making Konig scoff and roll his eyes. “Looking back now, I hate my younger self. I was so sensitive to what people thought about me, and I just wanted to be independent and strong. I wanted to be a ‘different girl.’” I gritted out the words that left a sour taste in my mouth. “I think I just wanted attention at first – of course, when I heard how everyone said they hated how annoying teenage girls were, and how gullible and weak they were, it just – it made me change. I wanted to prove everyone wrong, it wasn’t just about being different anymore. So, as soon as I turned old enough, I enlisted. Didn’t get to Navy SEAL right away, of course… but I joined every program I was allowed in until I could submit my application.”

I sighed, then chuckled. “Thought my family would say they were proud, that I was successful, that I was doing a good job… they were just angry. Said I was throwing my life away for business that didn’t involve our country.” I opened my mouth to say more, but I ended up scoffing and closing it once again. I felt like I had shared enough.

I looked at Konig, expecting him to acknowledge what I said. “That’s how the story goes…” he would say. But, when I met his gaze, I only saw concern. His brow was creased with what I imagined was pity, and my stomach churned. It was the exact opposite of the reaction I had hoped for. I only wanted to share stories with him, and now it was… this.

“I think you made the right choices.” He said, and I looked away.

“You don’t need to make me feel better, Konig. I appreciate it, but-“

“I’m not just trying to make you feel better.” He said, his accent slightly thicker from his exasperation. “You’re good at what you do. Your parents are just probably worried for you, and they don’t know how to show it.”

I bit down on my tongue, my eyes settling on the building in front of us with a hard expression. If only.

“Maybe that’s it.” I muttered, hoping he would drop the subject. He seemed to understand, and turned to look ahead with a disappointed sigh. My heart sank the tiniest bit at the sound, and I internally scolded myself. Still a people-pleaser, apparently.

We continued walking in silence, the buzz of the lights above us mimicking the static of a communication system that had been severed in a time where it was needed most. The edge of the barracks appeared into our view, just around the corner of the arsenal sheds that stood between us and our destination. I continued to stare at the ground, pretending to watch my steps and try to not slip on the snowy asphalt. My heart twisted with each second of silence that sat thickly between us. It wasn’t technically a fight, but somehow, it felt worse. It felt like the first time I had pissed him off, the first time we had spoken to each other – and god, did I already hate myself for the way I had acted towards him during those first few weeks. I didn’t want to drive another wedge between us, not after the ones that had already been worked back out.

I exhaled heavily through my nose. “Sorry.” I mumbled quietly, but loud enough that I knew it reached his ears. “Sensitive topics.”

He flitted his eyes in my direction, but didn’t bother to move his head. He sighed, and I nearly jolted when I felt his wide hand on my upper back. It rubbed back and forth, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was comforting me. Or, trying to, at least.

“I know.” He said, and his hand rested on my shoulder. “I’m sorry for pushing you.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I was stuck on the feeling of the roughness of his palm, which I could gleam through the fabric of my jacket. How his fingers squeezed gently and released twice. There was no hidden meaning, no forced contact or any kind of attempt to put context into the touch. It was… natural. Warm, comforting, and it spoke a thousand words that I wouldn’t have been able to stomach if he had said them. It broke past my self-hatred and walls of ‘don’t be weak’ that I would have used as my defense if he had tried to verbally convey any sort of consolation. It was the first time I didn’t feel awkward about being so close to him, let alone when he was touching me. I wondered if he did this on purpose, or if he had no idea what he was doing at all.

I let myself stand nearer to him, almost tucked under his arm. I looked up and smiled as genuinely as I could – not that it was hard for me, but because I wanted to make sure that he really knew how much I appreciated the gesture. Although, if he knew that this simple act of comfort would pierce through my outer shell, was it really necessary?

“Thank you, Konig.” I said.

He looked down at me and smiled. That damn smile. I wondered how much more refreshing it would be when he wasn’t wearing his mask. It was already too much for my soul to bear when it was just the crinkling in his eyes that I could see.

“Anytime, Bonnie.” He replied, patting my shoulder before tucking his hand back into his pocket. I grieved minimally at the loss of the touch, but I was happy for what it was. “And I mean it. Anytime you need to talk – or not talk, and do that empty staring that you do – just come find me.”

I quirked an eyebrow in his direction. “Anytime?” I asked amusedly.

“Mhm!” Konig replied, his eyes on the ground as he watched his steps. Then, the realization hit him, and his eyes went wide with panic. “Oh- well, eh- I guess, not anytime-“

“You gonna tell me when?” I joked, and he laughed. “You need an open/closed sign on your door.” I jogged ahead, trying to reach the door to the barracks before he did.

“How about this?” he called out, and I could hear the grin behind his mask. “I’ll nail a chalkboard to my door, and if I’m busy, I’ll draw a stick guy jerking off in his bed!”

My cheeks burned after I heard him. “No!” I shrieked, laughing nervously. “You’ll traumatize Juno!” I quickly tried to pin this on someone other than me.

“Juno, hah?” Konig teased, and I had half a mind to run into the building and leave him on the quad. “I don’t care about him. Kid needs to be traumatized.”

I laughed and threw my head back, turning the corner around the arsenal shed. “That’s not very-“

Immediately, my heart leapt into my throat, and I gasped. Konig nearly ran into my back as he skidded to a halt.

Sick, sick, what the fuck, I feel sick-

“Stimmt etwas nicht?” he asked, concerned. “What- oh, scheisse-“

We both stared at the bird on the ground. A crow from the looks of it, though it was hard to even decipher that it was a bird in the first place, due to the state it was in. Its belly had been cut open, entrails and bloody bits pulled from the abdomen and strewn to either side of the bird. Its wings were stretched to their full capacity and most likely beyond it, crushed and missing a large number of feathers. Both of the legs appeared to have been ripped off and tossed to the left of the crow. Its beak was the worst of it all: pried open, the jaw probably broken from how wide it was spread. A haunting look of terror in the crow’s red, glossy eyes made a violent shiver run up my spine.

I exhaled shakily, my eyes still glued to the horror. “Holy shit – what the-“

Konig quickly walked around me and knelt in front of the crow. I shifted to look over his shoulder, still fearfully curious, but he held a hand out behind him, urging me to stay in place. With his other hand, he pulled at one of the bird’s wings, stiff and heavy. Whether it was frozen from the cold, or this was the effects from rigor mortis, I couldn’t tell.

“How – did a fucking fox do that?!” I asked. Are there even foxes in this area? How the hell did one get on base?

“Nein.” Konig replied, still looking at the corpse. His gaze fell upon it with a sense of… familiarity, maybe? “Not a fox, no.”

“Then what? It – whatever it was didn’t even eat-“

“I’ll take care of this.” Was all Konig said. He stood up and marched past me – I was barely able to catch a glimpse of his furious expression. His eyes were hard and narrow, and as he walked away, I noticed that his shoulders were tense and his hands were balled into fists. I didn’t dare say anything to him; he almost looked the same way he did after our first mission together, except this time, his anger seemed to be directed at something, instead of just a post-mission adrenaline high.

“I’ll see you later.” He said over his shoulder. There was an obvious fury to his words, and although I knew it wasn’t intended towards me, it still made me freeze where I stood – almost as if I might anger him more simply by taking a step after him.

Whatever it is… I thought, watching him disappear into the compound, he’s sorting it out. I can take care of myself. Although, with such an abrupt and tense departure, I was at a loss on what to do next. I looked back at the bird; its terrified eyes locked onto the sky above it, frozen in its last wish to fly away from whatever horror it endured.

A shiver ran up my spine, prompting me to look away.

- - - -

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#konig x reader #konig x reader smut #konig cod #konig smut #call of duty #cod x reader #ghost x reader #ghost x reader smut #ghost cod #cod #konig #ghost #simon ghost riley #simon riley #simon riley x reader

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yuri-is-online · 1 year ago

Note

Hi hi, Can you please to prompt 4 with Malleus,Vil, and Riddle?

4. You met someone really wonderful at the Masquerade Ball and have been ranting about how he was totally the love of your life to your abnormally quiet friend. Actually wasn't he invited too? Maybe you should ask him how that went.

Hello hello and of course I can, and I agree with the first ask you sent me. I was not really thinking of Malleus specifically when I wrote that prompt but it really does suit him doesn't it?

Oh also, welcome to the hell site. I noticed you're new from the few asks you sent me (I was so confused as to how a blank blog was talking to me), I hope you have fun with the content on here. New people are always welcome with me, I know all about being shy and uncertain of how to interact with people. I'll answer the other Malleus prompt you sent in after I have done some others, it was my bad for not realizing you were the same person haha.

notes: they/them used for Yuu, full shojo manga lack of self awareness here in Malleus's part (it is implied to take place before the Ch. 6 reveal), just don't think about it is Yuu's middle name. The rest of the requests can be found on my masterlist here.

Malleus

"Tsunotarou, you know a lot about gargoyles, right?" Such a foolish yet welcome question. Truly your unawareness of just who you are conversing with never ceases to amaze and infatuate him.

"Of course, I am something of an expert." He smiles, trying to keep it from showing the whites of his teeth.

"Oh well then you must be very happy to be in Diasomnia." Your eyes are sparkling, and he pauses. Yes he is very happy to be in Diasomnia, but not for the gargoyles. Briar Valley has long respected the legacy of the Thorn Fairy, and what better house could there be for the noblest of nobles than one that's very core is the spirit of nobility? But these are not exactly things he wishes to speak with you about, it would require detailed revelations he fears the consequences of.

"And what makes you think that, child of man?" Still there must be cause for your reasoning, and he does wish to hear it.

"Well your housewarden is one, isn't he?" You seem very pleased with yourself, but your mind is clearly very far away. Malleus stares at you, eyes wide in shock as he attempts to piece together what logic might have drawn you to such a conclusion. "I met him last night." Your dreamy sigh fills him with jealousy, just irrational enough that the thunder crack above you is quite small enough that he can convince you to remain outside of Ramshackle in conversation with him.

"Your mask is really impressive!" Your eyes always shone at the simplest displays of magic, it filled Malleus with a joy he could never quite find his fill of.

"Mask?!" Roars Sebek, his volume matching the pride rapidly feeling Malleus's chest. "Foolish human, this is more than a mere mask! This is a display of my lord's skill! A perfect recreation of old Briar Valley Masquerade tradition! His artistic talent has been woven though magic to bear his true face for the world to see-"

"That's quite enough Sebek." He does enjoy his retainers praise, but he has a task in mind that the over excited boy might- no will definitely endanger if he speaks further.

"But my lord!" Poor Sebek is torn between embarrassment, jelousy, and concern as he watches his precious lord observe you in the same manner one might a particularly expensive jewel.

"They have given me a most treasured compliment and I wish to reward them in turn." He bows, making sure to flourish his hand as he extends it, taking great pleasure in the little shudder that he only sees unaccompanied by fear in you. "May I have this dance, prefect?"

"Y-yes. You may." You seem in a daze as he takes you to the floor, just as unaware of the others around you as he is. It's wonderful, no matter how many times he visits you he has never had such a good excuse to hold you as this. Your scent, the weight of you in his arms, the way he can better familiarize himself with the subtle movements of your face is all much more real and overwhelming than he had ever imagined it being. It's all Lilia can do to drag him away, whispering teasing things about impropriety and duty to soothe the storm at his fingertips as he sees your friends scoop you up where he left off.

"He is a very handsome gargoyle. And so polite! But then I guess he is royalty so that makes sense..." The continued thunder has you inviting him in, mentioning something about tea he really can't be bothered to think about.

"No he isn't." Malleus pouts. "The nobility of Briar Valley has a reputation for being extremely dour and irrational."

"Oh. Well no wonder he seemed so happy I danced with him. Poor fellow must be very lonely." Oh if only you knew.

"Enough about my housewarden." Malleus declares without a hint of irony, bowing in a familiar fashion to prevent you from entering your kitchen. "He isn't the one you are talking to now is he? He isn't the one who you will be thinking about when you dream tonight." In a slight daze you take his hand, the living room fills with green fireflies as the storm outside slows to a halt as kinder, not softer emotions fill the young lord's heart. "He isn't the one your last dance is for, so focus on me, won't you?"

Vil

"This is why I told you to make sure whatever costume Crewel gave you came with a coat." Vil is beyond angry, with you certainly, but mostly at- life? The fact humans have an immune system that doesn't always work? You have no clue and your head is much too stuffed up to care. What you do care about is that Vil is here, and he really shouldn't be. Colds are contagious and Vil has so many things that he should be doing other than fussing over someone who is not in his dorm and not his responsibility.

"You could get sick." You say and he laughs, if you could see him, if he was not sat behind you on a bed in one of Pomefiore's empty rooms, you know the look he would have on his face. You would see his stupidly beautiful smug smile he has when he has something particularly cutting to say; instead you have to close your eyes and picture it as he pats your head dry just a bit more forcefully.

"Not my responsibility you say? You certainly seem to have a funny view of this." Vil has a word on the tip of his tongue. A word that's ambiguous, a word that would make his manager have a fit. If only she had been a fly on the wall during the Masquerade last night.

"My my, you seem a bit out of place." The tall stranger must be confused at your staring, but he seems more amused than offended. "Does my costume enchant you that much?"

"It reminded me of something." It would hard enough to explain to a friend what you are thinking of, harder still to a stranger. The scarlet costume could have been taken from a playbill, you find yourself looking him over for any sign of a folio. You highly doubt it's you the Red Death wants to capture tonight, but you cannot say you will protest too loudly if that's what he decides. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

"Quite the opposite," the stranger does not ask you to dance, merely extends his hand and gracefully leads you off to the side when you take it, "so long as you praise me out loud you can look as long as you like."

"It's not like you got me sick." You sneeze into your tissue and Vil frowns, satisfied with your care but not with your answer. He had his suspicions that you may have made a... mistake in your assessment of your time at the Masquerade. But it did hurt him slightly to think that you did not know his essence well enough to have recognized him at once. "And I did get a costume with a cloak, I just gave it to the Red Death because it was too weird to see him without it."

"Mhmm I don't know." you say. It's such a shame Vil can only see your lips, he loves it when you tease him so much already it isn't fair he has to focus on something so tauntingly close and yet so far out of reach. "I think your costume is incomplete."

"Oh?" Vil makes sure to hold you close to him as the song ends, daring anyone to come close enough to try and steal your attention so he can laugh at the attempt. "What's your reasoning for that? Depending on what you have to say, I just might agree." You back out of his arms and make a frame with your fingers. "Kiss me." He begs silently. "Kiss me and leave a mark." But instead you unwind your cloak and fix it to his shoulder.

"Perfect. Now you really look like the portrait." And to his great despair you are gone.

Despite your earlier stated worries, you fall back into Vil's chest, tilting your back to look up at him. "When I'm not sick remind me to tell you about the Phantom of the Opera? I wanted to spend more time dancing with him, but I was feeling too much at home and got scared he'd vanish." Vil's eyes shine with a strangely familiar light, and he gently guides you under the bed's covers. Just before he leaves he kisses your forehead so gently it's all you can do not to cry.

"I think your phantom might be closer than you think." He murmurs against your skin and leaves you to sleep, tucking you under a mysteriously familiar red cloak as soon as your eyes are well and truly closed.

Riddle

"You will be too tired to do anything after the ball, so make sure to shower and go directly to bed."

It was good advice based off of a reasonable assumption, and technically you were not in fact physically doing anything. You were also quite tired, you had expected to spend most of the ball on the outskirts observing the display of feathers and paints but that was far from what actually happened. You don't think you had ever danced in your life as much as you had in the past six hours. It would be extremely reasonable to assume that after scrubbing yourself free of makeup and sweat you would be down for the count.

But you weren't. Your mind was running a mile a minute, eyes constantly glancing at your phone on your nightstand. It's an odd feeling, wanting to call someone and not being able to. It is also a feeling you have become deeply familiar with, the ache it produces might as well be permanently woven into your heart, you should be immune to the pain at this point.

This time though, this time the person you want to call could theoretically be within reach. This person was someone you could touch, someone you could hold, someone whose touch still lingered against your hands.

The little knight was just as awkward as you were, if he didn't immediately stutter out a protest you would have thought he was just as inexperienced with the whole formal party thing as you were.

"I know what I'm doing I just-"

"Then can you show me how to dance? I've been practicing but I'm not great at it." He stares at you, and you are worried you said something wrong until he laughs, it sounds smug you think but you can't be sure.

"That's the proper way to ask for a dance." He takes your hand in his as he bows, kissing it so gently you half think it was your imagination. "This is."

You pick up your phone before it buzzes, immediately sitting up in shock when you see just who is messaging you at 3:30 am on a Friday.

[Riddle] Are you still awake prefect?

[Yuu] Ace is that you.

[Yuu] I'm not covering for you if Riddle finds out you took his phone again (¬_¬)

[Riddle] What do you mean again?

The little knight's dance is stiff at first, but he relaxes as you continue. He has been guiding you to the center of the room, you belatedly realize. You must have looked frightened once you did. "It would be rude to stay in the corner during the slower songs." He squeezes your hand to bring your attention back to him. "It isn't against the rules to be bad at dancing, but it is to monopolize other people's space."

"Aren't you doing that right now?" You tease and he stops leading you, almost as if he hadn't even considered that.

"Are you not enjoying yourself?" He almost sounds afraid and you find yourself having to take over the direction of your movements.

"I didn't say that." Your knight almost seems to grow ten feet tall at your praise before he becomes aware of himself again and gets a bit bashful. But he does not take over again, content to let you set the pace of your dancing for the rest of the night.

[Riddle] Actually disregard that. Since you are awake, would you mind coming to your window? I understand throwing rocks is considered romantic but breaking a window would be most unfitting behavior for a housewarden.

You are tempted to tell him you are waiting for a message from someone else, but the unusual behavior has you at your window before you can even full form the thought. You almost drop your phone at the sight you see below you.

Riddle expected to have difficulty making eye contact with you. He expected to be teased about his failure to follow his own good advice, his costume has got to be a mess between the dancing he did with you earlier and the pacing he did once he got back to Heartslabyul.

But neither of those happen. Neither matters, instead you see him and the familiar scrap of paper you had given him with your number and a heart and fly down the Ramshackle steps into his outstretched arms.

"I'm so glad it was you I danced with tonight."

#twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #malleus draconia x reader #vil schoenheit x reader #riddle rosehearts x reader #500 followers celebration #malleus is just delulu enough to be jealous of himself and you cannot convince me otherwise #also i understand that malleus and vil's voice actors were actually in a production of phantom together before being in twst #as the phantom and Raoul respectively? or did i hallucinate that #anyway i just think vil suits the phantom role and will be making more references to that in the future

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hbyrde36 · 17 days ago

Text

Caught in the Undertow

Chapter Six

WC: 4380 | R: Explicit | TW: Suicidal ideation/depression | Ch 6/10 | AO3

Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 <-

Steve watched the glow from the streetlights dance along the walls of his bedroom as a gentle breeze coming in through the open window sent his curtains fluttering.

The smell of tobacco smoke still clung to his shirt and hair from the cigarettes he and Eddie had shared out back. Normally he would have showered to avoid letting the odor settle into his sheets and pillow, but the usually acrid smell now just reminded him of Eddie, and he found himself turning over onto his stomach to press his face into it, breathing deep.

Which… okay.

That—that was definitely not normal. And decidedly not something Steve had ever done thinking about a friend before. Sure he loved Robin, and the smell of her body spray was comforting and familiar, but he’d never felt the desire to roll around in it.

Of course, he’d never before felt a lot of the things he did where Eddie was concerned.

And that whole interlude earlier with the cigarettes. He could pretend it was only due to the fact that Eddie’s lighter had been broken, but it would be a lie. It was unmistakably a move.

He’d pulled a move on a guy.

He’d pulled a move on Eddie Munson, and it’d felt like the most natural thing in the world.

It was as sure a sign as any that maybe it was time to let himself consider it, to let himself examine everything he’d been pushing to the side for way too long now.

Steve cast his mind back to the first time he’d truly seen Eddie. Like he’d told Wayne, they’d been aware of each other in school, Hawkins was a small town after all, but they hadn’t actually interacted all that much.

No, the first time Steve had looked—really looked—into those big sad brown eyes was in the boathouse, wide and terrified from the moment Eddie had jumped out from beneath that blue tarp, and pinned him against the wall.

Steve had instantly recognized the pain in those eyes, the way it echoed his own, and before Eddie had even told his story he already knew there was no way the other boy was guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In that moment something fiercely protective had settled in his chest. Right up there with Robin and Dustin, Nancy and the others, though he barely knew the guy at the time, Eddie’s name was penned in permanent ink on the growing list of people he would lay his life down to keep safe.

It only got worse from there. More confusing.

All throughout that awful week Steve had felt drawn to Eddie, completely unable to resist the pull. Anytime they were together—in the boathouse, walking through the Upside Down, sitting in the RV—he always found himself right next to Eddie, drifting into his space, or else searching out his gaze.

Those moments when they weren’t together, when they’d been forced to leave him behind to keep him hidden, Steve had been completely consumed with worry.

He almost lost it the day they came back to the boathouse to find Eddie gone and the place crawling with cops. Those few minutes before he managed to radio them from Skull Rock had been dark, leaving Steve ready to tear the entire town apart to find him.

But nothing could hold a candle to the way he’d felt on the night they’d nearly lost Eddie for good. When Steve had stupidly left him and Dustin behind to deal with the bats on their own. He’d convinced himself, or tried to, that it was Dustin his heart was breaking for when he didn’t find a pulse, as he desperately tried to keep Eddie’s heart pumping with his own two hands.

But he realized now—and honestly, deep down he’d sort-of known even then—that it wasn’t the full truth.

In those hopeless moments his heart had shattered for Dustin and for the boy laying all but lifeless under the press of his palms. A beautiful soul who still had so much to offer the world. Steve mourned the lost potential, had shed tears for everyone who had ever loved Eddie. And yes, cried for his own loss too, and everything about himself that he hadn’t realized was there until it was almost too late.

Somewhere between the near-apocalypse, the hospital, and his own ill-fated party the other night, Steve had fallen—hard.

It was a shocking realization, but also, somehow, not surprising at all.

Maybe he should have felt some type of way about the fact that Eddie was a boy and that meant Steve was probably not as straight as he’d always assumed—okay, it definitely meant that—but somehow that realization was less of a concern than that fact that it was Eddie he had these feelings for.

Eddie, who’d hated him less than twenty-four hours ago.

Eddie, who had enough to deal with right now.

Eddie needed a friend, not someone desperately crushing on him. He had so much on his plate already, and certainly didn’t need the added burden of Steve who was notoriously too clingy, too needy, just plain too much when he was in a relationship.

Relationship.

Steve actually scoffed out loud at himself for the thought. As if Eddie would even be interested in him like that. It was ridiculous. They were polar opposites.

It would never work.

And yet, a part of him still thought they might just be perfect for each other.

Or maybe it would ruin everything.

He slipped out of bed and quietly tiptoed to the bathroom, splashing a bit of cold water on his face, deciding ultimately—after a brief panic at the thought of coming clean about it—that his little epiphany didn’t have to change anything.

No one had to know.

He could handle it. It would be no different than the months he’d spent pining after Nancy when they broke up, and eventually, just like with her, he’d get over it. They’d be friends and it would be fine, because that’s what Eddie needed right now.

A muffled bang and wordless shout sounded out somewhere in the house. It must have been pretty loud, or at least close by for Steve to have heard it from all the way up here. He stuck his head out the bathroom door, planning to sprint to his room for his bat before searching the house, until it happened again. A voice, coming from Eddie’s room, repeated heartbreaking cries of Dustin’s name.

Steve lunged for the door, hoping it wasn’t locked.

It wasn’t, to his relief, and he rushed inside, stomach dropping at the sight of Eddie screaming and crying, thrashing around violently in his bed.

A nightmare, it had to be. Steve had never really seen it from the other side before. Robin slept over from time to time, and she’d been struggling with insomnia off and on since her first foray into the dark side of Hawkins, but when she did manage sleep it was generally a peaceful affair.

Lucky her.

Or maybe not, because watching Eddie go through this now was frightening, and Steve knew Robin had seen him in a similar state more than once.

He approached the bed, sitting on the edge of it as he took Eddie gently by the shoulders, shaking him lightly, hoping not to scare the guy any worse than he already was.

“Eddie?” Steve said softly. Then a little louder, “Eddie? Can you hear me?”

Eddie’s eyes flew open and with a rough gasp he sucked air into his lungs like a swimmer who’d finally reached the surface of deep waters.

“It was just a nightmare.” Steve spoke calmly, trying to soothe though the sight of Eddie in such distress made him want to cry too. Without thinking he released his hold on Eddie’s shoulders and instead reached out to gently cup his damp cheek. “You’re okay, I’ve got you. Dustin is fine, everyone is fine.”

For a second Eddie only stared up at him, chest heaving and lips parted, but then he nodded, making his warm cheek press into Steve’s hand a little more and he realized what he’d done—how close they were.

He tried to pull away, put some distance between them. Barely an hour into admitting his feelings to himself and he’d already overstepped.

It was time to go.

He’d done his part, he’d woken Eddie up and—

Suddenly Eddie’s hand shot out, twisting into Steve’s shirt with a grip like a vice, tugging him back.

“Stay?” Eddie begged, voice cracking as he forced the words out. “Just for a little while. Please?”

It was a bad idea.

The worst.

“Scoot over,” Steve breathed, crawling into the bed and under the covers Eddie lifted for him in invitation, his stomach doing somersaults as he became enveloped in Eddie’s warmth, now shared between them as they settled together beneath the heavy blankets on their sides, facing each other. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really. It was…”

Steve vividly remembered how jarring his nightmares had been in the months after he’d faced down that first demogorgon with Nancy and Jonathan, and worse still after the demodogs and the tunnels, when his evening terrors began to feature four little guest stars in mortal peril. Again without thought for the consequences he slid his hand along the sheets until it found Eddie’s, holding it tight, giving whatever comfort he could. “I know.”

Steve didn’t mean to fall asleep. He hadn’t planned to stay all night, just until Eddie felt better enough to be alone, or maybe until Eddie himself fell asleep, but being cozied up surrounded with the other boy’s scent, with their fingers still laced and their conversation tapering off, it was all too easy to let go and drift away.

Had that been it, it would have been manageable.

With a bit of distance, a bit of time, Steve might have been able to guard his heart better, keep his feelings from growing to the point that he was fit to burst with them. But as it was, night after night he found himself in Eddie’s bed, comforting him as he came down from yet another nightmare, where they inevitably fell asleep together to wake in the morning with arms thrown over waists, and legs tangled.

