#did start this off planning it to be iris but realized halfway through that its vague enough to be either so here u go

[cubedmango]

practice makes perfect

[wild-aloof-rebel]

Do you have any David and Patrick wedding reception/after party/wedding night headcanons?

absolutely! here are nine…

i.

even though the rest of the catering is delicious, david still misses the pizza that should have been, insisting that his carefully crafted menu is incomplete without it. halfway through the night, a dozen of elm county’s finest pizzas mysteriously appear, and though it isn’t fresh-baked the way it would have been had everything gone to plan, it’s salty and cheesy and hot and precisely what everyone needs to keep the night going. no one takes credit for ordering it, but patrick suspects that roland and jocelyn’s sudden absence during the cake cutting may have been for more wholesome reasons than he and david had assumed.

ii.

the cake is a traditional white almond sponge, but there’s a cherry filling and a thin layer of matcha buttercream in the middle that perfectly balance out the sweetness with bright and earthy notes. david had made patrick promise that he wouldn’t smash cake in his face, and he holds true to that vow, feeding him a careful bite from his own fork and relishing the way his eyes close and the corners of his lips quirk up, the same as they had the day they’d first sampled it at the bakery in elm glen, tipsy on free champagne and each other. but as soon as all the eyes in the room turn away from them and back to their own plates, patrick dips his finger into the icing and dabs a single dot of it to the corner of david’s affronted mouth just to have the excuse to lick it off of him.

iii.

there are too many toasts for david’s taste, which is to say any at all, the spotlight of stories and well-wishes making him wriggle in his seat, patrick’s hand squeezing gently at his thigh every time his leg begins to bounce. johnny, despite david’s worries, gets through his brief words without a single tear, just a huge, proud smile that doesn’t seem to leave his face all night. clint, on the other hand, tears up as soon as he starts, leaving marcy to swap his champagne flute with a tissue from her handbag. stevie, traitor that she is, opts to give her speech responsibilities over to alexis, and david braces himself for whatever horror story from their past she’s about to unleash. but instead of the past, she talks about the here and now, about the ease of david’s laughter and the quickness of his smiles, about the way patrick looks at him when he isn’t watching, about getting back a brother she hadn’t realized she’d lost and gaining another she hadn’t known she’d wanted, about how the walls we build around ourselves aren’t what protect us but love and friendship and family and trust are, about all the ways that letting others in only makes us more ourselves in the end. her charm and endless warmth invite everyone in to the story, make them a part of it, and there isn’t a dry eye in the room by the time she finally raises a glass, not only to david and patrick but also to this little town that brought them together–all of them–and gave them happiness they hadn’t known was possible.

iv.

patrick tears up watching david dance with marcy, his husband taking advantage of his height to spin her under his arm, her buoyant, carefree laughter floating out over the sounds of “brown eyed girl.” impossibly, he sometimes thinks she might love david even more than he does, and while he’s so glad that everything has worked out the way it should, there’s still a part of him that knows he could have missed this, that he could have let her miss this, not just the joy of dancing with david, which on its own is a beautiful thing, but the certainty of knowing that patrick is living this happy, comfortable life of his own choosing. they’ve talked a lot since his birthday, and he knows that all she and his dad have ever wanted is for him to be happy. there’s guilt and sorrow that twist in his gut like knives when he thinks about how close he came to denying them that, to denying himself that, and he still isn’t sure some days how he managed to walk away from that life and straight into this one he hadn’t even known he’d wanted instead. he honestly suspects some kind of divine intervention; it’s the only way to explain the miracle that is his husband, holding out a hand to him from the far side of the room, inviting him in once again to this world of joy and laughter and light that he gets the privilege of sharing with him every single day.

v.

moira wears 4 different outfits throughout the night, and david can only roll his eyes fondly at each costume change. in addition to the white alexander mcqueen dress she wears for the ceremony, she slips into a black stella mccartney gown before the start of the reception, the fabric split at the shoulders to reveal sleeves made of the same delicate crystal-adorned mesh that’s stretched across her shoulders. at the end of the night when it’s time to retire to the motel, she says her final goodbyes in a gareth pugh striped pantsuit that reminds david so much of her pajamas he briefly wonders if she might actually sleep in it. but his favorite by far is the ethereally structured iris van herpen she dons after dinner and toasts and cake, the dress flowing around her in elegant waves as his father spins her across the dance floor, art come to life, all the sharp, swift lines of her blurring into something–someone–softer and subtler and more at ease than he ever thought she could be in this place.

vi.

after a dance with stevie, patrick spies his husband tucked into the far corner of the room, his nose buried in his phone. david startles when patrick’s hands slip around his waist from behind, but the surprise of it passes quickly and he relaxes back in patrick’s grasp, comfortable and safe and at home in his arms. he drops his phone to his side though when patrick presses up on his toes to hook his chin over his shoulder, but not before he can catch a glimpse of a picture of the canopy of tulle and flowers that hangs over the center of the room. you can admit it you know, patrick tells him. admit what? david asks, though he clearly knows he’s been caught out. patrick presses a quick, soft kiss to the curve of his neck, tightening his arms around his husband as he breathes him in. they did a good job. this place is beautiful. david scoffs, but there’s no truth in it at all and patrick buries a chuckle in his shoulder. you’re beautiful, david replies instead, raising his phone again but flipping to the front-facing camera this time. he catches patrick’s left hand in his own, squeezing them to his chest so that both their rings are visible on the screen. he snaps several, both of them grinning dopily at the camera or at each other, as if they can’t stop themselves from looking deliriously happy if they try. after a careful debate over which one is best–patrick argues for the picture where the crinkled laugh lines around david’s eyes are deepest, though david vetoes that one in favor of another where patrick’s smile is wide and bright as david presses a kiss to his cheek–david posts the picture to the store’s instagram account since he no longer uses his own, captioning it we’re officially a family-owned business now. family. david is his family. the thought bursts into happy sparks, a cascade of fireworks hot and bright inside of patrick, and he can’t help but kiss david then, turning him in his arms to press all this glittering joy against his lips.

vii.

much later, patrick opens instagram on his own phone to clear away the overwhelming number of notification that have popped up on the post. hundreds of likes and dozens of congratulatory comments have rolled in, but the very first of each is from rachel.

viii.

thought i might find you out here, patrick says as he finds his husband standing in the inky darkness out behind the building. he looks overwhelmed–by the noise and the people and the emotions of the day–but in that way like he still can’t quite believe this is all real. let’s go for a drive, patrick offers. david’s brow wrinkles but he climbs into the passenger seat without a word, and patrick knows that however many mountains he’d climb for this man, he’d never have to do it alone. he can feel the moment that david realizes where they’re going, his fingers digging excitedly into the meat of patrick’s thigh. it’s well after midnight, so he doesn’t pull into the driveway, stopping instead on the shoulder across the road. he drags a blanket from the trunk and throws it across the hood of his car, offering david a hand to help him clamber up on top of it. they sit together there under the stars, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at their future, sketching the shape of it in whispers and hushed giggles and kisses soft and warm. only when they’re both shivering in the damp night air do they finally climb down and crawl back into the car, taking one long last look at the place they’ll soon call home. i wish it was already ours, david confesses into the safety of the dark, and patrick threads their fingers together, squeezing until he can feel both of their rings digging into his skin. me too, he says, but you’re still the only home i need.

ix.

they slip in quietly through the back door, though stevie grins wolfishly at them from across the room to let them know their absence hadn’t gone unnoticed. but there’s more dancing then. and drinks. photos. conversations. all these beautiful memories in the making. and later still, when things finally wind down and their parents and most of their other guests have said good night, david’s stomach rumbles loudly enough to be heard over the hushed strains of whitney houston still playing in the background. patrick, half-drunk, buries his fond, ridiculous laughter in his husband’s neck, and twyla suggests they head to the cafe. together with alexis and stevie, they wander right down the middle of the street, arms linked between them, david shaking his head as the other four make a sloppy, over-loud attempt at belting out “willkommen.” at the cafe, they all pile in to a booth together, talking loudly enough that twyla can still join in, calling back to them through the pass-through as she cooks up a mountain of scrambled eggs with cheese and warm, buttery toast, which she brings out all on one big plate. as they dive in, david thinks back to all the best meals he had when he lived in new york–expensive dinners at michelin-starred restaurants, quick lunches at greasy spoons, long boozy brunches and cheap late-night dives–and none of them could possibly compare to 3 AM scrambled eggs at the only restaurant in town, with his husband pressed so close he’s practically in david’s lap, surrounded by these people he loves more than he ever thought he could, all of them cackling wildly as they try to steal bites off each other’s forks. it’s the kind of moment–the kind of life–he would have never even thought to dream of, but it’s his and it’s real and he’s going to do everything he can to hold on to it for as long as he’s able.

[echoes-of-the-clockwork]

Book Four: War (Gladiolus x Reader) Chapter One

A/n: Welcome to the final book in the Four Horsemen series! It has taken way too long and I apologize! As in the other books, your hair color is predetermined based off which Horseman you pose as, but feel free to change it! Enough chatter from me. Let's get right into the story! Love you all!!! ••••••••••••••••••••

Prompto stared wide-eyed at the wanted poster of Deadeye that was on display at Wiz Chocobo Post. He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat when Noctis told him they'd be hunting down the deadly behemoth. "You seriously think we can take this thing down?"

Noctis shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

"Dude!" The blonde whined at his best friend's nonchalant attitude toward the deadly situation.

"Hey, you wanna ride the chocobos? Then we've got no choice."

"Noct is correct," Ignis spoke up as he and Gladio walked over to join the two younger boys. "In order for us to gain access to the chocobos, we must execute this beast."

"Enough chitchat. Let's get moving," Gladio stated. "You've got enough items, right, Your Highness?"

The ravenette rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah..."

The royal retinue left the chocobo outpost and headed to where Deadeye's den was located-the Nebulawood. It wasn't far from Wiz Chocobo Post as it was a five-minute hike from the outpost. Before they could even locate the entrance to the Nebulawood, they could hear the sound of trees snapping and slamming against the ground.

Finding the entrance to the Nebulawood, the four exceeded caution as they could hear even more trees falling in the distance. Eventually, they stumbled upon a narrow passageway they could crawl through.

Gladio grabbed Noctis and yanked him back before he could enter the crawlspace. Offering to go first, the shield proceeded to enter the crawlspace and lead the way. Noctis, Prompto, and Ignis followed after him, keeping their voices down when hearing a menacing growl.

Halfway through the crawlspace, the boys spotted Deadeye. The large behemoth stalked past them, failing to notice their presence. However, the beast's nose scrunched up as it smelt an unfamiliar scent. It immediately turned around and crept toward the crawlspace.

Seeing this, Gladio stopped Noctis just in time. Deadeye shoves its snout into an opening and roars. When seeing its sharp teeth, the shield noticed a round, red object lodged between two of them.

Suddenly, the royal retinues' attention was drawn to the behemoth when a sword came out of nowhere and plunged into the side of its neck. Deadeye cried out, yanking its snout out of the hole.

"What the...?" Noctis murmured, eyes glued to the sword.

"Hurry up," Gladio hissed.

The four made it out of the crawlspace and were greeted by the sound of Deadeye's thunderous roar. Alongside the beast, they heard someone yell at the top of their lungs. The group froze after realizing it was human.

"Who'd be crazy enough to come here by themselves?" Prompto asked.

"Perhaps the person who wounded the behemoth," Ignis said.

"We're gonna help them, right?"

"If we get to them before they become behemoth bait," Gladio stated.

Following the sounds of battle, the group made their way through the area of the Nebulawood that was shrouded with a heavy fog.

After pausing through the dense fog and managing to locate Deadeye's den, they climbed over a fence and stared at the ruins before looking toward the battle unfolding down below.

A young woman with fiery red locks and (e/c) eyes wielded a sword with a crimson blade. Her attire was strange and out of place.

(A/n: I imagined the outfit without the ears on the hood and the mask. And before I forget... I DO NOT OWN ANY IMAGES USED IN THIS STORY! Please go support the original artists if you like their work.)

She nimbly dodged the behemoth's attacks before leaping forward and striking. Her blade sliced off Deadeye's other horn and destroyed its other eye. Swinging its claws around blindly, the behemoth tried to strike the girl. When its claw got close enough, she sidestepped and swung her sword upward, slicing off a couple of its toes.

Seeing the appendages fall to the ground, Prompto backed away from the ledge. "So, uh... We gonna help her?"

Gladio crossed his arms as he continued to watch the fight. "Looks like she can handle this herself."

"Yeah, but..."

"Nah, it's fine," Noctis replied, his eyes glued to the battle. He watched the girl swing her blade, but his eyes widen in shock when she exchanges her blade for a javelin. He saw the familiar crystal-like shards that engulfed her weapons when they switched. Unlike his, they were a bright crimson. He blinked in bewilderment. "Did you guys just see that?"

"Quite so," Ignis answered.

"Wait, is she a member of the crownsguard?" Prompto asked.

"No way," Gladio responded. "I'm pretty sure we'd remember a firecracker like her if she was."

"Then what's with the shards?"

"I am curious as well," the advisor spoke up.

All of a sudden, the girl's javelin was set ablaze. She charged toward Deadeye, ducking under his flailing claws and eyeing its chest. She jammed the blazing javelin into the behemoth's chest, discharging the flame. The fire consumed its body, frying it to a crisp. Yanking the javelin out of Deadeye's chest, she dispelled it with a heavy sigh before stepping back to prevent from being crushed by the corpse.

Seeing it was finally dead, the redhead kicked the behemoth's head. "Dammit... Where is it?" Her attention was drawn to the royal retinue when they hopped down from the cliff and joined her. She watched them with a glare, keeping her distance and remaining silent.

"You lookin' for something?" Gladio asked, shattering the silence.

"You really think I'm going to tell you?" She scoffed.

"Let me guess: it's red and round." Her eyes widen, which made him smirk. "Looks like I hit the nail on the head. It's stuck between its teeth."

The redhead turned her attention back to the carcass of the behemoth and walked over to its mouth. Summoning a crimson-bladed dagger, she examined Deadeye's mouth and found what she'd been looking for. "About damn time." Using the dagger, she picked the orb out from the beast's teeth and wiped it off with a disgusted look. "Of course it's covered in slobber..."

Dispelling the dagger, she grabbed Noctis' attention. "Hey, where did you-?"

"Sorry, can't talk," she interrupted him. "I'm a busy person." She sauntered off, her hips swaying as she did so.

"Hey!" The prince shouted. "Wait a minute!"

"Aaand she's gone," Prompto sighed. "What do we do now?"

"Return to Wiz. We must inform him of the behemoth's downfall," Ignis replied.

"We're not gonna take the award money, are we?"

The strategist shook his head. "No."

"After all, we weren't the ones to kill Deadeye," Gladio added. "Let's get goin'." The four left the ruins and headed back to Wiz Chocobo Post.

Back at the chocobo outpost, Noctis told Wiz of Deadeye's death. The old man tried to give him the reward for slaying the beast, but he refused.

Before Wiz could ask why, a familiar redhead made another appearance. "Just take the money. I wasn't planning on using it."

Noctis turned around in disbelief. "You're really not going to take it?"

"That's what I was implying," she groaned. "Hurry up and take it or I'll give it to someone else."

"Okay..." Noctis told Wiz of his decision and took the gil from the man. When he spun back around, he saw the redhead was gone. "Dammit..."

From across the chocobo ranch, Gladio had watched the exchange between Noctis and the mysterious girl. He watched her walk away and decided to follow her a little ways down the road. He called out to her, happy it made her stop. "You just gonna walk away?"

The redhead crossed her arms with a scowl as she faced him. "You just gonna follow me if I do?"

The shield held up his hand in defense. "Take it easy, firecracker."

"Do not call me that," she hissed.

He smirked. "Feisty."

She clenched her fist. "You're pissing me off. I'm pretty sure you've somewhere else to be. Y'know, a place called Lestallum? Or are those big muscles to make up for how small your brain is?"

Gladio wasn't fazed by the insult, but he was flabbergasted at what she said. "How'd you know that?"

Now it was her turn to smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know, Gladiolus Amicitia."

Without another word, she walked away. Gladio watched her as she vanished down the road and out of sight. Still in shock, he returned to his friends and they rode away from the chocobo ranch.

<------------<<<<<

The next day, the royal retinue arrived in Lestallum. Ignis parked the car and everyone headed to the main thoroughfare. Gladio received a call from Iris, letting him know she was staying at the Leville. Deciding to not keep her waiting, they headed to the hotel.

When reaching the courtyard outside the Leville, the ground begins shaking. The four boys brace themselves to prevent from falling. "Whoa, do you feel that?" Noctis questioned.

"You mean the earthquake?" Gladio inquired.

Suddenly, Noctis grabs his head and winces. Images of Titan flash through his mind. After a moment, the visions abate and Noctis shakes his head. He wasn't worried about what he saw.

Gladio noticed the boy's discomfort and asked, "What's wrong?"

"My head just started throbbing," the raven-haired boy answered.

Prompto glanced at his best friend with concern. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Continuing forth, the group enter the Leville. They stand in the lobby and wait for a couple minutes. When Iris comes trotting down the stair, she smiled at her older brother. "Gladdy!"

"Iris," Gladio called out to his sister.

She then casted her smile toward the others. "Look at you guys, holding your own out there."

"What can I say? You look good," Prompto complimented her.

"All things considered. You guys are staying here, right?"

"That's the plan," Ignis said.

"When you have time, we have catching up to do," Gladio stated.

"I've got time now. Come on up!" Iris cheered.

The four boys follow Iris upstairs. They enter one of the rooms with a young boy and an old man inside. Gladio recognizes them and called out, "Jared and Talcott! Is it good to see you."

"Prince Noctis! Iris is safe with me!" Talcott proclaimed confidently.

"Please excuse my grandson. He has yet to learn his manners," Jared apologized.

Noctis smirked at the young boy. "I like it."

"Your Highness is very kind, but we shan't impose. A very good night to you, Your Highness."

Jared and Talcott leave the room and Iris closes the door behind them. She and the boys then all take a seat. Noctis was the first to speak up. "So Iris, what was it like inside the Crown City?"

She frowned. "Not pretty. The Citadel took a beating. But a lot of outlying neighborhoods made it through in one piece."

"The empire had tactical targets in mind," Ignis stated.

"We wouldn't have made it out if it wasn't for (Y/n)."

Noctis' brows furrowed together in confusion. "Who's (Y/n)?"

"I'm not really sure myself. She showed up just before the empire attacked and escorted us out of the city," Iris answered. "We owe her our lives."

"(Y/n)..." Ignis murmured the name.

Noctis looked toward his advisor. "What's up, Specs?"

"I believe I've heard such a name from his late Majesty."

"Really?"

"Though I am uncertain."

Gladio looked back at his sister. "Think we could meet this (Y/n)?"

"Definitely!" Iris flew to her feet. "She should be somewhere near the outlook. Follow me!" She acted as the royal retinues' guide, escorting them out of the hotel and to the outlook.

Arriving at their destination, they saw only one person. They had a hood pulled over their head. Iris recognizes the person and shouted, "(Y/n)!"

The person turned in their direction, pulling down their hood and revealing fiery locks. Prompto's mouth fell agape. "No way..."

Iris looked over at the blonde. "You know her?"

"Not personally, no," Noctis responded.

The mysterious girl, now known as (Y/n), smirked. "Well, well, I didn't expect to see you four again so soon."

"Neither did we, firecracker," Gladio chortled, grinning.

The girl's smirk morphed into a scowl. "Do you want me to kick your ass? Because I will."

Iris glanced between her brother and the redhead. "How do you all know each other?"

"We somewhat met yesterday at the chocobo ranch," Prompto responded.

(Y/n) tore her gaze from the shield and glanced up at the sky. "It's getting late. I'm heading out."

"You tryin' to make another quick exit like you did yesterday?" The brute asked.

"For your information, I've got important things to do. That behemoth yesterday was a minor setback. If you're so eager to talk to me, I'll be back in the morning."

The five watch her leave. Prompto made a comment once she was gone. "She's, uh...interesting."

"I'll say," Gladio chuckled.

"Anyway," Iris chimed in. "You guys are probably tired from the drive. Why don't you take a day to relax?"

"A long nap does sound nice," Noctis confesses.

"When does it not to you?" The shield retorts.

The boy waves him off before heading back to the Leville with Prompto, Ignis, and Iris. Gladio glances in the direction (Y/n) walked before following the others.

<------------<<<<<

The next morning, Noctis went on a tour with Iris while Prompto and Ignis went shopping. Gladio, who'd been itching to talk to (Y/n), searched for the redhead. He wandered around Lestallum for a little while until he found the girl where they talked yesterday-the outlook. She was sitting on the stone railing, gazing down at the scarlet orb in her palm. Her head shot up when hearing him approach. "I swear to the Astrals, if you call me that ridiculous nickname I'll toss you off the nearest bridge."

Gladio, even though he'd only known her for two days, was starting to enjoy her fiery attitude. "As much as I would love to, I'm here to thank you and not piss you off."

"Oh?" She hummed in curiosity. "What do you want to thank me for?"

"For saving Iris, Talcott, and Jared."

"It was only coincidental," she muttered.

"Still, you saved 'em. So, thanks," he said. "Why were you in the city anyway?"

She looked away. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

She arched a brow. "Excuse me?"

Galdio repeated himself. "Try me."

A sigh fell from her lips. "My sisters and I were summoned by your late King to help with evacuation."

Of course, this made the brute even more confused. "Really? His Majesty thought four sisters could evacuate the entire city?"

"I haven't gotten to the last part," she groaned. "Are you familiar with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

"Yeah." Gladio couldn't help but chuckle. "Don't tell me you and these sisters you're talkin' about are the Four Horsemen. They're just a scary story to tell kids to freak 'em out."

(Y/n) pinched the bridge of her nose. "I told you you wouldn't believe me. What was even the point in trying to tell you? You mortals don't even know the real story of the Four Horsemen..." She hopped off the railing and walked past Gladio.

Before she was out of reach, the shield grabbed her wrist and stopped her from leaving. "I'll admit, I don't believe you. Think you could do somethin' that'll convince me?"

"Like what? Summon my horse, vanish in a puff of smoke, stab myself, burn something?"

"Uh..."

The redhead stared into his amber eyes. "You think I'm crazy. To be honest, I didn't expect much." She yanked her arm out of his grasp. "Why did I even think I could try?"

"Fine, I'll bite. Let's say you and your sisters are the Four Horsemen. What did you mean by mortals don't even know the real story?" Gladio asked.

"You wanna bear the truth? Fine."

***

Four souls were pulled from the four corners of Hell, gifted with abilities no human, god, nor daemon could comprehend. Each soul was given one of four aliases that accompanied their powers-War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Now dubbed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by the Daemon King, Aeshema, they were sent to a world between the living and the dead known as the Inner Sanctum-a domain where the Four Horsemen would reside and keep order of the monsters who relish to break the seal preventing them from entering the world of the living and quenching their bloodlust.

With the seal preventing the monsters from escaping to the land of the living shattered, the Horsemen were tasked with traveling to the bustling world to hunt down the monsters that escaped and kill them before humans fell victim to their bloodlust. Once each Horseman slew their share of the monsters, they would be granted passage back to the Inner Sanctum.

Once the Four Horsemen reached the gateway and entered the portal, they arrived in the land of the living. Famine, Death, Pestilence, and War went their separate ways and disguised themselves as humans in order to walk among the living and hunt down the monsters incognito without startling the lives around them.

***

Gladio stated at (Y/n) in disbelief. The redhead rolled her eyes. "You wanted the true tale, you got it. I'm a warrior, not a storyteller."

"Isn't it missing details?" He asked.

"Well, yeah. It's still in the making. That's why it kinda sounds incomplete." Even though she knew he didn't believe her, she went into deeper detail. "In order for me to return to the Inner Sanctum, I must slay a pack of bunyips and a dullahan that escaped. In order to complete my mission, I can't dawdle around here and perform tricks like a dog just to try and convince you I'm a Horseman. Besides, I don't care if you believe me or don't. It doesn't change my mission. Have fun escorting His Highness to Altissia." (Y/n), once again, gave Gladio the cold shoulder and left.

[writtingfiction]

A Glow in the Dark

Pairing: Ignis x FEM!Mermaid

genre: hinted romance

words:1.8k

summary: Ignis was looking at the Royal Vessel when something more interesting takes ahold of his attention. He hopes it doesn’t doom him for the future.

The boys could hardly believe it, they were finally able to make it to Altissia. Across the sea where the city awaits them and Noctis’ lovely fiancé as they like to tease him about it. However, they would set sail in the morning. Taking the Royal vessel to the magnificent city, with the sun rising and showing just some of the true wonders that Altissia has to offer. It’ll have to wait though, for they rest scattered about Cape Caem, waiting for exhaustion to take them.

Ignis, in particular, was down by the boat, examining and admiring the beautiful boat that she was. Checking more out of curiosity than anything else, but something quickly catches his attention. A splash of water is heard on the opposite side of the boat and he fears he may have knocked something over. He quickly checks and peers overboard to see the faint shimmer of something moving swiftly through the water. He thinks it’s one of the glowing barrel fish he has seen Noctis catch on late nights.

Ignis hears another splash of water, this time towards the bow of the boat. His brows furrow as he follows the sound, once again just managing to see a glow. Ignis hums, confirming his suspicions that the cause of the noise is just a barrel fish. Nevertheless, his thoughts were quickly thrown out when there was a louder and bigger splashing coming from behind him. It sounds like thrashing and Ignis is quick to move.

Before he can call out anything, he’s taken by surprise. A young woman, a glowing young woman is trying to climb onto the boat. No, a glowing young woman with a tail is trying to climb onto the boat. Ignis blinked slowly in shock, the gears in his head were trying to turn to make sense of the situation, but he couldn’t figure anything out. All he could do is watch in awe as she managed to pull herself up about halfway up the stairs before looking up at him, eyes going wide.

She had long hair glowing from the roots which faded out along the length of her hair. Turquoise glowing markings shaped her face which trailed down to her arms and webbed hands. Her tail glowed brightly showing the true beauty of her fin, frills trailing from her waist to the edge of her fin. They gave off a dim glow as her fin was large with glowing spots along it. She was pretty, heavenly even.

“What are you…?” She spoke. Catching him off guard. She spoke in such a heavy accent he could barely understand her, never mind place where the accent was from.

“W-what am I…?” Ignis echoed, surely not with enough class as he would like to admit. She continues to look at him. Tilting her head to the side ever so slightly. Ignis admits to himself that the way she looks at him does unsettle him but it’s also a familiar gaze. He doesn’t know why and he isn’t sure if he should be comforted by that, but he answers her question, odd as it is. “I am human. What are you?”

She stays silent and tilts her head the other way, slowly. Ignis is left in the dark about her intention. He isn’t sure what to do exactly. To help her or not. Would it insult her or no? He is filled with many questions.

“Sirenă.” She says it with confidence, and he knows she speaks a language that isn’t his.

“Siren?” Ignis echoes once again and his brain goes into overload. “You’re a siren? Like those stories we tell children about, where the mermaid is a woman of the sea and that there’s an entire city of them at the bottom of the ocean.” The siren blinks once and sighs.

“Sirena de mare adăncime.” The look in her eyes changes as she tries to settle herself onto the stairs on the edge of the boat. “Deep sea… siren. Different than, other sirenă.” She fixes herself, sitting now on the stairs as she stares up at Ignis. Curious and calm, clearly not sensing any danger from the blonde. Ignis, on the other hand, isn’t quite sure how to feel.

“I see, sorry for the mistake then.” There’s another tilt with her head and this time he catches sight of the gills on her neck. It’s another thing upon another and Ignis is forced to accept his reality that he is meeting a real mermaid, or siren as she labels herself so.

“What is your name…?” She speaks slower, perhaps easier for her but he’s glad either way. He can hear her better this way.

“Ignis Scientia.” Ignis, in turn, says his name slowly. The siren gives a little smile.

“Fire… Science… your name has… funny meaning.” Her smile only grows bigger at Ignis’s dumbfounded look. “I am Y/N L/N, I wanted… to be on ship one last time before… you take for good.”

“Y/N is a beautiful name. It’s a pleasure to meet one such as yourself. What makes you think we are taking the boat for good?” Ignis replies, confused. For all his knowledge is that the boat was kept here the entire time, except for when the king had taken it out for his adventures.

“You go adventure to pretty place. Just like the young King.” Y/N said and Ignis thinks of Noctis but knows he isn’t king yet. He wonders whom she could be talking about before it realizes that Y/N was talking about the late king, Noctis’ father. “Is the young King with you?”

“No, but his son is.”

“Ah, I see.” There was a sadness that had washed over her. “I promised I would… bring gift for son… but I don’t have with me.”

“It is quite alright, I’m sure the sentiment is there. I’ll tell the prince.” Ignis says it but Y/N is quick to react.

“NO!” Y/N shout was loud, echoing through the cave. “My living… no, existence… must be secret. There are bad people…”

“I understand.” Ignis wishes for a moment that he didn’t. Sadness washes over him, he wonders for a moment, how many sirens were there that lived down at the ocean floor. He wondered if there truly was a difference between sirens and mermaids like you had said. “However, the ship will be returning.”

“Then I wait for its return…” Y/N smiles but also trails off, looking at Ignis for a long while before speaking again. “And for yours.” Ignis is surprised by the comment, flustered as his cheeks burn.

“Mine? We’ve only known each other for a few moments.”

“Which makes the next encounter, all the more fun.” There’s a glimmer in Y/N’s eyes and Ignis isn’t sure what it means. “I’ll teach you about me, and you teach me about you. Simple.” Y/N reaches her hand out, almost as if she’s sealing the deal. Ignis nods, however, stays rooted to where he is. Y/N pouts, hand falling back to her side but it doesn’t dissuade her. Deciding to change tactics.

“…Let’s play a little game,” Y/N starts to sing and Ignis is immediately taken in, but still has his wits about it. “just between you and I. Obviously physical~” Her singing is mesmerizing and Ignis can’t help but want to get closer. Nevertheless, he doesn’t want to get closer, something isn’t right. The shine behind her eyes holds much more than the curiosity she had earlier. But he can’t help but take a step closer, and another as she continues to sing. “But either way the objective is the same. To please and entertain.”

Y/N knows it’s working, raising her hand once again. A tantalizing deal awaits him, he just doesn’t fully understand it. However, the elaborate plan is cutting short, she can hear the elevator working and many voices. His companions were coming, cursing herself mentally about her shout earlier. She didn’t have to be so loud. She’s ready to start the next line, but his companions could appear quicker than she thinks but decides to push it. He’s so close.

“You can be my vixen,” His gloved fingers begin to brush against her fingers just as the elevator opens. She takes her chance, the weight of having to see him again versus being seen by his companions is heavily outweighed. His hand is firmly clasped in hers just as they call out to him. “Your demise will be your stage~.”

“Ignis!!” The three of them shout and it’s enough to pull Ignis out of his trance. His head quickly spins towards them as Y/N takes the chance to finish the rest of the spell. Pressing soft lips to his neck and whisper quick details to him, officially bounding her to him.

“Paws off, our man!” Gladiolus shouts, summoning a great sword to his hands. Y/N is quick to react from here. Letting go of Ignis and quickly diving off the boat as he throws the large sword at her, barely missing her.

They’re quick to run over to Ignis and check the water, seeing her glow fade out as she swam away, back into the deep ocean. The boys fuss over Ignis checking to make sure he’s alright but they concluded that the only thing she did was leave a mark. A trident within a circle is placed right by his collarbone and neck. It glows a bright turquoise before going completely black.

“Ok, but let’s confirm that wasn’t a daemon or was it?” Prompto says worriedly.

“If it was a daemon, why didn’t the light bother it?” Noctis makes a note.

“I don’t think it was a daemon.” Ignis sighs, fingers lingering on the mark. The others look at him concerned. “However, we can’t be sure. Let us speak with the others, they may have more knowledge on this beast than we do.” They agree and all move back up to the house.

The second they enter the house, they’re swarmed with concerns from everyone but Talcott was the only one to point out the new mark on Ignis’ neck. Eyes wide with wonder and shock as the kid goes on a whole tirade about mermaids and sirens. Eventually saying that those who bear Ignis’ mark are bound to see the mermaid again at some point in their lives before they die.

“Here I thought it was just a bedtime story…” Iris comments with a small smile. Ignis feels exhaustion take him. He was grateful it was nothing bad, but he wondered if he really could place all his faith into a child's’ bedtime story.

“What did she look like?” Cindy pips up, quickly gaining everyone’s attention. Soon everyone is sitting around the table and telling what little they saw of the siren and Ignis retelling the encounter. As he does so, he wonders if the encounter is as innocent as Talcott’s stories are.

[weartirondad]

Chaos, Yet Harmony

Summary: 3 times Peter made Tony watch Star Wars and the 1 time it was Tony's idea.Or: Peter Parker is unapologetically a geek and Tony quickly realizes that there's nothing he wouldn't do for him.

A/N: this is part of the @irondadsecretsanta and is my gift for @aslanscompass. It was a ton of fun & I wish you all a wonderful Christmas <3

Check out all the other AMAZING fics HERE !

FF.net I ao3

--

i.

Tony was wary when he answered the call at 10 past eleven at night.

He had learned early on that late night calls from teenage vigilantes were never a good sign and that, really, a call at any time from a teenager was a rarity and should always raise a red flag. So, yeah, he was wary but he felt like he was entitled to.

Next to him his fiancée was curled around the dark green plush blanket like a cat and regarded him, staring at the lit up screen of his phone, in amusement. “Don’t yell too much.”

He rolled his eyes and accepted the call, “No promises.”

“Mr. Stark?” came the breathless voice of none other than Peter Parker through the speakers and already he could feel his blood pressure rise and tried to breathe out deliberately slowly.

Calm, Stark, you’re calm.

“The one and only,” he answered and was almost proud of how calm and collected he sounded. Oh how deceiving voices could be.

“Oh!” The kid sounded actually surprised and paused for a second in which Tony could only hear the telling thwip thwip thwip of hectic webbing.

Not the best sign but he was calm. So very calm.

He was also already on the way to the nearest window, two steps from calling a suit. Pepper behind him was now openly laughing but he didn’t look back because –

“Great! I might need a little help here. Something.” Thwip. “Something came up.” Thwip. “Sorta.”

“Sorta?” Calm.

“I mean.” Thwip. “It definitely came up. Yup.” Thwip. “Definitely. How far are you from Queens?” Thwip.

“Three minutes,” he sighed, giving up on the act of sounding completely aloof, half waving to Pepper before turning around, stepping into his suit and jumping out of the window. There went the nice, cozy night he had planned.

“Kid? You still there?”

There was a long moment of no rambling and no thwiping and it was unsettling. If Tony knew that getting late night calls was a bad sign, he was sure as heck that random pauses in late night calls where close to the calling of the apocalypse.

“Huh? Yeah. Just, uh.” Thwip. “Try’na avoid getting hit.”

Jesus.

If anyone was going to test his body’s ability to handle stress it wasn’t his own superhero gig or some spandex wearing traitor, it was a goody-two-shoes kid dressed up as a spider.

“Okay, great. You keep doing that and tell me what’s going on.”

Just keep talking, kid, tell me you’re alive.

Peter started talking and while he sounded a little too excited for his taste he let the familiar sound calm him down. As long as Peter was talking, Tony could convince himself that he didn’t have to panic just yet.

He could already see Spider-Man flipping towards another building when a message from Pepper blinked up on his HUD.

Get home safe. Both of you. I’m heading to bed. Love you.

..

“That was wild, Mr. Stark! Like, super wild. Super mega wild. Super-duper mega –“

“Wild?” Tony suggested in mock seriousness, setting down on the landing pad and watched Spider-Man land gracefully behind him. The second the kid had solid ground under his feet he ripped off his mask and took in a big gulp of air. His hair was mussed, cheeks red and his usually light brown eyes dark, pupils dilated so much not much of the iris was left to be seen.

Typical signs of an active sympathetic nervous system, his mind supplied unsolicited.

“Steady,” he ordered roughly when a bony shoulder bumped into his arm but there was no real force behind it when he reached out to wrap an arm around him to do the steadying himself. As soon as he had him under control he led them to the kitchen to get one of the nutrition bars he had started keeping in stock for Peter’s mutant metabolism.

“S’rry.” The kid grinned up at him sheepishly, rubbing at the mess of curls on his forehead in a poor attempt to tame them. “What’re we gonna do now?”

He raised an eyebrow in silent amusement. “It’s midnight, buddy. You should probably get to bed sometime soon if you wanna make first period.”

“But –“ Peter looked disoriented for a moment, eyes flying back and forth between the clock and Tony felt for him when his searching gaze fell on him. He looked so hopeful, as if he was lost and Tony his compass and he was so certain that he would lead him back home. The genuine trust in his eyes pierced through him and immediately he felt lacking. Thank goodness that deflection was his second nature.

Shoving two granola bars into Peter’s hand, he took a step back to give himself some space to reorient.

“You’re too excited to sleep?”

There was a vigorous nod that had crumbs falling everywhere.

“Figures,” he sighed, “The aftereffects of adrenaline are never fun.” He watched the teenager devour the second bar in mere seconds, mind whirling with doubt. “Do you want me to stay with you until you are tired enough to go to bed?”

Wide eyes found his and, mouth still full, Peter gave a timid nod, uncertain question marks clear in the twinkle of his eyes and the way he cocked his head to the side slightly.

“Okay, let’s make some tea and put on a movie. What do you wanna watch? Frozen?” He turned around to start rummaging through the kitchen for herbal tea.

That must’ve been enough for Peter to finally swallow his food and get his bearings. “How do you even know about Frozen, Mr. Stark? Are you a fan?” he quipped.

He half-turned, kettle in hand, grinning when Peter plopped down on the couch and immediately tucked himself into the blanket Pepper had neatly folded and stashed on the arm rest before she had gone to sleep. “Have you been outside last year? Show me someone who doesn’t know about Frozen.”

“Fair point,” Peter agreed easily, mind obviously already a step further. “What’s your favorite Star Wars?”

“Uh,” Tony put the kettle on the stove, “I have seen about as many Star Wars movies as I’ve seen Frozen movies.”

“You –“ The way Peter turned must put a painful strain on his neck but he looked too scandalized to notice. “What?”

The kettle whistled and he put in two bags of Pepper’s herbal tea before replying, “I have never watched Star Wars.”

“Oh my –“ For the second time that evening Peter looked utterly confused which, for a kid that smart, was especially amusing. “What rock have you been living under? I thought everyone knew Star Wars. Especially old people.”

“Hey!” He admonished but had to admit that it lost much of its brunt when he put down two steaming glasses of tea and started tugging at the blanket to cover Peter’s foot fully. “Be nice to me.”

“I’m being super nice, Mr. Stark. ‘Cause I’m gonna introduce you to a galaxy far, far away. The best galaxy.”

Tony watched in amusement as Peter ordered F.R.I.D.A.Y. to put on Episode IV and then looked eagerly back at him. “You’re gonna love it.”

“This is supposed to make you tired, squirt,” he reminded him, tapping his knee gently.

“It will,” he promised, “Star Wars always calms me down.”

The way he said it made Tony pause, made his heart ache with the harsh reality this kid had had to face and how bright he still was despite of it. Instead of an answer he pushed the glass of tea into his hands and made sure he was all tucked in before starting the movie.

Surprisingly enough Peter wasn’t lying. Halfway through the movie his breathing had evened out so much that Tony thought he was already asleep, cheek mushed into one of the big pillows, curled in on himself.

When the movie was over he stirred, slurring “G’nna watch the rest t’morrow?”

“Maybe let’s split it up a little, whataya say?” He reached out to brush some of his curls from his forehead, surprised by the gentleness of the gesture. “But we can watch them together if you want to.”

“Promise?”

“Pinky promise, kiddo.”

--

ii.

With Peter it wasn’t exactly hard to notice when something was off.

Even Tony, who admittedly was often too caught up in his own world to be fine-tuned into other people’s feelings and was much more comfortable fixing a cranky robot than moody human, could see it from a mile away. Or maybe that was a new kind of sense that began and ended with Peter Parker’s wellbeing. Oh well, he tried not to dwell on that.

The thing about Peter was that, when he was fine, his entire being radiated contentment, his voice tripped with excitement and his eyes shone with laughter. On a good day he was the picture perfect golden retriever puppy and similarly receptive to hugs and hair ruffles.

Today, though, his usual exuberance had visibly deflated and when he came to the workshop he punched in his code and then continued to scuff towards his workstation with only a passing hello. That was not the Peter Tony knew and, frankly, it was worrying to see someone normally so eager and lively so … lacking of life for lack of a better word.

The thing about Tony was that he was, by his own standing, probably the least equipped to deal with someone having a bad day. Heck, his own bad days usually ended in working through every meal, chugging coffee by the gallon and seeing no sun light for hours on end and even he knew that wasn’t healthy.

So he kept quiet at first and let Peter work in hopes of it calming him down because what did he know about healthily dealing with teenage angst on a Wednesday?

He kept a close eye on him, though, because for how much Tony didn’t think he was equipped to handle Peter’s bad days he also wanted to chase the shadows from his face and the hardness from his stance however cliché that sounded.

He wanted to help, he did. He just didn’t know how. So he watched from afar and contemplated.

When Peter dropped the screw driver a third time and was getting more and more agitated with the web shooter he was working on, Tony decided to stage an intervention ‘cause what the heck. He hated seeing the kid so down.

Rolling his chair over to the teenager’s work bench he picked up the tool before Peter could. “You wanna tell me what’s up, squirt?”

Peter glared, which was about as intimidating as a golden retriever puppy glaring, “Nothing,” and reached for the screw driver. Which Tony pulled out of reach at the last moment.  Which made him look even more like a puppy. It was all in the big brown eyes, he decided then.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I have a secret identity.”

“Which I found out about in like a day.” He leaned back with a grin and started throwing the screwdriver in the air and effortlessly catching it.

“You’re Tony Stark,” the kid gave back with an eye roll, catching the tool before Tony had the chance to. “But I’m fine, honestly.”

“I mean,” he crossed his arms and watched him turn back to his web shooter rather listlessly, “considering that you not being fine usually means you’re bleeding out in an alleyway I’m not entirely reassured.”

“I’ve never bled out in an alleyway.”

“Yeah, because I flew in to get you before you could.”

“Why do you even care?” Peter snapped at him, a flicker of teenage annoyance dancing in his eyes before vanishing in the time it took Tony to ponder the fact that even this seemingly perfect kid could be annoyed. Finally. “Sorry,” he sighed, proving yet again how much better he was than literally anyone else, “I’m just annoyed.”

If that wasn’t a break-through, than he didn’t know what was. Silently patting himself on the back, Tony reached out to turn Peter’s chair so he was facing him and gently took the screw driver from his hands, putting him down on the work bench before giving the kid his full intention.

“What are you annoyed about?”

He shrugged indifferently, not meeting his eyes, “I don’t know. I just... Ned and I got into an argument and he was being so… so stubborn about it. Like, it wasn’t even that bad but he just wouldn’t budge.”

“Oh no, a stubborn teenager. Someone call the zoo we’ve found an endangered species,” he deadpanned.

Peter glared again but Tony could also see him bite down on his lower lip to keep it from curling upwards.

“Sorry, sorry. What did you and Ned fight about?”

“It wasn’t a fight… not really,” he corrected, “And it was dumb. Like, really ridiculous to be so annoyed about it. It’s not… it’s just stupid.”

Cocking his head to the side ever so slightly he raised an eyebrow and repeated calmly, “What did you argue about? I mean, if you don’t wanna talk about it that’s fine but if it’s got you so up in arms about it maybe you should is all I’m saying.”

“You’re gonna think it’s stupid,” Peter pouted.

“Maybe,” Tony shrugged, “But it’s still okay to be angry about something stupid sometimes. You don’t wanna know about half the things Rhodey and I fought about back in the days. Still do, actually.”

“Now I kinda do,” Peter grinned, then paused. “We argued about the Jedi code.”

“You… argued about the Jedi code,” Tony repeated dumbly, “Like… The Star Wars guys running around in wardrobes? They have a code?”

Big brown eyes flew up to meet his, full of indignation “Of course they have a code! There’s actually a couple different versions of it which is what we were arguing about because he said –,“ Peter stopped speaking midsentence, mouth slamming shut audibly. “It doesn’t matter… You don’t… you don’t have to listen to this, honestly, Mr. Stark.”