Neither of them ever acknowledged it, and it was threatening Steve’s ever dwindling sanity.

It took less than a week for him to break and tell Robin what was going on in his head. He’d been unusually quiet during their daily check-ins, typically letting her steer the conversation towards school, or the kids, or Vickie, and he suspected she already knew something was up.

“Ahoy, sailor!” She announced loudly through the receiver, answering on the first ring.

Steve could picture her laying on her bed, phone pressed to her ear with one hand, giving her ceiling a mocking salute with the other. It made him smile despite himself. “What if it was someone else calling you?”

“Meh, it’s not the weirdest way I could answer the phone.” There was a rustle over the line as though she were adjusting her position. “How's it going? How’s Eddie today?”

“He’s…” Steve trailed off, swallowing to soothe his suddenly dry throat. He’d fled for the downstairs only seconds ago after happening upon Eddie as he was coming out of the bathroom after a shower, wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his waist. It left his scars on full display, but to Steve they only enhanced the view and served as a physical reminder that Eddie had survived.

“He’s doing really well.”

“Oh good!”

“Yeah,” he sighed out, the sound overly dramatic even to his own ears.

“Is that… not a good thing, Steve?”

“I have to tell you something,” he rushed out before he could change his mind.

“What do you—” Robin gasped loudly. “Oh—Oh! Oh my god, really? Are we finally doing this?”

He groaned, ”Robin—”

“Sorry, sorry, I'll let you tell me.” She took a deep breath, as though she were the one about to confess a secret. Not that it was exactly a secret, apparently. “Go ahead.”

“I think I’m in love with Eddie”

Her sudden silence was deafening.

“Are you still there?” Steve asked.

She huffed, “I hate you right now.”

“What did I do?!”

“Leave it to you to blow right past the crisis part of your bisexual awakening, skip the crush, and fall head over heels for the first boy who made you think twice!”

“You told me to!” He nearly shouted, cursing himself as he pulled the receiver away from his ear, listening for footsteps in case Eddie came to see what was going on.

Thankfully, he heard nothing.

“Nope, no you do not get to blame this one on me,” she was saying as he tuned back in. “I was merely a witness. An innocent bystander. I just wanted you to admit you thought he was cute! I knew you had a thing for him or something, but Steve—”

“I know,” he whispered into the phone with his hands cupped around it, still paranoid of being overheard, but he couldn’t help the smile that stretched over his face. It just felt so good to have finally said it out loud. “I don’t even know when it happened. I feel… I like him so much it makes me feel crazy sometimes.”

“Well, don’t leave me hanging, what did he say?” She asked, plowing ahead as usual without letting him actually answer. “I can’t believe you got a boyfriend before I’ve even had the chance to hold hands with a girl. You just had to one up—”

Steve cut her off. “What makes you so sure he’s, y’know.”

“Seriously, Steve? He's kinda obvious. Wait, are you telling me he turned you down?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“What do you mean you haven't told him?!” She screeched.

“I can’t, for so many reasons. I just can’t.”

She let out a disgusted puff of air. “Explain it to me.”

“Rob—”

“No!” She interrupted. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. Is this some self-loathing sacrificial crap, or do you really have a reason?“

“It’s–it’s not the time. He’s got enough to deal with right now, he doesn’t need this too.”

“You know you’re not a burden, right? That loving you, and being loved by you isn’t a chore?”

Steve wanted to believe her, really he did, but it couldn’t be true.

He knew Robin loved him, she’d proven it time and time again, but she was the only one who’d ever stayed. Nancy said she loved him, then turned around and called it all bullshit before running straight into Jonathan’s arms. Even his parents had left. And yes, he’d chosen to stay behind but he’d seen the subtle look of relief on his fathers face when he’d told them he wasn’t moving with them. He could remember all too well how many days he’d come home from school to an empty house as a kid. How many nights he’d slept in his parents' bed just to feel close to them when they both went away on his father’s business trips.

Robin was the exception to the rule.

He must have been quiet for too long, and she spoke again. “Anyone would be lucky to have you, and I know it’s scary but I think you should tell him. He might feel the same way. Whatever reasons you think you have, isn’t it worth the risk for a chance to be happy?”

“I’ll think about it,” he conceded, if only to shut her up for now.

“Good,” she said, the relief in her voice making him feel guilty for lying about his intentions. “Are you sure you don’t need to have a gay crisis with me?”

“Pretty sure.” Steve chuckled softly. “I guess I’ve always found some guys attractive. I thought it was like, objectively? But I guess not. There’s just something about Eddie, how he makes me feel. I don’t care that he’s a guy, or that having feelings for him makes me less than straight. It doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change the way I feel, or what I want.”

When Eddie asked to come shopping with him, Steve had worried about what It might do to his progress if people reacted badly to seeing him out and about.

On the flip side, they’d been happily living in their own private world here, and maybe Steve was being dramatic again, and more than a bit selfish, but he felt like this little adventure to the grocery store could be the beginning of the end to that.

It turned out, Eddie’s reaction wasn’t the one he should have been worried about.

As they walked back into the house, arms laden with heavy bags, Steve couldn’t stop replaying the whole thing in his mind. He’d wanted to beat the shit out of Andy for talking about Eddie like that, for looking at him like that. Had Eddie not stepped in and stopped him, he would have done it too, right there in the middle of the aisle without a single doubt.

And as they set the bags on the counter and began to unpack their groceries, Steve also couldn’t seem to stop staring.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Eddie said after a while.

“Sorry.” Steve felt his cheeks begin to burn. He moved away to hide it, shoving a few things into the refrigerator. He was usually under more control than this, but nearly getting in a fight to defend your crush’s honor had a way of exposing your nerves.

“Hey,” Eddie said when he turned back, trying to catch his eye. Steve tried to resist but as usual he fell right into the twin traps that were those big brown eyes.

“I'm okay, I promise,” Eddie went on. “I'm not gonna go off the deep end or whatever you're worried about, ok? Screw that asshole and everyone who agrees with him. We know the truth, and that’s all that matters.”

At least he didn’t seem to understand what exactly Steve was struggling with at the moment. “Sorry. You’re right,” he said, playing it off. “You did great. I'm the one who lost it. I just—I hate that anyone thinks that way about you.” It was the absolute truth, the only one he could offer right then.

“Steve—” Eddie hesitated, worrying at his bottom lip. “Why, and I swear I'm not being a dick this time, but, why are you doing all this for me? Why do you care?”

“Eddie…”

Those words, that question and the sincere look on Eddie’s face was all it took for Steve’s resolve to crumble. He couldn’t let Eddie walk around on this planet for one more second without knowing how much he really cared, how much Eddie meant to him.

The thing was, over the last few days whenever the feelings hiding just beneath the surface of his skin became too much, when he couldn’t stop himself from gazing longingly at Eddie, sometimes he caught Eddie looking back.

And it made him wonder.

“I care because it’s you,” Steve began, trying hard to put all of it into words. “Because you’re one of us. Because you’re my friend. Because…” With a shaky breath, he stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Eddie stood there, frozen but not moving away even when their feet touched and Steve took the can he was holding out of his hand and set it on the counter.

This close up he could see the fan of Eddie’s dark, full lashes, the brush of color sweeping across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the dip of the cupid’s bow above his top lip.

“Because…” Steve’s words failed him, as they so often did, and he only knew one other way to convey everything he felt. As he leaned in, pressing his body against the length of Eddie’s, he prayed he hadn’t imagined it, that all the mornings they’d woken up in each other’s arms had meant something to Eddie too.

A soft press of lips.

The hint of stubble scratching at his chin.

The taste of coffee and cigarettes.

It was far from Steve’s first kiss, but for the first time he got what people meant when they talked about feeling sparks fly. He’d told Dustin once to go for it when you feel the electricity. Honestly, he’d thought it was just a metaphor, but now with his mouth on Eddie’s and every nerve ending in his body on fire, he finally understood.

When it’s right, it feels like nothing else.

For a moment he was on cloud nine, but it was with a slow dawning horror that he realized Eddie was frozen beneath his touch. That he wasn’t kissing back.

Steve jerked away, stepping back with his hands raised near his shoulders. “I-I’m so sorry. I thought—”

Eddie was still unmoving and silent, his face paler than Steve had ever seen.

“Oh god. Eddie, I’m—”

Without a word Eddie turned and ran, his footsteps pounding up the staircase all the way to his room.

A door slammed in the distance.

Steve sank to the floor on numb legs, his back leaning against the cabinet the only thing keeping him upright.

He knew this would happen.

It was the whole reason he hadn’t said anything, and now he’d gone and fucked everything up. Eddie was probably packing his things right now, desperate to get away from him.

Steve pulled his knees to his chest, hugging them tight as he hid his face.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, wallowing, wishing he had the courage to get up, or at least run away himself and hide until Eddie was gone.

How could he have been so stupid.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

“You're not stupid.”

Steve sucked in a breath as Eddie’s voice washed over him. He didn’t dare move his head to see but felt it as the other boy sat down next to him on the floor, resting a hand on his elbow.

“Would you look at me, please, Steve?” Eddie said softly when he didn’t react.

Reluctantly, Steve did. “Are you mad?”

Eddie scrunched his face like he was in pain. “Of course not.”

Steve shook his head. “You’re clearly not happy about it.”

“You surprised me, is all.”

“Not the good kind of surprise then, huh?”

“I just–I don’t understand,” Eddie said, letting go of Steve's arm to rake his hands through his mass of curls. “I thought you were straight?”

Steve snorted, looking away. “Apparently not, or so I’ve realized.”

“Right.”

There was a soft thunk to Steve’s left as if Eddie had banged his head back into the cabinets.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn't have…” Steve shook his head again. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go back in time and take it all back. “I get it, If you hate me now.”

“Steve, how could you even think that?” Eddie asked incredulously, as though the idea were shocking.

Steve rolled his head back to look at him, raising both eyebrows.

“Okay, that’s fair.” Eddie grimaced. “I’m sorry, I shouldn't have walked away from you like that. I just needed a minute to think.”

“And what–uh, w-what do you think?”

“Steve, I’m—” Eddie dropped his eyes to his lap, rubbing his hands together and fiddling with the rings there. “Flattered, which is the understatement of the century. You are one of the best people I know. I feel so incredibly lucky to have you as a friend after everything, but I… I can’t do this.” Eddie raised his head, holding Steve's gaze as he went on. “And I need you to believe me when I say it has nothing to do with you, this is all me. Okay?”

Steve forced himself to smile and nod, hoping that it would hide the fact that he was dying inside. Eddie could say whatever he wanted to, but Steve knew better. Whenever someone said—It’s not you, it’s me—that was almost never the case. “Sure, y-yeah. I get it. No–no problem.”

The act must have been convincing enough, or maybe Eddie was being kind. He returned Steve’s smile and rose, extending a hand to help him up.

It was awkward then, moving around each other, finishing the process of putting all the food they’d gotten away, out of step in a way they’d never been before. It had Steve itching all over again with the need to escape, to hide in his room and maybe call Robin to cry about it, but he was determined not to make things any weirder than he already had.

“Do you think the kids would want to come over tonight?” Eddie asked as they were finishing up. “I feel like it’s time for me to try and make up for ruining their party.”

A few hours ago Steve would have asked Eddie if he was ready for that, but if today had proved anything it was that he was doing just fine. This could be the best thing for them now anyway. A buffer, a distraction, something to focus on instead of his own horrible lapse in judgment.

“Yeah, they’d love that,” Steve answered with a touch more enthusiasm than he felt. “You should call Dustin. He’d be happy to hear from you and I'm sure he’d take care of getting the rest on board.”

Eddie nodded, moving to grab the phone off the wall.

“What about Robin?” Steve asked before he could dial, quickly adding, “we don’t have to have all the older group over, just her.”

Eddie shot a grin at him over his shoulder. It felt like a knife in his chest. “Sure, big boy. It’s your house. I guess I probably owe Buckley a bit of an apology too, huh?”

The name, which before made butterflies take flight in Steve’s stomach, now only made it turn sour.

How was he ever going to get over this?

At least he’d have Robin to console him tonight, once he could get her alone and tell her what an idiot he’d been.

Thanks and love to @penny00dreadful and @pearynice for all your help and encouragement with this!

Permanent taglist(open): @penny00dreadful @pearynice @hitlikehammers @bookworm0690 @wonderland-girl143-blog

@goodolefashionedloverboi @themagicalari @awkwardgravity1 @rocknrollsalad

Fic taglist (open): @sidebarre

#Sad/Angst with a HAPPY ending #steddie fanfic #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #steddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #steve x eddie #steddie fic #tw depression #cw depression #robin buckley

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noiriarti · 3 months ago

Text

Inappropriate: Armitage Hux x Reader - Ch. 4

NSFW!!!

TW: mentions of Brendol Hux being abusive, nsfw

Summary: Hux has to travel to Starkiller Base to check on construction. His favorite lieutenant comes with him, but these horrible, terribly inappropriate thoughts just won't stop.

Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, [Ch. 4]

The Academy didn't exactly leave its graduates romantically well-adjusted, and Armitage was no exception. As he stormed into his room, his heart pounding, partially with fear for his career and partially with adrenaline from your encounter, he closed his door and immediately felt the guilt wash over him. Saying that to you felt terrible, and the look in your eyes when he pulled away nearly shattered him right there. It took all his resolve to protect your careers.

He wondered if he had made a wrong decision. Cora had married someone as an officer, after all. A small part of him whispered that one of you could just retire, and then it wouldn't be anyone's business what you did--Order or not. And, if something did happen, it wasn't exactly nonconsensual like it was with Kelein. Maybe he could even get away with an honorable discharge.

He had thought about it before, if he could build a life with you. He looked into it, considered all the practicalities. But he never acted on anything, because it would have been ridiculous to think you felt the same way about him. After tonight, though, Armitage thought maybe you felt the same way about him. Just maybe.

Armitage weighed the probability in his mind as he got out of his uniform, meticulously folding each piece as he took it off. Around the time he had slipped on his sleep shirt and sleep pants, he had decided that there was a greater than 50% chance you liked him, at least a little bit, and that there was some merit in talking to you about it. He brushed through his hair and broke up the gel, leaving his bangs soft over his forehead. Either way, his words to you were far too harsh. You hadn't done anything wrong. You were just sitting there, and it was him that touched you. Fuck, now that he thought about it, he had initiated all the contact, except the leg thing. He was the creepy one leering on your lips and touching them like some pervert.

There was a decanter of whiskey on the desk, just as he had requested, and he poured himself a double with shaking hands. What had he done?

He gulped the whiskey down as fast as he could. The warmth in his throat didn't burn him, though, it just reminded him of your legs touching earlier and the warmth it had filled him with. He leaned over with his head in his hands, panic gripping him. FUCK, what have I done?

Armitage was halfway through pouring himself another drink to build up his courage when he heard a whimper through the wall. Oh fuck, were you crying? He froze. You shared a wall, so he pressed his ear to it. His heart stopped and his throat got tight at the mental image of you sobbing. He had only seen you cry once, when an Academy student died on a mission. You were both so much younger then, but he still felt himself drawn to stand by you and put his arm on your shoulder. He couldn't stand to see you cry again.

A moment later, he heard another small noise. A deep intake of breath. You were definitely crying. Hard, by the sound of it.

He could barely hold himself together as he put on a sweater and slippers, shoving his feet into them hurriedly. He had to fix this. NOW. His hands shook as he set the glass down.

It's all my fault it's all my fault it's all my faultit'sallmyfaultit'sallmyfault, his mind echoed as he slammed his door open and rushed to yours. Your cries were louder now, and his chest was tight with guilt.

Fuck protocol. Fuck rules. Fuck Kelein. Fuck the Order. All that mattered was you feeling better. Him making it right. He wanted to make it right for the rest of his life, if you asked him. He would do fucking anything for you, and he knew that now. He would take the firing squad, if it would stop you from crying because of him.

He reached your door and knocked on it hurriedly, calling your name, propriety be damned. No answer.

Fuck it. He opened the door.

There, on the bed, he saw you splayed out, fingers buried inside you. Your other hand was gripping your breast, but he barely noticed. His attention was entirely on your face and your moans. You looked positively fucking angelic with your hair splayed messily around you, and the sweat beading on your brow. He heard you make a little *oh!* sound, face scrunched together, as you finally came. Hard.

Your back arched off the bed, pushing your breasts into the air. His eyes were glued to your pussy now, watching it twitch around your fingers. From the moment he saw you, his cock was harder than a fucking diamond, but it started twitching when you came. Stars, he needed you. Needed to be inside you.

It was only a split second, but it was enough for him to memorize everything. And to process that he should probably go. His cheeks and chest grew hot and feverish, blush spreading all over his upper body.

"HolyfuckIamsosorry!" he blurted before he ran out of the room. He closed the door behind him and walked, lightheaded and unsteady, back to his own room. As he closed the door behind him, he realized he had fucked up. Majorly. This was an HR report waiting to happen. But he couldn't stop his cock from twitching, or his mind from seeing that image of you, cumming hard in front of him.

Usually, masturbating was just taking care of a need for him. He would wake up hard, or, worse, come back to his quarters hard after one of your meetings, and take care of himself full of shame. Your sweet voice haunted those moments, saying "Affirmative, sir" or "Good shot, sir" with those perfect lips.

This was different. He was harder than he had been in any of those moments. His cock ached in his pants, begging to be taken out and touched. He rolled his hips subconsciously, feeling his head rub across the material of his pants. He wanted more. He needed more. He palmed his cock as he moved to his bed, falling onto it roughly. The material of his sleep pants was already getting sticky at the point where the tip of his cock leaked precum. For a moment, he was scared he was going to cum as soon as he wrapped a hand around his length. He had to make this last.

He smeared the precum over his hand as he pulled his pants down, setting a slow pace to keep himself going. Fantasies weren't new to him, and it wasn't like he'd never imagined you naked before. But now, he didn't have to imagine. He had your perfect body snapshotted in his mind forever. Would your pussy twitch the same way if he made you cum on his cock? Would you make that noise if he bent you over some stupid machine on the bridge? He'd give anything to make you shake while he buried his face between your legs, making you cum over and over and over until you begged him to stop.

Fuck, it was too much. He sped up, setting a brutal pace, like he imagined he would with you. The head of his cock was a dark red, sensitive and ready to cum. He grunted as his thumb rubbed over his slit, sending the tingling feeling that had started in his legs all over his body. It had never felt like this before, when he was alone in his quarters.

Then a knock came a his door. It was probably the pilot, telling him the updated ETA. He internally cursed fate, timing, and just life in general as he pulled up his sleep pants. A rather obvious tent was still visible, and he tried to shift it to make it smaller as he moved toward the door.

"Yes?" He swung the door open. It was you.

"Gene--Armitage. Can I come in? I'd like to talk to you," you said, wringing your hands like he knew you did when you were uncomfortable. He was still a little pink from his encounter with you, but he definitely flushed a deeper shade when he saw your cheeks still rosy, and your pupils still blown wide.

"Yes, er--sure," he answered. He gestured for you to enter, and, while you passed through the doorframe, pulled his shirt down as far as he could to try and disguise his obvious arousal. You breathed in raggedly and turned to face him once he closed the door behind you. An awkward silence sat between the two of you.

"I-" you both began in sync. You giggled awkwardly, which in turn made him chuckle.

"Please, go ahead," he said.

"No, please, you go first," you responded. He took a deep breath and began. He got the sense that what he said, and the way he said it, was perhaps the most important choice he had ever made.

"Alright. I came to see you because I wanted to apologize. For earlier. I was harsh to you, unnecessarily so. I most likely made you uncomfortable earlier, with the, well, I suppose, advances I made. I am deeply sorry for that. It also wasn't my intent to to walk in on--to see you in such an... intimate moment. I am truly, very sorry," he said. It took you several seconds to respond--4 and a half, not that he was counting--and his heart was in his throat for every single one of them.

"About you seeing... what you saw. I should be the one who's sorry. I shouldn't have been doing that on a mission, and I didn't want to make you uncomfortable," you said, and then paused before continuing, "But you were making advances?" Your hopeful eyes bored into him, and he took a shaky breath. It was now or never.

"I-yes. I was. I hadn't intended to, but I couldn't stop myself once I started. The truth is that I have... feelings for you--deep feelings--and I have been trying to shake them since the Academy. I have been in love with you for so long that I cannot imagine what my world would be like without you," he paused, "But I was, and am, worried that, given my position of power over you, that I would pressure you into a relationship, or that I would lose my job, or, even worse that you would lose your job over my silly crush." There was a certain vulnerability to being honest that Armitage wasn't used to, and he so rarely felt exposed the way he did now. His heart was in your hands, and, even if you crushed him at this moment, saying that he loved you had lifted a weight he did not even realize he was carrying. Now you knew. Not that the minor relief made the earth-shaking nervousness any better.

A long pause hung in the air between you. His heart pounded in his chest and his ears thrummed with the blood rushing through them. When had he last been this scared? This nervous? He pressed his nails into his palm to distract himself, the bite of the pain taking the edge off. He kept his gaze downward, as if that would help him avoid the inevitable.

Instead, he was met with your hands on his face. Stars, your hands were so soft pressed up against his cheek. His eyes fluttered shut and he leaned into your touch, starved for it. He sighed deeply, hoping against all hope that he could stay here forever, suspended in this moment with you.

Then he felt your lips on his, gentle and warm and perfect. He could have sworn that every single nerve in his body was firing at a million miles an hour and lighting him up like a firework. It was the best feeling Armitage had ever felt. If this is what being kissed felt like, he didn't want to ever stop for the rest of his life. He could die right here and be the happiest man to ever exist. Even when you pulled away, he kept his eyes closed, savoring the moment before it was gone. Your thumb gently stroked his cheek, which made his body scream for more more more, but he ignored it in favor of waiting for you to say something.

"Armitage, I love you too. I've loved you since, well, as long as I can remember," you said. Your confession sat, heavy in the air between you. Now that everything was in the open, the tension that had been suppressed by his fears was suffocatingly strong. His eyes met your lips, again, and he snapped.

He kissed you wildly, grabbing your waist and face with such force that you almost fell over. It was everything he had ever wanted to do to you over all those years--sloppy and messy and so, so intense. Your cheek was just as smooth under his hand as it was earlier, but this time it was *his*. You sniffed in pain when, in his haze, he accidentally bumped your teeth together. Fuck, I hope I'm not bad at this, he thought.

"Sorry," he murmured to you, face only an inch from yours, "I'm not very experienced." He internally hoped you hadn't thought of him as some playboy who would be perfect the first time around.

"Me neither, whatever, just kiss me," you gasped as you pulled his shirt and slammed your lips together again. Your already wet lips slid together and against each other so perfectly, sending jolts to your core. Heat was pooling in his body too, settling to an insistent thrum in his cock, which was already sensitive and twitching like mad. He was leaning down to kiss you, and you occasionally stepped back to catch your balance, until your legs hit the back of his bed, almost knocking you down in the process. He caught you with his arms, which really were stronger than they looked, but what he really wanted was to push you down onto the bed and keep you there for hours. (Would he really be that lucky? Would you even want that, from him? Could he really even make you feel good, let alone make you cum? Would his cock be good enough for you? Big enough? Was he enough? A little voice asked in his mind. He dismissed it.)

"We don't have to, now, I mean," he whispered to you between kisses.

"No, I want to. I want you," you breathed, pulling him down onto you. He was weightless for a moment before catching himself on his arms, his body so close to yours. Here goes nothing, he thought, pressing his clothed erection against you. You moaned in response and he swore it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. He wanted you to moan for him all night, begging for his cock inside you over and over.

Armitage rocked his hips hesitantly, hoping you wouldn't hold him obviously being aroused beyond belief against him. The friction was absolutely delicious, and he wished there were fewer layers between you as he kept thrusting as he kissed down to your throat, planting wet kisses as he went. You would have a high collar anyway, he figured, so he started sucking and biting a spot that made you whine whenever his tongue ghosted over it.

He pulled off you with a wet pop, and looked in pride at the swollen red mark he left. His. You were his. He beamed with pride. His kisses progressed lower, down to the neckline of your shirt, and you got the hint. When he next pulled off you, you kicked off your slippers and scooched back onto the bed, laying on the pillows. You treated him to quite a show, taking your shirt off slowly and sensually as he sat, practically drooling for you. You were in just your regulation sports bra, not anything special in your mind, but he thought it was the best thing he had ever seen. Your nipples peeked through the garment, and he longed to take them in his mouth.

Fair was fair, so he took off his own shirt, pausing for a moment when he realized this would be the first time anyone saw his bare chest in years. It was, like the rest of him, lean but muscular, and, to him, not particularly sexy. His freckles peppered his shoulders, but his back was covered with small scars from particularly harsh beatings from his father, including several rather prominent cigar burns that he hid at all costs when he was changing in the Academy. It felt shameful, to be so weak. He hoped you wouldn't ask, and that he wouldn't have to explain.

Your eyes scoured his chest, looking like you wanted to pounce on him again, which cast a warm glow in his heart (and crotch, but that mattered less right then). He approached you and lay next to you, on his side, carding his hands through your hair.

"What are these scars from, Armitage?" You asked, tracing a particularly harsh one that cut from his back to his shoulder.

"I-" he felt like his mouth was filled with cotton, dry and heavy. Would you think less of him? "My father. He is... not a kind man," he choked out. You gazed at him with pity, and his heart pattered in his chest. Had he ruined the moment? Did you still want to keep doing... whatever you were doing?

"I'm sorry. He sounds like an asshole," you said. You kissed him tenderly. "But let's not think about him," you continued, kissing him with more heat, more urgency. His arousal came back, insistent. He rolled so he was on top of you, skin against skin, kissing away any memory of his father until his head was filled with nothing but you. His hand came up to your bra strap, and you nodded. He grabbed the bottom, pulling it gently up and over your head. Finally, he was seeing you again. He went back to your jaw, kissing down to your nipple. He took it in his mouth, swirling and sucking until you moaned like you did when you came. He'd pull more noises out of you, he decided. His right hand came up to roll your nipple--almost exactly like you had imagined--grabbing and kneading your breast as he thrust gently against your clothed pussy.

The heat between you was getting unbearable. When he was satisfied with your tits (not that he would ever, really, be done with them), he kissed down to your waistband. Looking up at you for confirmation, he started pulling them down when he saw you nod emphatically. "Yes, yes," you whispered. He practically ripped them off, along with your underwear, finally seeing you naked in front of him again. But what was he supposed to do now? He'd never touched someone like this. He had an idea.

"Show me what you like. How you did it earlier," he commanded, pouring some of his General voice into it. You whimpered, bringing your hand to your clit and rubbing circles. Finally, pleasure. You moaned loudly, and he ripped your hand away. It was his turn.

He dove into your pussy like a man possessed, licking sloppy circles on your clit until he figured out which position made you react the most. Then, he kept on it, speeding up as he went. Words poured out of you, almost surprising you with their filth.

"Fuck yes Armitage please faster please please please that feels so good," you babbled, body twitching. He could feel your abs clenching, and your thighs tensing up as he kept going. With his free hand, he thrust his middle finger into your pussy. You were positively soaked, and he groaned against you at the sensation. He had read somewhere that he was supposed to curl up (in one of his times alone with a datapad after a particularly long study session with you), so he tried it, and you practically screamed. So sensitive for him. He moved a hand to stroke himself through his pants. Fuck, you were perfect.

He set a brutal pace on you, adding another finger, which your pussy instantly gripped around. You were even louder now, so so close to release.

"Please, General, let me cum please please pleasepleaseplease," you gushed, digging your hands into his hair and gripping it. He made a mental note to pull yours later. He could tell you were almost there, and who was he to deny you? He just wanted you to come undone all over him, so he let you.

He could tell you were cumming when you spasmed and clenched *hard* on his fingers, moaning just like you had when he saw you the first time. Only, this time, it was all because of him. He smiled against you at that thought. He gently worked you through your orgasm, slowly lapping at your sensitive clit. You were so perfect for him. When you had caught your breath, he pulled his fingers from you and licked the taste of you off of them as he climbed back up you.

"Darling, I want to fuck you," he said with a newfound confidence from your glazed, doe-like eyes. He had an idea of something you might like. He put his hand on your cheek and toyed with your lower lip like he had earlier.

"Do you want your General to fuck you?" He asked sweetly, pouring just the smallest tinge of command into his tone. He knew you couldn't resist. You whimpered and nodded fervently as your hands tried to tug his pants down. He chuckled darkly and tutted.

"Not yet, darling. Do you have protection?" He asked. He didn't exactly have a need for condoms, so he didn't tend to travel with them. You looked embarrassed as you jumped off the bed and dug one out of your pants pocket, holding it up to him once you returned to the bed. He grinned wildly. You were his favorite strategist, after all. Gods, how he loved you. Armitage ripped open the little foil packet, holding it between his teeth as he pulled his pants down, finally freeing his aching cock. He gave it a pump or two, just to take the edge off, and then he rolled it smoothly onto his cock. Your gaze was fixed on his cock, ravenous. Joy bloomed in his chest, and he lined himself up with you.

"Are you sure, my love?" He just wanted to check. You smiled and tucked a piece of his bangs behind his ear.

"Yes, are you?" He nodded, grinning impishly. He slapped his dick against your oversensitive clit a few times before pressing into you, loving the squeal he elicited. He watched your eyes roll back as he sheathed fully into you, trying in vain to take a mental picture of your face as he first fucked you. The feeling of your sweet, wet, tight pussy gripping his cock was overwhelming and perfect. He was sure life couldn't get any better than being buried in you. He experimentally pulled back and thrust in, shallow, but he groaned with the feeling. So. Fucking. Tight.

"Please, fuck me, sir," you whispered to him, and he immediately started slamming his hips into you. *Stars*, this was worth waiting for. You were worth waiting for. He fucked you with long, deep strokes, rushed and sloppy. His cock was lighting up your pussy, and, whenever you clenched around him, he groaned loudly. Your moans were becoming louder and louder in rhythm to his hips. Your mind was going blank with the feeling of his thick cock bumping against every spot that made your body sing. He could feel his balls tightening, so he pulled out of you quickly, wanting to make this last.

He put his hand under your hip and roughly flipped you over. As he entered you from behind, he grabbed your hair with one hand and smacked your ass with the other. You practically howled, and, before he could push in all the way, started moving your hips on his cock. He tutted at you and grabbed your hip with his free hand, pulling your hair to turn you to face him.

"You want to be fucked? I'll fuck you, angel," he growled, setting a brutal pace. You squealed and bucked when his hand snaked down your stomach and met your clit. The headboard of the bed smashed against the wall, the springs creaking so loudly, it almost sounded like your moans. But you, his love, were drowning them all out with your beautiful moans. Stars, he was close. He wasn't going to cum without you, though, so he put all his energy into speeding up his hand on your clit and fucking you even faster.

Then, it came. He could tell you were close from the way your body tightened and you panted, just like you had before. All at once, you came with a loud yelp, moaning obscenities shortly after. It was too much for him. His legs were tingling from the pleasure, and his head was buzzing, almost distracting him from the hot coil in his stomach. When your pussy clenched from the waves of your orgasm, it was over for him. The feeling exploded all over him, and he fucked you through it, chanting your name like a prayer as he finished.

Tired and spent, he leaned forward and rested on your back. His head was a daze, filled with such much joy that he didn't know it was even possible. He pressed a few lazy kisses to your back as you panted, tipping your head back to look at him with a smile. After a minute, he pulled out of you, tied off the condom, and tossed it somewhere toward the trash. He would get it later. You slipped into his arms, resting your head against his slightly sweaty chest.

"That was perfect," he said, still trying to catch his breath. He played with the hair that fell over your face, pushing it behind your ear.

"I love you, Armitage," you said, and he decided he would never get tired of those words.

"I love you more, darling," he responded.

"Most."

"Moster."

"Mostest," he chuckled with his face buried in your hair. You settled into contented silence, gazing out the window to space.

"I should really go clean up," you murmured.

"Can I join you? We have 18 hours to kill, after all," he asked, grinning from ear to ear.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

AN: thanks so much for reading!! asks are always open for requests or feedback, and i'd love to hear from you!

#armitage hux x reader #armitage hux x you #armitage hux/reader #armitage hux/you #general hux x you #general hux x reader #general hux/you #general hux/reader #general hux fanfic #armitage hux fanfiction #armitage hux #star wars sequels #fanfiction

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sephirthoughts · 5 months ago

Text

Vincent Got a Phone Ch. 4

YES I'M STILL WRITING THIS IT BRINGS ME JOY

Vincent got a phone and then Aerith adopted him as her friend, and all kinds of other shit started happening and he's very tired.

ships: valenwind, background sefikura, background aerti

rating: not explicit yet but it will be

Chapter 4: Vincent is Quite Literally a Boomer

“Vincent! Come on!” Aerith said, banging on his hotel room door. “You’ve been in there for three days, you can’t keep hiding forever!”

Her phone vibrated just then, and she paused her onslaught to dig it out of her skirt pocket.

VValentine: i am not hiding.

VValentine: now please stop shouting and go away, before anyone realizes i’m in here.

✿FlowerGal✿: no way! i’m not going anywhere! in fact i’m gonna yell even louder!

“Vin! Cent! Let! Me! In!” she bellowed, punctuating each word with a heavy thump on the door. “Vincent! Valentine! Let! Me—”

Her phone vibrated again.

VValentine: you said you wanted me to come out. if you wanted to come in, you should have clarified. the door is not locked

✿FlowerGal✿: …

After putting her phone away and taking some deep, meditative breaths, to prevent herself committing an act of violence, Aerith opened the door and entered Vincent’s room.

The rooms at this hotel were all different, so it wasn’t much like her own, which had more of a country-cottage aesthetic. This one was like an old library, with dark wood paneling and a well-worn leather easy chair, as well as a shelf of old books, and a small, ornate table with a reading lamp.

The large bed was of the antique, four-poster variety, with a burgundy damask comforter. It was a very lovely piece of furniture. The problem was that it was immaculately made, like it had never been touched, and Vincent was nowhere in sight.

“Um…Vincent? Where are you?” Aerith said, as the door swung closed behind her, with an ominous creaking sound.

The curtains were drawn, so the room fell into pitch darkness, till she flipped the light switch, and the incongruently modern overhead lights lit the place up like midday. She heard a muffled groan, from somewhere near her feet.

“Too bright!” Vincent’s voice complained. “Turn it back off!”

“Oh, there you are!” she laughed. Getting down on her stomach, she lay on the floor, facing the bed. Vincent was lying underneath, with his arms crossed sullenly on his chest. “Your room is really great. Love the vampire ambience.”

“Cid chose it for me, when he assigned the rooms.”

“He did well. It’s perfect for you. So…you want to tell me what you’re doing playing monster under the bed?”

“I am not playing. This is where I sleep,” Vincent glowered. “I’m also avoiding human contact, and you know that. Why do you persist in coming here?”

Aerith reached under the bed and poked his arm. “We’re friends, Vincent. This is what friends do for each other. When they see a friend who’s depressed and isolating, they pester them until they feel better.”

“Cid hasn’t come to pester me,” Vincent muttered, scowling up into the box-spring.

“He might be avoiding you, because he thinks seeing him would make you uncomfortable, right now. Didn’t he act super weird about it, that night?”

“No,” Vincent sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “He’s not the one who was weird. I’m the one who was weird and ruined everything. He had every right to be upset.”

“Ok, Vincent, you’re an old man, so you probably don’t know these things, but you shouldn’t equate your queerness with weirdness. ‘Queer’ and ‘weird’ are not the same thing.”

“‘Queer’ and ‘weird’ are synonyms, Aerith,” Vincent replied patiently. “They are quite literally the same thing.”

“Not anymore, they’re not. I mean, the dictionary definition didn’t change, but queer is way more commonly used to mean gay, now.”

Vincent looked at her like she was deranged. “Gay means cheerful. Are you flashlighting me?”

“Am I what? Oh—gaslighting! No, I’m not gaslighting you. Terms evolve to mean different things, all the time. I’m just trying to tell you not to equate your homosexuality with weirdness.”

“Homosexuality?” Vincent said, taken aback. “But I’m not homosexual. Or, what did you say young people call it, now? Cheerful?”

“Gay. And queer. Queer is more of an umbrella, though.”

Vincent was utterly bewildered. “Umbrellas are gay?”

“Yep. But, why do you say you’re not gay? Are you uncomfortable with the label?”

“I say it because I’m not. I have been seriously attached to one person, before Cid. She was a woman.”

“Oh, got it. You’re bisexual.”

“I don’t know what bisexual means.”

“It means you’re equally attracted to people who present as male and people who present as female. You’ve been into one woman and one man. Fifty-fifty is about as clearly bisexual as it gets.”

“I suppose I am bisexual, then,” Vincent replied dourly. “I wish it sounded less vulgar. I think I prefer queer.”

“Whatever makes you most comfortable. Anyway, what I’ve been trying to say is, you’re not weird for being queer. If Mr. Highwind can’t accept you the way you are, then he doesn’t deserve your friendship, in the first place.”

Vincent sighed heavily. “He didn’t say he couldn’t, he just said he needed time. For which I don’t fault him. It must be startling to have a trusted friend, who he thought he knew well, suddenly announce that they feel entirely differently about the friendship than he does.”

“Mm, maybe,” Aerith said, tapping her lip thoughtfully. “I just can’t figure it out, though. My detection system has never been wrong, before. I would swear on a stack of yaoi that Mr. Highwind was under the umbrella.”

“You think Cid seems gay?” Vincent frowned. “He’s so rugged and masculine, though.”

Aerith groaned, covering her face with her hands. “Ugh, Vincent, can you try not to be from the 1950s for like, one second?”

“No, I cant. That is when I was born.”

“I didn’t mean literally, I meant don’t perpetuate outdated stereotypes, like equating queerness with levels of perceived masculinity. Lesbians aren’t manly, and gays aren’t feminine. Unless they are. In which case, it’s because that’s how they are as individuals, and not because they’re queer.”

“I don’t think of lesbians as manly,” Vincent said, indignantly. “You’re not manly, at all. You’re the most feminine young lady I know.”

Aerith stared at him, wide-eyed, with her mouth hanging open. “You…how did you know I’m—”

“Twelve days ago, when I confronted you in the area between the hotel buildings, you said, and I quote, ‘Even if I swung that way, you’re like a million years too old for me, yuck.’ And then you stuck out your tongue, as if the idea disgusted you.”

“Whoa. I can’t believe you both noticed and remembered that.”

“I have a near-perfect memory. But even if I hadn’t noticed that statement, your very obvious feelings for Ms. Lockhart would have alerted me.”

Aerith stared at him, wide-eyed, with her mouth hanging open, part II. “It’s not…that obvious. Is it?”

“It is to me, but I can hear your heartbeat and sense fluctuations in your hormones. I don’t think most humans can do that.”

“Well, congratulations, you’re the first person I’m out to,” she laughed. “But don’t tell anyone else, ok? I’m not out to the group.”

“Out?”

“Good lord, grampa. I’m gonna get the sisters to whip you up a queer dictionary. It’ll make everything easier. ‘Out’ means having your sexuality known by other people. Though, it’s a bullshit concept, since it implies an assumed heterosexual baseline, that you have to ‘come out’ as not fitting into.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why should anyone assume anything about another person’s sexuality, one way or another? Are people these days so sorely in need of something to occupy their time?”

“Tch. You’re preachin’ to the choir, old man. But I didn’t come here to get you square on the queer lingo. I came to drag you out of your lair into the living world. Cloud wants everyone to meet at the hotel restaurant for dinner, and I think you should come. Cid will be there. It’ll be a good opportunity to test the waters between you, in a casual setting, with other friends as a buffer.”

“I don’t think—”

“Come onnnnnnn. Solidarity, Vincent. If worse comes to worst, at least we can be two sad queers with unrequited crushes, together.”

“That doesn’t sound—”

“Before you decide, be aware that if you don’t come to dinner with me, I will be staying here with you. And singing the entire score of Loveless.”

Vincent narrowed his eyes. “There is no way you know every song from Loveless.”

Aerith narrowed hers back. “Try me.”

Thirty seconds later, the two were stepping out of Vincent’s room, into the balmy, early-evening breeze. At that same moment, Cid also happened to be exiting his room, which was directly across the walk from Vincent’s.

“Evening, Mr. Highwind!” Aerith said cheerfully, not giving him a chance to pretend he hadn’t seen them, which it very much appeared he’d intended to do. “Looks like we’re all headed to dinner. Let’s walk together.”

“Uh. Ha. Evenin’ Ms. Aerith. Evenin’ Vinnie,” Cid said awkwardly, not making eye-contact with either of them. “Sure, I’ll walk with y’all. If ya don’t mind a third wheel.”

“Not at all!” she chirped. “More the merrier.”

The three walked on, Aerith making breezy chit-chat to her stiffly silent companions, for about thirty steps, before she saw Tifa and Yuffie, who’d just come from their own rooms.

“Ti-chan! Yuff! Wait up!” she called out, waving to her friends. “You fellas can keep each other company, right? I’m gonna walk with the ladies.”

With that, Cid and Vincent were left to themselves.

“She’s, uh…energetic,” Cid attempted, casting about for a topic of conversation.

“Yes, very much so,” Vincent answered obliviously.

“Kind of a handful, huh?”

Vincent scowled behind his collar. “You don’t know the half of it. She barged into my room, a little while ago, lectured me for being an old man, and threatened to sing the entire score of Loveless to me, unless I accompanied her to dinner.”

“Hoo boy,” Cid whistled. “There ain’t gonna be any winnin’ with a woman like that. I’ll tell ya from experience, Shera and me got along lots better once I learned to just say yes ma’am and do as I’m told. We’re just roommates, but I figure it’s the same kinda thing with…uh. What d’ya call her, anyway?”

“I call her Aerith. She gave me permission to be less formal, since we’re friends.”

Cid’s eyebrows went up. “Friends? She ok with you sayin’ she’s a friend, still?”

“Why should she not be?” Vincent asked, a bit more defensively than he intended. “Do you think she should be ashamed of me?”

“Ashamed? What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“You know what I mean. Because I—I’m under the…umbrella,” Vincent explained fumblingly, in his agitation. “There’s a…weird umbrella. No. Queer. A queer umbrella.”

“Oh shit, Vinnie, are you havin’ a stroke?” Cid said, stopping him and grabbing his shoulders, to peer concernedly up into his eyes. “What year is it? What’s your full name and birth date?”

“I am not having a stroke,” Vincent said, shying away from the sudden touch. “I was only trying to explain that no one should be ashamed to be my friend, because of the way I am. It is not weird to be queer.”

Cid squinted. “Ain’t those synonyms?”

“Apparently not. At least, not the way young people use them, now.”

“Hm. Only other way I heard people use queer is for LGBTQ stuff.”

“I have no idea what that acronym means,” Vincent said dejectedly.

“Least, I thought that was how people use it,” Cid said to himself, scratching his chin. “Maybe I ain’t in the know, anymore.”

Before he could consider the matter any further, Vincent clenched his fists and blurted out what was on his mind. “Cid, are we really still friends? Or have I ruined things between us?”

“What? Well…of course we’re friends, Vinnie,” Cid said, clearing his throat against a slight waver in his voice. “Uh. So. About that. Sorry I acted like a jackass, the other night. I just never expected to hear ya say somethin’ like that. I guess I never thought of ya as a romantic type. And, to be frank, ya don’t seem like the kinda guy who’d go for…y’know. Someone so much younger.”

Vincent’s face fell. “Oh. You object to the age difference. I hadn’t considered that. I…I understand.”

“Not the age difference, per se. It’s just, when one of ya’s been around and seen some shit, and the other one’s barely outta the nest, there’s uh…an imbalance. Y’know?”

“Barely out of the nest? At what age did you leave home?”

“What, me? What’s that gotta do with anything?”

They had arrived at the hotel restaurant at that point, however, and couldn’t discuss it any further. During the seating shuffle, Aerith was trying to maneuver Vincent and Cid into seats beside one another, and unbeknownst to her, the others were trying to put her and Vincent together.

Vincent became the unwitting tuber in this game of social hot-potato, and wound up in the uncomfortable position of sitting between his two friends, rather than on the end, as he preferred. Tifa sat across from Aerith, with Yuffie in the middle, and Cloud across from Cid. The table was meant to accommodate eight, so there were two empty chairs on the end.

After drinks were ordered, the conversation became general. Cid anxiously downed an old fashioned and was already halfway into a second, before the appetizers even arrived. Vincent’s red wine stood untouched, however, as he had crossed his arms and promptly fallen asleep, as soon as the party were seated.

Cid thought it was strange that he wouldn’t be paying more attention to his girl, but she didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Vincent, either, and was intently focused on her friend across the table. It was like her and Vinnie weren’t even together, Cid thought, as he sucked down the remnants of his third drink and signalled the waitress to bring another.

He usually enjoyed all the lively banter between the young people in their group, but the mood was off today. Everyone seemed kind of tense and on edge, like they were expecting something to happen. Especially Cloud, who was usually so flat in affect, he could be taken for a cardboard standee.

Or maybe it was just Cid’s imagination. It was taking every bit of his energy to put on a cheerful and supportive face for Vincent and his young lady, and he wasn’t even doing a great job. But how could he be expected to, after he’d been bulldozed by his revelation, the other night?

He’d called Shera in a near panic, about it, at which she’d laughed for far longer than he thought was strictly necessary, and then said she was glad he finally figured it out. She didn’t have any advice regarding what to do, however, except to commiserate about it being really unfortunate that his first gay crush was on a bisexual guy who already had a girlfriend.

Then there was a whole back and forth where Cid asked why she thought Vinnie was bisexual, not straight, at which she’d laughed even harder, and called her girlfriend over so she could laugh, too. Damned women and their already knowing everything, Cid groused internally, as the waitress delivered his fourth drink. He was getting tipsy at this point, though, so he slowed down and nursed the beverage, while he tuned in to the conversation.

“People can’t control who they love, but if it’s someone they know is bad for them, or might even wind up hurting them, they should come clean to their friends and ask for support,” Tifa was expounding, in response to something someone had said. “I, for one, would be really hurt if a close friend didn’t trust me enough to talk to me about those things.”

“But maybe it’s not about trust,” Aerith put forth. “Maybe it’s just a really complicated situation, and that person isn’t ready to be outed to their friends yet.”

“I guess anything’s possible,” Tifa replied, looking unconvinced. “I’m just saying I think people should rely on their support systems, more. And by that same token, if their support system sees them doing something incredibly stupid, they have a responsibility to say something.”

“And I think everyone should respect each other’s privacy, especially about relationships, until they’re ready to talk about it, in their own way and their own time,” Aerith contended.

Cloud nodded vigorously, at his end of the table.

“Yeah but, if they’re going to be super obvious about it,” Yuffie interposed, “like basically eye-fucking every time they’re in the same room, not to mention running off to be alone together, all the time, they’re kind of making it everyone else’s business.”

“What do you mean, eye-fucking?” Cloud wanted to know. “Intense eye contact can mean all sorts of things. Especially in combat situations.”

Aerith ignored him and leaned around the unconscious Vincent, to look at Cid, who was sucking disconsolately at his drink, through the teeny cocktail straw. “What do you think, Mr. Highwind?”

“Hm? Ya wanna know what I think?” he said, slurring his words a bit. “Well, gather round, cause the old man is gonna tell you kids the way it is. It’s like this. People’s gonna follow their hearts, whether you like it or not. Best ya can do is respect your friends’ choices and not interfere in their shit, where you’re clearly not wanted. Even if they were your best friend, and it hurt that they didn’t come to you with it sooner, cause ya just want ‘em to be happy, no matter what, even if it means ya can’t be their most important person anymore, and you’ll probably die alone in a ditch somewhere.”

There was a beat of baffled silence.

“Well, you won’t die alone, though. Right, Cid?” Tifa asked. “Isn’t Shera your girlfriend?”

Cid choked on his beverage and actually spit some out. “M—my what? Hell no, she ain’t! Can’t a man and woman be friends and work together and live in the same house without people makin’ wild assumptions? Damn!”

“Once again, I awaken to Cid spitting all over me,” Vincent sighed, dabbing his cloak with a napkin.

“Sorry, Cid, yeesh,” Tifa laughed. “I didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“I ain’t offended, but I’ll tell ya what. Don’t ever let her hear ya say it, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Yuffie blinked around at the group, none of whom had reacted to Vincent’s statement. “We’re all just going to move past that?”

Cloud looked at his phone and immediately hopped up from his seat. “Sorry, guys. Excuse me, for a minute.”

“Cloud, damn it! Not this again!” Tifa called after him. “You invited us to dinner, you have to actually eat dinner with us!”

“I’ll be right back. I just have to…go to the bathroom,” he said, as he walked briskly away.

“The bathroom is the opposite direction,” Yuffie said, squinting suspiciously. “What is he up to?”

“Morning, Vincent,” Aerith said sunnily, to the yawning vampire. “Cid ordered you a basket of breadsticks, but I ate most of them, while you were asleep. Also, I drank your wine.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Vincent replied, unconcerned. “I don’t think the wine here is all that good.”

“S—Sephiroth!” Yuffie shouted suddenly, giving everyone a jolt. “Cloud, look out! Sephiroth is right behind you!”

“Wait, wait! Everyone calm down!” Cloud pleaded, holding up his hands, as his friends leapt to their feet and summoned their weapons. “He’s not here to fight! I asked him to come!”

This elicited stunned silence from the group, in which the sound of Cerberus’ hammer clicking back rang out very clearly, followed by Vincent’s deep voice.

“Care to elaborate?”

the author has something to SEPHIROTH JUMPSCARE

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scalamore · 11 months ago

Text

(Thoughts) Vol 3 Manhwa cover + Ch 115

It didn't hit me until recently, but I think this is so clever. Through her tweets, the artist, Hayeon-nim tells the readers that when she and the team work on the manhwa, they make a lot of intentional design choices. that is, they put a lot of thought into the final product. (But of course, there's always some details that could be random and not as intentional) Before, she had said that she had drawn the covers for Vol 2 (Red Lari), and Vol 4 (Green Rupert) to mirror each other: Lari amongst the flowers (roses), and Rupert amongst the greenery/forest. Is fitting for their characters. But what I found interesting, is in particular, the Vol 3 Cover:

This cover was first released Dec 2022, almost a full year before Chapter 115 was released in KR. So at first, looking at this cover, you think "Awwww", the two of them are so cute together, this is based on Ch 26 when she helps take care of him when he's having fevers from his nightmares.

The bonus chibi is also cute, because it hints that Rupert was shy and aware of the fact she held his hand for a while

But it wasn't until this part of Ch 115 that made me do a double take:

This stands out SOOO much because in the novel, the scene really only said "On those nights I couldn't sleep from the nightmares, you would go up to me with a lantern in hand, and ask me if I was ok with a worried expression." <-- something like this. But in the manhwa, they chose this specific scene to show how much he appreciated her... and how early he started doing so. When you think of it that way, the Vol 3 cover and chibi was foreshadowing how despite Rupert being gruff during the events of Ch 26, he was REALLY touched by her presence of staying beside him and making sure he was ok. Not to mention, she may not really remember or care about holding his hand, but he definitely does because this is the first time ANYONE's held his hand, and he definitely felt the warmth and reassurance of having someone supporting him. ^^

#your majesty please spare me this time #rupelali #manhwa #rofan #otome isekai

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inevitably-johnlocked · 2 years ago

Note

hey steph! hope your having a good day!

I was wondering if you had any "first dates" type of fics, because that's the current mood (woo yeah projection)

Hi Nonny!

AHHH, You know, I really needed to make a "Dating" list, so here we are! This one has fics specifically where they Date Each Other, and not NECESSARILY a first date, but definitely think you'll enjoy these anyway!

AND to make it a bigger list, I've added fics that came up with "date" or "dating" as a search result on my MFL list :)

As usual friends, feel free to add your fic or a fic you know! <3

FIRST DATES / DATING EACH OTHER

See also:

Date on a Dare

Victor Trevor / Sherlock and Other People

Sherlock and OMC's

Jealous Sherlock Because John Dates a Man

The Marriage Proposal Negotiation by Goddess_of_the_Night (G, 2,161 w., 1 Ch. || Dev. Rel., Possessive Sherlock, Insecure Sherlock, Fluff, First Kiss, Post Mary) – Sherlock hasn't ever really done anything the traditional way, so of course it wouldn't bother him to propose to John even though they're not even dating. And the fact that John is already on a date with someone else when he decides to do it? Tedious.