He made sure to school his expression and started speaking deliberately slowly, “Peter. I know I don’t have to listen to this. And, as you’ve pointed out before I am Tony Stark and you know I rarely do anything I don’t want to but, kid, you gotta know at this point that I like having you around and I like talking to you. That doesn’t just hold true when you’re your usual bubbly self but also, and especially when you’re not. This is clearly important to you. And if it’s important to you, I’m interested.”

He waited until Peter gave him a nod of understanding, timid as it may be, and leaned back in his chair again, “So tell me about this discourse in the Star Wars fandom.”

The kid didn’t have to be told twice and Tony felt his soul settle when he watched him perk up and dive into what must’ve obviously been weighing him down.

“Okay, so the Jedi code most commonly used goes like: There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge etcetera which, you know, it’s mostly meant to be used as a mantra for meditation to, like, get to a place where you don’t let your emotions overtake you and stuff. And I get that, I do.”

When Tony gave an earnest nod to show he was listening, Peter continued. “But it wasn’t always like that. It used to be: Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge, and so on. And I like that one better because it acknowledges the fact that Jedi do have emotions like everyone else, too, right? I think that’s important! And this whole black-and-white view of ‘There’s no emotion whatsoever’ makes me so mad!”

He was gesticulating wildly, cheeks reddening with fervor as he spoke.

“Putting aside how hypocritical the whole thing sounds, you can’t make people think that having emotions will put them on a direct path to the Dark side when so much of the goodness of the Good side comes from how much they care. It’s all about controlling those emotions enough to not make bad decisions based on them but – Why can’t there be peace with emotion? By giving their Padawans the feeling that they’re in the wrong for being… well, for being people they just make it so much easier for them to fall to the Dark side!”

“It just – it makes me mad how black-and-white they want to make the world seem. And by doing that they start lying to themselves and to their students and what good does a code do when it’s impossible to hold yourself to it? You can’t just go around telling people there’s no Death but the Force when that is, objectively, a lie. Whereas Death, yet the Force acknowledges that people die but gives you the closure of knowing where you’ll find them again and the belief that they’re still with you, somehow. I think … I think that’s beautiful.” Once he was done he slumped together on his chair.

“Feeling better now?” Tony asked, reaching out to pat the top of his head.

“Yeah, a little,” he sighed, “I’m annoyed that we even argued about it but I also don’t like how he wouldn’t even listen to my point of view, ya know?”

“Well, did you listen to his side?”

“I mean,” Peter blinked up at him sheepishly, “Kinda?” The corners of his lips tugged upwards and he gave a shrug, “Maybe not as much as I should have,” he admitted with a sigh. They fell silent for a moment, Tony giving Peter the time to work through the wall his mind had built up.

“Guess I’m gonna text him an apology for not listening and that it’s okay that we have different opinions.”

“Atta boy!” Tony grinned at him and while he knew none of Peter’s maturity was his doing, his heart still swelled with pride of how good Peter was.

“Can we watch Star Wars now?”

“You got your homework done?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Hungry?”

He laughed, exasperated, “Nothing some popcorn couldn’t fix.”

Tony smiled, then sobered and gave him a once over. “You okay?”

Peter nodded, a lone strand of curl bobbing back and forth, smile soft and true. “Yeah.”

Well, that settled it. He clapped his hands once and got up from his chair in a swift motion. “Then let’s watch... What comes after Episode six?”

“Episode one!” Peter jumped up, grabbing his wrist like a child pulling their parent towards a candy store, “You’ll finally meet Anakin. And honestly that’s exactly my point! Maybe if they hadn’t told him that all emotion is bad –“

He let himself be dragged upstairs and listened to him rambling over the Jedi code and he realized, in that instant, that he was truly, irrevocably happy.

--

iii.

“I cannot believe I let you put me into this,” he complained, his voice breathy and rough.

Peter pulled on his white robe and fastened his light saber in its holder for the umpteenth time. “To be fair, you were the one who wanted a mask. I wanted you to go as Obi Wan.”

“He is blond, Peter,” he shot back like he had the last hundred times they’d had this conversation. He looked around through the dark lenses of his mask, the HUD he had installed blinking up to scour the crowd for possible threads, and sighed, “I miss the days where I was oblivious to Star Wars and didn’t have an annoying teenager dragging me to these things.”

“No, you don’t.”

He was glad the mask hid his smile at the easy banter. It was bad enough Peter knew exactly how wrapped around his little finger he was, he didn’t have to show it time and time again.

“Okay, I don’t. But you still owe me one.”

“But Mr. Sta-a-ark,” he said, dragging his last name for at least two more syllables than it had and looking as pitiful as if he’d actually just lost his hand, “I’m already being punished enough. We’re going to MOMA next semester.”

Despite himself, Tony could feel the fondness shine through as he chuckled, “Excuse me, are you actually voicing dislike in something? Are you actually my Peter Parker or have you officially become a rebel now?”

The kid giggled, honest to god giggled, and shrugged, “Guess there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Mr. Stark. I do dislike things!”

“Really? Name three.” He raised an unimpressed eyebrow, leveling Peter with a glare before realizing that the gesture was completely lost in his costume. Not even the tone translated. He really needed to figure something out for that next time. He couldn’t have his natural charm get lost in the Dark side.

The thought made him stop dead in his tracks – thankfully still unseen by the Jedi next to him. Next time? He hated this costume with a passion why would he consider wearing it again?

Unbeknownst to the inner whirlwind that were his thoughts, Peter actually answered his question after floundering for a bit.

“Well, I don’t like bad people. And hurricanes. And MOMA. Even though, MOMA really never did anything to me, I’d just rather go somewhere else y’know. I mean, it’ll probably be kinda nice anyway? So yeah, maybe I don’t not like MOMA. But – I still don’t like, uh, racists?”

Ah, yeah, that was why he was actually thinking about a next time in this ridiculous outfit. Because of Peter freaking Parker.

“Those are all very good things to dislike, Mr. Parker, but I was actually hoping that all people with a little decency and common sense disliked those things,” he teased. “Just admit that you do not have a single mean bone in your body and that it’s physically impossible for you to dislike anything.”

“That’s not –“

“I love your cosplay, man!” some guy in a badly made Yoda costume whose ears were precariously close to falling off the side of his head and were only held in place by a few strands of grey fuzz interrupted him and the disturbance would have annoyed Tony had Peter’s face not started positively lighting up at the compliment.

“Thank you!” he replied easily with a face splitting grin, “I love yours, too. What’d you use to make the ears?”

“Just papier-mâché”, Yoda replied, obviously taken aback by the interest in his own costume by someone with an obviously home-made light saber. He seemed excited, though, and started rambling about something until he let his eyes wander to the side and took in Tony’s appearance for the first time.

“Oh my god,” he gasped, yes, gasped, and gaped at him like a fish pulled out of water, “That is the best father and son costume ever! Can I take a picture of the two of you?”

And before Tony could so much as utter a word, Peter had already nodded his consent and leaned against him with a huge grin on his face and the other kid was fumbling for his phone and started snapping pictures of them. And then a selfie, because of course.

“Is this real life?” he breathed out almost silently.

“It might just be fantasy,” his sassy AI replied instantly, earning him another gasp and round of big, wide eyes from Yoda.

“Did your mask just reply to you? And did the eyes light up? How did you do that?”

“It’s just a, uh,” very high-tech AI system that was talking back to him, “it’s like Google glasses.” He cringed internally and could feel more than see Peter snicker against his side.

“Oh, like the ones Tony Stark always wears?”

By now Peter was having to work so hard on holding back his laughter that he had gone almost rigid, grinning from ear to ear and happily answering for him. “Yes, yes, Tony Stark is totally wearing Google glasses.”

“Ah, well, I think yours are cooler anyway. I mean you’d never find Tony Stark at the Star Wars midnight premiere.”

Oh, don’t I wish, he thought, ruefully imagining how comfortable he could be on his own couch right now.

Peter, though, Peter was loving this which made him reconsider his earlier statement about the mean bones in his body.  

“Yeah, you’re way cooler than Tony Stark. Right, dad?”

Oh for goodness sake. That sassy dad should not do the things to his heart that it was currently doing. That could not be healthy.

“Sure,” he cleared his throat to get rid of the pesky emotions in there, “I mean, Tony Stark is a pretty cool guy but, uh, yeah, so much cooler.”

And, as if someone had heard his prayers, the doors to the movie theater were opened and a reverent murmur went through the crowd before people – droids and aliens, Jedi and Sith alike – started wandering in and taking their places and finally, finally the thing they were actually here to see could begin.

Tony would complain about that day to anyone who would listen (and to some, like Pepper, who wouldn’t) but when Peter sent him one of the pictures the Yoda guy had taken, he framed it and put it up next to the picture of him and Rhodey proudly presenting Dum-E in his lab.

Until, of course, when he broke it in a moment of uncontrollable grief because looking at all he used to have just hurt too dang much.

--

iv.

“You coming, kiddo?”

The voice came out of nowhere, startling him so much he almost toppled over the front porch’s wooden railing he was leaning against.

“Wha-“ he whirled around and his heart simultaneously sang and sank, “Oh, it’s just you.”  

“Yeah, just me. Sorry to disappoint.” The quip fell from his lips easily but his mentor’s dark eyes shone with concern. Somehow that made the lump in his stomach grow even heavier.

“That’s not – I mean, uh, I’m not –“ he stumbled over his words, cringing at how high-pitched his voice sounded even to his own ears, “Sorry. I’m –“

He stopped midsentence when he realized that he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say and just shrugged, coupled with a small smile that was definitely fake and evidently did not convince Mr. Stark of anything.

He was still coming closer, slowly and careful of the shiny prosthetic that sat where his arm used to be.

The image made Peter sick and he tried to focus on his face instead. There were a few more wrinkles than he remembered, especially around his eyes and mouth – from laughing no doubt. He was sporting more grey hair, too, and he looked comfortable in his dark blue cardigan where he used to wear suits or band shirts. He looked exactly like someone who lived happily in a lake house.

“You okay, squirt?”

He snapped out of his spiraling thoughts and, on reflex, started nodding.

“See,” he stopped when he was next to him and leaned against the railing, too, facing Peter who turned to face the small boat that was moving ever so slightly with the lake’s small ripples. “I don’t believe you.”

Huh.

“You’re not okay.” It was a statement, leaving no room for him to argue.

“But –“ He was cut off and a part of him was glad for it because what was he going to say anyway? He was a bad liar and Mr. Stark good at reading him. That, at least, was something that hadn’t changed.

“None of us are really okay and that’s okay,” Mr. Stark said and turned to watch the lake now, too. “Or so I’ve been told repeatedly. But, as I’ve also been reliably informed, we have to talk to each other to get better.”

He shrugged and crossed his arms in front of his chest, tugging both hands under his arm-pits to keep them from shaking.

“No talking, I take it?”

He shrugged again.

“Would you let me hug you?”

His head snapped up instantly. The question came as a surprise but sounded honest and hesitant and attentive and it made his head spin. But, when he took a moment to think about it, he ended up nodding. He didn’t think there was a whole lot he would refuse the man for a while.

Almost immediately he was being wrapped into a strong healthy arm and pulled close until Mr. Stark could bury his face in his hair and take in a deep breath. He couldn’t help but notice how heavily his mentor was leaning against the railing while holding him but he also noticed how his entire body seemed to loosen as the hug went on, how tension and worry slowly sept out of his stance.

Peter noticed the same for himself, too, and somehow that made him want to cry.

The arm around him was steady and it held him together when everything had seemed to fall apart and his head was spinning and he felt his eyes tear up and his heart beat speed up and he suddenly wished that he could stay here forever.

Which was ridiculous. Mr. Stark just wanted to give him a quick hug and go on with his day. He couldn’t know how liberating his touch felt, how cared for and valued and loved Peter felt just by being in his arms and he couldn’t just tell him. He couldn’t –

But it felt so nice.

“Hey, hey, bud,” Mr. Stark sounded worried and it felt like he wanted to pull away and Peter’s breaths started coming in quicker at the thought. There was a sound somewhere in the back of his throat and Mr. Stark stopped pulling away but still loosened his grip.

“It’s okay, kiddo,” he shushed him and Peter had to swallow down a sob because this was getting ridiculous but it felt so nice, “It’s gonna be okay, I promise. It’s gonna be okay.”

After a moment he had caught himself enough to not start breaking down and gave a nod. “I’m –“ he sniffed and whispered, “Thank … Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

For a moment it seemed like his mentor wasn’t going to say anything but then he gave a small smile and pulled him into his side instead. “Anytime, kiddo. Now let’s watch Rogue One. The Force is telling me it’s time for a high stakes-tragedy-comfort movie.”

Despite himself, Peter let out a wet giggle. “There’s never a wrong time for Star Wars, Mr. Stark.”

“I know, I know. It’s tradition. Or so you keep telling me,” he said and the fondness in his voice almost made Peter cry again.

He didn’t, though.

They went back into the empty lake house – May, Pepper and Morgan were having a girls day apparently – made themselves comfortable on the big couch and put on the movie as if they had never done anything else. They moved like a well-oiled machine, like a team that had been working together forever.

Peter was curled into Mr. Stark’s side and his thumb was constantly caressing his knee and it felt wonderful. It felt like home.

The lump in his throat never left.

Somehow it kept growing with every passing minute and with it the loneliness and while he felt right at home it also felt like he shouldn’t. His body felt out of place, as if all the pieces of him had never truly reintegrated, leaving him with holes in his being that he wasn’t sure how to fill.

He watched Chirrut Îmwe blindly walk across battlefields and single-handedly eliminate an entire garrison, trusting the Force to keep him safe and the blazing desire for that kind of certainty hit him unaware.

Maybe that was the whole problem, he realized slowly, as he watched Galen’s message to his daughter and that was when the first tear fell, silent and painful.

Ever since he had come back barely anything had seemed certain anymore. There had been things he had believed to be unchangeable but then a mad Titan had snapped his fingers and his beliefs had turned into dust alongside his body and half the universe and then he had come back and everything had been different and even things that appeared to be the same just weren’t.

May had been gone, too. They still loved each other the same way they always had. Unconditionally. Unquestioningly. Easy. She never had to miss him, never faced a world without him in it. She was the only constant he could claim but everything else –

He couldn’t understand how it had been five years and Mr. Stark had a wife and a kid and a lake house and how he could have still missed him with all that. How he could’ve even had the time. Why would he miss Peter of all people? And, and…

Mr. Stark’s affection was different now. Fiercer, gentler, more… more parental. Or maybe it wasn’t different but he was more open with it. He looked at him the way he looked at Morgan and he couldn’t make sense of that. He couldn’t.

Why would anyone miss me?

He kept circling back to the same question.

Whywhywhywhy- Why me?

He didn’t notice he started full on crying until suddenly the screen in front of him was blurry and his cheeks were wet and his breaths came in rough. He tried to breathe through it, to keep his body calm and steady so Mr. Stark wouldn’t notice but it made his lungs feel like they were on fire trying to keep it all in.

As if he had read his thoughts Mr. Stark’s hand moved up from where it had been resting on his knee and started rubbing slow circles into his scalp. He didn’t move otherwise, made no attempt to pull away and when he spoke his voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Did he? He knew if he started talking, he’d start spiraling and he’d lose the last ounce of self-control he was clinging to. He didn’t want that.

He shook his head, but his body started shaking more violently anyway when he couldn’t breathe through the sobs anymore.

“Shh, that’s okay, buddy, that’s fine,” Mr. Stark murmured, “But stop trying to bite down on your tears. I know how much that hurts. It’s okay. Let it out. I’m here.”

He kept talking – quietly, soothingly, calmly – and at some point Peter’s body decided to listen and he stopped trying to keep quiet and when the first sob broke through his lips he buried his head in Mr. Stark’s stomach and let himself cry.

It hurt and more often than not Mr. Stark had to remind him to slow down his breathing so the oxygen could reach his brain and it didn’t seem to ever stop. But it was also freeing.

Every sob that tore through him gave voice to a pain he had buried inside like needles in his soul that he was pulling out one after the other. For the first time since he had come back he felt like he could breathe again.

His lungs were finally uncurling fully, the weight that had been sitting on his ribcage was gone. He could breathe and at first he gulped in the air like someone pulled from certain death through drowning. He felt like he had been suffocating for weeks and this was the first time someone had pulled his head above water again.

“Slowly, squirt, slowly. Breathe nice and slowly, the air’s not going anywhere, I promise.”

And if Mr. Stark promised to keep his head above water it must be right. After all, Mr. Stark always kept his promises.

They didn’t exchange anything other than those small reassurances and soothings until the end of the movie. And Peter shed a few tears when the inevitable happened but he was tired and cried out and so emotionally drained he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to feel again.

Still, when Princess Leia appeared on the screen he felt the same flutter of hope in his chest that he always felt when he watched it and his soul settled.

“Hope,” she said on screen and the single syllable word echoed through his body, spreading like a bonfire and melting places that had been numb for days.  

Everything was going to be okay.

When the credits started rolling, that’s when Mr. Stark started talking again starting with a cough to clear his throat that sounded like he had been crying, too.

“I know you may not want to talk about it, Pete, but I feel like we should.” He sighed and he sounded sad and strong at the same time. More importantly, though, he never stopped running his fingers through his hair. “You may not have heard but I’m a responsible adult now. Someone who makes kids talk about their problems.”

Peter snorted and Mr. Stark gave a chuckle.

“Granted, Morgan’s tears are usually about whether or not we’re letting her have that second juice pop but we do talk about that.”

“You give her the juice pop, don’t you?” His voice was scratchy but Mr. Stark didn’t comment on that. He laughed quietly.

“It depends, honestly. On whether or not Pepper is around when the tantrum starts.”

“You’re a great dad to her,” he whispered in reply and if he had thought he had calmed down just half a minute earlier then his heart felt like splitting open again now. He couldn’t put the finger on it, didn’t want to admit to himself that it was jealousy of the time they had that he would never get. He hated himself for thinking about it. If anyone deserved a family it was Mr. Stark and Morgan was the sweetest child. It was just –

Morgan belonged with her family, she was a Stark through and through – stubbornness and smarts and all. And Mr. Stark belonged with Pepper and his daughter, too. He knew that. He wanted that for them.

He just – he had thought that he had kind of belonged with Mr. Stark, too, but how could he now that he had been gone for five years? How could he ever belong anywhere ever again?

“As they say; practice makes perfect,” Mr. Stark spoke, completely oblivious to Peter’s thoughts, “Guess it gets easier the second time around.”

For a moment he forgot to spiral into self-doubt and angst and stopped. A Second… Second time? Huh?

As if he sensed the wordless question, his mentor pulled him closer and buried his face in his hair again. It seemed to soothe him as much as it calmed Peter. He seemed comfortable this close. Happy, at home.

“See, squirt, I know that I didn’t raise you. I would never take that honor and privilege from May and your Uncle Ben and your parents. They made you in the person you were when I met you and that person was already better than anything I could have ever hoped to achieve. But then,” he paused as if unsure how to continue, “We did meet and I did get the honor of being in your life, of mentoring you, of caring for you. I made a lot of mistakes at first and – My biggest mistake was trying to keep you at arm’s length.”

“I don’t – I don’t understand,” Peter whispered, pushing himself up far enough to meet his mentor’s eyes that were glistening with unshed tears. His gaze softened even more when he saw his own tear stained cheeks and red rimmed eyes and there was a shadow of anguish and a spark of love in them.

“I know,” he sighed, never breaking eye contact but shifting them into a more comfortable position, “You can’t understand because I never told you. Not really. But, Peter, you have to know, that you’re my kid. You are as much my kid as Morgan is. You made me want to be a dad, made me want to prove that I could because I wanted to be one to you and I didn’t want to fail you. And –“ he stopped and a shudder went through his body, “And then I did. I failed you and I – I never forgave myself for that. And I never stopped missing you. God, I missed you so much, Pete.”

But … “Why would you… Why me?”

“Because, Peter. Because you’re my boy and I love you and the world was so much darker without you in it and because every awful moment would’ve been less awful with you and every good moment would’ve been perfect. I – I kept going, I went on because I had to. Because there were Pepper and Rhodey and then Morgan. I had to keep going but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you every single second of every single day.”

“I’m scared that I don’t belong anymore. That I don’t belong anywhere anymore,” he admitted finally. The shameful confession uttered so quietly that the words almost got lost in his mentor’s heavy breaths on his cheeks.

“Oh,” Mr. Stark looked at him stunned, like he had grown a second head for a good moment before leaning forward and pulling him back in, holding him tighter than he had ever held him. Both arms folding across his back with the prosthetic cutting into his skin but it didn’t matter, it didn’t. Because he felt held together in place, in a place where he belonged and where he was wanted. He was being anchored and kept from drifting off into the infinite vastness of space and he was so incredibly grateful.

“You belong here, kiddo,” he took in the fierce words in his ear, let them run down his back and warm him like a hot shower after a cold day. “You belong with me and you belong with May. You belong in Queens and you belong here, in this lake house that has been planned with your bedroom in mind. You belong with your family and, for as long as you let me, I will never let you go ever again.”

He cried some more after that – cried himself to sleep that night in fact – but Mr. Stark was there the whole time, holding him, whispering reassurances and tickling a wet smile out of him eventually. The next day was a little bit better. The self- doubt didn’t evaporate, didn’t leave right away.

Some days were worse than others, some were better. Some the voices in his head had him going mad with why’s and what-if’s and some days he couldn’t even hear them over Morgan’s giggles and May’s bad jokes and Mr. Stark lecturing Dum-E.

Coming back wasn’t easy by any means and it did take a while but a couple of weeks later, he jumped out of Happy’s new SUV, running up to the front porch and flying into Mr. Stark’s waiting arms, and his thoughts hummed happily with only one thought.

I’m home.

[killervibe]

Cold Sub Zero Heart Breaker (By Your Own Design)

So, of course, I had this giant big Valentine’s Day fic planned for killervibe that did not go the way I had wanted it to. So here’s my last-minute new fic to fill in for the months of planning I wasted. Oops. 

Killervibe fic for Killervibe Valentine’s 2020! 

I highly recommend listening to Frozen Heart by The Hawk in Paris. The fic title comes from its lyrics! 

Rated: M

Summary: Halfway through his Korean fried chicken, Cisco licked the sauce off his thumb and acknowledged the elephant in the room.

“...Did you get….heartbroken?”

Frost scowled. “No.”

~.~ 

“Hey.” Cisco dropped a bag of food in Frost’s lap. “Got you something.”

She stared down at it, stunned. “I didn’t order anything.”

“I know.” Cisco shrugged, dragging a chair over.