Last Christmas by Mazarin221b (T, 3,911 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss) – That Earth-shaking revelation, then, leads to a problem, and one that Sherlock realizes should be solved quickly, before John’s dates turn into girlfriends or boyfriends, because sometimes girlfriends or boyfriends can turn into wives or husbands while your back is turned. Every time John hums happily at the mirror as he shaves, splashes on a little gift cologne Mrs. Hudson bought him for Christmas, Sherlock is drawn back to that night by the fire, and the way John’s touch had made the world stand still.

Date Night by inevitably_johnlocked (G, 4,451 w., 1 Ch. || Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Caring John, Schmoopy Fluff, Fidget Cube, Baking / Cooking, Date Night, Established Relationship, POV Sherlock Holmes, Understanding John, Grumpy Sherlock, John’s Bum, Kisses, Hugs, Domestic Fluff, Touching, Hair Petting, Light Humour) – It's John and Sherlock's first Date Night as an official couple and Sherlock needs it to be PERFECT. Mrs Hudson helps. Part 7 of I-J's Tumblr Ficlet Collection

Correspondence by Cleo2010 (T, 8,031 w., 5 Ch. || Letters, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, Dating) – Sherlock’s been spirited away on a case for Mycroft. Part of the deal was that he and John could communicate via letter until the case was completed. Maybe the cliche is true, absence does make the heart grow fonder. Or perhaps something is growing on the feet in the fridge. Read their letters month by month.

Six Dates by avawtsn (E, 7,421 w., 2 Ch. || 5+1, First Time / Kiss, Post S4-Compliant, POV John) – A rather accidental 5+1 written for the prompt “is this a date?” Hint: it is.

How To Give Your Boyfriend Who Doesn't Know He's Your Boyfriend the Best Valentine's Day Ever by unicornpoe (T, 9,832 w., 1 Ch. || Valentine’s Day, Fluff and Crack, Soft Sherlock, POV Sherlock) – Sherlock is pretty sure that John Watson is his boyfriend. He's also pretty sure that John doesn't know it. But with a little help from a magazine, some friends, three crepes, five dates, one awesome CD, and a stalker van, John is bound to realize just in time for Valentine's Day.

Uncharted Territory by J_Baillier (T, 19,603 w., 4 Ch. || Dystopian Future / Black Mirror AU || Alternate First Meeting, Angst, Drama, Homophobia, Bisexuality, Technology, Humour, Romance, Near Future, Happy Ending) – The System puts people through a series of assigned relationships in order to determine who their Perfect Match is. John believes that it works; Sherlock really, really doesn't. One of them is probably going to be wrong.

Dear John by wendymarlowe (E, 23,031 w., 64 Ch. || Post-TRF, Online Dating, Pining, Epistolary, Cybersex, Long Distance Romance) – With Sherlock dead, John eventually (under duress) makes a profile on an online dating site. And falls into a long-distance relationship with an enigmatic partner who reminds him of Sherlock in all the right ways. (Hint: it turns out to be Sherlock.) Part 1 of Dear John

Don't Leave Anything Out by lookupkate (E, 27,422 w., 24 Ch. || Letters / Epistolary, Misunderstandings, Angst, Happy Ending, Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock in Love, Pining Sherlock) – The first letter John writes home from Afghanistan is meant to go to a woman he went on only one date with. How it ends up in Sherlock's hands is completely innocent. What happens next is not. What do you do when you find out the person you're in love with has been lying about something as monumental as who they are? What do you do when you're the one who lied?How on earth do you put the pieces back together?

Classified(s) by blueink3 (E, 36,153 w., 4 Ch. || Wedding Date AU || Fake Relationship, Jealous, Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, Mary is not Nice, Escort Service) – Clara's American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger. See, Clara is not only American (and wealthy to boot), she's also best friends with John’s ex-fiancée. Whom she's placed in the wedding party. As Maid of Honor. And John just happens to be Best Man. Bloody brilliant.

floating through a dark blue sky by Lediona (M, 58,966 w., 15 Ch. || Notting Hill AU || POV John, Celebrity Sherlock, First Date / Time / Kiss, Past Drug Addiction, Angst with a Happy Ending) – Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day.

MARKED FOR LATER

A proposal in blood by Some_weird_queer_writer (T, 756 w., 1 Ch. || Marriage Proposal, Injury, Ambulance, Established Relationship, Date Night, Love Confession) – John and Sherlock go out for a date night when they're attacked and John is injured. Still, they make a promise.

Date Night by Calais_Reno (T, 1,477 w., 1 Ch. || Coming Out, Drunken Love Confessions, Drunk John, Fluff) – On a date, John and Sherlock out themselves to Lestrade. It's all fine. Part 1 of the Just Johnlock series

The Importance of February 14th by cypress_tree (T, 3,156 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Humour, Valentine’s Day) – Sherlock was born on Valentine's Day. John doesn't know this and invites him out on a date. Sherlock assumes it's a birthday celebration and believes so right up until the moment John kisses him.

Third Date by Calais_Reno (T, 4,111 w., 1 Ch. || Dating, Awkward Romance, Relationship Advice, Jealousy, Friends to Lovers, POV Lestrade) – John Watson dates a lot of women, but never gets beyond the Third Date. Sherlock solves it. Part 3 of the Just Johnlock series

It's all Fun and Games Until Someone Falls in Love by Malakia (T, 5,618 w., 1 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || Fluff, Bullying, BAMF John, Online Dating) – Anderson and Sally while drunk sign Sherlock up for some gay dating event or website as a laugh, hoping to embarrass the detective. The next time they see Sherlock, he is on a date with his new boyfriend John who he met at the event/ through the site.

Come and Find Me by Salambo06 (M, 9,737 w., 3 Ch. || Different First Meeting, Fluff, First Kiss, Twitter, Awkwardness, First Date, Love at First Sight, Inexperienced Sherlock, Frottage) – Two days ago, Sherlock found himself being kissed by a man only known as John during a Pride event, before running away. But Sherlock soon realises that the said John intends to find him again, even it means asking the help of the entire Internet.

Not this year by Imjohnlocked87 (E, 16,293 w., 4 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || Friends to Lovers, Valentine’s Day, Fluff and Smut, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Sex, Wall Sex, Angst with Happy Ending) – One month after leaving the rehabilitation centre, when Donovan asks Sherlock if he will be alone on Valentine's Day this year too, he replies he will be spending it with someone special.The only problem is that this someone doesn't exist.Because who would want to have Valentine's date with Sherlock Holmes?

The Aftermath is Secondary by meet_me_in_samarra (E, 19,641 w., 5 Ch. || Punk AU || Pining John, Seductive Sherlock, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Horny Idiots, Public Sex, Toilet Sex, Hand Jobs, Tongue Kink, Insecure Sherlock, BAMF John, Insecure John) – Will Doctor Holmes and Doctor Watson really go on the agreed date in the infamous punkrock club "The Misfit"? Will their sexual tension finally be resolved? Is it really going to be dangerous? And will Sherlock really wear the promised fishnet top? (Oh God, yessss!) Part 2 of the Wretched and Divine series

Cinema by thelookyouredoingthelookagain (E, 22,411 w., 12 Ch. || Different First Meeting, Nightmares, Flirting, Cinema, John’s Cane, John’s Blog, Therapy, First Date) – John's nightmares drive him across the street to the all night cinema where the tall, dark projectionist provides in an interesting distraction.

Gravity is missing from everything by meet_me_in_samarra (E, 23,557 w., 6 Ch. || Punk AU || Overdose, Suicide Attempt, Developing Relationship, Slutty Sherlock, Vulnerable Sherlock, Public Sex, Food Sex, Porn With Feelings, Sherlock’s Past, Sherlock Whump, Caring / Protective John, Insecure Sherlock, Anal Sex, Drug Use) – People bumped into him, cussing and throwing death glares. Blocking their way, Sherlock stood frozen in a throng of commuters. “Are you high?” one shouted into his vacant face. Funnily enough he actually was not. This was all John´s fault. Inflicting a date on him. To have dinner. Part 3 of the Here I Am series

Whenever it's right (AKA First Date) by Aliea (M, 26,493 w., 15/? Ch. || WiP || London Underground, Explosions, Doctor John, Sherlock Whump, Angst, Hospitals, Mind Palace John, Coma, Past Drug Use, Big Brother Mycroft) – Meeting the person you have been searching for all your life, never knowing that you have been searching until its over and you have them before you. What happens when you fall in love at first sight then everything goes to hell? Do you stay or go, take the risk or run for the hills. John has has never ran from anything, so he wasnt going to run from the man that changed his life in less than five seconds.

A Wizarding Barista's Field Guide to Seducing a Muggle by paradigmfinch (T, 29,344 w., 9 Ch. || Harry Potter Coffee Shop AU || Fluff, Wizard John, Muggle Sherlock, Bisexual John, Flirting, First Dates, Harry Watson, Secret Identity) – To help pay for Healing tuition, John Watson gets a job at a coffee shop in Muggle London, where he soon sets his sights on a particularly gorgeous customer. John's seen plenty of Muggle films. How different can it really be to woo a Muggle?

If Baker Street Could Talk by a_different_equation (E, 31,723 w., 12 Ch. || Neighbours AU || Blind Date, Domestics Life, Widower John, Pianist Sherlock, Developing Relationship, Slow Burn, PTSD, Mental Health Issues, Alternate First Meeting) – There is a very thin wall between 221b and 221c. As if by fate, it has separated two sitting rooms that now almost morph back into one. One sitting room belongs to Sherlock Holmes (43), a pianist; and the other one to Dr John H. Watson (45), whatever he might be after everything. Theoretically, John's a war hero, an ex-surgeon, a widower, and he’s telling everyone that he develops a game which might take a lifetime. There is a wall between them, but they cannot be separated.

Four Shots Series by Opy3332 (T, 34,736 w. across 5 works || Series WiP || Coffee Shop AU || MI6, Barista John, Developing Relationship, First Dates) – Series of stories revolving around John and Sherlock meeting under different circumstances--when John takes a job as a barista at SIS headquarters and meets Sherlock there.

Starting Over by Calais_Reno (M, 49,260 w., 10 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || POV Alternating, Dev. Rel., Awkward Romance, Misunderstandings, Angst with Happy Ending) – A disappointing blind date set up by well-meaning friends brings together John Watson, invalided army doctor, and Sherlock Holmes, asocial, "married to my work" consulting detective. Two idiots falling in love.

To Poisons and Their Antidotes by thegirlinthedeathfrisbee (M, 66,648 w., 12 Ch. || Unilock AU || Deductions, Coffee, Dinners, Dates, Drug Use, UST / RST, Romance, Humour, One-Liners, Drama, Angst, ASiP, Oral/Anal, Hand Jobs) – Every poison has their antidote. Sherlock will meet the antidote to his poison in the most unlikely of ways.

Follow Me Down by 221BeStillMyHeart (E, 67,725 w., 15 Ch. || Alternate First Meetings / Professions AU || Captain John, Daddy Kink, Suave John, Slow Burn, Pining, First Dates, Gay Sherlock, Jealous John, Case Fic, BAMF John, Caring John, Insecure Sherlock, Protective John, Protective Lestrade, Big Brother Mycroft, Fluff, Masturbation, Gentle John, Flirting Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Sherlock Holmes is a 23 year old genius working as a forensic analyst at Bart's hospital. John Watson is a 38 year old army captain just back from war, working as the lead surgeon in the trauma ward. A chance meeting brings them together, and no one is ever the same.

What have you done? by Tildathings (M, 78,184 w., 20 Ch. || Internalized Homophobia, John’s Family, Coming Out, Sherock/OMC, Hugging, Suicide, John Deduce’s, Nightmares, Love Confession, First Date, Bed Sharing, Psychiatry) – John have been invited by Sherlock on a pub night?! Sherlock said to him at Monday that Greg and Mike wanted him to come with them on a pub night. Sherlock is afraid that he would do something wrong socially left alone, so could John come with him? When John arrives at the pub Two Broken Hearts he sees Sherlock talking to a man.

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #dating fics #date night fics #date on a dare

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 2 years ago

Text

Why Not Me?

Chapter 7 (Epilogue)

[Ch. 1] [Ch. 2] [Ch. 3] [Ch. 4] [Ch. 5] [Ch. 6]

[[Y'all this entire fic without the epilogue is just under 20k. This epilogue is juuust shy of 7k. It's over a third of the entire fic 😂. But anyway -- Here it is, the epilogue, in which LQR and LJY get to hug it out a few times (and we catch up to canon time, to the interactions that inspired it all) Enjoy!]]

--//--

-9-

“ZEWU-JUN!!!!!”

Jingyi’s shout skitters off the rocks in the pretty white gardens and the buildings ahead of him, propelled by his powerful lungs and the racing of his feet as he tears through Cloud Recesses like a wild mountain wind. Scandalized teachers and disciples alike call after him to stop running and shouting, but Jingyi doesn’t care one bit what they think, not right now.

“Zewu-jun!!” Jingyi shouts again at a volume that maybe won’t wake the ancestors when he’s closer to the Sect Leader’s office, but he’s thankfully still loud enough that he sees the man in question step out onto the porch to meet him before he’s even reached the border of his courtyard.

“Jingyi, hush,” Zewu-jun cautions, though without much conviction in his always-soft voice. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

Jingyi skids to a stop at the base of the few stairs that lead up to the porch and he bends double to brace his hands on his shaking knees to try to suck in deep breaths and recover what he hadn’t drawn in while he’d been running pell-mell through every shortcut he knows — and he knows a lot of them.

“Lan-xiansheng is hurt!” he manages to cough after a few breaths and Zewu-jun hurries (politely) down the steps to take him by the arm and help him stand upright.

“How is Shufu hurt?” his cousin asks, quick and quiet. Jingyi turns at the sound of scuffling behind him to find that his headlong flight has garnered them an audience. He hurries to wave Zewu-jun down to his level so he can talk quietly in his ear, and Zewu-jun obliges him immediately.

“Lan-xiansheng didn’t wake up on time this morning so I made him breakfast but when I woke him up to eat it he got sick and then coughed up a bunch of stale blood and then he told me to come find you and then he passed out and you have to come and help him, please Zewu-jun!”

Jingyi is half-expecting Zewu-jun to brush him off like all the other adults in the Sect do (except for Lan-xiansheng and Hanguang-jun, of course), but thankfully Zewu-jun seems to know he isn’t telling a tall tale just for attention. Jingyi’s definitely too big for it now but Zewu-jun still bends down to sweep him up onto his hip, and Jingyi isn’t even embarrassed to be carried like a baby because Zewu-jun can walk as fast as Jingyi can run without making it look like running, so he clings tight and tries to stop shaking as Zewu-jun carries him back through the disturbance Jingyi had left in his wake.

They arrive at the Yashi quickly and Zewu-jun sets him down again just inside the door that Jingyi hurries to close against the curious eyes of the rest of the Sect while Zewu-jun hurries further inside the house.

“Shufu?” Jingyi hears him ask, low and urgent, and he breathes a tiny sigh of relief at the responding rumble from Lan-xiansheng, too quiet for him to pick out the individual words. He has too much nervous energy in his hands for even his well-worn rock to contend with, so Jingyi busies himself with making tea and stirring up the morning’s congee to make sure it isn’t getting all burnt and gross on the bottom of the wok.

When the tea is steeped and the congee stirred he cleans up the mess he’d made while preparing breakfast and stirs the congee again a few more times for good measure…and Zewu-jun still hasn’t come back from the bedroom Jingyi shares with Lan-xiansheng. He doesn’t want to interrupt in case it would be bad, but he can’t stand another second not knowing what’s happening so he creeps on tiptoe to the door to peek cautiously around the frame and look through the gloom to try to see what’s happening.

Between Zewu-jun and Lan-xiansheng there glows a thin thread of qi, pure blue and glinting like a mountain stream at noon, tossing strange shadows on the walls beside and behind Lan-xiansheng’s bed. Jingyi drifts a little closer, still on tiptoe, to try to see what’s happening, and between one flickering blink and the next he’s able to make out the shape of Lan-xiansheng on his back and Zewu-jun’s first two fingers pointed at the center of his forehead where the cloud emblem of his ribbon would be sitting had Lan-xiansheng had the strength to get dressed this morning. Jingyi watches the transfer of qi with bated breath, holding still with a monumental effort as if the efficacy of the healing is completely dependent on how quiet and small he can keep himself.

It goes on for a long time, long enough that Jingyi’s fingers begin twitching on his sleeves and his knees feel like a wobbly jelly from his favorite dessert stall in Caiyi from how tightly he’s been keeping them locked to stay still. But finally, just when he’s about to break, the room goes dim again and Zewu-jun sighs as he pulls his hand away, no longer feeding Lan-xiansheng a stream of his qi.

“You are overextending yourself again, Shufu,” Zewu-jun says quietly, even though Lan-xiansheng looks like he’s gone back to sleep.

“It is hardly anything to be so fretful over,” Lan-xiansheng grumps in the same tone he uses when he knows Jingyi is right about one of his ethics puzzles but it isn’t the nice orthodox answer Lan-xiansheng likes. “I taught the talisman classes yesterday and activated a few too many, that’s all.”

Zewu-jun’s voice is nearly inaudible as he replies, “You frightened Jingyi, Shufu. He doesn’t know what sorts of injuries are fatal yet, he may be…overly worried.”

“Well it’s not fatal,” Lan-xiansheng snaps, still grumpy. “I’ll just need to rest today and I will be fine by tomorrow, I said there’s no need for so much fuss!”

Jingyi forces his jelly knees to bend so he can creep back out of the room before he gets caught eavesdropping. Now that Zewu-jun has said it, Jingyi realizes he is scared, and he should probably do something about that before he has to hide it while he brings Lan-xiansheng breakfast again. He digs around in the hollows around the hearth until he can fish out their big sack of rice and tuck himself small and round in the space it fits in, the stone pressed against his back toasty warm from the fire. Jingyi huddles into a ball there in his new hiding place and hugs his knees tightly to his chest, tight-tight-tight until his arms shake and his joints ache and he doesn’t feel like he’s about to fly apart into a million little pieces like he’s heard fierce corpses do when Hanguang-jun plays his guqin at them.

What if Lan-xiansheng isn’t really okay? What if his health is getting really bad? What if he’s going to die and leave Jingyi alone again, like his parents? What if he has to go back to the children’s home to live? What if he doesn’t get to have special classes and a family and a purpose anymore, what if he has to go back to being just a regular disciple with no one to want him around? Hanguang-jun leaves often for night hunts, and Sizhui lives in the disciple dormitories now whenever his dad is gone. Jingyi supposes he could probably try to live in the dormitories too, but Lan-xiansheng has said he doesn’t want him to, he said it wouldn’t be the right place for him because they wouldn’t understand him and the ways he has to live noisily. Would that be worse or better than the children’s home? But there’s no doubt that both of them would be horrible because it would mean Lan-xiansheng is gone, and Jingyi doesn’t want that to happen ever. He wants to keep living with Lan-xiansheng and helping him with all his work and being allowed to be noisy and run around when they’re at home and he wants his life to keep going exactly how it is, with Lan-xiansheng looking after him so Jingyi can look after him, too.

But what if it all just…ends?

“Shhh, Jingyi, it’s alright,” Zewu-jun suddenly murmurs from close by, and Jingyi hiccups around his next ragged breath. “Don’t be afraid, Shufu’s going to be fine. Do you need to stay in there a little longer, or would you like to come out?”

Jingyi squeezes his arms tight-tight-tighter and buries his face in his knobby knees, tilting sideways away from Zewu-jun until the back wall of the cubby-hole is pressed up against his side. He tries to push himself harder against it with his feet but they scuff against the floor and don’t help much at all, so he tries it again with a frustrated little huff that turns into a whine when the scuffing just happens again.

“It’s alright, Jingyi,” Zewu-jun repeats but that’s a lie because it’s not alright! Jingyi opens his mouth to tell him so, Sect Leader or not, but then big warm hands are pressing against his shoulder and knee to hold him stuck firmly in place against the stone, so tight it feels like he’s being squished under a boulder. Jingyi lets some of the tension in his arms go and Zewu-jun still holds him right there, pressed up against the wall so Jingyi can relax and lean his head against it too, suddenly exhausted as if he’d run laps around the base of the whole mountain instead of only through the main part of Cloud Recesses.

“Can you hear me now or is your mind still too loud?” Zewu-jun asks after a few long minutes of silence except for Jingyi’s breathing slowing down and the occasional ruffle of silk against stone when he or Zewu-jun readjust a little bit.

Jingyi pouts into his knees, but he gives his honest answer anyway. “I can hear.”

“Thank you, Jingyi. Shufu is only tired, he isn’t sick, or hurt. He was hurt some years ago when the Cloud Recesses was attacked, and sometimes his old injury takes up all his energy when he tries to do too many things in one day.” Zewu-jun’s explanation is patient and soft, and as he continues to hold Jingyi smushed up against the wall Jingyi finds that the information is…good. That it helps him to relax a little more. “He will not die from it, Jingyi, I promise you. No matter how tired he gets, no matter how ill he feels, this injury will not take him away from us. Can you repeat that for me?”

“Lan-xiansheng was hurt by the Wens when they burned Cloud Recesses. He feels worse when he’s used up too much energy. He won’t die.”

“Good. Shufu is a very strong cultivator. Everything will be alright so long as we make sure he looks after himself well to keep up that strength. Can you keep helping me do that?”

Jingyi sucks in a deep breath and lets it all back out with a big whoosh that takes all the tension in his muscles with it. “Yes, Zewu-jun,” he promises, and when he wriggles a little bit against his Sect Leader’s hold, beginning to feel cramped, Zewu-jun releases him easily and helps pull him back out of his hiding spot. Zewu-jun is kneeling right there in their kitchen, on eye-level with Jingyi, and so Jingyi can see it perfectly when Zewu-jun offers him a gentle smile as he pats the side of his head, careful to avoid his ribbon.

“You’re a good boy, Jingyi,” Zewu-jun tells him. “I was worried at first that Shufu would get too tired looking after you, but do you want to know a secret? It’s a good one, I promise.”

Jingyi nods, though perhaps a little reluctantly. (He still doesn’t like hearing that Zewu-jun thought he wouldn’t be good for Lan-xiansheng to keep around, which he privately thinks is fair.)

“Shufu’s health has been much better since he brought you home, I think raising you is a very good thing for him. Hanguang-jun and I are quite relieved and happy that he has you. Thank you, Jingyi.”

Jingyi’s tight chest sparks with the same joy he still finds in being useful to Lan-xiansheng, in carrying out his chores well and helping Lan-xiansheng with all his paperwork and meetings in between their cultivation lessons. He stands up a little straighter, feels a little better, and Zewu-jun smiles at him in the same gentle way Hanguang-jun does (only he does it with his mouth too, and not just his eyes).

“The congee is still warm,” Jingyi says. “But the tea is probably gross now.”

“Mm, I see. Shufu can have water with his congee, then. Will you take it to him?”

A task. A set task, one he can for sure accomplish without a problem. Jingyi relaxes further, relieved, and hurries to nod and scoop up some congee into a small wooden bowl, only realizing belatedly that it’s one of his and not one of Lan-xiansheng’s nice ceramic bowls like he always uses. Oh well, maybe wooden bowls are better for eating in bed anyway.

“Lan-xiansheng?” he calls from the doorway, as soft as he can make his voice (he’s getting pretty good at it!).

Lan-xiansheng’s voice is still rough around the edges, but it’s a relief to hear him call back an exhausted, “Come in, Jingyi.”

“I have congee and —“ Jingyi cuts himself off, guilty, and half-turns as if to head back to the kitchen only to find Zewu-jun already waiting behind him with a cup of water and that nice smile still on his face. He holds a finger up to his lips to shush him and winks before he hands the cup to Jingyi, so he doesn’t have to admit that he forgot something important. “I have congee and water,” he says to Lan-xiansheng and shoots a grateful look at Zewu-jun over his shoulder.

“Hmph. Filial child,” Lan-xiansheng huffs as he does anytime Jingyi makes it a point to take extra good care of him. He always sounds grumpy when he says it, but there’s always a little smile hiding under his mustache so that’s okay. “Bring it here, then.”

Jingyi makes his way carefully across the room to offer Lan-xiansheng his breakfast, and when the man takes the dishes off his hands Jingyi simply climbs up to sit on the edge of his bed and wait, kicking his feet a little and trying not to yawn. He always gets sleepy after he has to be small and tight for a while, but usually he can ignore it if he goes to do something outside after.

“You should not have run and shouted for Xichen like you did, Jingyi,” Lan-xiansheng admonishes when he’s finished and Jingyi has carefully taken the dishes back, the jade cup tucked safely inside the sturdier wood bowl. Jingyi grips the bowl a little tighter and shakes his head with a stubborn clench in his jaw.

“Lan-xiansheng’s health was in danger, I needed Zewu-jun’s help.”

“His help could have been requested at an appropriate volume.”

Jingyi’s jaw pops from how hard he’s biting down a big shivery feeling in his chest, and because Lan-xiansheng sees everything of course he notices.

“Jingyi?”

“I was scared,” he admits, ducking his head and using the hand Lan-xiansheng can’t see to swipe at his suddenly-damp cheek. He still cries just as easily as he had before he got his family, which is embarrassing, but they never say anything mean about it so it’s not too bad. “I yelled and ran because I was scared.”

“Ah, I see,” Lan-xiansheng hums. Jingyi swipes at his cheek again before he sits up straight and tries to begin hopping down from the bed to take the dishes back to be scrubbed — but then strong arms are wrapping around him and Jingyi melts into the embrace immediately.

Lan-xiansheng isn’t much for hugging. Hanguang-jun is, he hugs Jingyi a lot, but Zewu-jun and Lan-xiansheng don’t ever really hug him, and he’s noticed they don’t hug Hanguang-jun or Lan Yuan all that much either. But Lan-xiansheng is hugging him now, just as warm as the hearthstone and a little tighter than even Zewu-jun had pressed him against the wall to help him get through his panic, and without thinking Jingyi drops the bowl and cup with a clatter to hug Lan-xiansheng back just as fiercely.

“Please don’t die,” he whispers into Lan-xiansheng’s shoulder. His heart shies away from just saying it aloud, like maybe if he says it right to Lan-xiansheng it’ll actually happen. But before he can really get himself worked up, Lan-xiansheng presses a hand tight to the back of his head and shakes his own head enough for Jingyi to feel it.

“I will not die, Jingyi. I promised I would raise you. Are you grown yet?”

Jingyi laughs a little wetly around a big sniffle. “No, Lan-xiansheng.”

“Mm. Silly child.”

“Can you stay even when I’m grown though?” he has to ask, his voice small and nervous where he’s still hiding in Lan-xiansheng’s shoulder. If Lan-xiansheng has to die when Jingyi grows up then he’ll just have to find a way to stay a kid forever, it’s flawless logic.

Lan-xiansheng pauses for a long moment before he gives Jingyi an extra-hard squeeze and then pushes him away enough to look him in the eyes. “I will live for as long as I can. You may be…60 years old and still be a silly child. Will you be grown, then? Will you stop needing me then?”

Jingyi laughs again, stronger this time, and shakes his head ‘no’.

“Correct. I need to rest now — you may have a rest in your bed as well if you need to, we will not be doing work today.”

Jingyi, thus reassured of both Lan-xiansheng’s longevity and permission to nap through the exhaustion of one of his own episodes, hurries to return the dishes to the now-empty kitchen so he can lay down for his nap, the fear from the morning all but gone in the wake of getting a hug from Lan-xiansheng.

--//--

-15(.5)-

“Yangfu!” Jingyi hollers as he slams the door to the Yashi open with a clatter. “I’m home!”

“Child, how many times must I remind you that I can hear you coming from a li away? You do not need to shout that you have arrived.”

“Sorry,” Jingyi grins, not sorry at all. As expected, Lan-xiansheng waves a wooden spoon at him with a vague noise of irritation and nothing more — he’s long since stopped reminding Jingyi of any of the several rules pertaining to lying and careless speech that render his ‘apology’ worthy of reprimand.

“Go wash,” is all he says instead, so Jingyi salutes him deeply just to tweak his tail again before he hurries to set his sword aside and head out into the back garden for a perfunctory wash in the rain barrel. The weather is turning cool so he’s not too dirty from sword practice, which means he’s quick enough to wash and change into fresh clothes before he returns to the kitchen to strategically make himself too much of a nuisance for Lan-xiansheng to be willing to share the hearth with him. Jingyi cheerfully takes over the making of their dinner when Lan-xiansheng retreats with irritated grumbling about filial piety and pointy teenage elbows — a familiar background music to Jingyi’s evening routine.

“Yangfu,” Jingyi pipes up after they’ve finished eating in their usual silence and he’s chattered at Lan-xiansheng about his afternoon of training through the process of washing up and brewing tea that always follows. Lan-xiansheng barely glances up from the painting he’s carefully contemplating the next addition to at his call.

“Hm?”

“Did da-shixiong come to talk to you this afternoon?”

“He did.”

Jingyi fidgets from foot to foot before huffing in (fond) exasperation. Lan-xiansheng ignores him, of course, and continues to sip at his tea and study his own in-progress painting like the possibility of Jingyi beginning to join his peers on nighthunts isn’t being dangled in front of Jingyi’s eyes like a fish flailing on a line.

“Can I go?” he finally breaks enough to ask, flopping down into a…sort of correct kneel in front of the table. Lan-xiansheng holds his ink-loaded brush well away from the clattering table with the ease of many years of practice navigating a space with Jingyi’s clumsiness.

“If your da-shixiong has not seen fit to inform you —“

“Yangfu!”

Lan-xiansheng sniffs and finally looks up from his painting to level an acerbic glare at him from under truly impressive angry brows. (He can’t fool Jingyi though, he’s doing this on purpose just for the fun of teasing him.)

“Do not interrupt me, child, I’ve had enough of that in my meetings this afternoon. If your da-shixiong has not seen fit to inform you of your first assignment then why should I rob him of the headache?”

Jingyi grins wide enough to split his face and gamely gives Lan-xiansheng enough time to set his brush down and cover his ears with a pointed look before he lets out a noisy whoop and hops up to go run a couple laps around the back garden to burn off the sudden burst of energy.

“Wash again before you come inside if you’re going to be so energetic!” Lan-xiansheng’s sharp bark makes Jingyi laugh, and when he finishes a few more laps (cartwheels, to tire himself out as much as he can) he obligingly heads back to the barrel to dunk his head in the cool water, if for no other reason than to see the poorly-disguised distaste on Lan-xiansheng’s face when he tromps back in dripping water on the floor from the ends of his hair.

“Incorrigible boy,” Lan-xiansheng huffs. “Come sit, I know you won’t remember to comb your hair and I refuse to look at a bird’s nest on your head tomorrow. We have to go down to Caiyi for business in the morning, you should be presentable.”

Jingyi grins, fetches his usual oil and his comb, and finally feels his energy settle enough that he only fidgets a little once he’s sat at the table and Lan-xiansheng is kneeling behind him to comb his hair out with methodical movements.

“Thank you, Yangfu,” Jingyi murmurs when the motion of the comb in his hair has settled him further.

Lan-xiansheng sniffs in a way that could either be dismissive or a show of emotion (Jingyi will choose to believe it’s the latter). “It’s past time you went out on hunts. The other boys your age already do, and you are ahead of most of them in your cultivation.”

“Aiyah,” Jingyi tuts with a smirk. “Arrogance is forbidden! Do not flatter! Hey–!”

“Do not use the precepts for levity with me, Yi-er, it is disrespectful,” Lan-xiansheng scolds while Jingyi rubs at the spot on his scalp Lan-xiansheng had just swatted. “It is not arrogance or flattery to state what is fact. Your cultivation is highly ranked amongst your peers, they should take you for an example in their learning on night hunts.”

Jingyi smiles, practically glowing with happiness from such blatant praise, and settles down obediently for the rest of the de-tangling process.

“You will be careful on your hunt,” Lan-xiansheng says eventually, as serious as always. “You will listen closely to your seniors and obey them, should their instruction be correct. If it is not, you will go through the proper authority to see it corrected, you will not take matters into your own hands to reprimand them yourself. You will only attend group hunts supervised by Wangji until you have proven yourself capable of behaving well enough for the other supervising cultivators that they understand you are not intentionally disobedient. You will not risk your life, and you will not encourage or support others in doing so, either.”

Jingyi nods vigorously enough that Lan-xiansheng puts his free hand on top of his head to stop him from yanking at the comb the man is still running through his hair.

“What scenario have I not considered?”

Jingyi screws up his face for a moment to run back through the list of instructions. Lan-xiansheng has gotten really good over the years at learning how to give him thorough enough lists of instructions that most circumstances are typically accounted for, but Jingyi is nothing if not creative in circumventing any rule he can, even when he doesn’t mean to be.

“What if a mundane person is in life-threatening trouble and I’m the only one who can help them but it’s really dangerous?”

Lan-xiansheng swats at his head again, more gently this time. “You will not be going on such dangerous hunts, and you will not be tasked with protecting civilians directly. It will be your task to shadow your seniors and do as directed, and to learn all you can from observing their work. You are not to endanger yourself, Jingyi. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Yangfu. I won’t endanger myself.”

“Good.”

Jingyi stays still as Lan-xiansheng finishes combing his hair and braids it for sleep, tucking the ends of his ribbon neatly into the braid to keep it safe. (Most of the time if he takes it off at night he forgets to put it on again in the morning, it’s easiest to just sleep in it.)

Jingyi returns his comb and oil where they belong and settles in across from Lan-xiansheng at the table to work on a bit of lure talisman research he’s interested in, the silence comfortable and peaceful at the end of a day. When the sandalwood incense burning in the brazier switches to jasmine, informing them of the start of hai shi, they set aside their individual pursuits and begin to prepare for bed. Jingyi is about to slip into his own bedroom — an addition to the house Lan-xiansheng commissioned to be built for him some years ago — when a hand around his wrist stops him.

For all the growth spurts Jingyi has gone through in the last few years, Lan-xiansheng still stands a few cuns taller than him. He looks every bit of it now, his gaze stern as Jingyi turns to look up at him, curious. “Yangfu?”

“I will not stop you from night hunting,” he says with apparent difficulty. “It is your right and your duty as a cultivator capable of helping to do so.” Jingyi stays quiet as Lan-xiansheng visibly chews on his next words before he manages to get them out. “You are..vitally important to me. Promise me you will be careful.”

Jingyi — suddenly feeling quite a bit younger than his 15 and a half years — surges forward to hug Lan-xiansheng tightly around the middle and hide his face in his chest. Lan-xiansheng still isn’t much of a hugger, but for now he indulges Jingyi enough to wrap his arms around his shoulders and hold on tight.

“I’ll be careful, Yangfu,” Jingyi promises into soft white silk, feeling wonderfully comfortable. “I won’t take risks. I’ll listen to my seniors. Hanguang-jun will keep us all safe, and I swear I’ll behave and follow all the rules.”

Lan-xiansheng is too slow to stop his disbelieving snort at that, so Jingyi grins and squeezes him tighter to irritate his adoptive father for daring to doubt him.

“Follow what rules you can,” Lan-xiansheng sighs, long-suffering, and pats his back a few times to signal him to let go. “And come back in one piece.”

That much, at least, he can do. He says as much and wishes Lan-xiansheng goodnight before they retreat back to their individual rooms. He settles in for bed with a smile and a shake of his head, unable to sleep for hours with the excitement of his first nighthunt humming under his skin.

--//--

-17-

In the two years since Jingyi started joining his agemates on nighthunts (when his other duties allow), he’s seen his fair share of wild and unbelievable things. The world is wide and the Lan disciples travel far, following the example set for them by (and usually under the direct leadership of) Hanguang-jun. He’d known even on that very first hunt that they wouldn’t always be so easy, that he wouldn’t always get to follow his favorite seniors around doing little more than holding their spare qiankun pouches for them and shouting about how cool they are at opportune moments in battle. That being said, he still thinks that it’s a little excessive that only two years later he’s progressed all the way up to getting kidnapped and thrown in a cave in the Burial Mounds with a bunch of other juniors who don’t have any better ideas than he does as to how they’re going to get the fuck out of here.

“If you ask me, you shouldn’t have just stabbed him once. Why didn’t you slice his throat?”

Ugh — not only kidnapped and thrown into the Burial Mounds. Kidnapped, thrown into the Burial Mounds, and tied to Jin Chan. Truly a low point in his life, Jingyi has to admit, and something he will decidedly not be putting into his reports of this nighthunt if they make it out of here (though he will likely complain about it to Lan-xiansheng in the privacy of their own home. Their home which he will definitely see again, he promised to be careful and come back in one piece, like he always does).

“It’s been a few days since they left us here,” Jingyi says, mostly to distract himself from the prospect of breaking such an important promise. “What do they want to do? To beat us or kill us…at least make it fast.” Jokes? Jokes. Jokes about death are a solid way to make it funny and not at all a very real possibility. He can make jokes about anything until he’s blue in the face, this is fine. “I’d rather be bitten to death by a monster while hunting than starve to death in this shithole.”

Jingyi can’t even find it in himself to feel bad that no one laughs. He’s not really laughing either, after all.

“What else would they want?” Jin Chan retorts into the despondent silence. “It must be like back in Nightless City, he wants to make us into fierce corpses and use us to fight our families!..”

Jingyi sighs and tunes out whatever other drivel about Wei-qianbei is coming out of Jin Chan’s mouth, and barely pays attention to whatever Jin Ling snaps back at him as if they aren’t always at each other’s throats anyway. He tunes back in enough to hear Sizhui trying to calm them down but he doesn’t bother trying to help his best friend — he at least knows a hopeless cause when he sees one. Or is tied to one, as the case may be, which becomes ridiculously annoying when Jin Chan starts struggling at their ropes to try to get at Jin Ling.

His irritation at his companions is a decent enough distraction from the morbid direction his thoughts had been trying to head in, at least — and then it hardly matters because someone’s calling to them from the entry to the cave and when Jingyi cranes around to look towards the familiar voice he can’t help but grin and relax in relief.

“Hanguang-jun!” Jingyi’s call comes right on the heels of Sizhui’s. It’s a simple fact of life that so long as Hanguang-jun is here then everything will be fine, and between one breath and the next he doesn’t doubt for a moment that he’ll make it home to Lan-xiansheng after all (though he will admit that being approached by the Ghost General wielding a sword comes really close to making him doubt it all over again in the moments before he’s cut free).

As is proper, he and Sizhui are the first to hurry up and greet Hanguang-jun, who studies them both closely as Sizhui greets Wei-qianbei and reaffirms for everyone present that their whole kidnapping and attempted murder predicament is not his fault. Jingyi doesn’t really care whose fault it is, if he’s being honest, he mostly just wants to go home and maybe spend a couple weeks (at least) doing nothing but helping Lan-xiansheng with his mountains of paperwork and badmouthing the Sect Leaders he doesn’t like since Lan-xiansheng can’t say any of it himself. Not that he doesn’t like nighthunting, and not that he doesn’t enjoy going out on adventures with Sizhui and Hanguang-jun, but this is maybe enough excitement for a while.

In the interest of washing his hands of the situation, Jingyi tells Hanguang-jun and Wei-qianbei what he knows about their captors and the fierce corpses outside (which is really very little). Hanguang-jun’s soft, “You did well,” makes him feel just as incredible as ever, even having to share the praise equally with Sizhui. He preens just a bit under it, smirking and sharing a look with Sizhui that his best friend returns with all the natural good grace that Jingyi always seems to lack. They’re so close to being able to go home he can almost feel the cool mist of Cloud Recesses on his face instead of the dry stale wind of the Burial Mounds.

Hanguang-jun’s attention suddenly darts over Jingyi’s shoulder and he shifts his weight to step in front of Wei-qianbei. When Jingyi mirrors him, ready in a heartbeat to follow Hanguang-jun’s signal, he scowls to see Jin Ling stepping forward with his usual sour expression on his face.

“What, are you going to stab him again?” he demands, ignoring Sizhui’s gently admonishing call of his name. They’re all thinking it anyway or else they wouldn’t be stepping forward to protect Wei-qianbei from him, so that means it’s only rude to say, not actually against any rules. (It’s not gossip, everyone knows Jin Ling stabbed Wei-qianbei at Jinlintai, and it’s not a lie because it’s a question, so there.)

“Aiyah, don’t surround him like that. Enough,” Wei-qianbei chides. “We’ll talk outside.”

Jingyi has to fight hard to keep from rolling his eyes when everyone else simply fidgets and makes no move to head for the doors like he’s itching to do. “What?” he calls to the room at large. “Still want to stay here?”

“There are so many fierce corpses outside. You want us to go out there and die?” Jingyi does roll his eyes at that, but since it’s Jin Chan who said it he’s probably not the only one doing so.

The Ghost General offers to keep the fierce corpses outside at bay, and Sizhui comes up with a much more eloquent argument than Jingyi’s badgering, and finally they’re all moving to head out, Jingyi’s practically thrumming with an electric buzz to get his sword under his feet and go home —

Or else the buzzing is actually the crackle of the Zidian whip, considering it throws the Ghost General back into the cave before the rest of them can even step foot outside. And where there’s the lightning whip, there’s —

“Jin Ling!” Sandu Shengshou shouts from outside the massive doors to the cave, and Jingyi feels everyone’s mood lift at the idea of help arriving that isn’t Wei-qianbei and the Ghost General (Jingyi, personally, thinks that they have no right to be picky since Hanguang-jun is also here, but maybe that’s just him [and probably Sizhui too]).

Ouyang Zizhen calls out to his dad next, and Jingyi’s heart actually does a little leap because if that old windbag Ouyang-zongzhu is here as well as the young ones like Sandu Shengshou then, maybe —

Jingyi falls into step quickly behind Hanguang-jun to file outside and yes, there, through the trees — Lan-xiansheng. Jingyi barely keeps from hopping out of line to run to him, and only manages it because Hanguang-jun hurries to lead them over so they can salute and fall in line properly the moment it’s possible. Jingyi takes up his spot close behind Lan-xiansheng’s left shoulder with immense relief that nearly makes his knees buckle. The only person he’s happier to see than Hanguang-jun is his adoptive father, and a few minutes later when Lan-xiansheng steps close enough amongst all the shouting and clamoring for Wei-qianbei to apologize (or whatever it is the rest of the world is demanding of him), Jingyi latches his fingers into the trailing end of Lan-xiansheng’s sleeve gratefully to give it a little tug in greeting.

Jingyi has a very definite purpose in this life, and that’s to take care of Lan-xiansheng with all the energy he has. The man took him in, raised him, taught him, sheltered him from the criticisms of the extreme traditionalists in the Sect, amongst whom Jingyi knows Lan-xiansheng was once counted. His job, then, is to be the most filial ward he can be, and so when a wicked trick costs everyone their spiritual energy the moment they begin fighting off the next wave of fierce corpses, Jingyi immediately lets Lan-xiansheng lean on him to hurry into the protection of the cave. He shouts down Su She and his stupid fucking joke of a Sect copying theirs because he knows Lan-xiansheng can’t say it himself, but won’t stop Jingyi from saying what everyone knows to be true, even if it’s ‘rude’. When all the talking and standing around comes to an end and Wei-qianbei makes himself into a lure for the fierce corpses, Jingyi knows that Hanguang-jun can rest easy helping him fight them off because he’s helping Lan-xiansheng down the path and away from danger.

And when all is said and done, when they’ve arrived at Lotus Pier to recover from their ordeal, and the events of the evening have unfolded in shocking ways but everyone is too exhausted to run after Jin Guangyao tonight, Jingyi settles into a guest room deep in the warrens of Lotus Pier with Lan-xiansheng to let the man fuss and grumble over him to his heart’s content. Jingyi half-listens and passes him a steady thread of qi like he’d seen Zewu-Jun do almost a decade ago, his own energy now more than strong enough to support Lan-xiansheng’s recovery efforts whenever necessary.

“I told you not to get in trouble,” Lan-xiansheng grouses, clearly unhappy to be laid up with his old injuries through no fault of his own. “I told you to stay on the safe roads and to stay with Sizhui at all times and to use your signal flares if you needed help —”

“Aiyah, Yangfu! Enough,” Jingyi admonishes with a little jiggle of Lan-xiansheng’s wrist in his grip where he’s monitoring the balance of his qi. “I was with Sizhui, we both got caught! Everyone did. Are you going to blame me for getting the juniors of so many Sects kidnapped when we were plotted against and meant to be used as bait?”

“Yes,” Lan-xiansheng snaps. “You’re different than they are, you’re not supposed to get caught up in these sorts of things. You’re my son!”

Jingyi’s breath hitches in his chest and he has to stop the stream of qi to Lan-xiansheng as his energy bobbles in response to the depth of the emotion boiling in his chest at such a pronouncement. Lan-xiansheng has let him call him ‘Yangfu’ without complaint since he started doing it when he was 11 and had just learnt what it meant, and that had been plenty, that had been great. Lan-xiansheng has always indulged him and shown him he loves him in the stuffy quiet ways all good Lans do (with the exceptions of his rare and treasured embraces). But this, right now, is the first time Lan-xiansheng has ever called him his son.

“Ha-Hanguang-jun,” he says around the tightness in his throat, “Zewu-jun..they’re…”

“Jingyi,” Lan-xiansheng interrupts, not unkindly. He strains to sit up straight again and Jingyi lunges forward to help him, conscious of how exhausted Lan-xiansheng is after his qi is depleted and his injury allowed to flare up in its absence. “Your cousins know that I care for them, but it has always been…complicated. They belong to the Sect, and to the world, because they must. They are their father’s sons, and they will never escape that entirely. Out of the three children I have raised, only you could ever truly be mine.”

Jingyi’s next inhale hiccups in his chest — it’s been a while since he cried as easily as he used to, but he doesn’t think that Lan-xiansheng calling him his son is something he’s supposed to take as stoically as most people would expect him to.

“I was so afraid, Yangfu,” he hiccups and darts in to wrap his arms around Lan-xiansheng’s middle so tightly it must be a bit uncomfortable, but Lan-xiansheng doesn’t protest. “I just wanted to go home and see you.”

“Well you’ve seen me now, and we can leave for home tomorrow. Leave this mess to the others, we’ve got enough work to do in Gusu. Alright?”

Jingyi nods and Lan-xiansheng’s hand resting on the back of his head moves with him, as solid and comforting as it had been that very first time when he was still so lonely and afraid, so certain that no one in the world would ever truly want him. But now he’s Lan-xiansheng’s son. His Yangfu loves him as his own, worries for him when he’s in trouble, accepts his help without complaint when he needs it. Jingyi burrows into his shoulder a little tighter and imagines standing in front of himself as a child just so he can look himself in the eyes and promise that it all gets better in the end.

#the untamed fanfic #Lan Jingyi #Lan Qiren #Lan Xichen #Lan Wangji #Junior Quartet #Why Not Me #Now that I have one LQR-gets-the-children-he-deserves fic done....I think I'd better work on the og one lol #also I fully had Jingyi calling LQR yifu and then I looked it up just to check and it turns out yangfu is much more appropriate!#yangfu is more directly adoptive/foster father while yifu is apparently more symbolic and more like a mentor figure?#the more you know #I love language

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hookedonapirate · 2 years ago

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Lady Cassidy's Lover

Summary: 1919 England, Emma Cassidy, wife of a baronet, finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage after the war leaves her husband, Neal, paralyzed from the waist down and unable to produce an heir.

Despite the obstacles, she sticks by her husband's side at Goldby Hall, his family's estate, but when she meets former army lieutenant and Neal's aloof gamekeeper, Killian Jones, she feels curiously drawn to his distant blue eyes and quiet demeanor.

At first, she seeks him out for reprieve from her soulless, mundane existence at Goldby Hall, but what starts out as purely physical quickly turns into more than either of them expects.

But Emma is a baronetess, wife of an aristocrat and Killian is a working class servant. Their love affair is frowned upon, and she risks losing her title, her wealth and her position in the world by being with him. But she is determined to get her happy ending with the man she loves. Even if it means losing everything else in the process.

A/N: Despite Emma's last name and marriage to Neal, this NOT a swanfire fic! This definitely ends with Captain Swan so if you're expecting swanfire, this is not for you.

This is the Lady Chatterley's Lover au no one asked for. I had never read the novel but when I watched the newest movie adaptation (there are 4 that I know of), I simply had to write this for CS even though I already have a mountain of wips in my doc. This fic will mostly be following the 1981 and 2022 versions. If you haven't watched the 2022 version, I highly recommend it, if no other reason than to watch Jack O'Connell.

This fic deals with mature themes (some of which the book was banned for back when it was written), adultery, postwar, language, smut.

Hope you enjoy!

Catch up: Ch 1 I Ch 2 I Ch 3 I Ch 4 I Ch 5 I Ch 6 I Ch 7 I Ch 8 I Ch 9 I Ch 10 I Ch 11 I Ch 12 I Epilogue

We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen—D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

Chapter One

Emma releases a heavy sigh as she slumps down onto the sofa, relieved the ceremony is over with. If only the day were done too, so she wouldn't have to be subjected to dancing and all the other useless traditions of a wedding reception. Now she has to listen to dreadful toasts and her and Neal's family drone on about how perfect she and her new doting husband are together.

"So, how does it feel?" One by one, her sister, Mary Margaret unbuckles Emma's shoes and pulls them off her tired feet.

Emma shakes her head. "I don't know. Ask me tomorrow." Perhaps then she'll feel differently about exchanging vows with a man she barely knows.

She and Neal had met and courted shortly before he was shipped off to war, and during his leave, he had confessed he'd hated being without her and asked her to marry him. She had said yes and they were quick to get married before he returns to the front. Their fathers may have had a hand in rushing things along as well. Britain declared war with Germany three years ago, heightening Sir Rumpelstiltskin's long-held desire to see his only son marry and produce heirs to their fortune.

Emma's father, Sir Leopold, wants her to have a stable husband, and who better than a man with a hereditary rank and title? She and Mary Margaret were raised in Kensington by Sir Leopold, a royal academician and their mother, Eva, a well-educated socialist, and had what one might call an aesthetically unorthodox childhood. They had been taken to Paris, Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and to the Hague and Berlin for socialist conventions where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue.

Emma comes from wealth and Neal from aristocracy, so some could say it's the perfect match, except for the fact she has not known him long enough to truly love him. But from her perspective, this marriage is the perfect arrangement. The perfect way to get her father off her back about finding a suitable husband like her sister's. Furthermore, she does not have to worry about getting hurt by someone she does not love. She has experienced what it's like to lose someone she loves. She lost her mother ten years ago to illness and had to witness her father almost become a shell of a man without her. Emma made up her mind long ago she would never give her heart to a man. She would never submit to him emotionally.

She has been with men before, of course, but none she had loved.

A man is like a child, and if he doesn't get what he wants, he whines and fusses, exposing an unpleasant side of himself. But a woman can yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. A woman can take a man without truly giving herself away. Certainly, she can take him without giving herself into his power. Rather, she can wield the power over him.

"You need to eat something."

"I need to get out of this dress first." She doesn't quite care for the high-waisted empire line, the tiered skirt made of dreadful lace or the sleeves that fall to her elbows. It reminds her of a tablecloth rather than a dress. Don't get her started on the extravagantly large bouquet of flowers that nearly touched the ground when she held it. And she'd tossed away the Juliet veil as soon as she had returned to the bridal suite.

Mary Margaret agrees as she takes her hand and pulls her up, helping Emma out of her wedding gown and into a simpler dress for the reception.

"How do I look?" Emma asks once she's in it, twirling around in the green dress to give her sister the full effect.

Mary Margaret smirks. "Well, I doubt Neal will want to stay long at the reception."

Emma's cheeks warm as she stands in front of the mirror and removes her earrings, replacing them with emerald ones that will match her dress. She and Neal have not even had sex yet, so tonight will be their first time. "You don't think his mother would've approved?" Neal's mother was the daughter of a viscount before she died.

"Well, I'm not entirely sure I do."

Emma rolls her eyes at her sister as she recoats her lips in red lipstick. "Are we talking about the dress...or the wedding?" Not everyone can find their prince charming as she did. Mary Margaret's marriage to David was definitely not forced or rushed. They are true love, as she always likes to boast. "We had to marry quickly before he returns to the front in the morning."

"Yes, but couldn't you have just had sex with him instead of marrying him?"

Emma laughs. "Mary Margaret! Be serious." She studies herself in the mirror, turning and running her hand over her dress, deciding to leave her blonde hair braided into a crown atop her head. She looks like herself, but somehow different now that she's married. She had honestly never thought this day would come.

"I am. It's much less commitment, and it's all Neal will want anyway."

"Neal's not like that. He's kind and thoughtful. He makes me feel safe."

"You mean safe from getting hurt?"

Emma looks up to see Mary Margaret's reflection in the mirror as the brunette narrows her eyes. But Emma knows she can't lie to her sister. Mary Margaret would see right through her. Emma stands and turns around to face her. "Precisely."