He pulled out the takeout carton from his own bag, and the two ate silently together, their legs propped up on each other’s seat.

Halfway through his Korean fried chicken, Cisco licked the sauce off his thumb and acknowledged the elephant in the room. “...Did you get….heartbroken?”

Frost scowled. “No.”

Cisco blinked, taken aback. “—No?”

It seemed like it. Cisco wasn’t around Central City last Valentine’s Day, but he had heard the story from the rest. Frost was all over the holiday, dressed up in reds and cutting out paper hearts with crazy glue. He rose his eyebrows at Barry when he'd explained it all, not exactly able to say he’d seen that coming.

Today he’d gotten to witness it with his own eyes. Frost had begged Caitlin for the day, wearing red nail polish and handing out snarky valentines to their friends in Star Labs, humming The Beatles.

Or at least, she was.

In a quick turnaround, Frost had lashed out, tearing down the decorations and audibly gagging at Barry and Iris’ lovey-dovey cuteness.

Ralph tried to approach her a little over an hour ago, only to quickly retreat, telling Cisco her mood was beyond sour.

She had mellowed out after their meta fight, seemingly needing to have gotten her hands dirty, but refused to even talk or hear about anything to do with love. Now she was quiet, sitting at Caitlin’s chair in the Cortex. Sad, almost. It was a new look for her. Cisco had thought something must’ve happened.

“...Are you sure?”

Grant it, Cisco wouldn’t have a clue who Frost would be heartbroken over.

She threw her used napkin behind her.

“You missed the trash,” Cisco pointed out.

“So?”

Cisco swallowed. He had to choose his battles.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Fine!” She stood up, already ready to rant. Cisco’s eyes widened, not expecting to be given a front-row seat to a Frost lament. “I’m at Jitters, and they’re doing this 30% strawberry syrup special for all of their drinks. I order the Killer Frost with it—”

“Of course you do.”

“—And as I’m mixing it evenly into the drink, it hits me. It freakin’ hits me!”

Cisco leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “What does?”

“I have no business participating in this heteronormative commercialized holiday bullshit! Screw February 14th! It’s a sham! Hot garbage!” Her hands misted at her sides. She paced the room. “You know what—Oh my god.” She stopped abruptly, as Cisco tried his best to follow along. “Here I am trying to live a life. Like, I’m fricken’ trying, right? Caity says I’m doing okay but I’d give myself a D on a report card.”

“Oh come on,” Cisco interrupted. “That’s not fair.”

“It is,” she snapped. “Because I realized the most—Ugh, stupid Debbie.”

“Wait.” Cisco frowned. “...Ralph’s mom?”

She nodded, rolling her eyes and threw an ice dagger at the wall. Cisco watched with growing concern, his plastic fork still hanging from his mouth as she closed her eyes and exhaled. She breathed, and the frost receded back into her palms.

“I’m chill,” she said.

“You good?” Cisco squeaked.

“Yeah. I’m good. I’m fine. It’s cool.”

“...Okay.” Cisco smiled at her, a little uncertain. “I’m glad I could help.” He looked down at the rest of his meal and popped the second to the last piece into his mouth. He glanced back at her, noticing the sudden silence on her part, and immediately stopped chewing.

Frost was looking at him. Like, right at him. Intimate eye contact. No break.

Cisco squirmed under her intense scrutiny. “What are you staring at?” There was still chicken in his mouth.

“Let’s have sex.”

Cisco almost choked. He heaved as chicken skin scraped down the wrong tube of his throat, banging his arm against the table as he scrambled for water. “—Why?”

“I want life experiences. Sex is usually an important part of life—”

“—Not for everyone!” he gasped out.

“And I’m trying to have some life experiences and Caity seems to like you so I don’t think she’d be too mad.” She paused, checking him out. “You’re not bad to look at either.”

Cisco has forgotten how to breathe, frozen still like a deer in the headlights.

Frost hesitated for the first time since bringing it up, her confident tone cracking. She wrung her hands, biting her lip. “Also, like. You like me, right? I mean you tolerate me, so.”

“Of course I like you,” he said automatically, a touch incredulous, and it came out softer than the volume in which he was thinking. His brain rebooted. Or maybe his heart. Something integral to his body reacted in defence mode whenever Caitlin had the slightest doubt of his love for her. Frost included. But this was a whole other level, holy frack. Cisco was going to have a heart attack. Like seriously. Those were heart palpitations.

He got up stiffly, excusing himself.

He breached to a quiet beach in Barbados, looked up at the blue sunny sky and screamed. A startled crab scurried away from the sand underneath his running shoes.

Cisco let out a breath, muttering to himself. “Okay. Okay. Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay.”

He breached back into the hallway, flicking back the hair from his eyes and casually walked back in, only mildly sweaty. He hoped she couldn’t hear his heart thumping away.

“Heeeey,” he gave her a pathetic wave.

“‘Sup.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “So are we doing this or not?” She finally picked up her litter, stuffing it into her bra. “Look it doesn’t have to be you. I can ask Norvock. He’s my backup plan—“

“—Hell no!”

She seemed taken aback by his vehemence. “What?”

“You’re not allowed to ask anyone else, okay?” Cisco stepped closer.

“I’m not allowed?”

“Not Chester P. Runk. Not Norvock,” he spat out the name, mouth twisting in distaste. “Or that guy at the candy store you like from across the street.”

His fear was gone, the panic was over. Unexpected? Yes. Nerve-wracking? Oh, definitely. But he was so doing this.

Good lord, Cisco could feel the onset of a migraine at the thought of all the things that could go wrong if she said this to anybody else. What was Frost thinking? Snake eye? Ralph vouched for him last time he last appeared, but he remembered the way he leered at Caitlin in that bar. There’s no telling she’d be treated right.

If Frost wanted sex then by god Cisco was going to give her some good sex and she would not be getting it from any other means. Because Frost’s body was Caitlin’s body, and he could only guess Caitlin was taking a very deep nap to not be awake right now and intervene. So yeah. Screw that.

He jammed his finger at her, raising his voice. “If you’re going to be asking anyone for sex around here on Valentine’s Day, no less, it’s going to be me.”

Frost blinked down at his pokey finger for a moment, dumbfounded as Cisco seethed. She met his steely eyes, a pleased smirk pulling up at her lips. She had no idea how she managed to rile him up this way. She knew he was protective over her, but there was that and then there was this. Killer Frost may be a flirt, but she had no real experience with men. Even then, there was no denying this.

This was the exposure of Cisco’s layered jealousy over Caitlin or herself or both—who the fuck cared. It was amusing.

“So that’s a yes.”

“Yes, that’s a yes,” he shot back. He rolled back his shoulders. “I’ll see you at 8.”

Frost licked her lips. Somehow, Cisco was only a breath away. Their eyes had yet to look at anything else than each other. “Make that 9. I watch Wheel of Fortune.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

  ❄️❤️❄️

 It’s nine on the dot and Cisco had brought a basket of anything and everything romantic he could get his hands on. Roses, candles, chocolates, strawberries, condoms, wine, his Bluetooth speaker, bubbles, lingerie, breath mints, a mini radiator. Everything.

Frost pawned through the basket and took out the bubbles. “Why?”

Cisco yanked them out of her grasp, stuffing it back into the basket. “Forget those.”

She pulled out the thong. “Was this Kamilla’s?”

“No.”

She shrugged and ripped into the heart candy as he struck a match, setting down flickering flames around the room.

She watched as he scattered the roses around Caitlin’s bed. “Is this necessary?”

Cisco blew a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Do you want the Valentine’s Day experience or not?”

Frost didn’t really have a response to that. After a good amount of setting up the scene to look straight out of a Netflix romance, Cisco queued up a playlist and appraised his work.

“Dim the lights,” Frost said. The candles wouldn’t have much effect otherwise. Cisco did, and it became dark but for the glowing candlelight.

Frost removed her sweatshirt over her head and waited expectantly for Cisco to strip.

He took off his shoes and toyed at the button of his cardigan.

Frost climbed over to where he sat gingerly on the bed, unbuttoning the rest of it when his hands failed to continue. She removed the clothing from down his shoulders, and he shivered when her skin moved over his bare arms.

“Are you okay?” she asked him. It was gentler than he was used to hearing her talk. “How are we starting this?”

Cisco gave her a look. “I’m going to kiss you. We’ll start from there.”

Frost laid down, her silver hair flattening against her pillow as she stared up at the ceiling. “Okay.”

Cisco hooked a leg over her, still maintaining a considerable amount of space between them.

He thought it would be best to ease into it. Some touching, first. It was hard to just jump right in. It was weird how receptive Frost was being. Cisco’s mind floated away, thinking back to this afternoon. What did she mean exactly, when she had said he was not bad to look at. Did she like him, this entire time? It was...Weird. To think about. 

Was that what this was? Frost has had her moments. She’s blunt, sarcastic, cold-blooded by nature. But she’s not unfeeling, either. There’s always been something about her motivations that had struck Cisco odd. She thought of things most people didn’t. She followed her gut and didn’t seem too scared to die. Not like the rest of them, at least. But even that was untrue. She was the flightiest of them all, the most explosive and unpredictable. And what was that from, if not from the unrest of her own self? It made Cisco wonder. And what the hell happened with Debbie? Should he even ask?

Frost’s eyes popped open. “If you're just going to hover over me like that can you at least change the playlist?”

Cisco frowned, interrupted from his internal monologue. “Do you not like Michael Bublé?”

She twitched her nose. “Not really.”

He sighed and got up, changing the playlist to an R&B track suggested by Spotify’s romance playlist. “Better?”

“I guess.”

They resumed their positions, Cisco taking the time to drink her in. There were so many ways she resembled Caitlin. Especially with her eyes closed. Caitlin would never wear the bold blue lipstick, but her face was all the same. Kind, soft. Gentle. Beautiful. He thumbed the side of her cheek, lost in reflection, running his finger over her lip. Frost stilled under his touch.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he murmured, leaning in.

He stopped millimetres from her mouth just as memories of Earth 2 suddenly bombarded his brain. He had prepared himself up to this moment the best he could that he’d be sleeping with Frost. But somehow it had slipped his mind that this was the same woman who could kill with a kiss.

“What?” she mumbled at his stalling.

“Frost…”

“What?”

“Have you ever kissed someone before?”

Her silence was concerning.

He pulled back, alarmed.

She sat up. “Once.” She winced. “When I tried to kill Barry. You threw me off of him.”

To quote John Mulaney, now they didn't have time to unpack all that.

“So you’re saying you cannot say with confidence this won’t kill me.”

“I won’t kill you,” she said. But she was lacking the confidence. Frost swore lightly. “This is ridiculous.” She grabbed his arm and pressed his wrist to her lips. Her mouth was cool, wet. But there was no ice in his veins. She raised an eyebrow as if to say see?

Cisco’s next words died on his tongue, eyes wide as she peppered kisses up to the crook of his elbow, almost aggressively.

He pulled his hand away and inspected it. Yeah, it was cold. The sensation tingled. But it wasn’t that bad.

“If it makes you feel better, you can avoid my mouth. We don’t need to kiss to have sex,” she said wryly. “I’m not a virgin.”

Cisco’s right eye twitched. “—Okay.” Compartmentalize. He frowned at himself. “Didn't you just say…?”

“It was never any good,” she muttered defensively. “Never with anyone who ever cared about me.”

Cisco softened, playing with her hair. He worried he was way over his head. “Then don’t you want to be kissed?”

Frost worried her lip, turning away. “I don’t know. Sure.” She tugged at the hem of his t-shirt, trying to undress him. “If you think it’ll be good.”

“Wait,” Cisco said. Something about this was off. Really off.

“What?” she whined.

He studied her. She stared back like it was just another ordinary spat in the Cortex at Star Labs. Cisco sighed, changing his mind. Frost seemed to be wanting to get over the chatting and move onto the next step already.

“Fine, let’s do this,” he said, and unbuckled his belt, helping Frost out of her t-shirt. He offered to help with her jeans but she waved him off, yanking her skinny light wash by the ankles herself until she was only in her underwear. He rolled over, thinking that this might work out better if Frost felt more in control. She straddled his thighs and reached into her bra to remove the used napkin from their lunch.

Cisco made a face. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.” He was lucky he could even manage the snark. 

It was hard to keep his breathing even. He’d never seen this much of her before, obviously. Her pale skin, her stomach, her creamy thighs. Silvery hair cascading down her back in waves.

She was paler than he’d thought. Her eyes had lost the spooky glow they used to take some years ago, and her voice no longer went two-toned, something Cisco was somewhat thankful for. He couldn’t imagine hearing her words bounce and echo off these walls. It made him uncomfortable, back when Frost first appeared. The overlapping layer, like Caitlin was trapped inside when Frost took over, speaking over her louder, colder, with more command.

Now, Cisco closed his eyes and he heard her voice. She was saying something, but Cisco wasn’t listening, Reevena’s Still Dreaming floating in from his speaker in low pulses. Her hands roamed down his shoulders, and chest as she explored and his goosebumps unsheathed.

He lost himself in the first kiss and grabbed onto her hair. It was kind of better than he’d ever imagined. Caitlin sighed into his mouth, moving closer. Cisco tipped his head back against the backboard, cupping her neck as he drew her to him. Caitlin’s lips and her body and her skin and her perfume tickling his nose. It was better than he’d imagined. It was everything he’d secretly dreamed.

Caitlin.

“UNCLE!” Cisco cried, shimmying out from underneath her. “Oh my god. I’m sorry, but, uncle. Frost. I’m sorry. I can’t.” He reached for his shirt, hastily pulling it back over his head.

Frost ran a hand through her tangled hair. “...Why not?”

She didn’t seem hurt. Confused, maybe.

It was hard for Cisco to explain it because he hadn’t been able to articulate the thought himself properly until only a few seconds ago. But the truth was simple.

He couldn’t do this.

“Look,” Cisco stared at the duvet cover. Ralph Lauren sheets, high thread count. On discount from the last Cyber Monday sale. He knew that because he was beside her when she added it to her cart on the website.

“Dreamy,” he had said with a tease. “You’ll sleep well.” She had laughed at the time. “I think we’re kidding ourselves thinking we’d be getting any actual sleep nowadays.”

This was Caitlin’s bed. Caitlin’s room. Caitlin’s apartment. And he knew Frost was a part of Caitlin. But, when it came to this? It didn’t matter —His heart panged. Frost deserved to be looked at when he said this. “I’ve imagined doing this before. More than once...The rose petals, the music. Valentine’s Day…”

Frost shot out a candle from her fingertips, listening.

“With Caitlin.”

“You do realize we’re basically two sides of the same person.”

“To you, maybe.” Cisco gave her a small, stiff smile. “Except you’re not. Not to me.”

He grabbed her hand. “I love you, Frost. I do. But it’s because I loved her first.” He searched her eyes. “And I have to know. I really need to know.” He bent down and scooped Frost’s red sweater from off the floor, tugging it over her head, mussing her hair. It stuck out all staticy, and Frost glared at his insistence of returning her to a modest state of dress. “Because you seem unsure of this yourself. What do you get out of this? Do you want me? And you never told me for sure, if Caitlin is okay with this. Like really okay with this.”

“She would’ve stopped me by now if she weren’t.”

Cisco tried not to think too hard about that. “And what about you?”

Frost didn’t reply.

“Because I can’t just do this,” he continued. “Have sex with you. If it’s not with her. And I can’t call it making love to you if it’s because you have no better option. This wouldn’t just be some holiday romp for me. And I don’t want you going elsewhere for this. But I think you’ll have to if it’s what you really want.” There was no more saliva in his mouth, but he said his piece.“Just please don’t tell me about it.”

She bunched the covers around her waist, covering her bare legs as she retrieved his basket. She broke into the wine, pouring out a glass silently and handed it to him over the messy sheets. He took the drink silently. Taking a careful sip. It was like she could tell he needed the drink.

“I think you're right,” she confessed after a long time. "It’s not what I really want." 

“Oh?”

“I like the idea of Valentine’s Day.” She heaved a big sigh. “I like the concept of having this one great person, that means the world to you. But I like it for other people. It works for them.” Her shoulders drooped. “And I thought—maybe if I threw myself into it...I’d get it. Barry and Iris, Sue and Ralph. Joe and Cecile. There’s just you. And me….” She tilted her head, considering. “Norvock?”

“Please don’t bring Snake Eye into this bedroom.” It was almost a growl.

Frost snorted at the green in his eyes.

“Stop worrying about him. Really there’s just you. And it’s you because—Because it’s what Caitlin feels. And I can feel Caitlin. So I thought maybe...If I tried it, too…”

“Frost.” Cisco squeezed her hand. “It’s okay to not be interested in sex or romance. It’s okay if that’s just not you.”

She sucked in a breath. “I don’t think it is.”

“That’s okay.”

“Okay.”

"Okay." 

Reevena crooned on. 

Frost began to giggle.

He frowned at her, worried. Insulted? “Um.”

She covered her mouth, turning away to muffle her laughter into the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she managed. “I just— I don’t know what I was thinking. Sex!? Making love!? With you?! Oh my god.” She sobered immediately at the look on his face. “I’m sorry, there’s a reason why I’m laughing. I’m not trying to be mean.”

He smiled at her awkwardly, he wasn’t sure why his heart was breaking. “I promise it’s alright.”

“No, because. I was feeling something. And I was acting on it. But it’s not my attraction.” She met his curious gaze and lowered the wine glass from his lips, putting it on the bedside table so that he’d have her whole attention. “It’s hers.”

Cisco’s mouth parted, but nothing came out. His face felt horrendously warm, and he could tell by Frost’s amusement that he was mad red. “Can I speak to her?”

“Yeah,” she said breezily, pausing for what Cisco could only guess is to talk it over with Caitlin telepathically or however. “I think I’ll be absent for every Valentine’s Day from now on.”

Before he could get another word out, Caitlin was blinking at him. Cisco wanted to very kindly melt into her floorboards. “Uhhhh….Hi.”

She stretched, digging her fingertips into the soft sheets, looking particularly unbothered for finding Cisco cozied up in her bed.

“Hi.” She tucked her brown hair behind her ear, eyeing the rose petals and bubble machine.

He knew it looked bad, but he had to excuse himself before this could continue.

The warm salt air of Barbados greeted him once again. He stood in his haphazardly thrown on cardigan and boxers in front of the stretch of the Caribbean Sea. Cisco assumed the crabs did not take his scream any better than the first time, but it was too dark to tell. The seagulls, however, were displeased, shrieking right back at him.

He breached back into her room, kicking at the overkill rose petals, and shutting down the bubble machine once and for all. “Sorry about that.” His voice was hoarse.

“Wow,” Caitlin said with a growing smile, glossing over his little disappearing act altogether. Maybe she could tell how desperately he needed it. “You did a number in here.”

It took a moment for Cisco to realize. “You were awake this entire time, weren’t you?”

“You’re crazy to think I’d have let this actually happen.”

He climbed back onto the bed, and Caitlin moved to make room. It was already so much better, easier. To be half-dressed and making a fool out of himself. As long as it was with her.

“Why?” He stretched back to lean against the pillows. He was aiming for sexy, but he’d take anything above cute. He winked at her. “Want me for yourself?”

Her eyes raked down his body appreciatively. It was slower, more deliberate than Frost had ever done. “Yes.”

Oh.

“If that’s okay,” she added. A bit shyer.

Cisco couldn’t speak. Except he had to. He had so many questions. And the way she was smiling triumphantly at him should be illegal. She held his face in her hands, smoothing out his gobsmacked expression until he smiled at her, helpless but to melt under her touch. The effect, she had. It was dangerous. So dangerous.

“Why?” he said again, his mouth working in contradiction to his brain, that had all but given up on asking. He turned his cheek into her palm.

Caitlin sighed and let him go. “I couldn’t just tell Frost. I had to let her come to her conclusions. And I trusted you. She trusted you. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down either.” She blushed for the first time that evening, looking away. “And to stop and explain meant I’d have to tell you why she was so confused.”

She meant that she’d been suppressing her feelings for him so hard it leaked. What a fact. Cisco forced his brain to assemble back enough to think properly, setting that tidbit aside for later. “...Is Frost going to be okay?”

Caitlin nodded. “More than. She’s relieved, I think. And glad she discovered this with you. I’ve always suspected she was asexual. With her impulse control, she would’ve gone after someone by now if it weren’t the case.”

"What would've happened, then?" 

Caitlin was slow in answer. "I guess we would have had to talk about it. I'm not sure." 

“What happened with Debbie?” Cisco couldn't help but ask. 

Caitlin made a clueless face, shrugging her shoulders. “Hey,” she said, tapping at his knee. “We can talk about Frost at some other time. It’s Valentine’s Day.”

The music and wine glasses and candles still scattered around had yet to serve as nothing else but a constant reminder to them. “That it is.” Cisco smiled at her. “I actually got you a card.”

“Forget the card,” Caitlin surprised him.

She scooted forward, dragging him upright to drape her arms around him in a hug. But it was intimate and warm, his heart beating against the thick material of Frost’s sweater. Caitlin tangled her hand into his hair, much like he had done with Frost, raking her fingernails gently along his scalp. He tried his best not to get drunk off it.

“Tell me what you told Frost,” she whispered against his neck.

There was a lot of incriminating stuff he’d said. “You’re going to need to be more specific.”

She snuck her hands underneath his sweater, tugging it back over his head. He was sure by now he looked like a wreck.

“Mhm.” She was busy kissing his collar bone. It seemed they wouldn’t be leaving the bed anytime soon. Cisco was pretty okay with that. “Something about loving someone first.”

He laughed, flushed. “Oh, that.”

"Yes, that." 

“I love you, Caitlin,” Cisco told her.

She stilled in his arms. Cisco drew back so he could see her face. 

“I love you. Caitlin.”

It must’ve been different—Hearing it now compared to when she was under. Because she held her breath, and curled her fingers into his sweater, pressing herself against his chest. He lowered them back down slowly. Caitlin was practically on top of him, soaking him in. The weight was nice. He could get used to this. 

“How opposed would you be to making good use of your little sex kit?”

“It’s not a sex kit!” he blurted out with a gasp, scandalized.

Caitlin laughed. Loud and freely, wonderful. Cisco would make a thousand sex kits just to hear the sound again.

“Not opposed,” he promised and made good on it. “Not opposed at all.”

❄️❤️❄️

“Say it again,” he whispered in the morning.

“I love you.”