Mary Margaret places her hands on Emma's shoulders. "See, that's just it. If you never open that heart of yours up to anyone, you'll grow old and gray without ever experiencing the wonderful things life has to offer."

"I do experience the wonderful things life has to offer." Not that sex is really that wonderful. It has always been merely a way to let off some steam.

Mary Margaret tilts her head. "I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about love."

The clearing of a throat interrupts their conversation when Neal steps into the room with a tray of three wine glasses. "I brought reinforcements."

The two women blush when they realize he must have heard the tail end of their conversation.

Mary Margaret goes over to Neal and grabs one of the glasses, taking a sip. "You read my mind."

"I nearly drank yours on the way up," he tells her, chuckling as he hands one to Emma and takes the other one for himself. Setting down the tray, he clinks his and Emma's glasses together. "Cheers."

"Cheers." Emma smiles at her new husband and takes a sip.

"Our fathers are preparing their toasts."

Emma groans, not looking forward to going downstairs. "Can we face them together?"

"Of course." He smiles at her, and she has to admit, Neal is not the worst man she could've chosen for a husband. He's handsome and charming, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles. She can tell he cares for her. "You look beautiful, Ems."

She offers a smile in return. "Thanks."

After they finish their wine, she takes his offered hand, allowing him to lead her downstairs, where their fathers give speeches and announce their hope for a new heir to Goldby.

~*~

Two years later

Dearest Mary Margaret,

I knew the war would change us all, I just didn't know how much. It feels as though it ended half a lifetime ago, not half a year. Neal and I have already moved away from London, and we've just arrived at Goldby, his family estate. Once we get settled in, I expect to write to you often.

Your loving sister,

Emma

Lady Cassidy gazes vacantly through the window as the motor-car winds through the park of oak trees. The sky is about as gray and murky as the future, for who knows what tragedies it may hold. Clouds of smoke rise from the chimney of the pit in the distance where Misthaven village struggles to stay afloat beyond the park gates.

The car pulls up in front of the eighteenth century home made of brown stone that sits on the top of a knoll, overlooking the park. This is her new home in the smoky Midlands where she and Neal will finally begin their married life at Goldby Hall, the family seat. His father had died of heart failure, and Neal is now baronet. But he claims his father died of chagrin since he and Emma are without a child. And they most likely will be childless forever. Not only did they never get the chance to consummate their marriage the night of their honeymoon since she had been too exhausted and he had been too anxious about returning to war, they never will.

The chauffeur opens Emma's car door and grabs her luggage.

"Thank you." She steps out, taking in her new home. This place is nothing like her childhood house in London. Goldby certainly needs a lot of work.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Potts, who worked for Rumpelstiltskin, approaches with her husband to greet them. "Welcome, Sir Neal. We've been praying for you."

Mr. Potts helps him out of the car, picking him up and placing him into his wheelchair. An explosion during the war left Neal paralyzed from the waist down, and the doctor said he may never be able to walk again.

Emma tries not to think about that, however. She tries not to think about how she may never get pregnant or be able to give birth to a child as long as she's with Neal. She will never get to raise children or watch them grow up and run around the park at Goldby. She can't think of herself anymore though. She is married to a baronet, whom she vowed to have and to hold, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health until they are parted by death. After he returned from war, he told her he could never lose her, and she promised he never would.

She will spend the rest of her life keeping that promise.

"Mr. and Mrs. Potts, this is my wife, the new Lady Cassidy."

Mrs. Potts turns around to greet her with a curtsy. "It's so nice to meet you, milady."

Emma smiles, bows her head and steps toward her. "Nice to meet you."

Neal wheels himself over to his wife, and the four of them avert their attention to the worn-looking house towering over them. "There's plenty of work to be done," Neal comments. "Hire back all the workers we can, Mrs. Potts. Old girl's seen better days."

Emma places a hand on the back of his chair and tries to be optimistic. "We'll bring her back to life."

~*~

"Killian Jones." Sir Neal looks up from the application in his hand from where he sits at the other side of the desk. "You, uh, worked for my father before the war?"

"Aye, sir. For two years." When he returned, he heard Rumpelstiltskin had passed and that Neal would be taking over and hiring new staff.

"And you were an army lieutenant?"

Killian nods. "I was very sorry to hear about your father. My condolences, sir." He wishes he could say Sir Rumpelstiltskin was a good man, but that would be a lie. He was ridiculous, chopping down trees in the forest and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war while he, himself, was a coward who stayed safe at home and buried his country in heaps of debt while claiming to be patriotic.

"Thank you." Neal looks at him skeptically. "Do you honestly believe returning to gamekeeping will be satisfying after your time as an officer?"

Killian shrugs, his fingers drumming along his wool cap. If he could, he would leave. Every night, he dreams of escaping to a new place where a new voice says his name with warmth, where eyes filled with love look at him instead of ones filled with hatred and betrayal, where he is not dismissed. There is no freedom here, there never will be. Milah doesn't love him, but nevertheless she holds him close. One more possession.

"Bit of quiet would do me good. I've seen enough of what war does to men." Not only had he seen men brutally die in battle, but his brother had been one of them. Every day, he tries to push away the horrific images that have plagued him since the war. Every day he tries to forget. About the war, about her. Being a gamekeeper, tending to the animals, breeding them, enjoying the quiet of the forest while protecting it will be therapeutic for him.

"Hmm. As have I." Sir Neal has learned firsthand what war can do to men. He himself was paralyzed from the waist down.

Rumors about his injury had spread before Neal came to Goldby.

Neal sets the application down and joins his hands on the desk. "Very well then. Welcome back, Mr. Jones."

"Thank you, Sir." Killian turns around and heads out of Neal's study, moving past the long line of men seeking employment. He was lucky the baronet had hired him so quickly, and he is grateful. Killian receives a monthly war pension, but since he and Milah are still legally married, she's entitled to half of it. So now he is stuck in Misthaven, barely skimming by to make ends meet while Milah prances around with various menfolk of the village, spending the money he had earned by going to battle and risking his life.

Now he spends restless, lonely nights in his cottage, thinking about his brother and the war and everyone else he has lost.

But at least he has Jolly to keep him company.

He returns home to his cottage, where she's waiting for him at the door. His lips crack into a big smile when he sees her. "There's my good lass." He kneels down to ruffle a hand through her fur as she yaps, wagging her tail excitedly.

She truly is a good dog and the best companion he could hope for. She's loyal and trustworthy and always appreciates his affections, unlike his wife who betrayed him to be with other men.

After everything that's happened, Jolly is the one good thing in his life.

All he has left.

#cs ff #captain swan #lady chatterley's lover au #based on a novel

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otakween · 6 months ago

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One Pound Gospel - Volume 2

I forgot to mention the format I'm reading this in. This manga is super duper out of print. Since I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars tracking it down physically, I downloaded some scans of the first Viz release. It's so old that it's a "flipped" manga (left-to-right). Also, instead of chapters it's broken into parts with like sub-chapters, but maybe that's how it was originally, not sure. I'm just numbering the chapters as I usually would to avoid confusion.

Ch. 10

Kosaku gets challenged by a boxer from his past, Taro, who holds a grudge against Kosaku for knocking his teeth out.

If Taro's a waiter now, does that mean he's no longer a pro boxer? Are non-pros allowed to challenge pros? Or maybe he's still a pro and working at the restaurant is a side hustle lol.

Kosaku has to get even skinnier than before and I guess I'm supposed to find his suffering funny? :/

Ch. 11

Taro kinda hot (even tho he has no teeth lol). His face is definitely different enough from Kosaku's, but I feel like they have the exact same hair. Kinda a feathered look.

I guess when you have no teeth you can wear cool fantasy dentures (vampire teeth), an advantage I'd never thought about...(not that I want to lose my teeth, but if you had no choice, might as well have fun!)

They show a chart with all of the weight classes in this chapter. I was surprised to see how minimal the differences are between the classes. Why is it so granular?

What does it mean to be a 6 rounder vs. a 10 rounder? I'm guessing it means you're so skilled you could last up to 10 rounds (but it could also end sooner than that??)

So Taro is a pro boxer out of spite. Very anime of him.

What is that manga reaction when someone gestures in shock with their hand like this 🤟Where does that come from??

Ch. 12

Oh look, it's the same joke about Kosaku overeating again. Hardy har har.

"Lamb who strays so easily from the light" is such a nice way to color things lol. I can see why people seek religion for comfort. (I can also see why people can be terrible people and still consider themselves in good standing with the G man).

Needing to gain weight quickly can be just as detrimental as needing to lose weight quickly. Are boxers okay?

Ch. 13

Yeah, fat definitely means something different in the boxing world. Them calling Taro a "whale" was wild. He looks very average.

Kosaku finally shows some restraint for once. I guess the other workers at the gym have better tactics than the coach (do those dudes even have names? lol).

Ch. 14

Ohh so Taro can't gain weight fast because he has no teeth. I missed that connection.

They really just keep telling the same "if you promise him steak, he'll win the match" joke over and over again. Kinda feels like Popeye eating his spinach or something.

Not winning a fight for 4 years is pretty crazy. I'm guessing money comes from ticket sales? After that long you would think people wouldn't want to pay, but I guess plenty of sports teams have had long losing streaks.

Ch. 15

Omg Sister Angela without her habit hype! She cute, I like her really short bob (a rare style for the cute girl in a manga. I feel like that's how you know this was illustrated by a woman).

Finally we get a little more focus on the romcom half of the story and some acknowledgement of Angela's position. (Is being a nun a job? I guess it's more like, a calling).

All the nuns ganging up on Kosaku was funny, new opponent seems entertaining too (his gimmick is that he looks really tough but is actually a coward).

Ch. 16

Kurusu is really cute, I'd choose him as a romance option in a dating sim <3 (the way his eyes are drawn reminds me of Mob Psycho)

It was refreshing to see Kosaku acknowledge that he's been dumped. I have a sneaking suspicion he won't take no for an answer though. Alternatively, it might be Angela who snaps when she realizes she misses him. We shall see.

Ch. 17

So Kosaku ends up being able to focus on his training more when he's not thinking of Angela, but then he relapses into his food obsession again, so not much has changed really?

Kurusu getting into fights because he looks tough...I feel like I've seen this trope before. Toradora maybe?

Apparently "Abbess" is a title, not a name. I was pretty sure that was the case, but was unfamiliar. I guess their was a Mother Abbess in the Sound of Music.

Ch. 18

Awe, this chapter was cute. Mother Abbess pulling the whole "you know, I was quite a looker in my day," the kindergarteners helping Angela hide, and Kosaku comforting being gentle with Kurusu in the church <3 All nice moments

The dream at the beginning with Angela being tormented by a devil Kosaku made me laugh.

Ch. 19

I'm glad Kosaku lost, even though it's clearly just to prolong the romance drama. Kurusu needed the W more ;w;

The coach saying "You like rituals? Try harakiri, loser!" had me laughing. Savage.

I only consciously noticed in this chapter that Sister Angela is the only nun who isn't inked in black (her habit is left white). She's an anime MC for sure lol

The nuns cheering on Kurusu while simultaneously not understanding how boxing works at all was cute

#one pound gospel #manga

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malmagma · 2 years ago

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Hi yes go read all of @megamanrecut ‘s things that is my command

(Based on Become The Night)

#megamanrecut #ruby spears protoman #ruby spears Elec man #pharaoh man #ruby spears mega man #alright it’s time to ramble #big sorry that I’ve been gone since the Dawn of time #I’ve been on a I don’t wanna draw humanoids streak #genuinely love looking in from time to time #also this AU fucking rocks #I vibe so hard with the syndicate AU #love this sort of stuff and I know it’s been floating around for awhile #wanted to honor it with this composition #definitely drawn before ch 4 #I had to decide if I was going to draw Proto with a gun #but then realized I didn’t feel like saving a billion gun references to my ipad #it’s running low on space with is a bummer #also drawing him with the papers is peak comedy #I can’t even imagine Proto sitting down to read a book #but now he has to go over legal papers lmao #also I almost drew two Elec men #like one would’ve been armored and the other in normal people clothes #but glasses Elec man shows up more than Elec man with armor #also sorry Elec I ruffled your least favorite coworkers hair #pharaoh man is there for compositional reasons #I have no idea if he has an important role #which is ideal #no spoilers for me #gonna be really awkward if he shows up for two lines and then fucks off for the rest of the fic #centum is amorphous as always

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neversetyoufree · 3 years ago

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with this new episode.. would you think noé has a crush on jeanne? i've never seen it as something possible up until this episode. like i have no idea why he would, but this episode is making me think otherwise??? i just can't think of an explanation as to why he'd love her, it's really confusing so that's why i'd like your thoughts on it. </3

I do think it’s a possibility, yes! I wouldn't call it a full-on crush or anything, but I do think he's at least a little attracted to her.

I don't love the anime's tweaks to chapter 12 in ep 7, and especially not them putting extra emphasis on Noé and Jeanne (since ch 12 thrives on a very careful balance of subtext imo), but there is evidence in the manga for some one-sided NoéJeanne attraction.

Starting in chapter 3, when we get Jeanne's big reveal spread, Noé looks just as struck by Jeanne's appearance as Vanitas does, and we know for certain that Vanitas finds her quite beautiful.

In fact, given there's that little extra slim panel of Noé looking surprised before he reacts to her appearance, you could even argue that more emphasis is put on Noé seeing Jeanne than on Vanitas seeing her. So if we know Vanitas seeing her here is a big deal, and Noé gets even more emphasis, then this moment is probably important. And the important thing happening is that Noé is quite struck by the way she looks.

Continuing on, when Noé and Jeanne fight in chapter 4, Noé holds his own pretty well at first. Then Jeanne looks at him and he freezes up, allowing her to kick him through a wall.

Given that there's a heartbeat sound effect and a blush on his reaction panel, it's pretty clear that seeing her face here once again has an effect on him. He even reacts like this after recovering from the blow:

which is more or less how I'd expect Mr. "what on earth is love" to react to being attracted to a woman for the first time in his life.

There's a couple other similar moments in the bal masqué arc (his reactions to hearing Jeanne is at the ball and having her thank him the day after), but I'll save the in-depth analysis of those. For every moment after Vanitas kisses Jeanne, you could argue that at least some of Noé's interest in her is connected to his trying to make sense of her "romance" with Vanitas, but in chapters 3 and 4, I really can't think of any explanation for how Noé acts other than "he thinks she's really pretty and doesn't know what to make of it."

You could read that as romantic attraction, or maybe just very strong aesthetic attraction (esp if you're a fan of aro-spec Noé like me), but either way, he sure does seem to be attracted to her in some form.

Furthermore, when future Noé starts narrating about the "feeling stirring in his heart" that he's yet to understand in chapter 12, it's immediately preceded by him looking over at Jeanne, and shown over the image of him stepping on Vanitas's foot.

The images shown with narration like this are pretty important for implying future meaning, and there's definitely a way that you can read these pages as implying a future crush on Jeanne. After all, Noé turning to look at Jeanne right before the narration about his feelings does sort of make it feel like it's his seeing her that prompts romantic thoughts. Her face is also shown larger than Domi's or Luca's, making it seem like Mochijun wants to draw extra attention to her importance here as Noé talks about love. Or, we could argue that he's just looking at Jeanne because he's baffled by Vanitas's explanation of his feelings for her, and thus naturally staring as he tries to puzzle it out. He feels things about Vanitas and Jeanne's relationship, and he's drawn to talking about it and watching the both of them as a result, but it could well be that Vanitas is the one he's really jealous about.

Similarly, if we set aside Noé looking at Jeanne and say the image actually under the narration is what's important, we run into a similar split. If the foot stepping means something, it could be foreshadowing about Noé someday stepping on Vanitas's toes in a less literal way via some kind of relationship with Jeanne. I don't know whether the "stepping on someone's toes" metaphor is something relevant at all in Japan, or if it's exclusively an english phrase, but it's at least possible that it's what Mochijun is referencing here. Or, it's possible that the foot step itself isn't the significant part, but that it is important to have Vanitas and Noé interact under the narration. After all, even if it's a silly interaction, it does draw attention to the two of them while Noé talks about his future love, so maybe it's Vanoé foreshadowing, not Noéjeanne.

In other words, the end of chapter 12 could be a setup for Noé's future crush on Vanitas, or his future crush on Jeanne. It could maybe even be both. That's how I've always read not only this scene, but the whole chapter. We just don't know which of them he's jealous of.

However, it also seems worth noting that chapter 12 is pretty much the last time we get any indication of this semi-crush Noé has. After that point, Mochijun almost never has them interact, with only two notable scenes between them in 40+ chapters. And within those scenes, the only even slight hint of attraction on Noé's part is a single panel of him blushing when Jeanne literally twists her leg around his neck and shoves her thigh into his face:

which I'm not inclined to read into all that much.

I think literally anyone even a little bit attracted to women would be blushing in that moment. It's quite possible even people who aren't attracted to women would be blushing in that moment. So it's not exactly compelling evidence for a future NoéJeanne plot.

Overall, I think it's fair to say that, while Noé hasn't interacted enough yet with Jeanne to "love" her in a notable way, he does seem to be at least a bit attracted to her. I have a lot of thoughts on what Mochijun could be doing with this thread, and where I think the whole Vanitas/Jeanne/Noé romantic mess is going to go in the future, but given this post's word count, I think I'll be saving that ramble for another day.

#I'd still like to think that the foreshadowing about Noé's feelings in 12 is about vanitas #because I think that's the most interesting option for everyone involved #but I can't fully discount the possibility of Mochijun exploring Noé's attraction to Jeanne at some point in the future #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #noéjeanne #noé archiviste my beloved #noé arqueueviste #english major hours #also yes this is another months old ask that I'm answering #anon I'm so sorry #ask #anon #ID in alt text

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nikadoesanart · 3 years ago

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Who could the hallway silhouette be?

Aaaaagh I know everyone is speculating and wishing and insisting that this is Chuuya but I’m literally going to go through the full character roster to prove or disprove every last character that it could possibly be!

Ch 95, p 13-14, translation by @czkkn-upload

This is definitely my longest post yet but fear not, I made it organized! Putting the spoiler warning here and end of the intro too, there are Storm Bringer, 55 Minutes, and ofc ch 95 spoilers!

Edit since posting my initial thoughts of this on Twitter: turns out the physical appearance of the silhouette isn’t all too relevant here (shoutout to @chazukekani for helping me with checking), given some of the past examples of silhouettes being used, specifically when we don’t know who the silhouetted figure is yet. Although there have been silhouettes drawn made to be obviously one known character or another (ie. the PM in ch 46 p 10 or John in ch 24 p 5),

Ch 46, p 10, translation by dazaiscans Ch 24, p 5, translation by easygoingscans

We’ve also seen silhouettes be partially revealing and partially obscured if it was right before the reveal (ie. Fitz, Lucy, and James on ch 15 p 6, only for the three of them to be fully revealed a couple pages later).

Ch 15, p 6, don't know who translated

The silhouette I’m focused on here however is the ambiguous kind, which has basically been used for one of two purposes. 1. It’s ambiguous with slight variation to show the masses (ie. many victims) or 2. to keep a future reveal (or at least one not in the same chapter) in suspense. The former isn’t important here because I don’t see a reason for the hallway figure to be some random guard or no-named thief breaking in. Examples being the seemingly forgotten mystery writer that used the page (ch 58.5) and when Taneda was telling Ranpo about the DOA and how there are 3 more members (ch 58.

Ch 58.5 p 4 and Ch 58 p 14, both translated by dazaiscans

We still know next to nothing about the mystery writer but we do now know all of the DOA members and more importantly here, their appearances. None of the silhouettes look like the DOA because we were meant to be kept in suspense, not just because Sigma hadn’t met everyone yet. Sure you could argue that with the page overwriting things that concealed Sigma’s identity in the memory exchange with Taneda but that doesn’t change the fact the silhouettes were kept as generic and ambiguous looking as possible. After all, we don’t even know what happened to Bram’s body below the chest. Conclusion to this point? TLDR? We can’t rely very much on the height and proportions of the silhouette to deduce who it is. The height proportion to the doors and walls too because it’s not impossible that this is just an unusually tall hallway, or it’s just as likely that the blood splatters aren’t all at the height of the head of who the blood came from since some of the blood splatters (which look like headshots in my opinion) do seem to be at roughly the same height as the silhouette’s head once perspective is applied.

Again spoiler warning for the Storm Bringer epilogue and 55 Minutes! And ch 95 ofc! Now onto the bulk of the content!

Armed Detective Agency

Fukuzawa: near impossible that it’s him, his last appearance was ch 91 at/near the airport and I see no reason for him to go on a messy killing spree now

Yosano: literally a healer, although she can hold her ability back from activating right away (as seen in ch 59, likely thanks to Fukuzawa's ability) I don’t see why she would go to such lengths because this specific setup leaves a very real chance of the half-dead state not lasting long enough while she completes her mission and she does normally use bladed weaponry over guns, plus she also should still be at or near the airport anyway

Atsushi: he’s at the airport and he doesn’t want to kill, it’s not gonna happen, next

Kunikida: same as Atsushi, but although he’s willing to use some force it’s limited to intimidation purposes (unless the situation absolutely makes him deem it an exception)

Tanizaki: Naomi’s not directly in danger currently, no reason for him to be out for blood currently, especially since these guards haven’t done anything to Naomi. Also, he’s most likely at the airport

Kenji: most likely at the airport and not enough property damage for this to have been him. Any property damage here is only the mess created by the blood; no cracks or holes or anything else in the walls, floor, or ceiling

Kyouka: she’s learned to refrain from killing as a member of the ADA, and she’s probably at the airport now anyway

Dazai: literally the one getting broken out of jail a few pages later. Also, he’s long since left behind using the methods that result in this aftermath. Yes he does still use underhanded techniques, not with nearly the same brutality as in his mafia days

Ranpo: We just saw him in Anne’s room and he’s not a murderer. He’s a thinker, not a doer lol

Naomi, Haruno, Katai: Just no, it’s none of them cause they’re either somewhere safe in hiding and/or not someone who’d go on a murder spree

Port Mafia

Mori: very unlikely and near impossible as he has his hands full with the vampire mafia over in Yokohama while this hallway is over in Meursault in Europe. The only reason I say it’s not completely impossible is because Mori is the one that retrieved Kenji and Tanizaki from hiding (even they were surprised to see him)

Elise: very unlikely as we don’t know the limit to her range as Mori's ability but orMi would want to keep himself and Elise safe currently and also the silhouette wasn’t wearing a frilly dress

Chuuya: he’s just not the type to go on unnecessary killing sprees, much less make it so messy. Plus there are no signs of damage caused by his ability (ie. fractures and damage to the floor, ceiling, or walls). He values life (unlike a certain former executive). Plus he likely has to deal with the vampire mafia. Quite unlikely imo. I also see no reason for him to be smirking in the face of carnage (unless using tainted but again, no property damage in sight so no reason to believe tainted has been activated), as he was the one telling Dazai to stop shooting a dead body in 15, telling Adam off for being disrespectful at a funeral, and even paying his respects to the grunts that died due to Q’s ability in s2. Also although yes he does have a knife, his fighting style does seem to prioritize hand-to-hand combat, especially making use of his kicks. Not too much reason for those kinds of blood splatters to be everywhere if you ask me. TLDR: I just cannot see it being him

Kouyou: can’t be her because even if she was tasked with whatever mission the silhouetted person is on I don’t see a reason for her to be smirking. And again, the vampire mafia business

Akutagawa: in the airport vents and a vampire, it just can’t be him

Higuchi: whereabouts unknown but also a vampire. Makes the most sense for her to still be in Yokohama, spreading the vampirism around

Hirotsu: same as Higuchi

Gin: same as Higuchi and Hirotsu

Q: likely locked up in the basement. Also, this isn’t how Dogra Magra works. Actually, wait unless everyone started shooting each other because of Dogra Magra? Plus Q did mention planning to hurt everyone Dazai cares about when they next meet but then the guards don’t fulfill this "criteria" technically so I still don’t think it’s Q. But hey they are on the shorter side (which isn’t the biggest factor here imo) and would smile in such carnage, especially if it’s a way to get back at Dazai

Kajii: this isn’t what his lemon bombs or the aftermath of them looks like. Also we don’t know where he is

Verlaine: honestly one of the most likely in my opinion. That or he’s still chilling in the basement and no one told him what’s happening. After all, he’s a former assassin so he has the skills, and he is publicly dead to everyone that doesn’t need to know so in a sense he can sneak over to Meursault if needed. We also know that he’s not afraid to vary his kill methods and leave a mess behind. If this person does happen to be the same one greeting Dazai currently, then I do see a reason for Verlaine to be smiling at the chance to see Dazai again, as well as the possibility that this is the first time he’s been outside in 8 years, plus the chance that he’s getting back at the very government that created him (as some people do believe Meursault is in France but idk because last I checked the only thing confirmed about the location is that it’s in Europe).

Tachihara: vampire and location unknown. Considering how long he’s been missing to the rest of the HD it’s not impossible for him to be here but I highly doubt it, especially with the whole smirking thing

The Guild

Fitzgerald: he has a business to run and an organization to rebuild, so no

Alcott: like Ranpo, a thinker and not a doer. You won’t see her on the battlefield

Steinbeck: This isn’t how grapes of wrath works and I see no reason for him to come back now. After all, he wants to make Fitzgerald suffer when he peaks again

Poe: he’s basically working with the ADA now and I don’t see a reason for him to go on an actual murder spree (what happens in his books is different)

Melville: literally no reason for this to be him. That’s not how moby dick works, no reason for him to be killing people (much less while smiling), last we saw him was leaving to explain everything about the guild incident to the special division

Lovecraft: not how his body(?) that isn’t actually an ability works and no plot relevance for him to be here

Lucy: working with the ADA now and at the airport and no reason for her to go on a murder spree, much less try to fight outside of the room where she’s much weaker than in it

Margaret: either waiting to be healed or already healed. No reason for her to do this

Hawthorne: can't be him, he's stuck in Anne’s room (confirmed by omake 21)

Twain: isn’t he in America? Writing a novel? Look at him achieving Oda’s dream, at least that’s someone being a writer

Rats in the House of the Dead

Pushkin: didn’t he get arrested again? He did escape Meursault once so maybe there is a chance, assuming he got sent to Meursault again. He is also the type to smirk while killing others after all

Ivan: What even happened to him? I’m going to assume he’s arrested. I mean hey, like Pushkin if he’s in Meursault and assuming he has a way to break out then I could actually see him walking around smirking while killing the guards for his beloved Fyodor

Mushitaro: basically allied with the ADA now. Either in Poe’s book or Anne’s room though and there's no reason for him to go on a killing spree now. He’s had his character arc about this. In conclusion, it can’t be him

Decay of Angels

Kamui/Fukuchi: he's busy at the airport struggling with a box

Bram: no lower body whereas the silhouette is clearly walking and even footprints are left behind, plus he’s in his coffin at the airport anyway. Hope he's enjoying a BTS livestream or something with Aya rn tho. Maybe a bit of Tchaikovsky’s Flower Waltz too

Fyodor: I think it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible unless Asagiri is playing with the order of events being displayed again. It doesn’t seem that way as this was shown before Dazai asked about the noise outside. Unless the Fyodor in the cell has been a body double or something (ie with the use of Ivan’s ability?), which I do think is unlikely, for a while I highly doubt it. Because although I do have to admit that the carnage in the hallway is reminiscent of the one left on Ace’s ship (presumably by his ability), it’s not like Fyodor is the only one that can leave a bloody mess.