It was Caitlin’s voice, and her words and it was her lips he kissed thereafter. It was Caitlin’s breath that stuttered against his mouth and Caitlin’s lace bra that Frost had borrowed that ended up on the floor. It was Caitlin’s eyes, watching him adoringly and it was her smile that lit him up. It was her cheek, with pillow lines and it was her laugh he got out of her time and again.

[kentuckywrites]

Brainjack: Loud Silence (Part 1)

So @heroicmeep has been writing @deltheor ‘s Sydney’s Brainjack tyrant arc for a while (which is an AMAZING read) and I recently got inspired to write something based off its events.  However, that something grew into twenty four pages where “Pongo” got somewhat involved in things...needless to say, I went OVERBOARD. So this will be two parts long - it was a fun little ride, and now I have feelings.

It felt weird having his comm device turned off. Vandham had given him the all clear to do so - well, actually, he’d taken it out of Pongo’s hands and shut it down himself after he granted Pongo time to take a vacation. Pongo didn’t exactly want a vacation, but Secretary Nagi had gotten wind of how hard he was working and had told him in the most polite terms possible that he was taking a break whether he liked it or not. Pongo hadn’t been given much room to argue.

So halfway through his vacation Pongo flew his Skell over to Oblivia, to the Floating Reef to the far east. He’d packed himself a nice lunch to enjoy while looking out over the continent, and for once he was looking forward to the peace and quiet. It wasn’t that Pongo didn’t enjoy human interaction, but lately his missions with other BLADEs had come with little inconveniences, little mishaps that he had to solve. Broken comm devices, Skells out of gas, teammates arguing, battle tactics thrown to the wind. They all built up after a while. As Pongo exited his Skell, he realized that maybe being forced onto a vacation wasn’t a bad thing after all. 

His plan for vacation had been to explore the continents on his own, get some time alone with his thoughts. He’d packed enough coffee and extra rations to last him a week, maybe a little longer. Pongo knew enough about Mira’s ecosystem that he’d be able to hunt down and scavenge for some food, making good use of the knife Irina had lent him. The blade still felt awkward in his hands, and he preferred using traps whenever possible, but he couldn’t exactly avoid using it. He still had his photon saber and dual guns if things went wrong. Surprisingly, he hadn’t gotten into any dangerous altercations with indigens or Ganglion during his vacation, and he hoped it stayed that way.

Pongo sat down at the edge of the Floating Reef, setting down his lunch to the side. It was a rare day where Oblivia was shrouded under a layer of clouds, a threat of storms and lightning. He breathed in the Oblivia air, a mixture of moisture and sandy desert metals. If only he could sit here forever, taking in the sights and smells. It was calming in a way he could never admit out loud. He’d be forced on more vacations if he confessed his desires. 

The moment Pongo decided to open up his lunch, his stomach lurched. A rumble pierced his ears and he looked up quickly at the horizon. Was that the beginnings of the electrical storm in the west? That was what he thought, at first, but when he saw no traces of lightning he scowled. His hands pressed into the dry desert ground, rocks imprinting into his palms. He watched with a close eye to see if the horizon would change.

Pongo.

Mira spoke, a whisper that was both distant and too close for comfort. He spoke out loud in response, for there was no one else around to hear his monologuing.

“Mira? Are you alright?”

Something is wrong. I feel their confusion and pain in Caul-dron’avos. They are scared, but why?

Pongo knew Mira was referring to the indigens in Cauldros. “Is something attacking them?”

No, not attacking. But...I think something is there. Something unnatural. 

“The Ganglion?”

No, they have existed in Caul-dron’avos long enough for me to consider them natural. This is artificial in nature, but...I believe this stems from a human presence. 

“A human?” Pongo said, rubbing his chin. His hand lifted sand up from the ground and deposited it on his chin and on his lap, but he paid no mind to it. “Is someone going around and killing indigens?”

No one is dying. But there are many humans there, and they seem...subdued by something. Controlled, almost. 

“Controlled...what in the name of everything living…”

I guess I should have expected you to be just as confused. You are being forced on a vacation, after all, so it is only natural for you to be ignorant of everything happening around you.

“That is not fair!” Pongo cried, “But you have me curious. Perhaps I should go to Cauldros to investigate?”

That might put you in danger.

“Nice to see you caring about me! I can handle myself out there.”

Am I not allowed to care about my vessel despite him being overwritten by a childish and naive personality who has no sense of self preservation?

Pongo chuckled to himself. “Love you too, Mira. Let me know if anything changes out there. I will investigate after I eat.”

Are you telling me you are prioritizing your lunch over rushing headfirst into danger?

“You just called me out on my lack of self preservation, so yes.”

Fuck you. Eat quickly.

Pongo couldn’t help but smirk as he unrolled the wrapping around his sandwich, but deep down he was still shaken about Mira’s warning. What had happened in Cauldros? Were people really being controlled by something, like Mira theorized? He had picked up on the fear in Mira’s voice, almost hidden by its monotonous whisper, and now that same fear was taking root within him. If there were people in danger, he was going to help, vacation be damned. He wouldn’t let Vandham chew him out for this. 

In a few quick minutes Pongo scarfed down the food he’d brought and hopped back into his Skell. Eros’s engines purred as he booted up the flight module, setting course for Cauldros. It would be a long flight over a vast ocean, hardly scenic. Pongo could cut the tension in his cockpit with his knife, and after a few minutes of peaceful flight, he turned on Eros’s radio. The station that came on liked to play Earth music, songs considered classics, old but not forgotten. He recognized the one that came on - IRIS, by the Goo Goo Dolls. What a funny band name. He lost himself to the music for the entire flight to Cauldros, the sky around him shifting into darkness. 

When Pongo finally saw Cauldros on the horizon, he tried to look for any indication that something was wrong. But from the surface, everything was as it should have been. He pushed Eros’s thrusters to go faster, on a direct path to the Adder Byroad. Flying in from the southeast wasn’t the safest way into Cauldros; the sky was always littered with Ganglion Skells patrolling the continent. But he’d had good luck flying past them before. He knew the openings in their defenses.

And so he snuck past, landing in a secluded part of the Byroad. He opened up his cockpit, his nose shriveling up when he smelled the metallic heat of Cauldros. It had been a while since he’d been to Cauldros, and looking upon its barren and lava-filled landscape, it wasn’t hard to remember why. Too many indigens thrived here for his comfort, too many evil schemes, too many disturbing memories. He shivered as his feet hit the ground, his skin tingling under his vest. The heat had never bothered him, but the memories always would.

Pongo double checked his gear before beginning his surveillance, keeping an eye out for any other humans. Everything seemed quiet, but as Pongo kept walking, he discovered things were too quiet. He had at least expected some gerrids on the Byroad, but it was just him. Just Pongo.

...No. No, it wasn’t just him. Something else was here.

He could feel it, but couldn’t see it. Something pressing inside his mind, an oppressive and shadowed force. It felt similar to Mira’s presence, but this wasn’t Mira trying to control him. This was...could it be a Ganglion? A new indigen? Another human? Whatever it was, he could feel its mind crawling around in his own, tiny spiders invading his brain. Pongo clutched his head as the spiders started to bite, pain coursing through his body. He fell to his knees, gritting his teeth, doing everything in his power not to scream, not to draw attention to himself. 

Mira’s voice broke through the pain.

I know what this is. You cannot fight this. You need to give me control.

Its tone was dark, laced with a poisonous rage. Pongo had no choice but to let go, and his vision went white.

~

Mira opened his eyes, letting go of his head and standing himself up. The pain was residing now that Pongo had given him control, and Mira prepared himself to explain.

That was an Art. Brainjack.

Pongo began, his voice an echo inside Mira’s mind. It felt strange to have the roles reversed, for the physical body to belong to Mira instead of Pongo, for Pongo’s voice to be guiding Mira instead of the other way around.

“Yes. If I remember correctly, it can be used by humans who wield knives.” Mira’s voice sounded almost exactly like Pongo’s now that he was in control, but there was still an echo in this form, an otherworldly and commanding force. “You were Brainjacked once. I had to save you. Remember?”

I remember something like that happening. I was having coffee. The man who Brainjacked me...his name was Sydney.

“Right. He got fairly angry that I wiped his attempt from your memory.”

You did WHAT -

“Believe me, you did NOT want to remember what he did to us. Besides, your absolutely childish optimism shut him up quickly afterwards.”

Pongo was quiet for a moment, and Mira took that as a cue to walk, his hand dangling close to his photon saber. 

He said he Brainjacked me because he was bored. I always thought Brainjack only worked on indigens, but...Mira, do you think that he is the one who tried to Brainjack me just then?

Mira’s lips pursed. “I do not want to ignore that possibility, but I do not think Brainjack has that large of a range.”

You are right, its range is fairly small. But you said it felt like a lot of things were being controlled, right?

“...this does not feel right. Hopefully we stumble across a human soon so we can ask what is going on.”

You will maintain control through it all? Are you sure?

Mira rolled his eyes. “Either that or you get immediately Brainjacked the moment you regain control. Best you stay inside for a while.”

Alright. I trust you.

“Like you have a choice,” Mira joked, but when Pongo didn’t respond, he assumed he’d hit a nerve and sighed. He walked on, making a mental note of where Pongo had parked his Skell as he trekked farther into the continent.

With such a high surveillance point, Mira could eventually see other humans in the distance, some clumped together into groups, others traversing the land solo. All of them had weapons drawn. Some of them sparked memories in Mira’s mind - were they friends of Pongo? Had they gone on missions before?

There! We should try and talk to those people down there. Maybe they can tell us what is going on!

Pongo sounded excited, relieved in a way. Mira rolled his eyes, letting one of his hands rest on the hilt of his photon saber. He would’ve preferred if Pongo brought his dual swords instead, but then again, it wasn’t as if Pongo had prepared for any of this.

“Are you an idiot? That is too dangerous,” Mira hissed, “If something tried to Brainjack you before, then it likely tried to Brainjack those humans too. I bet that is why I sensed something off before. They are being controlled by something...someone.”

Controlled by another human, or at least a humanoid who can wield a knife and has been registered with BLADE. No civilians can access Arts.

“What about the Ganglion? Do they have Arts like you do?”

I am not sure. They have their own technology and method of weapon creation, but in my experience, they have nothing like Brainjack. I can only think of one other creature on the planet that can control humans, but -

“The Wanderer-King resides in Noctilum,” Mira finished, “And as far as I can discern, he is still there.”

Right. He hardly ever leaves his cave.

In the midst of their conversation, Mira had failed to notice that the humans down below had spotted him, and were approaching with their guns and melee weapons pointed at him. When he snapped back into reality and saw the humans coming his way, he grit his teeth. 

“Pong’netai-opta, LOOK. Do they look like they harbor good intent?”

Mira drew the photon saber at his side, the blade igniting under his grasp. It hit him that he had only a small grasp of human fighting styles; he knew Arts existed, what some weapons provided in terms of resistance and buffs, but the bar on his hilt labeled TP had almost no meaning to him. He had no time to ask Pongo about it, because when the humans descended upon him, they were quick to act. 

The first human to strike held a javelin between her auburn hands, and when the tip of the blade thrust forward it crackled with colorful electricity, reds and blacks intertwined in twisted harmony. Mira twisted his body to dodge it and immediately put up his photon saber to block the longsword that had attempted to strike him down at the same time as the javelin. He ducked and ran to an open spot to regain his bearings before pressing one of the Arts on the photon saber’s hilt. He cast the blade down in a brilliant show of sea green energy, wisps of light trailing behind and floating around his body, unconscious supports. He managed to hit the longsword user in the shoulder, a well dressed man with sunglasses dark enough to hide his eyes, but it was not a success to be proud of. From Mira’s backside he caught another photon saber wielder activate an Art and run forward, launching his body into a series of front flips, his saber inches away from hitting Mira. He grit his teeth as he stumbled backwards, and yelped when a bullet hit him in the upper arm. Three melee fighters, two ranged maintaining their distance. Mira shook his head. He could take them down, he just had to focus.

The girl with the javelin propelled herself forward by jamming her javelin into the ground and pushing to aim a kick at Mira. She’d taken too long to set herself up and Mira could predict where to go to dodge it and knock her off balance, and he did exactly that. She tumbled to the ground, and when she got herself back up, Mira saw out of the corner of his eye that her gaze was burning red, a strange symbol within her iris. 

Mira, stop!! That is my friend, Aeviann! 

“They are not your friends right now,” Mira said, nearly dodging another swing from the longsword user. A name popped up from Pongo’s memory - Draco - and Mira had to step back in a defensive posture. 

“Stop trying to regain control! You will jeopardize us both!!”

I will not let you hurt them!

A swing, a hit, someone was bleeding now and it wasn’t Mira. Time became irrelevant and he could only feel the hilt of the photon saber in his hand, how it finally connected with its targets, how the dark landscape of Caul-dron’avos was being stained with blue. There was something beautiful about Mira’s rage in that moment, something freeing. He had wanted revenge against the humans not long ago for their savage destruction of his ecosystems, and they’d proven themselves worthy, but some resentment lingered behind. He swung and hit with everything his body had left, but with every hit, his grip on the body kept slipping.

MIRA!! STOP!!

“And just give up?! They would kill us if we stopped defending ourselves,” Mira yelled, realizing just how long the fight had been dragging on, realizing that Pongo was close to regaining control. “Just shut up and let me -”

Mira screamed suddenly as his inner conscious was ripped apart. Pongo was too close to returning to the body, and whoever was Brainjacking these humans was close to taking Pongo’s mind too. Mira had to use the last bit of his strength to stay in control, almost ignoring his surroundings to keep Pongo at bay. But in the end, all he could do was watch Pongo’s mind slip to the front, and the pain erupted tenfold. Mira held on for dear life trying to stop Pongo from being Brainjacked, and through a lens he watched Pongo drop his saber, take every hit that came to him, pleading with his former friends to remember him, to break free of their binds, to remember themselves. 

Of course it didn’t work. 

Pongo took too many hits in the end and the poor body collapsed, and in Pongo’s mind, Mira spat a final curse before their vision went dark.

[versuswhitescar]

Malam Manor

We all grow up with that once upon a time, crap. When you're little, you believe it. Who believes it as an adult? I mean, really? We have smartphones, rumbas, and clap on lights. No one meets a 17-year-old vampire who supposed to be 52. But I have, and I found his tapes by accident. Now I'm living a filliping ounce upon a time that Anne Rice would drool over. If I don't find the f-ing cave his sister is trapped in, I'm going to be enjoying a lot less sunlight for damn sure.

I know if I could figure out the details, I'll find the cave. And the murderer and maybe be spared, or I fail, and I'm the next Elena Gilbert. I sure hope not.

I'm just a damn tutor who needs money for her master's degree. Why did I even think that posting a flyer online was a good idea? Hell, my only tinder date turned out to be a 300 lb guy catfishing for a date to his sister's wedding. I stupidly, no innocently thought I'd get some pimply high school sophomore struggling through R and J and Shakespeare word salad.

Man, was I wrong? Mr. Cain Haywater answered my ad. Normal name for an average guy, right? Well, who the hell names their kid after the first murder in the Bible, but I'm getting off track. My ancient 98 jeep with more rust than metal is not going up the hill to the "Malam Manor." Later I Google it and turns out the word is Latin for bad. I should have asked Siri sooner. Too late, Cain Haywater a ward of the state. Because he's 17 and wicked rich is paying me 50 bucks an hour to help write his family's history.

This house is unusual in ways I can't even begin to describe. Its windows seem to follow you like eyes while I rev up the circle drive. The brick looks like it's from out of the Hogwarts rejection pile. The height makes it at least three floors, and there's a damn covered entry that carriages pulled under in the 19th century. Besides the semi-creepy outsides, even though it looks well maintained, I'm coming here close to 9 pm. Ounce, the sun is down on the hottest July night in history. I should have done a business major instead of English lit. Follow your bliss, my mom said. What does she know she's a nail tech for the last 12 years. She probably has brain damage from the polish fumes.

I can't imagine anyone hears my lame knock at the gigantic door. But I swear to God it seems like a cat or something opened the door. I thought maybe the heat melted my brain, but it looked like a fuzzy ken doll. It darted behind a curtain. Before I could investigate Cain, hold my breath beautiful, Haywater stands ten feet in front of me in his large foyer in black jeans, skin-tight grey shirt with a badass blue tattoo that seems to have a deep center that radiates over his forearm. I'm shook in so many ways I can barely speak "Nyx, Nyx Jackson?" My name never sounded so smooth coming out of any humans mouth ever. That was when my brain should have clicked over to reality that he wasn't human. He hadn't been human since 1989.

Sadly only 2 hours into my best tutoring gig ever, I discovered Cain Haywater was indeed a real vampire. And his beloved twin sister Danielle, Dani, as he referred to her, was just as dead only traped in a watery caved transformed into a rusalka for the last 34 years. I was Cains's last chance at finding her cave and the wort boyfriend a girl could ask for. Jefferson Granton. A 200-year-old vampire that he needed to kill. My life wasn't fair and only made worse by the fact that I'm sure I'm going to fail, and my last meal was crappy ramen.

It was my stomach and too much curiosity that made me start playing with the vintage tape recorder Cain had on the black walnut desk. He heard my growling belly and while he searched for food. I pressed play. Big mistake, I'm not sure where he went to kill the food, but I listened to almost one side of a cassette tape. The quick spark notes, once he came back with cheese, apples, and fancy crackers to catch me, went fast.  

Back in May of 1986, he and his twin sister were graduating from Xaiver highschool. Somehow she latched on to an older college guy that wandered into town on a semester off to find himself. Jefferson Granton was mesmerizing, according to Cain, tall blond lovely to look at and even more interesting to listen to. He swept naive Danni off her feet on a cross country trip. He had a long term plan. One he had been cooking up for at least 100 years when Cain's family made a fortune in lumber and now stocks.

Jeffy boy started life as Jacarde Gulomar in the Brittany region of France. He accepted the gift of eternal life from a Norse vampire who wanted a mate. Jeff never entirely made his fortune and became a bad luck symbol for the covens all over Europe. Eyes on the new country to the west, he hopped a ship and arrived to wonder the grandness of the US just after the civil war. Comming upon early decedents of the Haywater clan. William Percy Haywater knew the deal equipped each member of the family with a hawthorn stake, holy water, and a warning against a freshly minted newly named Jefferson Granton.

No one fell for him until Danni, with all her beauty and openness, fell in love, and became a target for her trust fund. By the time the twins were 17, their parents were dead at the fate of a drunk driver, and a deaf Aunt looks after them. Danni fell under Jefferson's spell forgetting all caution to follow to the whispering cave. Now oddly in the middle of the mind-melting story, a flash caught my eye, and I met the grandfather like ken doll Cain shared his mansion with.

Pere was a domavoy who kept Cain and Malan safe as much as he could. Cain respects and adored him, so I was polite. Over the next three weeks, I moved in search their land every day when Cain joins me and feasts on Pere's cooking skills. His little face sparkled at each new dish he made for me after decades of blood bags. On steamy Saturday, July 31st, I finally found, or more fell into the mouth of the cave. Much of Cain's memory was erased on the night he watched Jefferson murder Danni while he hogtied in the corner of the damp cave. Only to meet a fate worse than Danni by forcefully being turned and compelled to kill and drain his Aunt of all her blood. Jefferson helps smooth it all over with some compulsion and tricks, but Cain secured his wealth in the next few days only to vanish. He picked a small fishing village in Maine, where he met Gabriel 100-year-old vampire who taught him to live and gave him advice on how to avenge Danni. Gabriel's plan centered on Cain coming home as his namesake's son Cain Haywater II. The mansion and his tie to Danni or Cain's greatest strength. It was clear why Jefferson failed to control them.

The night I stumbled into the cave, I wore my Danni look-alike costume Pere helped me pull together. I looked like a backup dancer on a Wham video. It was. It was to trick Jefferson, but oddly I caught the attention of another creepy creature a leshii in the woods. I thought it was Cain because the voice fit, and I felt drawn to the being. Only when it had led me halfway across the land did I catch a glimpse of its eyes. Pure white scalaris was not a hint of iris or pupil. Taking off back towards the cave, I felt two forces moving me one I can now sense with Cain, and the other I was damn sure was Jefferson. He'd been down a rough road probably because, in life, he was a bit of a narcissist. Only to have that enhanced by his Vampire Life, he thought I was Danni, and he'd Follow Me to Hell to get that money. Once we made it to the rippling silver pond within the cave, I laid eyes on Daniella. My wham costume was a joke compared to her beauty.

She swept as close to us as possible, shouting silently in my brain to turn now. Cain stands between me and Jefferson stake in hand slowly I fell to the wash of a cool breeze flowing over us which I knew mixed with my warm body temp to engulf Cain it was in that moment I saw the vague outline of a man just like he left a speakeasy in 1926. He became more gas-like to almost solid, yet I could still see right through him. He is handsome except for that visible gunshot wound to his right Temple. Why was I surprised that we now have a ghost to add to the mix. Pere spoke of the cave as whispered he claimed someone took their life after the 1920 stock crash here he was with eyes for Danni.

The extraordinary power Cain had wasn't just his home or his connection to his twin. It was that he could feel loved. He survived and lived by keeping his Humanity. I saw beautiful sparkling Jefferson with his flowing blonde hair realize it too. Cains power made the cave hum Jefferson was cocky, and that was very clear. He charged expecting to deflect the steak easily, but with Danni's strength and God help me my feelings for Cain. He drove the stake straight and true into Jefferson's lean chest.

Before I can blink Cain without a blade from his boot and with incredible strength severed the head like clockwork Cain without a new Zippo lighter and flicked it on to Jeffy. Making a roaring vampire candle. Can quickly turn to glance behind making a connection with Danni. "find your bliss" I heard in my head, and I knew Cain heard it too. The 1920s gentleman back into Danni as they drifted further back into the cave. We're only water held the floor we stood still.   "Nyx?" his velvet voice floated over me. I can only gape open mouth, watery eyes, and some snot beginning to flow. At that moment, my stomach rumbled loudly. He smiled a genuinely genuine smile with all the years that he waited. I knew without any doubt Cain Haywater would be in my future Tech probably my whole life, and I smiled too.

Let me know what you think and If you want more 

[fandom-of-the-day]

it was real and it was beautiful

Link at AO3

“I’m Team Eliot.”

The words stood between them like a physical boundary. What more needed to be said? Alice had saved Quentin’s life, but was one action enough to undo broken trust? No. And Q couldn’t afford to get distracted by hurt feelings right now. Not now that he knew Eliot was alive.

Peaches and plums, motherfucker.

The words rang through Quentin’s head.

I’m alive in here.

Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds was all it took for his world to turn upside down and his heart to hope. But no…that was getting to far ahead. Right now they needed to start thinking of a way to save Eliot. Knowing he was alive…

Q barely noticed Alice grab the book and leave. The silence following her departure was deafening. With Alice gone Quentin was alone with his thoughts and all he could see was Eliot. Eliot when he saw him that first day at Brakebills…Eliot opening up about his childhood trauma to reassure him…Eliot teasing him about the mosaic…Eliot that night on their first anniversary stuck in Fillory…

“Q?”

Quentin looked up to see Julia standing by the kitchen counter. She must have come back out after Alice left. Q couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be around Alice. Julia had sacrificed everything to restore the keys and Alice had been the one that had destroyed them. That was a pain that was not going to be undone with one action.

“So we need to talk strategy.”

“Q…” There was hesitancy in Julia’s voice.

“We don’t know when the Monster will be back and we need to start thinking of a plan to stop it.” Quentin felt himself getting anxious. His hand twitched. He lifted it to run it through his hair. “There’s got to be a way to stop him.”

Julia was looking at him unsurely, like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. She often looked like this when they were learning the quadratic formula in high school. At the time, Quentin had thought that would be the hardest problem he’d ever have to solve…

“We had a way to stop the Monster.” It wasn’t an accusation, but it felt like one.

Quentin shrugged before throwing his hands up. “It wasn’t good enough. It would’ve destroyed Eliot’s body and we can’t allow that to happen.”

Julia nodded. “Because Eliot is alive.”

She didn’t believe him. Q could hear it in her voice.

“Yes. He is.” Was he being short? He didn’t mean to be. But she wasn’t helping and Eliot needed them. “I spoke to him.”

Julia paused for a minute, watching him. He wished she wouldn’t. What good was standing around, staring going to do? Who knew how much time they had left to help Eliot?

“So,” Julia finally said. “What do we need to do?”

Wasn’t that a good question?

**

Julia watched Quentin. He was sitting on the floor with a book propped up on the coffee table in front of him. It had been two hours since she’d heard him speak too engrossed in the research he’d set out for himself. She’s seen him like this before, obsessive over something, desperate to prove it true. Lately life had thrown so much shit at Quentin. She had been afraid he was on his way to a breaking point. This was always the first step. He’d hyper-fixate on something and pour all of his energy into it. Then when it didn’t work out the way he had hoped, when it didn’t stop the pain, the next step would come.

Talking to Q had proven futile at the moment. He wasn’t listening to anything that wasn’t a plan to save Eliot. So for today she would sit by him, pouring over ancient books that got them no closer to an answer. Because there wasn’t an answer.

Julia had been worried from the moment Q had brushed off sealing away the Monster. He wasn’t dealing with his friend’s death and he wasn’t ready to let him go. Julia was almost glad Q had stopped the sealing from happening. Almost. He wasn’t ready to let Eliot go and doing so in that moment might have destroyed him. At least now Q could work through some of the trauma he’d been dealt lately and then they could come up with a way to get rid of the Monster permanently.

Which did need to happen soon if they wanted to keep him from killing more innocent people. Hopefully he was too focused on the gods to waste any time on mere mortals. Unlikely.

Julia looked at the clock, surprised that it was late in the evening and no one was back at the penthouse. Kady had been in and out for days now, but Julia had expected Penny to be back by now. He’d been hovering ever since Shoshana’s ritual and it felt odd that he had been gone for so long. He was over earnest when it came to helping, but right now that would be really nice.

“Knock knock.” The voice was sing-songy and Julia tensed automatically. It was only a matter of time before the Monster was back, especially since it seemed to view them as some kind of weird friends. Or maybe they were its playthings?

Julia looked over at where the Monster was leaning against the couch. He had appeared out of nowhere and was currently hovering over Quentin’s shoulder, reading whatever ancient words were written on the page. “What are we looking for?”

Julia continued to stare at the Monster, not speaking. How could someone who managed to thrust his fist into a gods chest and pull out their heart speak in such a childlike manner? How could someone so childish be so evil? A spark of an idea flickered at the back of Julia’s mind.

“We’re uh…” Q was stuttering. He had immediately frozen when the Monster reappeared, his hands gripping the edges of the book he held tightly. “We were just…looking…for a way to help you.” He was floundering for words to say.

“We want to help you find the other gods.” Julia piped in. The small idea she’d had taking root. The Monster turned to look at her.

“The other gods?” There was no emotion on the Monster’s face, but his voice sounded skeptical.

Julia nodded. “We already found Bacchus and Iris, we can help you find the others!” What was she saying?

“YES!” Q shouted, jumping up from his spot on the ground. Julia was startled by the sudden movement, and it seemed the Monster was too. “We can help track down the other gods. We have books…and..and…the magic. We can help you build a body.” Quentin was starting to talk faster. Suddenly he was the most animated Julia had seen in weeks. “If we keep looking through all of this we can find the next gods. Won’t that help you build your body?” Q sounded desperate. How did they go from silently searching through books minutes ago to desperately pleading with a murderous godlike being to let them help him? The sudden change felt like whiplash, yet it wasn’t so different from anything else that had happened in the past two years.

“Right. We can see what other gods might have had a reason to lock you away.” Julia winced, wondering if the reminder of what the gods did to him might upset the Monster. No matter how childlike the creature acted, they had witnessed him murder a goddess easily just that afternoon.

The Monster nodded nonchalantly. “If you say so.” He then sat down on the edge of the couch, watching.

Julia looked at Quentin. What were they supposed to do now? Q just shrugged and cautiously sat back on the ground, eyeing the Monster. He slowly picked up a book to start reading. Julia followed suit and watched as the Monster stayed in his spot, staring. Clearly he was going to be making sure they did what they offered to do.

Julia tried to focus on the ancient texts, but they were on a hopeless search and it was stupid to think there was even a chance of finding something in a random book pulled from the Brakebills library. Every so often she stole a glance over a Q and more times than not he wasn’t reading. No, he was glancing over at the Monster, a pain etched across his face that she could not remember seeing before. Her heart jolted as she realized Q’s quick agreement to help the monster came from wanting to save Eliot. If they got the Monster a new body, he could leave Eliot’s. At least that’s probably what Q was thinking. But Julia doubted the Monster would truly leave Eliot’s body. And wouldn’t there be consequences in helping him build this new body?

Right now we just need to stall. And hopefully come up with a better solution. While the Monster was there, they’d need to focus on a way to help him. But as soon as he whisked away to wherever the hell he went, Julia would be putting every effort into finding a way to get rid of him. Even if she had to look for a solution alone.

**

A loud slam startled Julia from sleep. For a moment, she looked around disoriented at the grand room around her. What the fuck was she doing in a room that would’ve gone for at least $5k in Queens? Her back hurt and she felt her spine pop as she moved. Right. She’d fallen asleep going through old books to find an impossible way to help a killing machine become an even worse killing machine. Because this was her life.

She stood up and stretched before remembering the loud slam. With so many people using the penthouse it barely even registered that she should be cautious. Maybe she’d gotten too used to the stupid shit that had been happening?

Walking into the kitchen she saw Kady digging through the refrigerator.

“Where have you been.” Julia asked as she sat down on one of the stools.

Kady gave her a hard look. “Didn’t know you were my mother now.” The words had a bite to them and Julia internally winced at the reminder of Kady’s mother. They had worked past that, but lately they’d fallen back to the tension they’d had at the start of their friendship.

“I’m just worried when people disappear for a long time.” Julia said cautiously. She knew Kady could take care of herself. She’d seen it plenty of times. But right now everything was halfway to hell and it would be nice if she just knew where everyone was. Like Penny, who was also AWOL at the moment.

Kady took a long swig of whatever juice was in the fridge. She screwed the lid back on before speaking. “I had an old acquaintance reach out about some hedge stuff. Just looking into it.” There was a lot Kady wasn’t saying, but Julia felt grateful she’d at least gotten that much.

Julia nodded, watching as Kady moved to the other side of the kitchen. “What you’re not going to ask more questions?” Kady said sarcastically as she started to pull on her jacket.

“No.” Julia said. “I’m here if you want to talk, but I’ve kinda got a lot going on now too.”

At that Kady nodded, giving her an almost understanding look. They weren’t exactly friends right now, but there was a mutual understanding that they both had their own shit to work through and that was that. Perhaps there would be time to repair their relationship another time. Right now she had to figure out a way to somehow research both ways to help and ways to stop the Monster currently living with them.

And I thought Monster’s living under the bed were made up stories. Julia laughed dryly. If magic was real, of course monsters were hiding in the dark. Sometimes they weren’t even hiding.

Reynard’s face flashed through her mind.

She shook her head at Q walked into the kitchen.

“Any luck?” He asked as he made his way over to the cabinets and looked inside. “We’ve got to figure out what this next step is.”

Julia hesitated. “I don’t know, Q.”

Q closed the cabinet and turned around. “We have to help him get these stone...organ...prizes so we can get him out of Eliot. It’s a good plan.”

“Unless we help him build a completely indestructible-titan-god body.” What were they doing? They needed the Monster off their backs, but could they really help him become even more dangerous? Her morning thoughts felt much clearer than last nights desperation.

“Well he’s already pretty murdery. It can’t get much worse.” Q shrugged, leaning back against the counter.

How could he be so casual about this now? “You say that like we can just risk people’s lives!” She didn’t mean to get angry, but how could he be so careless when people were dying. Stalling was one thing, but actively deciding that helping the Monster was their plan?

“We’ve taken down gods before.”

“And we end up losing every time!”

“It’s Eliot.” The firmness is Q’s voice gave her pause. Again, the focus was on Eliot. Because Q was still convinced he was alive. She’d seen last night how he’d become convinced of this and if there was one thing Q would never do, it was give up on a friend. “Right now we can’t fix everything, but I think that we can do this.” By the end of his sentence, Q’s voice was softer, less sure despite the words he was saying.

She considered her next words more carefully. “Okay. For now we help the Monster. But we also have to figure out what our next move is going to be.” Q had to know that they couldn’t just go along with whatever the Monster demanded of them. She could help him help the Monster, but it would really just be another way of getting that Monster off their backs so they could figure out a real way to stop him. Surely Q would start to realize that.

He sighed. “Thank you.” He walked over to the counter and waited on her to add to the conversation. He knew her well.

“I don’t know, I guess I’m just worried. I can’t help you if…” She hadn’t wanted to think about it. How useless she was. How everyone around her could perform magic and actually fucking do something and all she could do was sit and not die.

Quentin brushed her concern off “You’re helping a lot.”

“I was a goddess and now I’m just your friendly, neighborhood bullet proof vest.”

Q fought back a smile. “You would be a very high level X-Men.”

“Hmmm?” She couldn’t help the responding grin. Her nerdy best friend.

“Like a Emma Frost Diamond Form.”

“A mutant.”

“A mutant.” He agreed.

Julia used her chopsticks to throw a bit of noodles at Q. “Like the Indestructress. PEW!”

Julia laughed for a moment, thrown from how quickly she and Q had gone from nearly arguing to making nerdy jokes. She was so thankful for growing up with Q in her life. The world was full of shit, but right here, right now she had her best friend. And for a moment it felt like things were going to be okay.

“So about the page you gave the Monster…” Q started. The illusion of happiness crashed and the reality of the tasks before them set in.

[crimsondomingo]

Day 8: Mystery

For my July AU a Day Challenge

Barry was a good friend, the best friend, and Cisco was in love, so of course he had to support him.

He just wished that meeting Cisco’s girlfriend Lisa for the first time didn’t have to involve costumes. With everyone they knew and everyone she knew.

Mostly because her brother was unbelievably hot, and Barry looked like an idiot.

It was such a good idea too! Renting a night at the Wells mansion for a murder mystery party and sleepover. Well not like a sleepover, where they would all be in sleeping bags in the living room, but it was basically their hotel for the night. Whoever won the murder mystery game and figured out the killer got the main suite to sleep in. Barry should have been on cloud 9 to do this for his friend while meeting a few new people.

But he wanted to be a gangster since it was set during the roaring 20s, not…the swanky singer with hopes at Hollywood.

“This is a girl’s part.”

“Get with the 21st century, Barr.”

“Cisco, you know that’s not—”

“I’m sorry, man, it was the only part left! I wanted to make sure Lisa’s side got the good parts so her brothers don’t kill me.”

“Brothers? I thought she only had the one?”

“By blood the one, but this big guy she grew up with is basically a brother too, and they’re both super scary. Please? You could swap with Iris.”

“She’s the ‘cigarette girl with a temper that sizzles’. I don’t think that’s better.”

“No, being the singer is, because we can totally set up a part of the story for you to show off your pipes, man.”

“I don’t know…”

“Please, this is the love of my life, no joke. I want it to be perfect.”

Only perfect wasn’t how it started because it was raining cats and dogs out and everyone got soaked on the way in. Barry managed to save his hair by running with his jacket over his head, but most of the girls weren’t as lucky. They all met in the foyer and introductions were a little tense.

Cisco was playing the bartender and storyteller for the mystery. Lisa ran the speakeasy. Barry was the singer of course, and for some inane reason he’d let Cisco convince him to jazz things up as a male version of the character, wearing eyeliner and a jacket with fur on the collar to represent a boa. His boots even had heels, making him an extra inch taller.

He wanted to hide beneath his trilby when he saw how sexy Lisa’s brother looked, Len the actual mobster for the night, which was the cool part, obviously. He had on such a nice suit, all dark blue, with his own hat, and just exuded coolness. He eyed Barry with so much scrutiny when they shook hands, Barry wished he could dig a hole out in the rain and drowned himself in the mud.

Iris was the cigarette girl, Lisa’s big friend and other ‘brother’ Mick was the bouncer, Caitlin was a moll for the police, and Lisa’s best friend Sara was a femme fatale for hire.

The killer definitely wouldn’t be Sara then. Or Len. Too obvious.

“This is stupid,” Mick said, shaking water off his hat.

“Aw, come on, Mick, a little drama and adventure can be a good time,” Len defended. At least he was trying for his sister’s sake.

All of the girls appeared to be getting along too, but Barry did get the impression that he was being sized up and that Len and Mick were not trying to tamp down their intimidating natures toward Cisco in the slightest.

“Is the poor bartender our victim for the night?” Len asked with a drawl.

Barry shivered. He had a really smooth voice.

“No! You’ll, um see once we start.” Cisco ducked behind Lisa, who stood tall to defend Cisco against her large and scary (and sexy, geez, like wow) brothers.

“Knock it off, Lenny. And this is going to be fun, Mick. You’ll see. Now, esteemed guests,” she shifted into her lady of the establishment role, “let’s retire to the lounge to begin our evening.”

The idea was for Cisco to actually bartend and make drinks to start things off, there were hors d'oeuvres set up waiting, and Barry would sing a couple songs while everyone mingled.

They had a recording for background music, which was sort of cheating, but they figured they could envision the band. While some people might have been more nervous to perform, on stage, whether karaoke or back in college and high school doing glee club and musicals, was where Barry felt most comfortable, able to lose himself in the performance.

He sang “Feeling Good” first, which got the crew to erupt into applause when he was done, and he gave a little bow, then broke into “Big Spender.” He’d complained to Cisco that neither of those was right for the 20s, but they weren’t being strictly authentic tonight.

He realized he’d caught the attention of Lenny the Mobster about halfway through “Big Spender” and felt a flutter in his gut, nerves he wasn’t used to while performing, though thankfully it didn’t mess him up. Everyone else was enjoying the song, sure, but they were chatting, drinking and snacking, all like Cisco wanted.

Len came forward with an extra glass in hand, waiting for Barry to finish. While everyone else applauded at the end of the song again, Len handed him the extra drink.

“You’ll need to catch up, Scarlet. Do you take requests?”

Barry nearly choked on his first sip—partially because Cisco had made them strong. “Scarlet?”

Len nodded at his getup. The jacket was a deep scarlet red. Then Barry remembered, Len was staying in character, and the singer’s name was Scarlet, which was why he’d chosen the coat at all.

“R-Right. Thanks for the drink. I’ve been known to take requests for the right…spender,” Barry winked—and shit, maybe he shouldn’t get too into the character, but Len looked entirely pleased by the comeback.

“Okay, folks!” Cisco called. “The Mistress has an announcement!”

Shoot, they were getting started, but while Barry was a bit disappointed, he noticed how close Len stood when they gathered near Lisa.

The story went that with the passing of prohibition and organized crime on the rise, The Rogues Den, a swanky speakeasy run by Mistress Goldie, had been nothing but jumping. To celebrate its success, she’d planned a party to remember at the exclusive nightspot, but danger lurked in the shadows.

They basically discovered the ‘body’ of the mayor straight off and had to try to solve the murder before the police showed up and blamed all of them. Only one of them was the killer, and they had to gather story clues throughout the night to figure out who. When time ran out, they could each give their guess, and whoever guessed right, got the suite. Tie breakers would be decided by who had the most accurate evidence.

Halfway through the night, Barry was convinced he was the killer. He could divert people’s attention, make himself look innocent as long as he never lied about anything asked of him point-blank. But Len kept sticking to his side like glue. He had to know Barry was the killer too. Barry wanted that suite for the night, but as the evening wore on, he wondered if it wasn’t only suspicion that kept Len close, but that Barry might get to sleep in the suite even if he was…hehe, fingered as the killer.

He may have had too much to drink. Cisco kept refilling their glasses!

Then came a section where they were allowed to split up to look for clues hidden about the house as they were nearing the end. They each had a final envelope to open, and Barry was not at all surprised to see that his said: YOU ARE THE KILLER. If you think your partner suspects you, use your discretion to decide if you can get away with killing them before time is called and the murderer must be chosen by everyone at the party.

“I get Scarlet,” Len grabbed his arm and hurried away with him.

Barry tried not to giggle. He was definitely not imagining the electricity between them.

Definitely not—once Len’s tongue was in his mouth when they got to the kitchen.

“I have some bad news for you, Lenny,” Barry said, arching into Len’s embrace when he started kissing down his neck.

“You’re the killer and you’re gonna have to stab me?”

Barry giggled for real this time. ‘’Fraid so.” He poked two fingers at Len’s belly. “Now I have to dispose of the body.”

Grabbing Len by his lapels, Barry stole another fierce kiss, moving them across the kitchen toward the door into the pantry. They could hide there a while until the others got suspicious.

But when Barry knocked into the door with his back, it wouldn’t budge.

“Crap, it’s stuck. Hang on.” He and Len both laughed as they disentangled, and Barry turned to push firmer on the door until it finally forced open.

To reveal the body on the floor with a knife in its back.

It was the owner, Harrison Wells—dead.

“Oh shit.”

[pinkletterday]

Your Vigil In My Keeping

Pairing: (pre) Barry Allen/ Iris West

Rating: All audiences

Read on AO3

Summary: No one believes Barry about The Man In The Yellow Suit, which is why it's down to him to protect his new home. But his best friend always has his back.

...

Iris didn't know what had woken her up at first, except that once she had, she was quite sure she wasn't alone in her room. This failed to freak her out. Barry was becoming notorious in the West house for his night-time wanderings.

She sat up to look around for him and almost missed him except for the sliver of light through her half-open door falling on a lump huddled on the floor beside her bed.

"Barry? What're you doing?"

"Nothing," said the lump. "Couldn't sleep. I'm okay."

"You're on the floor, Barr."

"It's fine. I like it here."

"You like it...on the floor?" she said dubiously.

The lump gave what might have been a shrug. "Yeah."

Iris suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. It was at times like these she was reminded that her best friend was a boy and therefore prone to deep weirdness.

She gathered up her own pink Kim Possible blanket and slid to the floor beside him. "Move over."

"What are you doing?," Barry's tousled head came into view as he hurriedly scootched backward, dislodging his own blanket.

"Seeing how much I like the floor," she huddled closer to him, wincing at the roughness of the carpet through her socks. "Hmm. Feels kinda cold."

Barry bumped her shoulder with a sigh. "Go back to sleep, Iris."

He seemed to have built himself a nest here. His Dexter's Laboratory backpack leaned against her bedpost, stuffed full of assorted snacks, a flashlight and Prisoner of Azkaban, among others. "Barry, what are you doing really?"

She knew his ears were going red because he was running his hands along the back of them, which meant he was embarrassed. She couldn't make out his mumbling though.

"Huh?"

"I'm scared the Man in The Yellow Suit will come back," he said, worrying at a corner of his PJs. "I don't want him to get you too."

It wasn't that this hadn't occurred to Iris. The Man In The Yellow Suit (which was how she and Barry both thought of him, all the words capitalized) now featured prominently in her own nightmares. It would have been hard not to, the way Barry still shook with fear when he spoke about him. Unlike her Dad, Iris knew Barry wasn't lying.

But even when her Dad was being an unreasonable grown-up, she still had every faith in him to do his Dad-duty. "Dad will protect us. He has a gun and can arrest people." It's why all the bad guys were scared of him.

"Joe doesn't even believe he exists," he clasped his hands together, running them over his face in frustration. "You don't understand. He can go through walls."

Iris had no answer to that. The small knot of fear in her own chest grew a little bigger. "What'll we do if he comes?" she whispered.

"I don't know. But I've come up with some ideas for booby traps."

He launched animatedly into an elaborate plan involving a tripwire, spray paint, a joy buzzer, the robot from his science fair project "Destructo", and her Dad's old police siren he had found in their attic and repurposed.

"…so while he's blind and on fire and the smoke alarms are going off and Destructo trips the circuit breaker...maybe I can...warn your Dad or something," he finished. Then subsided awkwardly, realizing that this conclusion somewhat lacked the expected panache.

There were some glaring holes in this plan. Her best friend was the smartest person she knew, he just didn't quite think obvious things through sometimes.

This wasn't the time to bring any of that up though.

(Except maybe she would give her Dad a head's up about the spray paint and Destructo, just in case. The school lab had yet to recover from that one.)

"Okay," she allowed. "But you cant stay awake and guard my room every night, Barry," a thought struck her "- how long have you been doing this?"

He rubbed the back of his neck again, looking shifty. "Uh."

Suddenly, all the mornings he had looked like half a zombie made sense. It had worried her Dad so much he had spoken to his psychiatrist again.

She came to a decision and started tugging all her own pillows down onto the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"You need to sleep," she said firmly, pushing him gently out of the way to make a larger, more comfortable nest.