Ch 42, p 41-42, translation by dazaiscans

Gogol: those are not his shoes, pants, or the rest of his outfit ok so since the clothing argument is not really a thing now in my opinion, there is an honest chance of it being Gogol. We’ve seen him smile while torturing and attempting to kill others but he also does so with at least some purpose to who he kills.

Sigma: same as Gogol. Also, why would the two of them separate at this point? Plus, I don’t see why sigma would go on a murder spree of his own volition, much less be all smug about it. However, there’s also a chance that only Gogol was walking through the hallway, killing and smiling, and then he brought sigma over from one end of the hallway or a hiding spot to wherever they are standing at the end of the chapter with the use of Overcoat. So basically, it’s not impossible for it to be Gogol while hiding Sigma somewhere

Hunting Dogs

Teruko: at the airport with Fukuchi

Jouno: at the airport in the vents and a vampire, very likely still with Aku

Tecchou: also at the airport with Fukuchi

Order of the Clock Tower

Agatha: why would she even be here when she can sit comfortably and send commands while sipping tea?

Government

Taneda: unconscious and with Ango

Ango: we just saw him working overtime again

Tsujimura: no reason for her to be here or doing such a thing

Murakoso: she’s one of Ango’s guards, no reason to be here

Aoki: another one of Ango’s guards iirc

Ayatsuji: he can be anywhere in the world for his ability to work, his presence isn’t needed for this. But now I am curious as to how he got affected by the page and what would have happened if the government had asked him to solve the whole case a good while back. But also idk how Gaiden ends so idk where he even is or his current status

Minoura, Sugimoto, Yamagiwa: can’t be them, they're in Yokohama either busy or arrested

Tonan: he’s not going to do anything himself

Unaffiliated/Other

Natsume: he literally made a whole plan to keep Yokohama safe, why would he kill the Meursault guards? But it would be interesting if the shoulder in front of Dazai later on is his because he snuck in as a cat

Shirase: The last we heard of his whereabouts, he was heading to Europe with Adam. But why would he go on a killing spree? Much less be all smug about it? I honestly can’t see it being Shirase, despite how much the idea of Dazai possibly meeting anyone from his PM days intrigues me

Adam: he wants to protect people, so no

Wells: there’s no reason for her to go on a murder spree considering how she explained her motives in 55 minutes (idr the exact phrasing of her overall goal but basically to save people from disasters, especially those caused by ability weapons iirc, but here’s some quotes anyway. All of these are Wells talking to Atsushi btw).

“ ‘I came to stop that weapon [the Shell].’ … ‘My name is H. G. Wells. I came here to prevent this catastrophe,’ ” (55 Minutes, p 76, translation by Yen Press)

“ ‘I don’t want anyone else to die because of me’ ” (55 Minutes, p 185, translation by Yen Press)

However, I do think there’s a chance of Wells being the one whose shoulder is shown near Dazai on p 23 and not just because of what we know of how she dresses. She actually knows Dazai and there’s also her parting words in 55 minutes, plus Dazai describing the situation as basically the end of the world in ch 95 p 20. No this is not my bias for her and me wanting her to make an appearance, wdym /j

“ ‘Well, I should be on my way to the next catastrophe. As I will continue to do until I draw my last breath and am forgotten in the flow of time…’ ” (55 Minutes, p 235, translation by Yen Press)

If you made it to this point, seriously thank you. I know I reblogged and replied to a few others' takes on who this could be (both here and on Twitter) prior to posting this here but I'd still absolutely love to hear any feedback here on my revised version of this!

TLDR: My top choices for who it could be in the hallway are basically Verlaine or Gogol (but others aren't impossible). I don’t think it’s Chuuya but it’s not completely out of the question for it to be him. Trust me, as much as I want to see Wells again, the chances of even just the shoulder in front of Dazai (if we assume it’s a different person from the hallway one) being her are pretty slim in my opinion.

#bsd #bsd analysis #bungou stray dogs #bsd spoilers #bsd theories #bungo stray dogs #bsd manga #bsd manga spoilers #bsd chapter 95 #bsd ch 95 #this is literally about every bsd character that’s still alive #bsd meta #I am once again asking you to read 55 minutes

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dandy-writes · 3 years ago

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Eyewishes - Ch. 2

AN: Did I just sit down and write all of this in like two hours on a whim after over a month of inactivity? Yes. Is it good? God, I hope so. Anyways. Obligatory spoiler warning! This fic takes place in season 2, but contains spoilers for certain things up through the end of season 4. Also, in this chapter I describe scars and thus, the implied wounds that caused them. So warning for that. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Chapter One

Someone had blinded them in their left eye.

Well, perhaps something might have been a better term given the situation, but Y/N truly didn’t know. It was incredibly disconcerting. They had no idea who or what had blinded them, nor any knowledge of anything about themselves from before they reached the doorstep of the Magnus Institute. It was obvious they were suffering from amnesia, and without much effort they Knew that if they were to go to a hospital their affliction would be diagnosed as retrograde amnesia specifically, as opposed to anterograde amnesia, the difference being… well, they could go on and on with textbook definitions and possible causes. But no matter how hard they tried, they could not See into their own past.

The handiwork was at the very least neat, so perhaps there was a clue there. On several occasions Y/N had found themself losing track of time and spending hours staring at themselves in the water-stained mirror of the Archives’ seldom-used bathroom, analyzing every detail of their wounded eye. Two lines of scar tissue ran over their brow and eyelid down to their cheek, perpendicular to each other in a way that formed an “X” over their eye. Was it intentional? By the way their gut churned when they asked themself that, Y/N suspected it might have been.

And though the damage done to their eye was horrific enough, Y/N wasn’t convinced that it alone was what was causing their stagnation. They could probably write it all off to that, but something that pulled at the back of their mind told them that there was more. That something else had happened to them, but they just couldn’t remember. Couldn’t See. There was, of course, the situation of their stomach, but… Well. That was a bit more difficult to address. Besides, they’d only learned of that when they’d first had the opportunity to change clothes over a day after they’d arrived at the Institute. Martin had been kind enough to locate and bring to them some clothing in roughly their size, but they’d decided quickly to keep the flannel. It was cold down in the Archives, and maybe it was just their imagination, but it seemed like when they wore it the barbed wire surrounding their memories retreated just a little bit.

The others weren’t as friendly. Tim and Jon were suspicious -- rightly so, if a bit misguided -- and only allowed them to stay in the Archives after quite a bit of persuasion from Martin. And luckily for Y/N, the thing seemed just as content to avoid them as they were it. Then, there was Elias.

Elias didn’t visit the Archives too often, but that didn’t matter, because he was always Watching, even if the others didn’t realize. He couldn’t See through Y/N’s eyes, though, something that had become apparent quite early on in their stay at the Institute. All the more reason to isolate themself from the others. They might have both been on the same “side”, but his demeanor towards them made it quite clear that this meant nothing to him.

That being said, it wasn’t that much of a surprise when Y/N felt the staticky presence moving down the hallway towards the bathroom door. They had been staring again (for approximately 42 minutes and 37 seconds), and again, no answers were coming. They gripped the edges of the sink and did their best not to look away from their reflection as the door opened.

Elias was immaculately dressed, as usual, in a dark green three-piece suit that was utterly out of place in the drab surroundings. His gray-streaked hair was pristine, and he had a pair of thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, through which he was watching Y/N intently.

“Ah, Y/N. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.” It was a blatant lie, and they both knew it, one of many that the two had passed between themselves since Y/N’s arrival. “Hiding from the archival staff? I suppose I can understand that. They can certainly be a little…” He turned on his heel so that he was fully facing the mirror, a slight smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Unsettling at times.”

He chuckled (it wasn’t a genuine laugh, of course. Y/N doubted if they’d had any sort of genuine interaction since he’d threatened them) and began to approach them. His steps were slow, drawn out, giving them apt time to meet his gaze in the mirror, but they didn’t. He’d only enjoy it if they were to watch him as he was watching them. Like a curious predator.

He stopped mere inches from them, and Y/N was almost relieved until he leant forwards. The moment his chest hit their back they stiffened fully, only just able to stop their neutral expression from faltering as Elias dipped his head down to the right of theirs, not quite touching, but still far too close for comfort. Carefully, he brought his hands to rest on the edge of the sink next to their own. He had not stopped trying to make eye contact with them.

“I just want to talk, Y/N. I’m sure you must have questions you’d like to ask me.”

His gaze narrowed slightly. “No, probably not. But why don’t you try me?”

They had to close their eyes to stop themselves from looking up at him at that. Did he want them to try and Compel him? Even if they were at their strongest, they didn’t think he’d let them do so successfully. No, he was probably just gloating. They reopened their eyes, but did not look away from their own reflection. <Why don’t they know?>

“You’re going to have to be a little bit more specific than that, I’m afraid.”

Their brow furrowed. <The Archivist, and the others. Why don’t they know they’re under the Eye? Or that there’s a Stranger posing as their friend? Why haven’t you told them, when-->

Elias cut them off with a tsk, tilting his head as he did so. “Really, Y/N, don’t you have more important things to worry about?” They watched their eyes widen as he placed his left hand on their cheek, fingers just grazing their scars. His touch was cold. “Poor thing… I can’t imagine what--”

<Stop it.> They felt frozen in place as they watched his fingertips trace over their skin.

“Ah, right. All you can do is try and imagine what happened to you. Or am I mistaken? Please, tell me exactly just what it is you can remember, Y/N. Or is it really nothing at all? So much lost knowledge, it must be taking a toll on--”

<Stop it.> In a burst of movement Y/N spun around to face him, their gaze finally meeting his. They nearly gasped at the force of it, and a wave of shivers wracked their body as the raw feeling of being Watched invaded their senses. Their reaction was obvious, and Elias’ small smile immediately broke out into a pleased, toothy grin.

The trouble was, it felt very, very nice to be Seen by another avatar of the Eye. Of course, there was no way Elias could Know that Y/N felt that way, but if he’d had much experience with other avatars of their god, which was likely, then it wouldn’t take too far of a leap to come to that conclusion.

It didn’t help that with his hands firmly planted on the sink edge, Y/N was practically caged-in between it and his body.

“Oh, Y/N, it really is a shame…” He’d lowered his voice to a purr as he brought his hand up to cup their cheek once more. “Because judging off of what’s left, you truly must have had beautiful eyes.”

That was it. With as much force as they could muster they pressed their palms against the lapels of his suit and shoved him away from them. He must’ve decided he’d had enough fun for one day, as he let Y/N push him off with far more ease than they’d expected, and did not move to stop them as they stormed out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind them. Every nerve in their body felt hypersensitive as they focused on getting as far away from Elias Bouchard as they could while staying within the boundaries of the Archives. They didn’t think he was going to follow them, but they couldn’t be sure after the way he’d been Looking at them just moments before. Y/N wasn’t used to him being so direct -- the statements he’d made in regards to their lack of memory had surprised them, but it just meant he was better at piecing things together without the aid of Seeing into one’s mind than they’d hoped -- nor to being confronted with so much power from another avatar. Though, worryingly, they didn’t think that he had exactly been using full force in there.

He was just toying with them, that was all. They had expected him to start doing so at some point, so that in and of itself wasn’t a surprise.

They just didn’t account for how good it would make them feel.

Taglist: @decora-peaches

#fanfic #fanfiction #elias bouchard #elias bouchard x reader #jonah magnus #jonah magnus x reader #the magnus archives #tma #tma fanfic #the magnus archives fanfic #x reader #reader insert #nonbinary reader #gender neutral reader #fiction #creative writing #marzipan writes #slow burn

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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 years ago

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Hex Life

Fandom: WandaVision Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Jimmy Woo Rating: E Chapters: 10/10 Word Count: 34k

Summary: Guest starring Agent James E. Woo as himself and introducing Dr. Darcy Lewis as Mrs. Darcy Woo!

Or: Darcy and Jimmy are sent into the Hex to retrieve Captain Monica Rambeau. Finding out Westview has cast them as a married couple is only the first of the surprises that await them.

read ch. 1 one / 2 two / 3 three / 4 four / 5 five 6 six / 7 seven / 8 eight / 9 nine / 10 ten

this fic is now complete!

Jimmy’s going to be a dad. He was going to be a dad in a black-and-white sitcom world and now he’s going to be a dad in a world on the regular spectrum, so the colours really aren’t as big a deal as his impending fatherhood. Possible fatherhood. As much as he’s always secretly wanted his own little Jimmy Woo Jr., he didn’t know if it would be in the cards for him—pun obviously intended—and the last thing he wants to do is influence Darcy either way, especially since he’s only known her a couple days and doesn’t have a clue if a baby was really part of her life plan.

It can’t just be rose-coloured glasses making him see his wife warming to the idea though; when she continues down the hall ahead of Jimmy and Monica, he spots her careful cradling of the baby bump. He can barely stand not touching her. The instinct to shelter others has always been one of his strongest and now he feels it intensely. He longs to protect Darcy, to hold Darcy, to love— Well. Jimmy clears his throat at the very thought and Monica gives him a suspicious side-eyed glance.

“Dry throat,” he lies, tapping his neck in a probably highly unconvincing gesture.

“Uh huh.”

Yeah, she doesn’t sound convinced.

He’s rescued by a burst of sound from the bedroom and dashes ahead of Monica in case Darcy’s in trouble. When he bangs the bedroom door fully open, she’s fine. She’s laughing. He sighs and looks where she points. The queen-sized mattress they shared has changed back to a pair of narrower beds.

“Seriously,” Jimmy says flatly.

“Well, the big bed worked its magic,” Darcy concedes. She pats her rounded stomach. “Mission accomplished.”

“Aw jeeze.”

Ignoring his distress, she sits on the end of the closest bed.

“What I like is that they’re magically made. I didn’t end up having to change the sheets. This is really the next step in home technology.”

“Honey, don’t encourage the magical forces that control our home décor,” he pleads, beckoning until Darcy rises and takes his outstretched hand.

“Better than getting on their bad side. In the AI uprising, you wanna make sure you’re friends with the robots.”

This is an outrageous statement coming from a credible scientist, so Jimmy squints down at her for a minute before saying, “Thanks, house,” aloud, just in case appeasing the Hex now saves him from being closed into a room with no door later, if the walls rearrange to form the ’70s model of their current home.

“You did the smart thing,” Darcy assures him.

As they leave the room, she keeps hold of his hand. He shoots adoring glances at her.

“Hey, Monica,” she says, calling to their guest, who seems to have gone to investigate the walk-in closet. “Accommodations aren’t going to be a problem. I can give you some pajamas too because I think I own at least a dozen pairs, as I’m sure you’ve already discovered…”

But when they look in the closet it’s… not a closet.

“Or maybe the Hex destroyed all my pajamas and I should take back my overtures of friendship,” Darcy corrects.

“Welcome to your nursery,” Monica says. “I’m guessing from the look on Jimmy’s face that this is new.”

It’s spartan, but there’s no doubt in Jimmy’s mind that the room is now intended to be exactly what Monica said. There’s a crib in pieces on the carpet and a rocking chair in the corner. Though he can’t remember this room having even one window, there are now two. The blinds are drawn against the night and curtains patterned with stars and streaking comets hang from a rod mounted above the window. Automatically, he pulls Darcy into his side. He feels her rest her head on his shoulder.

“Man, the Hex is really giving us the hard sell,” she comments.

Just like that, he’s guiding her around by her upper arms and propelling her from the room. He glances over his shoulder to see Monica following with an amused smile. At his nod, she pulls the door shut.

“Ignore it,” Jimmy tells Darcy. “Don’t let that room influence you.”

“Oh, like that’s easy.” She rolls her eyes.

“I know it’s hard not to picture reading Jimmy Junior to sleep in his crib, or watching him learn to roll himself over on the carpet, or cuddling him in your arms in the rocking chair as the morning light—”

“Jimmy Junior?” Darcy asks, interrupting Jimmy’s rapidly solidifying daydream.

“You know what? I’m starving,” Monica announces, putting a hand on each of their shoulders to head off the awkward pause. “How about you two show me some hospitality? I’ve had a long day of being mind-controlled.”

“How ’bout some comfort food?” he asks. “I make a mean bowl of chili.”

“Sounds great.”

So, Jimmy cooks for them. His attention is unequally divided between the simmering pot, Monica leaning against the counter next to him as she recounts the scene at the meeting when Wanda went to take his call, and Darcy sifting pickily through the contents of their fridge. He glances over after putting the lid on the pot to let the chili finish cooking and sees his wife contemplatively holding an egg like it’s Yorick’s skull. Ok, well, he’s just going to leave her to her thoughts.

He sets bowls of chili for himself and Monica on the dining room table. Darcy, justifiably finnicky, takes longer to decide what she’ll be able to stomach, reflexively rubbing the baby bump as she plunders their kitchen. Finally, she comes to sit down. She’s brought a spoon. That’s it. Jimmy’s going to ask, but Darcy just scoots her chair close to his and takes intermittent mouthfuls of his serving while the conversation continues on. He sighs in unannoyed exasperation and alternates dips of his spoon with hers.

It’s just another weird routine they’ve settled into, and like everything else, it didn’t take long.

“You two didn’t know each other before this assignment, right?” Monica checks, motioning between Darcy and Jimmy with a slice of buttered toast.

“No, why?” Darcy asks, dropping a chunk of tomato from her spoon onto his. (Apparently, she doesn’t like tomatoes.)

Monica smiles and says, “No reason.”

She seems ready to accept them as they are, whatever they are. She goes back over the events of this afternoon for Darcy’s benefit—who was zoned out staring at an egg at the time—then the three of them turn to talk of tomorrow. What does Monica feel she needs to try before she’s willing to concede and leave the Hex with them? What can she try? How can Jimmy and Darcy assist her? They talk themselves in a circle of possibilities, limitations, and Monica’s unswerving negative answer to suggestions of her leaving the Hex without getting through to Wanda. Eventually, they decide that the best plan may be no plan, since they’re up against Westview’s ever-shifting magical properties.

“We’ll get up in the morning and see what the world looks like,” Monica says.

Jimmy’s going to reply when the Captain’s expression alters.

“Are you remembering?” Darcy asks her astutely. Monica stares at her. “I don’t want to pry, I’ve just seen that look on a lot of people’s faces lately. People who came back.”

“This isn’t dissimilar,” Monica admits. “When I get anywhere near Wanda or the other characters with speaking parts and start to lose control to… Geraldine—” Jimmy thinks the look on her face is both disgusted and deeply hurt. “—I do get this feeling like the world is going on without me. Only I’m there. I’m right there. I haven’t made up my mind yet if it’s worse than being gone entirely then coming back to find nothing’s the same.”

“Yeah,” Darcy says, soft, sympathetic.

“I don’t know what else the members of this community have been through, but I know I don’t want them to have to keep going through this too. I can’t imagine how tight Wanda’s grip is on the people who were here when she started this. Not sure I’m qualified to be the one to tell her how to let go of her grief and move on.”

Monica blinks quickly and gives a forced smile.

“That was good chili, Jimmy.”

He nods in thanks because he can’t find the right words to say.

They’re all carrying something and Jimmy thinks about that as the three of them clean up, then splinter off to get ready for bed, tired for different and shared reasons. (He changes into his pajamas in the nursery—they found their clothing in a new, regular-sized closet in the bedroom—while Monica and Darcy take the bathrooms.) The Captain’s carrying her recent bereavement and the unignorable sense of responsibility she feels to help Wanda and the Westviewers, possibly precisely because she isn’t ready to confront her own loss. Darcy’s doing some literal carrying with the baby bump her pajama top is buttoned over when she steps out of the en suite bathroom to let Jimmy in to brush his teeth. She’s an astrophysicist who, while studying a television diversion from reality, was brought rudely back to earth by circumstances as real as they come.

What Jimmy’s carrying is actually carrying him: his hope. It’s a good thing to have in his line of work, but a tough thing to keep when the world’s been through what it has. A baby is the least likely and most longed-for thing he would’ve confessed to wanting if someone asked him what was missing from his life.

When it’s acknowledged through awkward glances that, yes, Monica’s taking one of the beds and Jimmy and Darcy will share the other, he climbs under the covers his wife holds open for him. She rolls away from him to lie on her side and he gets comfortable on his back. The Hex has definitely eased up on what it wants for their romantic development because this is the first time he’s been in bed with Darcy and not felt himself caving to the need to have sex with her. Oh, the desire to touch her is as powerful as ever, but the kind of touching he craves is as tender as the flesh of that peach he brought her earlier in the day.

But he doesn’t want to crowd her. Figuratively or literally. Between finding Monica and calling Wanda, making love to Darcy all afternoon and being presented with her pregnant belly in the evening, it’s been a dog’s breakfast of a day. The mission abruptly became just the second most daunting thing he needs to pull off. Now, he’s driven by the impulse to be near Darcy. She doesn’t know it, but she’s drawing him in like gravity and he can only cross his fingers for a soft landing.

Jimmy almost jumps when she reaches for him in the dark, hand feeling behind her until it finds his. She drags his arm over her and he flips onto his side to make it easier. Though Darcy lets him go when his arm’s around her, he doesn’t know where to rest his hand. Tentatively, he places it over her belly and she wriggles back into him. Heart bursting, he holds her more securely to his body, smooths his hand over the bump, and soon falls asleep.

—

The floor wakes him up. He’s just fallen out of bed.

Disoriented, Jimmy sits up in a tangle of comforter and squints at his bed companion in the morning light. They must’ve repositioned while they slept, but that alone wasn’t what forced him to and over the edge—he can see the shape of Darcy’s belly beneath the sheet. It’s noticeably larger than it was yesterday.

He’s still trying to come to terms with that when she sleepily grasps the comforter and yanks it back over her body. Jimmy chuckles and rises into a stretch. Monica’s bed is empty and neatly made, so she must be up already. Before entering the Hex, his internal clock was strict too. Since, he bends to the needs of his subconscious, which seems happiest when it’s allowed to sleep in, particularly if Darcy’s warming the sheets next to him. This is only their third day in Westview and the second time waking up here, but it feels wonderfully routine. As satisfying as completing his consistently-timed morning run or pouring exactly the right amount of milk into his cereal.

Although he’d like to let Darcy sleep, it’s weird now because he’s staring. Anyway, they need to tighten up their operations even further today if they’re going to get out of here soon. Monica requires either success or closure with Wanda, so Jimmy’s determined to help with that. And if Darcy’s pregnancy takes another leap forward, well… that’s another time crunch to consider.

She’s lying on her side, facing him, belly in the space where he fell asleep. Gently, he brushes hair out of her face and strokes lightly up and down her arm.

Darcy gives him a murmured “Hi” with her eyes still shut.

“You gonna get up?”

“Inaminute,” she promises, words running together.

“Alright.”

Jimmy hovers for a second, then darts down to kiss her forehead. She pats his shoulder clumsily in response.

He might as well have had his own eyes shut, blind to everything but Darcy, because it takes opening his wardrobe to realize Monica was correct—everything’s changed again. WandaVision has embraced the ’70s. The shirts and suits he was pretty comfortable with have been traded out. Those items still exist, but now they’re aggressively patterned. There are flared pant legs. There is so much corduroy. Out of the row of shoes tucked into the bottom on his side of the closet, half have platform heels.

“Oh god,” Jimmy groans softly, sifting through for something that won’t feel too much like a cheesy costume.

He ends up with jeans—his only pair of pants without a pattern—and a striped shirt with wide lapels. The Hex’s makeover of his closet has him so beaten down that he doesn’t even pick out a jacket. He doesn’t have the heart for business casual. At the sight of a long-sleeved jumpsuit, Jimmy closes the closet door securely. They have to get out of here. This will be the thing that breaks him.

Slouching into the bathroom, he drops his selections on the counter and takes a shower. As he washes his hair, his fingers slow their scrubbing. Is his hair… longer? He finishes quickly and steps out to find the mirror fogged with steam. He wipes it clean with his forearm, examining his reflection. This place isn’t through with him yet: the Hex has given him a mustache.

Jimmy screams.

“Fine!” Darcy shouts back to his wordless noise of dismay. “I’m up! God, you could’ve just set an alarm and OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF THIS BABY BUMP?!”

He sighs on behalf of himself and his wife, slicks his too-long wet hair back with a comb, then starts in on shaving off the mustache. It immediately grows back.

“Come on,” he complains, cursing the Hex. “Why’d you give me a razor then?!”

Luckily, his annoyance fades the minute he sees Darcy. She’s swearing up a storm about needing to pee and her head looking too small for her body because the Hex has straightened her hair, but he takes all of her restless irritation in with a dazed smile on his face. Adjusting her glasses—now almost circular, with rounded off corners—she catches sight of his new look and erupts into laughter. Whatever the Hex does to mess with their appearance, at least they’re each other’s best medicine to combat it.

“I don’t want to be insensitive,” Monica starts when they walk into the kitchen hand in hand, “but are you significantly more pregnant than you were yesterday?”

Jimmy watches Darcy nod and slips away from her to throw some more bread in the toaster from the bag Monica’s left out on the counter for them.

“You’d think it’s just this big, shapeless dress,” Darcy says, “but no.” She pulls the fabric taut over her stomach to show the size of her belly more accurately. “I don’t want to say it, but the size of this thing makes me think the Hex is leaving me room to grow.”

“And if that dress is only for today…” Monica says.

“Jeepers,” Jimmy concludes.

They eat together in their reconfigured living room. It’s not until Monica’s kicked back in one of their low chairs, ankle propped on her opposite knee, that Jimmy notices her patterned pants.

“Those aren’t from Darcy’s closet are they?”