"I can't. I told you -"

"So we can take turns, silly. Look," like she said, common sense sometimes eluded that brilliant brain, "you wont make a very good guard if you're falling asleep halfway. This way we can both keep watch and get some rest."

Barry hesitated, but he couldn't fault her logic. He gave her the flashlight and did not resist when she tugged his head down onto the pillow near her knee, settling down with a small sound of tired relief. She settled his blanket over him, dug out the apple and started reading Harry Potter by flashlight.

She had just begun reading about Harry doing the same when Barry whispered, "Iris. You do believe me dont you? You dont think Im crazy?"

She blinked down at him. What kind of question was that? "Of course I believe you. You're my best friend. You wouldn't lie to me and you're not crazy. Dad'll figure it out soon enough." Of course he would. He was only stubborn and tended to dig his heels in if you pushed him. Kinda like Barry, actually.

"Okay."

"You get some sleep now," she ran a hand through his hair, always so soft and fluffy like a puppy's. "I'll wake you up when its your turn."

Another moment of silence.

"Iris?"

"Yeah, Barry?"

"I don't really know what to do if the Man in Yellow comes back," he whispered fearfully. "What if your Dad cant stop him?"

Iris tamped down on the fear that was making her own heart beat hard. "If he comes, we'll be ready for him."

His clammy fingers closed around her wrist. "You won't let him get you, will you?"

"Of course I won't. I'm tough. Dad says so."

"Yeah you are," the proud smile in his voice warmed her better than a mug of hot chocolate. "The toughest."

"And don't you forget it!," they both snickered. She found his hand and squeezed it. "I won't let him get you either. I promise."

"Promise on what?"

It was good that they had their own version of this, because this was assuredly not a situation where "cross my heart and hope to die" would be appropriate at all. "On all the brownies I'll ever eat!," she said grandly, then came the serious part. "And my Mom's rings."

"Okay. I promise on...all the cookie dough ice cream in Happy Harbour. With extra sprinkles," he swallowed, voice trembling a little. "And my Dad."

The protective anger that coursed through her was stronger than all her night terrors. She laid her head on his and wrapped her arms and legs around his torso, tight enough to hurt a little. But he gripped her just as fast.

"We'll keep each other safe, Barry. You'll see."

[qqueenofhades]

the tangled web of fate we weave: xxii

welp, it’s almost done. the epilogue is probably gonna be tomorrow before the finale. in the meantime, yes, after what i did to you last chapter, here i am. back again.

part xxi/AO3

July 21, 2014

There is no one word in the English language that is really sufficient to describe the scale of São Paulo, Brazil. Huge has a decent stab, but still doesn’t get there. When the eggheads who study urban planning and population density and civil engineering use terms like “macrometropolis” and “megapolis” to describe it, you start to realize the shortcomings. It’s not actually the biggest city in the world; it’s something like eighth or ninth, including the metropolitan area, but right now, it might be. It is a sea of endless buildings between distant blue mountains, known for its notoriously changeable weather, a city to which “diverse” likewise does no justice, a melting pot and a global powerhouse. It’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so it’s not very hot. In fact, the temperature struggled to get above fourteen degrees Celsius today, and a fine Atlantic drizzle is dampening the pavement outside, bleared in the endless lights. It’s ten o’clock at night in a down-at-heel bar in Vila Andrade, not far from the poor Paraisópolis favela on one side and the wealthy district of Morumbi on the other, and Garcia Flynn intends to keep drinking as long as they’re going to serve him.

Ogroman, he thinks. Maybe ogroman does as a word for this place. It’s Croatian, means “vast, tremendous, oversized, immense.” It also sounds a bit like “ogre,” in English. Ogre-man, which he isn’t altogether sure he isn’t, become something monstrous and deformed and barely human that cannot venture into the sun without turning to stone. São Paulo’s sheer magnitude is his refuge: nobody can find him here, or at least he’s fairly sure they can’t. A needle in thirty million haystacks, a completely anonymous blip on nobody’s radar. His Portuguese is rudimentary, but he knows enough to order drinks, and for now, that has to do.

The bartender passes him a glass, Flynn grunts in thanks, and puts a crumpled five-real note on the counter, as this isn’t usually the sort of place where you run a tab. He’s not even sure what he ordered, but he also isn’t going to be terribly particular, as long as it does its job. He has been in São Paulo for three days, and his wife and daughter have been dead for two weeks. No, not dead. That sounds sedate, easy, like the “passed away” bullshit that people use to make it sound peaceful and palatable. No. Murdered. Murdered in the middle of the night by a full hit squad, the muffled thump of silencers and bullets flying in the dark. He barely got out of there alive himself. He honestly wishes he hadn’t.

Flynn lifts the glass to his lips and throws down a burning gulp of whatever local poison is within. It doesn’t taste good so much as it’s a promise that eventually, with enough repeated applications, he might be numb for a little while. He has his gun back at the room if it gets too much tonight. That’s the comfort. Make it through one more day if you can think of any reason to, and kill yourself if you can’t. When the only thing burned into his brain is the image of Iris in her little flowered pajamas with a bullet hole in her head, Lorena half-fallen over her where she was trying to shield her, that’s the place he goes.

Rittenhouse. Flynn takes another drink. When he took the fairly routine corporate finance job for his old buddies at the NSA, he didn’t see anything unusual about it. Broke the encryption and discovered something about a company named Rittenhouse funneling huge off-the-books sums of money to tech billionaire Connor Mason, through multiple offshore accounts in the Caymans. Intended, of all the things, to fund a time travel project. Flynn figured they were just crazy, but not his business. He flagged the transfers to his contact, who said they’d take care of it. Flynn thought nothing more of it. Went on with his life.

Four nights later, Lorena thought she heard Iris cough. Got up to check on her.

That was when, in under ten minutes, Garcia Flynn’s entire world was destroyed.

He has no solid proof. He has nothing. In fact, when he tried to call the police, call fucking someone, as if there’s any ordinary authority that has any jurisdiction over this, he discovered that he was the prime suspect in the murder. Everyone knows the husband probably snapped and gunned down his family one night, that’s how it usually goes. The killers – Flynn knows in his gut, he knows somehow that it was these Rittenhouse people – have framed him for the crime and they want him dead or alive, and his only choice was to go off the grid and on the run. He still has a few tricks up his sleeve, so he got out of Dubrovnik and went to South America because it seemed the farthest away. He wants revenge, it’s the only reason he hasn’t stuck his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, but he has no idea how to start to go about getting it. They appeared from the shadows and destroyed everything and vanished again. How do you fight smoke? How do you even catch it?

(Nothing, the darkness chants at him. Nothing. You have nothing. You are nothing. You should just go back to the room and get it over with.)

Later, Flynn thinks. Later. It wouldn’t be the first dead body they’ve had to carry out of that place, he’s sure, though if he’s going to make a mess, he should truck up into the hills and keep it to himself. They might not find his corpse for weeks or months, and there is something morbidly alluring about the idea of dying under the stars, staring up at them until he sees Lorena smiling at him, and it’s just a bad dream, and all the world falls away and it is all gone, it is all gone. But he can’t do that just yet without at least trying to take the bastards down with him. He has to think of something.

Right now, however, Flynn has thought all day and still come up with a big fat blank, and he’s not drinking because he wants to keep doing it. He yearns and aches and pleads for oblivion, for a sweet soft coma, and he doesn’t think there’s enough alcohol in the world for it. He has a little money, and he can get more if he puts his mind to it, but unless he’s going to bounce from place to place like a billiard ball, he needs to get himself together and decide what he’s going to do. Or he could just find somewhere high and jump. Christ the Redeemer is in Rio de Janeiro, but Flynn could head up there and really make a splash. Rub it in Christ’s face for not being any sort of redeemer. Tourists gawking at his broken body, probably a few headlines. Rittenhouse would definitely know he was dead, then. Might frame it and put it on their wall. In that case, no. He can’t give them that satisfaction.

He finishes the first drink and pushes the glass back for a second one, which is duly supplied. The door opens and closes, letting in wafts of cool, damp night air, as patrons come and go. There is a group of young men with gel-slicked hair, leather jackets and flashy necklaces, who might well know where to get the stronger sort of anti-depressant, but Flynn doesn’t feel up to it right now. A few women with too much makeup, short vinyl skirts, and platform heels circulate through the drinkers; he suspects they’re hookers drumming up business. There’s a futebol match on the TV in the corner, which Flynn stares at for the simple need to look at something besides his own reflection in the dirty bar mirror. His wife and daughter are dead. He’s not the only man who this has ever happened to, but it feels like he is. His wife and daughter are dead. His future is gone. His entire world has been erased.

One of the hookers comes up next to him, trailing her fingers over his arm, and Flynn brusquely sends her packing. He doesn’t want to be touched, he doesn’t want company or solace. He wants a miracle, and he knows he isn’t going to get one; the world is, as well proven, not that gracious and not that forgiving. Another drink, or call it curtains and go back to the room? He’s not sure he can resist the pistol tonight. If he’ll survive, he has to walk.

When the second drink is down to the dregs, Flynn cursorily pushes it back and asks for something else, just to change it up. The bartender looks askance at him; even in a place like this, it’s obvious when someone is intending to drink until they end up on the floor, and he probably doesn’t want to have to drag someone of Flynn’s size out by his heels. But Flynn puts another bill, of a larger denomination, on the counter, and the bartender hesitates, then pours him a third. Flynn isn’t drunk, since it takes a considerable amount, but he can feel the floating edges of not-total-sobriety. Good. That’s the point. He takes a sip, then another.

The liquid in the glass has dipped to about halfway when the door opens again. He doesn’t bother looking around, since it’s not going to be anyone he’s interested in. All he wonders is if it’s stopped raining, because if it has, he might think about leaving (how permanently is still up for debate). It might be stupid to care whether or not he gets wet, but he has to cling to whatever excuse he has by his fingernails, because otherwise he will –

“Hello, Garcia.”

Flynn almost has a heart attack. He jostles the glass of whiskey with his elbow, splashes it on the scarred wood, and whirls around. He doesn’t have his gun on him, if only because the temptation to use it might overtake him, but he doesn’t need it to kill someone. How – how – after all his precautions, his certainty that the megacity would hide him, after leaving no trace, has Rittenhouse found him? He’s had just enough to drink that the urgent command from his brain to snap into Terminator mode gets lost before being fully received by his body. Half-stumbles as he knocks the stool, prepares to fight whatever operative this is in the middle of some slovenly dive bar in –

And at that, he freezes.

The woman facing him could very well be Rittenhouse, and he’s certainly not ruling out the possibility that she is, but she has both hands up, clearly aware that she has startled him and that, given his current mental state, it might not have been the best idea. She holds his eyes as he stares at her in a confused, bleary, furious haze, waiting to be sure that he isn’t going to lunge at her. Then she says gently, “I’m sorry. How about you sit back down?”

Flynn tries to answer, but his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth for more reasons than just the percentage of alcohol in his bloodstream. She’s about his age – forty, give or take a few years – and she’s beautiful. Petite and trim, with shiny dark hair that shows just an elegant touch of silver at the temples, and a few lines around her soft brown eyes. She’s stylishly dressed in skinny jeans, a long coat, silk blouse, and scarf, and she’s spoken to him in English, with an American accent, rather than in Portuguese or any of the numerous other languages spoken in São Paulo. Some faint, attractive floral scent lingers around her, as if inviting him to lean in and take a breath. He’s not going to, of course, but the desire has briefly passed through his brain. She can’t be a hooker too, can she? No. CIA, or something in that department. Intelligence agent of some stripe.

“How do you know my name?” It’s not the most scintillating question in the world, but it begs asking anyway. He sinks heavily back onto the barstool. “Look, if you’re here to kill me, Jesus Christ, just get it over with.”

“I’m not here to kill you.” She looks at him. . . tenderly? Almost like she knows him. “I’m sorry for surprising you. My name’s Lucy. Lucy Preston.”

She holds out her hand, and before Flynn has any idea what he’s doing, he shakes it. It’s small, like her, but her grip is strong, and since it’s the first time he has touched anyone in any capacity for two weeks, it’s a shock, a reminder that there is still a physical, concrete world beyond the tortured hellscape of his thoughts. He almost wants to hold on, but this total stranger (is she a stranger?) has not come here to be his emotional crutch. He withdraws and clenches his fist on his thigh, trying to stop it trembling. Finally he says roughly, “If you’re not here to kill me, what the fuck do you want?”

“It’s complicated.”  Lucy looks at the remnants of his drink. “You might want another.”

Flynn grunts. “I’ve had a few already.”

“I suppose you have.” She tilts her head, studying him with that strange, soft look that both unnerves and intrigues him. “Do you want to talk here?”

“Where else?”

“All right.” She signals the bartender and orders a drink of her own in serviceable Portuguese, though it sounds like she’s practiced the phrase. Flynn keeps watching her carefully, waiting for any hint what her game is. When she’s gotten her glass and taken a sip, she says, “This is going to sound insane, and hopefully you’ll hear me out before you make a decision. There really isn’t an easy way to start, so. . . well. I know who you are, I know what happened to your family, and I know that you’d do anything for revenge on Rittenhouse. I’m here to tell you that there’s a chance.”

That, despite himself, snaps Flynn’s spine straight like a whip. Some of the fuddled torpor burns off, almost that fast, and he stares at her narrowly. “How do you know about – ”

“Again.” Lucy raises a hand. “Let me finish?”

He bites his tongue, though his head has turned into such a cyclone that he has to force himself to pay attention. He looks at her expectantly, as she reaches into her jacket pocket and removes a slim black leather book, monogrammed with the initials LP in the lower right corner. “This is my journal. I want you to read it.”

“You. . . want me to read your journal?” Flynn blinks. Anger is starting to replace confusion. “You come here promising revenge on Rittenhouse – when I still don’t know how you even know that name – and instead you give me your fucking diary? What, am I supposed to read about your high school crushes and – ”

“This isn’t an ordinary diary.” Lucy’s tone remains level, though there’s a certain aggravation that suggests, heartbroken and spiraling as she knows he is, he’s still frustrating her with his inability to follow simple instructions. Viz., keeping his fucking mouth shut for thirty seconds and letting her talk. “As I said, this was going to sound insane. That journal is going to help you take down Rittenhouse. And – well, we’ll start with that.”

“And how the hell is it going to do that?”

“Because – ” Lucy takes a deep breath. “Because I came here from the future.”

That, as might be expected, hits Flynn between the eyes like a bowling ball. He stares at her, waiting for her to proffer some, any other explanation, half-wanting to shout at her for thinking it would be funny to come here and pick the heartbroken, suicidal widower and bereaved father for her fucking YouTube prank show. He looks around for her cameraman. If this is supposed to go viral, he’ll kill them first. Finally he says, “I beg your pardon?”

“I came here from the future.” Lucy’s lips press together. “That’s how I know your name and about your family and about Rittenhouse. We’ve already met. We’re – we know each other.”

There are implications in that pause that make it clear she could have said any number of other things. Flynn can’t quite get air into his lungs, so he reaches for his drink and polishes it off in a long, burning slug. Then he shoves it across the counter. “Outro agora.”

The barman pauses, glances at Lucy (Flynn’s almost relieved for the confirmation that he can still see her, since he briefly started to wonder if this might be a total nervous breakdown), then figures that since Flynn has paid him enough for several drinks, it’s his department if he wants to get shitfaced in front of the lovely senhora. Once the glass is returned in an acceptable state of replenishment, Flynn takes another gulp. The tipsiness is starting to be less pleasant, a grating buzz like a nail between his eyes, and is on the verge of proceeding to full-on drunk. There’s something to be said for just quaffing it all and passing out, but Lucy hands him a glass of water, and he finds himself taking it. Finally he says, “You know there’s no way I actually believe you, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Lucy hasn’t broken character, if this is an act, or summoned some hipster with a man-bun to appear from behind a video camera. “Honestly, I don’t blame you.”

Flynn debates what to say. He could be much crueler, he could lash out, he could tell her to take her ill-conceived practical joke and shove it up her ass, but something – he has no idea what – is making him hesitate. Maybe it’s just a testament to his desperation, that any lead, no matter how ludicrous, might be the difference between life and death tonight. She knows about Rittenhouse. She knows his name. Even if not from goddamn time travel, she learned those somewhere. And the way she has been looking at him, with tenderness and sympathy and care. . . perhaps he’s just too small and weak and shattered to stand up, but he can’t quite bear to remove himself from it, not yet. Even if it’s all a lie or a trick. Maybe especially if it is. Reality is too much and he could do with a few comforting illusions.

After a moment, he pushes his drink aside and takes another sip of the water instead. “The future,” he says, with something between sarcasm and curiosity. “When?”

“I can’t tell you that exactly. We’ll say the relatively near future.”

“Convenient.” Flynn toasts her sardonically. “No firm dates.”

“Time travel is very confusing.” It seems as if this is probably the understatement of the millennium, but Lucy says it simply and almost apologetically, as if she really would tell him if she could. “I don’t know what I would risk changing if I told you too much, and things have happened in a certain way that. . .” She trails off. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry.” Flynn considers that. He isn’t sure he wants to ask for what, or if she would tell him. “So you’re going to appear, tell me that time travel is real, hand me some magic diary, and think that this will take down Rittenhouse? You can’t know what they are, if you think that’s going to work. You can’t possibly – ”

“Can’t I?” Lucy’s eyes flash. For the first time, she looks downright formidable, a mature and beautiful and slightly terrible queen – no Snow White evil stepmother, but no gentle, naïve princess frolicking with the songbirds either. She stands half up, staring at him. “I can’t know what Rittenhouse is? Do you think, do you remotely think, that I would have done this, that I would have risked everything to come here and find you, if I didn’t know exactly who they are? They killed Lorena and Iris, and before that, they – never mind. But they’ve taken more from you than you even know. I’m here because I’m willing to do whatever it takes to stop them. Is that you too, or not?”

Despite himself, Flynn is jolted. He recognizes the anger in her voice, because it’s the same rage that has been burning unceasingly through him, turning him to ash and soot and char, stripping away and tearing up everything he used to be, any soft place there ever was. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, even as Lucy takes a considerable slug of her own drink. He almost feels as if he should apologize, though she’s the one who turned up here spouting deluded fairytales. There’s a fraught silence, until he says, “All right.”

Lucy raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t answer. She wipes her mouth and leans on the counter, still too beautiful and put-together and glamorous for a shithole like this, composed and mesmerizing even in her anger. She controls it well, has taken it out and then put it back in its box, but it’s clear that it rubs raw nonetheless. She takes another deep breath, then says, “I’m sorry. I realize the burden of proof rests with me here. I brought the journal this time, I wrote everything down – well, as much as I could. It was actually your idea. Sort of.”

“What?” Flynn is thrown by that. “How can it have been my idea?”

“It. . .” Lucy debates something with herself, then shakes her head. “There are. . . there are other ways things happened before,” she says at last, unhelpfully. “We’re working on retrieving some of those, but it – anyway, it’s complicated. The best way I can describe it is the garden of forking paths. You walk in, and you see all the choices that you could have made, all the realities you could have existed in, branching off to every side. You can only walk one course through the maze, and that becomes your life. But there are echoes of what used to be, what might have been, or what was taken away. They’re still there somehow, on some quantum level, with some leftover trace that can be found in the time stream. Glimpsed, perhaps, if not recaptured. You and I, in one of those, we were – ” For the first time, her voice cracks. “There’s a reason I’m here for you.”

Flynn is even more thrown, understandably, even as Lucy turns her face away as if she didn’t mean for him to see that. He finds himself fishing out his handkerchief and offering it, some idiotic gentlemanly reflex, as she takes it, dabs at her eyes, and hands it back. “Yes,” she says, her tone once more cool and businesslike. “Anyway. It’s not random. How do you think I could have found you tonight, in a city this size, if I wasn’t here for you? If I didn’t know, in fact, exactly where you were going to be?”

“I don’t know,” Flynn says uncertainly. “You could have been looking for me for a while.”

Lucy snorts. “Do you really think that would work? Going door-to-door in all the gin joints in the world? Across this city, across the entire world?”

Flynn has to admit, the odds seem low. He doesn’t know if that means he believes her or not, so he takes a few more sips of water. He wants to judge if this seems remotely sensible at even partial sobriety, or if the alcohol is the only reason he’s entertained it thus far. There is certainly a part of him that is touched at the idea that she’s traveled through time and space to see him, that they have some sort of deep connection she can’t or won’t explain, but the rest of him is horrified. His wife died two weeks ago. He is not in the market for any other options. He wants Lorena back. Lorena. Whoever Lucy Preston is, she can’t be what he’s really looking for, what he needs. But walking into this place looking like an angel, telling him this impossible story, and seeming to think he might actually believe it. . .

He doesn’t know. There is another part of him that is well aware he was just asking for a miracle, and this seems as close as it’s possible to get. He’s prayed to God for answers, he’s begged for anything – that was, when he wasn’t screaming his pain and rage into the empty, uncaring void, swearing and cursing and bleeding. Lorena was the believer more than him, though he went to church to humor her, but Lorena is the one who was murdered in cold blood in her own home, trying to save her five-year-old daughter from men with machine guns who did not turn a hair. How can God have let that happen, if He is any sort of God worth His salt? Flynn knows the technical term: theodicy, or the question of how the existence of evil is compatible with a loving and powerful divinity. None of the explanations he has heard have ever quite satisfied him. This, even less.

There’s another silence as he and Lucy stare at each other. God, she is beautiful. Disloyal as Flynn feels, he’s a man with eyes, and he can’t quite take them off her. He glances at her hands, as if in search of a ring. He still wears his own, he can’t imagine wanting to take it off, but her fingers are bare, keeping their secrets. He wants to ask more about how they’re supposed to be connected – is this some sort of past-life nonsense, does she think they’re the reincarnations of Antony and Cleopatra, or something else to add to her clearly quite eccentric beliefs about the nature of reality? What’s even stranger is that he keeps having momentary, elusive flashes of something just below the surface, like sunlight on goldfish in a pond, that he cannot grab or hold onto. Is this hypnosis? Power of suggestion? She said something outré, and now he’s adjusting his beliefs to accommodate it? He’s been a soldier and a special operative for a long time. He can usually see mind tricks coming a mile off.

“I’m not sure if you’re crazy,” Flynn says at last. “There’s still a good chance you are. But I think you believe you’re telling the truth. If nothing else.”