“No. I’m assuming they’re my clothes from yesterday with the matter recycled for a new decade. Believe me, this outfit wouldn’t have been my choice if I had anything else to pick from.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. I had a whole closet and still ended up with this,” Jimmy says, motioning to himself.

“My retro Secret Agent Man,” Darcy states admiringly, leaning her head over to bump against his shoulder. Ok, he thinks, smiling at her, I can be alright with this for her.

When Monica rises to turn on the television, Jimmy realizes this is the first time they’ve had one in the house. He remembers seeing a set in the Vision residence when he and Darcy were watching an episode on the S.W.O.R.D. base, but he didn’t notice the lack once they got here. Probably because that first night was taken up with flirting, and then yesterday was split between scouring the downtown for Monica and holing up in the bedroom with Darcy. Watching the screen buzz to life now is like witnessing something truly futuristic and spectacular.

“Well, whaddaya know,” he says as the opening sequence of WandaVision begins.

“You think the TVs in here play anything else?” Darcy wonders aloud.

“Maybe not,” Monica says distractedly as they all turn their attention to Wanda and Vision’s adorable antics—the ice cream, the tandem bicycle. “It’s a pretty big coincidence that this show started right when I turned it on.”

“I can see an even bigger coincidence.”

There’s no need to guess what Darcy means. Wanda’s baby bump is obvious in nearly every shot of the introduction, particularly emphasized when she and Vision dance together, his hand on her belly. It’s all maternity clothes and Vision reading pregnancy books and while it’s wholesome, it’s also chilling.

“We’re doing the same plot,” Jimmy says.

“It’s like we’re… their understudies,” Darcy agrees, shrinking back into the cushions.

“Maybe Wanda figured, if you two wanted to be in the show so bad, she’d put you in the show,” Monica theorizes. “Her show. Exactly the way she’s living it.”

“So she’s teaching us a lesson? On what? Abstinence?”

“Could be a misguided attempt to gain your sympathy.”

“Or it really is all about control,” Jimmy suggests, cynical after the reveal that the pregnancy that’s upended his entire life isn’t really theirs. It’s not original. They’re following a Newlywed Couple template.

“Hey,” Darcy says, grabbing his arm, “this wasn’t all Wanda. She might’ve set the scene and, yeah, maybe we were more the goatherd puppets than we were Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp, but we did this.” She pulls his hand to her belly. “Wanda doesn’t decide what we do next.”

“What I suggest you not do next is consult Dr. Misogyny over here,” Monica says, gesturing at the television.

The doctor is condescending to Wanda and Vision about the facts of life during a checkup (in their living room?). He lowers himself even further in Jimmy’s regard when he refers to expectant mothers as “little ladies” and implies that the changes in their own bodies are beyond their understanding.

“What a quack,” he decides. “We’re not going to see that guy.” He’s startled to recall his promise to Darcy the previous evening, about options, his intention not to make up her own mind for her. Lowering his voice, he tilts his head close to hers. “I mean, we’ll do whatever you want. Including…”

Jimmy trails off and casts his eyes down. He still means it, wants Darcy on board with this 100% or not at all, but the whole thing’s been a roller coaster and he’s not great at pretending not to feel anything. With his wife so much further into her pregnancy today, it’s obvious that this baby will be born and they’ll need to decide who’s raising it. He thinks the two of them together could rear a pretty incredible kid, but if she wants out, is he prepared to be a single parent? The other option besides her, him, or both of them raising the baby is adoption. They’d need to leave the Hex before taking those steps (it’s not like he’s going to encourage Darcy to hand the baby over to a mind-controlled Westviewer), and just thinking about it, with everything he already feels for the baby, makes him certain that he’d rather rearrange his entire life than pass on this chance at a family. However unorthodox their beginnings.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy says calmly, pulling him from his spiral. “That guy will never get the chance to compare my uterus to a vegetable garden.”

“Fruit,” Monica corrects without looking away from the television.

“Right. Fruit. He’ll have no say about any of it. And he definitely won’t get the opportunity to be patronizing as fuck while he tries to give us the sex talk.” She looks Jimmy right in the eye and says, “I won’t let the asshole doctor-man say a word about your banana.”

Chuckling, he looks back to the screen. The doctor has departed and Vision’s currently baffled over Wanda’s newly expanded stomach. Uh oh. He jerks his head around to check and, yep, Darcy’s baby bump appears to be keeping up with the sitcom star’s.

“You two stay here,” Monica instructs, on her feet when Jimmy glances over.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To Wanda’s. If things continue at this rate, she could give birth in this episode. That’s going to make her even more protective of her family and her space and I’ll have an even harder time getting near her.”

“Are you sure you want to interrupt?”

They both glance at the television for a moment to observe Wanda and Vision debating baby names in the nursery. There’s nothing distressing about the scene—in fact, the couple looks as much at ease as Jimmy’s seen them on the show—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t change, and quickly, if Monica inserted herself. He just isn’t sure how that would go and he doesn’t like any plan where he can’t foresee all the possible outcomes.

“Guess I just have a feeling,” Monica says, looking unsettled.

“Well,” Darcy pipes up, “in the world of science, having a feeling is forming a theory, and in this place… I think having a feeling you should do something might be Wanda giving you your cue.”

“You’re not beyond her control,” Jimmy tells Monica, “just farther away from it. What if Darcy’s right?”

“If Wanda wants me there, I’m not going to resist,” she replies firmly. “She’s the key and we need her cooperation.”

“Good luck,” Darcy bids her.

With a nod to them both, Monica strides across the living room and opens the front door.

“Speaking of keys,” Jimmy recalls, but the door shuts before he can offer to let her borrow their car to get to Wanda’s.

Maybe the Captain has a different plan. Maybe she’s just bending to Wanda’s influence. Whichever it is, he can’t go after her. Monica was right—he has to stay here with Darcy today, especially because her belly seems larger when he looks again. He glances at her face with a question on his and she nods.

“And I felt a kick,” she says.

“Really? Could I…? Do you think I could…?”

Darcy rolls her eyes at his reticence and guides both his hands to the bump. When he feels something nudge his palm, Jimmy tears up.

“That’s our baby,” Darcy confirms.

“Feels like they have my softball windup,” he murmurs.

“Or my pre-coffee restlessness.”

“Our baby,” Jimmy repeats, staring into her eyes—finally blue for the first time in days, give or take a decade.

They’re having a marvelous family moment until the power goes out. Lights, TV, the hum of the fridge in the kitchen, everything. Seconds later, it all comes back.

“That was strange.”

“I wondered what Wanda’s magic was doing to the power grid,” Darcy says. “I’m still curious about the finer points of what happens when electricity meets power generated by an Infinity Stone. Really, I’d expect Wanda to have this kinda thing under control, but I guess if she’s— Ugh!”

Her pained noise has Jimmy cupping her face, pushing back her hair, trying to figure out what happened.

“She’s distracted,” she says.

“By what?”

“Labour.”

“What? No.”

Sure enough, when Darcy stands (with Jimmy leaping to his feet to support her) and stretches her back, her bump looks big enough to contain a baby that’s almost ready to be born. Ready to be born?! Jimmy thinks. In our house? With no doctor? Just because the one on TV rubbed him the wrong way doesn’t mean he’s prepared to write off every doctor, nurse, and midwife in Westview. He would very much like to place responsibility for this delivery in the hands of a medical professional, not his own!

Even as the TV’s flickering back to life, he helps Darcy away from it. That just shows how serious things are. He knows how quickly she became invested in the sitcom when they reviewed the ’50s episode at the base.

After some frantic thought, he’s thinking the bathtub is going to have to do. People do that right? With home births? Although he attempts to guide Darcy in that direction, she doesn’t even want to sit down on the edge, let alone climb in. No, she wants to pace, and as she paces, she rubs at her lower back, wincing.

“We could look at the nursery,” he proposes. “Might take your mind off it.”

Jimmy knows it could be a weak suggestion, an insult to imply that anything could take Darcy’s mind off whatever discomfort she’s currently feeling, but the Hex, with its radioactive walls, smiles down on them for once. With his arm around her to take some of her weight, they hobble into the baby’s room and it’s… perfect.

The walls are dark blue near the ceiling, almost black, fading to periwinkle halfway down the wall. The lower portion transitions from blue to pale yellow, then a blazing orange right before the baseboard.

“It’s a sunrise,” he comprehends.

“Yeah,” Darcy says softly.

Though he feels like he got slightly ripped off by not being allowed a chance to do any of the decorating, he does admire the Hex’s choices. At last, his wife’s been represented in this space, in this house, and it’s beautiful. There’s a shelf full of space-themed board books, a plastic jumble of play versions of scientific tools like telescopes. A dangling mobile of the planets. After easing his wife into the rocking chair, Jimmy holds up a pack of glow-in-the-dark stars.

“Should I put these up?”

She smiles.

“I would be all over that shit if I could, but I trust you to do a good job.”

“Oh no. Do you want me to do real constellations?”

“The baby’s not gonna know the difference. Make it look however you want.”

She rocks, assuring him something about the motion is helping her manage the intensifying pain of her contractions, and Jimmy finds a small stepping stool to help him reach the ceiling. The sway of the chair in the corner of his eye, the morning light through the curtains, and the sound of Darcy breathing are things he already knows he’ll never forget.

Before he’s stuck all the stars in the pack to the ceiling’s white paint, she calls him down from the stool.

“I need to walk again.”

Darcy says it with grit and Jimmy doesn’t argue, even when walking appears to put her in even more distress; she groans and pushes her free hand against the wall as they stroll out of the nursery and down the hallway.

“Let’s check in with Wanda,” Jimmy says helplessly.

This is who he is now: a husband in over his head, desperate to gain tips about delivering a baby from a TV sitcom. An overwhelmed real estate agent. A man with a mustache.

They return to the living room and the TV playing WandaVision in time for Monica’s entrance. Based on her free use of ’70s slang and the general discord between the Captain Rambeau Jimmy’s been getting to know and the woman on the screen, he knows they’re looking at Geraldine. Wanda’s back in control of her character alright, and Jimmy wants to know who it’s helping. The scene’s centered around some joke about Wanda attempting to hide her pregnancy, which is no good for him. He needs a step-by-step guide, not a magic-resistant stork!

“There better not be a fucking bird in here,” Darcy gripes, alternately crouching and standing as every position fails to make her comfortable. “If I see a fucking, goddamn, sonofabitch, motherfucking—”

“I know, sweetie, I know,” Jimmy assures her, rubbing circles between her shoulder blades with the flat of his hand.

“The betrayal,” she mutters when Wanda elects to lie down behind a couch.

It completely blocks their view. If this were a regular show, Jimmy would understand that. Sitcom viewers would definitely appreciate a little TV magic over graphic, up-close-and-personal birth footage, but here at the Woo residence, one FBI agent and his astrophysicist wife really just want the truth! If Monica had agency, he’s sure she’d shove the couch aside to help them out, but with Geraldine at the helm, he’s confronting the fact that he and Darcy are on their own.

“Let’s go, Darcy,” he says, steering her towards the bathroom. “We don’t need her.”

“Are you sure?”

He’s never heard Darcy sound so uncertain and knows he’ll have to bluff his way through this. When the Avengers aren’t around, the regular people must step up. Reminding himself of that has gotten Jimmy through more than one tough day on the job and he tells himself it’ll get them both through this.

“Of course.”

In the bathroom, Darcy kicks out of her underwear and uses Jimmy as a crutch to climb into the tub. Her face is scrunched up severely and her hands are braced against the walls of the bathtub, so he tries to watch and understand what she needs. When all the tension in her face and body burst out in a shout, he grabs her hand. Her fingers curl around his palm in a death grip.

“How about some nice warm water? Water, Darcy?”

She nods rapidly, eyes clenched shut, and he turns on the facet, then quickly reaches behind her to plug the drain. The stream wets his sleeve and, when he withdraws his arm, hits her hair around the level of her shoulders and begins to soak the back of her dress. Between contractions, Darcy sighs in what sounds like relief.

“That feels good,” she acknowledges.

“Good,” is all Jimmy can say back. He kisses her face and squeezes her hand in his. “Good.”

He’s back to scrambling for a solution soon enough when the warm flow of water down her back stops being enough to soothe her. He helps her out of her sodden dress, tossing it behind him to splat on the tile floor.

“What do you need?” he asks wildly, leaning over the tub.

“Earplugs,” Darcy tells him before emitting a scream shrill enough to probably be heard by their neighbour’s dog, Dipper, down the street.

Jimmy doesn’t think, he just does. Snatching a towel off the rail, bracing his wife’s foot against his shoulder as her leg spasms, reaching into the water to collect their baby when the Hex (he assumes) does them the favour of letting one long push be sufficient to expel him. Him. Jimmy and Darcy’s son.

He’s beaming through the happy tears, delicately wiping at the wailing baby with the towel and passing him into Darcy’s outstretched arms as she shakes with astonished laughter, hair wet, head resting back against the jut of the faucet.

“That wasn’t so hard,” he jokes.

Darcy sits up, sending a splash of water over the side of the bathtub to slap the floor, and he knows the Hex is interfering again to make her capable of anything besides exhaustion after what she just accomplished. She twists sideways in the tub until she’s closer to Jimmy. He wraps an arm around her wet shoulders and peers down at the face of their boy, already drowsy after exercising his tiny lungs. Jimmy can feel Darcy studying his face.

“Jimmy Woo Junior?” she asks.

And he knows the rest is going to be gravy.

—

Inside the Hex, the magic of television is real. They didn’t need to fake Darcy’s pregnancy with a cushion to make her belly, round and taut as a beach ball, disappear entirely only minutes after giving birth. They didn’t need a set of twins or triplets playing Jimmy Woo Jr. to swap in a quiet baby for one that starts to cry. There’s no trick lighting or fudged angles, just Darcy sitting on the couch (in dry, non-maternity clothes) catching their amazingly calm, less than an hour-old son up on the details of his origin story—Darcy’s wording.

It’s shaping up to be a nice, if highly unusual, family day in, until the tension starts to mount on-screen. Probably something Jimmy could’ve caught sooner if he weren’t spending 50 seconds out of every minute stroking the baby’s teeny-weeny hands while he hopes Jimmy Jr. retains zero memory of his dad’s mustache. When he hears Monica mention Wanda’s brother by name, he’s fully alert to the episode and knows he has to act. That close to Wanda, Monica’s control should be fully suppressed beneath the character of Geraldine. If she’s breaking through to ask Wanda person questions, questions that are almost definitely going to provoke an emotional response, Monica must be fighting like crazy to surface. Jimmy decides that’s his signal to get over there and help bring this thing to a satisfying conclusion so they can all leave the Hex.

“You’re not going to Wanda’s without me,” Darcy informs him, planted in front of the door when Jimmy returns from grabbing his keys.

“Darcy, you can’t. The baby. I’d stay with him and let you go, but I’ve never heard you mention particular skill in hand-to-hand combat and I can’t guarantee things won’t turn violent.”

She snorts.

“Liar. I could be the world’s biggest hand-to-hand badass and you’d still be trying to protect me right now.”

He stares at her and Darcy stubbornly lifts her chin as she holds his eyes.

“Ok,” Jimmy concedes, “yes, I would.”

“Please don’t leave us here,” she says, cheek pressed to the baby’s. No, no, no, he can already feel himself wanting to surrender, to have them with him. Darcy kisses their son’s face, then holds his hand to gesture while she pitches her voice higher, pretending to speak for Jimmy Jr. “I want to meet Auntie Monica.”

He gives her a look and reaches past her to open the door. Instead of trying to exit around his family, he waves Darcy through ahead of him. (She looks down at the baby in her arms and goes “Yaaaay! Isn’t Daddy a soft touch?”)

“You didn’t persuade me,” he says, leading them to the car and holding the door for Darcy while she climbs into the back seat with the baby. “This is strategic.”

“Is the strategy common sense? I feel like you should’ve gone with that from the beginning. Bringing a scientist to a magic fight is good thinking, for, like, balance and shit.”

Jimmy backs down the driveway as gently as he can. Their car’s been modernized (well, for the latest decade) and while it now has seatbelts, it wasn’t equipped with a car seat for their son. He’s going to have to drive with the utmost care.

“Hopefully, there won’t be a fight,” he reminds Darcy, “but if there is, you won’t be anywhere near it. You and Jimmy Junior are staying in the car. Alright?”

When he darts his gaze to the rear-view mirror, he sees his wife looking out her window, making a show of not listening to him. Jimmy sighs.

Without thinking, he navigates back to the street where they dropped Monica off yesterday. Wanda’s house is just down from Dottie’s; he remembers the number from watching WandaVision. Jimmy draws up to the curb and parks. He glances back at Darcy, but she’s still ignoring him.

“I’ll try to be right back,” he tells her anyway, eyes dropping longingly to the serene face of his sleeping son. He’s heard that about babies and car rides.

Jogging up the driveway, he does a doubletake of a ragged slash in the wall between Wanda’s property and her neighbour’s. There’s not exactly anything wrong with a damaged cinderblock or an amateur handyman job, but the crevice in the stone stands out in a world so aggressively styled and manicured.

Wishing for the reassurance of his gun at his hip in case things go south (it’s the first time he’s even thought about the gun since the night he and Darcy arrived), Jimmy enters the Vision residence without knocking.

Orienting himself to what he was just watching on TV in a house less than a mile from here, he walks across the entryway, attracting the attention of both Wanda and Monica. They’re standing across from each other in the living room. Raising his hands to show he intends no harm, Jimmy sweeps his eyes over the scene in assessment, like he has a hundred times before. Monica’s expression is alarmed under superficial friendliness—the look of someone trying to placate an attacker. With her aggressive, forward-leaning posture and the way she’s positioned herself between Monica and the cribs (he’s surprised to see more than one, but he did miss some of the episode while he was delivering his son in their bathtub), Wanda fits that role.

“Wanda,” he says, taking a step towards the seating area, “you don’t want to hurt her.”

“Are you working with her?” Wanda demands. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”

“James Woo. I’m not here to hurt you. Neither is Geraldine.”

“You don’t want to hurt me? Then why do you come asking questions? Saying things—” He can see her chin wobble from here as she teeters on the edge of tears. “—about Pietro. You didn’t know my brother.”

Her statement is directed at Monica, but Jimmy tries to bring her focus back to him. Of himself and the Captain, he’s the one with an exit at his back, whereas Monica’s hemmed in by a large bookcase.

“I didn’t know your brother,” Jimmy agrees. “I do know about him, but we don’t need to talk about that. I don’t want to upset you, Wanda, I just want you to let me leave with Geraldine.”

“Oh, I’ll let you leave,” Wanda says, cocking her head as she raises her hands. This motion conveys the opposite meaning to Jimmy’s—she does intend them harm.

He’s contemplating what’ll happen if he tries to rush her when Darcy charges through the front door he left open.

“Don’t!” Jimmy gasps, making a grab for her, but his body is tense with caution and Darcy has the momentum to dodge him, stepping down the level into the living room.

“Look,” Darcy demands of Wanda, whose expression is torn as she chooses between facing Monica and this new intruder.

Jimmy’s mentally composing and rejecting ideas of how to proceed when their unwelcoming host lowers her hands. She’s looking where Darcy directed her to, at the baby in Darcy’s arms.

“He was born less than an hour ago, and I only found out I was pregnant yesterday, but that doesn’t matter. I know it’s the same for you, the circumstances and the… yeah, whatever. You know about the Big Bang, right?” she continues, jumping to the next thought.

“Yes,” Wanda says carefully.

Jimmy’s terrified to move closer and set Wanda on the offensive again. He glances at Monica, who seems to be thinking the same thing, frozen in place.

“From nothing to so much, in an instant,” Darcy’s saying in her condensed history of the universe. “Science is supposed to be full of all these rules. Like, every scientist dude important enough to remember had some law or formula or method that we map everything on top of when we’re pretending we understand all this. Being in science isn’t a goal I’ve had for a long time—I mean, I probably wouldn’t be in it now if the world hadn’t more or less ended—and if all I ever heard about the workings of the universe was rules, I would’ve stayed away. Who likes rules, right? Who wants to be told that things are the way they are because something outside of your control says so? My point is…”

She takes a deep breath, then another one, shifting until she’s blocking Wanda’s expression from Jimmy’s view.

“Sorry, I just gave birth, you know how it is,” Darcy says when she goes on. Jimmy’s stricken with exasperation, adoration, fear, and pride. “My point is that I love science because, while science is laws and rules and equations, science is also standing outside at night and staring up at the dark. There are explanations for every light that’s up there and why, even when you’re away from big cities and the sky seems so black and close, you don’t fall up into it, although it kinda feels like you could. Science can tell me why, and it still feels like magic when I look at the stars. And we’ve all been traveling out here in space together, getting made and unmade and made again because the right ingredients needed to create something as precious as a planet, or a baby, or the clay that’ll make the bricks that’ll make the house never disappear. Suns explode, asteroids collide and get chipped away… things can separate down to their smallest part, life can…”

“End?” Wanda asks.

Jimmy’s stunned to hear the word come out choked. Cautiously, he leans to get a glimpse of Wanda’s face. It’s covered in tears. Darcy’s nodding.

“But everything’s valuable. All matter gets reused.” Jimmy wants to grab her and pull her to safety when she takes a step closer to Wanda. “I get it if you’re sad and you’re not ready to talk about it. I’m not gonna say it’s ok, because I’ve heard Monica’s testimonial on exactly how much it sucks to have you in her head, but I do think you should let us leave now so you have a few friends out there when you inevitably need people on your side.”

“You can go,” Wanda agrees, swiping at her nose. “I won’t hurt your baby.”

“You’re not going to hurt my friend either,” Darcy says, beckoning for Monica to cross the room behind her. “Or my husband.”

“No,” Wanda says.

Monica reaches Jimmy and they wait for Darcy in the entryway.

“I bet all that control feel really good,” Darcy theorizes. “Taking it into your own hands. But I think you know that focusing on the beautiful, magical stuff doesn’t mean the rules no longer exist. Maybe you can find a way to accept them both.”

“It’s time for you to leave,” Wanda says, firmer now.

“Not looking for a life coach, got it.”

She joins Jimmy and Monica, bouncing the baby lightly in her arms. Wanda ushers them out of the house ahead of her. Jimmy glances back to see her close the door after herself with a twist and red glow of her hands.

“What about waiting in the car?” he mutters to Darcy as they stride down the lawn.

His self-proclaimed wife stares at him.

“I’m not the kind of person who waits in the car. Would the kind of person who waits in the car give a speech like that?”

Jimmy’s at an honest-to-goodness loss for words.

She gets into the car willingly enough now, Jimmy in the passenger’s seat while Monica slides behind the wheel.

“Wanda’s told me how to stand, how to move, how to walk since I got in here,” Monica says, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m driving myself out.”

“It’ll part for you when you get there,” Wanda calls to them from the lawn. “The barrier. I suggest you do not attempt to enter again.”

“I think we’ve all had our fill,” Jimmy informs her cheerfully through his rolled-down window.

She doesn’t respond to this, so Monica executes a three-point turn and takes them back up the street the way they came. From there, they turn out of the subdivision, but Jimmy snags a last look at Wanda through the back window. There’s a light breeze blowing her dress and hair and she looks like she could be anyone. A suburban mom of twins? Why not. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again in person, but he has plans to catch her show.

“Wanda’s changed the roads,” Monica says as she drives. For his son’s sake, Jimmy’s grateful that she isn’t speeding, though he wouldn’t blame her for trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. “None of them lead out of town.”

“Literal tourist trap. Brilliant,” Darcy declares from the back seat. Jimmy reaches an arm back blindly and feels her close her hand around his.

“But,” Monica adds, “I remember Ellis Avenue being the closest cross street to the edge of town. We find that, then drive over the grass. Things may get a little bumpy.”

“We’ll survive.”

Jimmy twists around to look at Darcy. He nods. They will. They’ll survive.

They cross Ellis and take the car off-road. The barrier remains invisible, but…

“I can feel it,” Darcy says.

“Like we did the day we came in,” Jimmy recalls.

“It still wants us out,” Monica interprets. He sees her staring uneasily ahead. “Was I naïve to think I could change anything by coming in here?”

“No, Captain. It was brave.”

“Didn’t work though. We aren’t leaving with Wanda.”

“It could work,” Darcy says. “We left her with a few things to think about. We’ll watch WandaVision and see.”

“That’ll be strange after being a part of it.”

“You think so?” Jimmy wonders. He takes a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine, playing with Darcy’s fingers laced through his. “I think it’s returning to regular life that’s going to feel strange. Out there, it’s easy to see all this as a TV show, but everything in here is real.”

“We’ll make Hayward understand that.”

“I’m bringing back some compelling evidence,” Darcy says, followed by kissy sounds directed at Jimmy Jr.

The air just a couple of car lengths ahead of them abruptly glows red as Wanda reveals the wall of the Hex. Jimmy and Monica exchange a look, but she doesn’t slow down. They pass through without resistance. All of a sudden, it’s night. Monica lets out a relieved sigh.

The S.W.O.R.D. base is looming, exterior lights ablaze, but Jimmy looks backwards, checking that Darcy and the baby are alright.

“Same as you left us,” she says, pulling back the blanket to show him the face of his son.

He gives her a slightly melancholic smile.

“Not quite, Dr. Lewis.”

“I’ll have a lot of work to do,” Darcy notes thoughtfully, “but time for you and me to go on dates will be on my list of demands.”

“You have a list of demands?” Monica asks, laughter in her voice.

“After being forced into the Hex, where I could’ve lost my life? Fuck yes, I have a list.”

“What else are you asking for?”

“The coffee I requested on day one and a desk in a better spot so there’s room next to it for the crib that will also be on my list.”

Monica laughs aloud now.

“Is this a benefits negotiation or a baby shower registry?”

“Let’s get back to the part where we’re going on dates,” Jimmy says. “How’s that going to work?”

“Jimmy, darlin’,” Darcy begins, “will you go out with me?”

He leans to look around his seat at her.

“Darcy, we were married. We have a baby. Don’t you think we can—”

“Answer the question, Agent Woo.”

“Of course I’ll go out with you,” he says.

“And that’s how it works. Easy-peasy.”

She gives his hand a squeeze before releasing it to hold Jimmy Jr. more securely as Monica pulls up to a building and brakes. Already, S.W.O.R.D. agents are rushing out to meet them, but Jimmy drops back against his seat and smiles to himself.

“‘Easy-peasy.’”

#my writing #Hex Life #wandavision #wandavision spoilers #Darcy Lewis #Jimmy Woo #Darcy Lewis x Jimmy Woo #Darcy x Jimmy

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