Lucy seems to accept that is a start, given what she’s just asked him to swallow. She pushes the journal toward him. “Please. Take it.”

Flynn looks at it. He wants to ask if there’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul contained in it, because it seems like it might be a pertinent question, but he takes it and puts it in his jacket pocket. Then he gets to his feet, and promptly staggers enough that Lucy notices. “Come on,” she says. “How about you let me walk you back to where you’re staying?”

This is almost adorable, given that Flynn is a six-foot-four ex-commando with extensive military training, and Lucy is a five-foot-five woman who doesn’t look likely to be Black Widow in disguise. But he oddly doesn’t want her to go just yet, and he reminds himself that it’s really him doing the favor for her, making sure a foreign woman on the streets alone in a huge city, late at night, doesn’t get into any unfortunate situations. The ground, however, does feel a little farther away than usual, and he weaves his way to the door, Lucy bobbing at his elbow. He pushes it open and strides out into the night. Drops of mist bead finely in the air, but it isn’t raining anymore. Cars drone by, splashing puddles. The coolness is bracing against his hot face. For once, it feels good to breathe.

Lucy walks quietly beside him, dark hair tugged by the breeze, face intent and inward-looking. She doesn’t seem in a hurry, and he is absurdly tempted to ask where she parked the time machine (that has to be how she got here, right?) and if she has to get back before the meter runs out. The endless city lights flicker across her face. She is fine and ethereal and even more lovely in the glow, like something or someone not quite mortal or human. He keeps looking at her. He can’t stop.

After another few minutes, they reach the door between an all-night Japanese restaurant and a used electronics store, which leads up into the kind of apartment that can be rented with cash, without much paperwork, and a generally flexible occupancy. Flynn takes his key out and unlocks the door, then steps through into the shabby front vestibule, mail for previous tenants stuffed in the slot. He doesn’t expect Lucy to follow him in, but she does, and then up the narrow stairs. When he glances at her in confusion, she says quietly, “I know you have your gun in your room. I’m worried. That’s all.”

For the first time, after everything else she’s said or hinted at, that’s what rocks him the most. There is not any way he can specifically think of for her to know that – everything else could be a combination of very good intel and accurate guesswork, the kind of trick that fairground fortune-tellers use to read people and come up with something that might be relevant to their lives. He hasn’t said anything about that, about the lure it has on him, the coin toss every night as to whether he’s going to buckle and give in. Shaken, he turns away and takes longer than necessary to unlock the door. Muffled samba music drifts up from the flat below. He might mind it more if he thought there was any chance he’d ever actually sleep.

He pushes open the door into the apartment. It’s a bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a battered couch, with a bathroom squashed on the end. There are definitely cockroaches, the décor has not been updated since the eighties, and the power can be unreliable, but if he wanted to leave tomorrow, he could walk out with no strings attached. He almost feels compelled to apologize, again, for its sheer dreariness, but he stands awkwardly in the middle of the floor instead, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, half-wondering if he is supposed to be presenting for parade inspection. She is even more beautiful in the slitted light of the old venetian blinds. His throat is dry for other reasons than the alcohol, but he can’t quite get his feet to move.

Lucy looks up at him, as if trying to make up her mind about something. It’s well apparent that there is tension between them, whether or not there should be, and that if she made a move toward him, Flynn doesn’t know that he would turn her down. He’s still a little drunk and he probably shouldn’t, but he is so exhausted and so heartbroken and barely holding up, and she has appeared literally from nowhere and she’s here in front of him. He feels like he should say something about his gun, remind her why she came up, but his entire chest hurts and he is blind and raw and shaking with need. For what, he doesn’t even know. Not her, exactly. Maybe what she represents. Life. Hope. Light. Any remote, wild ghost of a chance. She hasn’t said what exactly she’s offering, what the journal is supposed to do, or how it’s related to taking down Rittenhouse. He could ask her that. He could ask her a lot of things.

Instead, slowly, Flynn raises both hands. Lucy’s throat moves as she swallows, but she shifts closer, rather than away. She looks up at him with simple, vulnerable, unselfconscious trust that shreds his already crumbling resolve. He puts his hands very, very lightly on her upper arms, not quite closing his fingers. Not grabbing her, not trapping her, not trying to give her any reason to regret coming into a terrible apartment with a mentally unstable strange man who is twice her size, but because he doesn’t know what else he can do. Because the desolate, impossible, harrowing pain inside him eases the smallest bit when he does, and he is utterly desperate for that relief. He has no pride left. He is flattened. He is wrung out.

Lucy’s eyelashes flutter, her lips parting, as she tilts her head up. Flynn runs his hand up her shoulder, cupping her face. He traces his thumb along her cheekbone, still mildly astonished that she is a flesh-and-blood woman, and not a detailed hallucination. Lowers his mouth closer, not sure if he wants to kiss her or just breathe her in, absorb her in some elemental way like symbionts, like atoms, like stardust. Her lashes make dark shadows on her cheek. Her breath is soft as a whisper on his.

Flynn closes his eyes just as their foreheads touch, as a shudder racks him from head to toe and he briefly thinks he might go to his knees. But that’s when Lucy grabs his face in her hands, guides his hungry, hollow mouth to hers, and kisses him so gently that his broken heart snaps again. The sound is almost soft, a light, dry click. Then the floodgates open.

He lifts her almost off her feet, arms wrapped around her waist as hers lock around his neck, as they turn their heads and mash their noses and open their mouths and gulp and gasp and kiss and kiss as if this is the only thing they have meant to do since she arrived. Flynn doesn’t know if it’s the case or not, and frankly does not want to think about it, or anything. If he keeps his eyes closed, it’s easy enough to pretend that she is Lorena, and either way, if he is not going to die tonight, he needs this. He can add it to his sins later. He already has enough.

There is not much attempt at seduction or foreplay. This is clumsy and staggering and primal as an avalanche, and there is just as much point (which is to say, none) of getting in the way of it. He breaks away from her mouth, pressing blind kisses into her cheek and neck and shoulder, as he shucks off her jacket and scarf, throwing them across the room. She unbuttons her blouse as they keep kissing, as he pulls his shirt off and she runs her hands over the heavy muscles of his chest and arms, catching a nipple between her fingers. He reaches around to unclasp her bra, and she shucks it off her arms. His hands come up to cup and caress her breasts, and she shudders like the wind.

They walk backwards into the bedroom in a muddle, and fall on the bed in a heap. It occurs to Flynn that he does not have any condoms, and while he does not have any diseases, thank you very much, she might not want to walk away from this night with the risk of an unexpected souvenir (of whatever sort). He manages to pull away long enough to pant, “I don’t have – are you sure you want – ”

“It’s all right.” Lucy looks touched by his concern, that he is able to snap out of his mad blind delirium long enough to make sure she is safe. “I have it handled.”

“You. . . mmm. . . sure?” Flynn kisses her again halfway through asking. “I don’t – you might – ”

“Yes.” Lucy crawls on top of him and leans forward, bracing her elbows on either side of his shoulders, lowering herself onto him at full length. “I said I was here for you.”

Flynn wonders if that encompasses the possibility of what is apparently about to happen, then decides to hell with it. He would have stopped if she said so, no matter how much it might have literally killed him, but if she’s sure – he’s shaking, he’s not able to touch her enough, as much as he needs. They untangle long enough to shuck trousers, and then underpants. The sight of her naked body in the low light – God. For a second he swears, he absolutely swears, that the sight is as familiar to him as his own, that there is nothing strange or unusual about it. He’s noticed, even in their hungry making out, that there isn’t any of the awkwardness or fumbling or uncertainty about what to do where and how that normally attends a one-night stand with a stranger. There is something uncanny about the fact that they already know exactly how to kiss each other. Almost lends a true touch of destiny to whatever she’s saying, and yet. It will just make it easier, for now, to pretend.

They stand on their knees, as Flynn grips Lucy’s hips and pull her gently toward him. He nudges at her just a bit, just a little, as she takes hold of him and helps guide him, as he slides carefully into her soft warm wetness and almost loses his mind. He doesn’t know why she is here, why she is giving herself to him like this. In the back of his head, he wonders if this is a calculated ploy, if she is making sure that he will read the journal no matter what, take to heart whatever insane thing it says, and want to see her again. Something cynical and intentional, the old honeytrap game. She could be. He wonders if he cares.

Lucy rolls her hips, easing the fit of him inside her, uttering a small whine in the back of her throat that makes him want to roll her over and take her as deep as deep goes and fuck her flat into the bed. But he goes down on his back beneath her when she pushes lightly, straddling him and bracing herself, still breathing in quick, shallow gulps. Sweat beads on her forehead, her eyes are glazed. She seems almost as shaken by it as him.

Their hands reach out and meet, clasping hard, as Lucy pushes his arms over his head and starts to ride him, with long, possessive swoops that drag him against every single bit of her and make him see stars. But then she gives the control back to him, lets him flip her onto her back and brace his weight on his elbows, cover her with his height and bulk, and thrust into her hard enough to make her hips jerk. She draws her knees up on either side of him, wrapping her arms around his back, as he buries his face between her breasts. “Lorena,” he mutters indistinctly, cursing and gasping and praying all at once. “Lorena.”

He has just enough consciousness left to know that he is calling another woman by his dead wife’s name and he should probably try to stop doing that, but it spills out of him anyway. He gulps, he tries to apologize, but this is already enough of a mess, and Lucy seems somehow to have expected that he would. The pace of his thrusts increases, raw and reckless, rasping and rutting. He needs her, whatever – whoever – she is. The realization is coming to him in punching bursts, breathless, blinding, hot as the heat of their coupling. He can’t walk away from whatever she is offering. He has to read the damn magic diary and learn what it is. He has to follow her. He has to – somehow – trust in the utterly impossible. Nothing else makes sense. Nothing else is left.

All further thoughts, however, are driven out of Flynn’s head in the next instant, as he bucks and jerks and loses himself entirely, collapses on Lucy as if his back has been broken, and realizes belatedly that he is probably squashing her. Guilt percolates through him, slow and cold. That was probably the worst lay Lucy ever had in her life. If it was just to bind him to her, maybe she doesn’t care if it was good or not, but he feels the duty to own up to it. Slowly, badly, as if he has two broken arms and legs, he manages to disentangle his body from hers, roll off and collapse next to her. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. He tastes the choking tears in his throat, struggles to spit them out. “M’ sorry. M’ sorry.”

Lucy rolls over and pulls his head down onto her chest, letting him rest there as she strokes his hair, as he grips hold of her side and presses his face into her. He jerks and shakes with sobs he won’t quite succumb to, his entire body torn between the sweet release of climax and the stabbing agony in his heart, his mind, his soul. He feels as if he must be hurting her, as if his hands are sinking into her like clay, molding her and marking her. She’s tiny, especially compared to him. It feels like far too much to ask for her to bear the weight of his pain.

And yet, Lucy doesn’t move, stays where she is, until he’s finally gone still, too exhausted and heartsick to stir at all. She rolls out from underneath him and goes to the bathroom, then pads back, pulling the covers out and crawling in. He manages to do the same, collapsing, as she slides up next to him and lets him rest his arm over her. He feels like a soldier that has been through far too many wars – which, perhaps, is exactly what he is. His chest heaves a few more times. His hand runs up and down her ribs, her hip, her slender thigh. “M’ sorry,” he mumbles again, eyes closed. “Isn’t what you deserved.”

Lucy doesn’t answer that, at least aloud, but he feels the light touch of her lips on his unshaven cheek. The backs of her fingers ghost along his jaw. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not.” He opens his eyes and stares at her. “It’s not, it’s – it’s not, it’s not.”

“It’s not,” Lucy agrees, admirably steady. He wants to cling onto her, he wants her to make it stop shaking. Perhaps it’s unfair of him to think that one small woman can make the whole world stand still, and yet, he almost thinks that if anyone, she could. “It’s not right now. But it will get better, Garcia. I promise. I promise.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask her how she can possibly know that, until he remembers, right. From the future. He’s too tired not to play along, is starving for any drop of reassurance, however childish or impossible. “What is it?” He has to know. “What am I supposed to do? With this – with time travel. Do I save them? My wife and daughter?”

Lucy hesitates for a long moment. It’s clear she’s deciding what to say, what sort of oracle it is permissible to play. At last she says, “We’ll say you do.”

“How?” He pushes himself up on his elbow. He desperately wants to believe her and he thinks, somehow, that he already does, has made the decision and felt the key turn. “How do I do that?”

“Read the journal,” Lucy repeats. “I’ve written down everything I can tell you there. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be difficult, and what it’s going to cost us, and you – I can’t possibly tell you that it’s going to be easy, or that it’s something I’m asking of you lightly. But if nothing else – ” she laughs, dry as dust – “it’s been like this before. I made another visit back to you, and that set things in motion once. I have to trust it will again.”

“What?” Flynn is confused. “I’ve never met you before.”

Lucy hesitates, then shifts his head down to rest more comfortably on her stomach, fingers still playing with his hair, a soft little gesture that seems almost unconscious. “No,” she says at last. “I suppose we haven’t.”

Flynn has a feeling that that is another one of the things she’s said which wouldn’t make sense even if he was sober. He’s closer to it than he was earlier in the evening, but the combination of alcohol and sex and heartbreak is never brilliant for a man’s brainpower. All his strength has run out of him, but in a different way than when it first left him, along with a sizeable proportion of his will to live, when he saw Lorena and Iris’ bloodied bodies on the floor. He has had to bear the shattered pieces of his world in absolute solitude and silence, barely any time to even grieve, when he needed to get out of Dubrovnik and avoid being framed and deal with the logistics of staying ahead of Rittenhouse and choosing a hideout and renting this flat and resisting the ever-present urge to eat the business end of his gun. He has not let it out, not once properly wept, because he is afraid there is no way to recover from it if he does. He still doesn’t know, in fact. And yet.

He cries so hard that his entire body shakes, face pressed into Lucy’s stomach, his tears glistening on her skin like sweat. He tries to bite it back, but he still makes horrible, hoarse, gulping noises like a wounded animal, one long, choked howl that comes out of him over and over. Lucy doesn’t make any attempt to shush him or tell him not to. Finally, she nudges him up so he can put his head on her shoulder instead, wrapping her arm around his back and pulling him alongside her. She waits until he’s finally fallen silent, drained and done, can’t even open his eyes or think about ever standing up again. It seems, even more than everything else he has heard tonight, utterly impossible.

They drift and doze. They’re still both naked, there is nothing between them in the dark, and for the first few hours since the murders, Flynn sleeps without any nightmares at all. When he wakes up, the light in the room is grey, he has a splitting headache, and Lucy is asleep next to him, curled up on her side with the quilts tucked under her arms. He stares down at her, not knowing what to do or think. Is she going to stay? Can she stay? Whatever faces him, it seems as if it might be easier with her help.

Lucy stirs as a touch of fragile sun peers through the blinds, rolls over, and opens her eyes, as he’s drinking the glass of water from the bedside table, grimacing and grumbling. Hangovers always suck, but for some reason, Flynn almost welcomes this one. It feels real, it feels like waking up from the haze of grief and guilt and alcohol, the wastelands he’s been wandering on. He thinks of the gun, one final temptation, and then pushes it aside. It doesn’t have the same hold on him anymore. Its curse has been broken. Now, he has other plans.

“Morning,” he says gruffly, seeing that Lucy’s awake. “About – everything. Last night. I wasn’t very – I wasn’t.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Lucy sits up and glances at the clock, which – given where, or rather, when, she’s come from – strikes him as oddly and unbearably poignant. “I can’t stay much longer, Garcia. I was promised only twenty-four hours in which this would definitely work, and any more than that was playing with fire. And I have other places to go.”

Flynn bites back his instinctive response that she could. “Lucy – ” he starts. “Lucy, are we – we are going to see each other again?”

“We will.” Lucy swings her legs over the side of the bed, goes to peer in at his shower, and apparently thinks better of it. “It’ll be a few years, but yes.”

“And? Then what?”

“I suppose you’ll have to find out.” She looks at him gently. “We both will.”

Flynn can’t believe he’d be visited by a woman from the future who then is no help about the future at all, when all he craves is a flicker of certainty and stability in the sea of chaos, but he can already sense that it will get him nowhere to push. He watches as Lucy gets dressed, then gets up to do the same. “Can I walk you to your – car?”

Lucy grins wryly. “All right,” she says. “I suppose you can see it work. You might as well have your proof that it’s real.”

Flynn suddenly wonders if he’s prepared for this or not, but doesn’t demur. He pulls on his shoes and jacket, and they step out into the cool, misty morning – São Paulo is once more living up to its unofficial nickname of Terra da Garoa, Land of Drizzle. It’s early enough that the streets are as quiet as they ever really are. A few fruit sellers on bicycles speed past, cardboard crates strapped precariously over their back wheels, and Flynn and Lucy walk awkwardly side by side, not quite looking at each other, hands in their jacket pockets. It’s about twenty minutes to a certain back alley, where Lucy strides up to a shrouded object at the end, pulls the lashed-down tarp off, and reveals a large grey metal eyeball. As time machines go, it looks like the junior varsity squad, and Flynn eyes it skeptically. “You came here in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.”

Lucy laughs. “Like the Millennium Falcon, yes, I did. It’s called the Lifeboat. You’ll probably want to stand back. But, well. This is goodbye for now. Good luck.”

Flynn doesn’t want to ask why she sounds as if she thinks he’ll really need it. He isn’t ready to let her go. “Lucy – ”

“One other thing.” Lucy tilts her head back to look at him. “My younger self meeting you is going to be… well, it’ll be an experience for both of us, let’s put it that way. She will ask you eventually how you got the journal. Don’t tell her about this – this night, all right? It’s going to be – well, I don’t want her to know that way. Just tell her that I gave it to you at the bar that night, and leave out the rest.”

Flynn has to run over that sentence in his head a few times to be sure he’s understood it correctly. He coughs, then nods, and holds out his hand. “Well then… goodbye?”

Lucy looks at him, then nods in return, takes it, and shakes it. Then she lets go, hits a lever, and opens the Lifeboat door, crawling in with what seems less than total grace. Flynn is almost tempted to offer her a hand up, but doesn’t. As ordered, he stands back.

The door shuts, and the bands on the outside of the machine start to whirl, building up momentum. The whine of the engine grows, and then, with a sharp backwash that rattles the windows in the nearby tenement, it vanishes into thin air. There one moment, gone the next. Jesus fucking Christ. It’s actually real. Time travel. What the hell.

Flynn shakes his head, resists the urge to rub his eyes, and stands there another few moments, as if to be sure that Lucy didn’t forget her purse and might have to come back. But the morning is still again, and there’s a faint brightness on the underside of the mist. The sun will probably come out later, and burn it all away.

After a final minute, Flynn turns his back and starts to walk. Slowly at first, and then faster, weaving through the streets of São Paulo as they’re starting to come to life, and the commuter traffic is soon to be in full and crushing throng. For the first time, he knows for a fact that he’s going to make it to the end of the day today, and then to the end of the next one. He is possessed, consumed, afire with curiosity, brain spinning fast as the Lifeboat’s gyro, as the world does not seem – not better, not exactly. It will not be better, nothing will be resolved, nothing will be stopped or surrendered, until Lorena and Iris somehow take another breath, and that night never happened, and the broken world is set to rightness. But it’s something. It’s more than that. It’s hope.

Flynn reaches his apartment, and heads up the steps. He has a feeling he won’t be staying in Brazil much longer, will be going somewhere else, and he needs to find out where that will be, needs to find out everything he can. He steps inside, shuts and deadbolts the door, and goes to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Black and rich; Brazil is one place you will never go without good coffee. He opens the blinds and cracks the window. Can smell diesel exhaust and the salty wind from the Atlantic Ocean and the whiff of roasting meat from sidewalk carts, gulps it all down. He’s ready now. Life can have him back. His head hurts with an almost crystalline clarity.

When the coffee is ready, Flynn pours it into a mug. He goes to his jacket, takes the journal out of the pocket, and carries it over to the table. Sets it down, runs his fingers over the embossed LP on the cover, and stares at it for a very long moment. Then he takes a deep breath, opens to page one, and begins to read.

[sophisticatedloserchick]

Fanfic - You Have My Blessing - 1/1

Summary: Missing scene from 3x14 where Barry goes to Joe to ask for his family ring to propose to Iris. 

Rating: PG

Word Count: 

A/N: Based on @amuzed1 headcanon post found here

Joe had been moments away from leaving the house for his date with Cecile when he heard a knock on the front door.

He knew something was up when he opened his front door to find Barry. 

Seeing Barry wasn't a complete surprise. Despite having moved out months ago Barry was still a frequent visitor to the West family home. Whether it was to watch Sunday football with Joe or for a family dinner. The odd part was Barry had knocked when Joe always had made it clear to him this was his home too.

There was also the fact Barry looked a little jumpy.

“Bar?” Joe stared at him in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, hey Joe.” Barry rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “Can I come in?”

“Its your home Bar,” Joe took a step to the side to let Barry in. “You are welcome anytime.”

Barry managed a weak smile as he rushed in. He took in Barry's attire of a fancy black suit and his hair neatly combed back. Joe would have guessed he was on his way for a date with Iris. Except he knew that his daughter was back at Picture News writing her article. Joe watched curiously as he made a bee-line for the living room. Barry looked like he was about to sit down on the couch but then stopped himself. He flailed around a bit before ending up in the middle of the room with his arms folded over his chest.

“You alright there son?” Joe raised his eyebrows at Barry.

“Yes of course,” Barry swallowed thickly. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“Cause you look ready to jump out your skin.” Joe pointed out. “I haven't seen you this nervous since your first day at CCPD when you lost the files of the murder case you were working on.”

“I did eventually find those files you know,” Barry said as the tension eased out of his shoulders.

“Only after you had a minor panic attack and was making plans to flee the country to avoid Singh,” Joe chuckled fondly at the memory. “So whats wrong? Everything okay with Iris?”

At the mention of his daughter Barry started bouncing nervously on his feet. He looked to be a strange mix of terrified and excited. Joe's parental instincts kicked into high gear. With Savitar's threat hovering over Iris anything involving his daughter put Joe on high alert.

“Tell me whats wrong,” Joe strode forward to Barry. “Is she hurt? Is it something about her future?”

“Well kinda....” Barry trailed off vaguely. 

Joe loved Barry like his own but sometimes he truly tried his patience.

“Barry,” Joe said in his firm, no nonsense voice.

“Can we sit down?” Barry asked instead of answering. “I feel like this would be better if we were sitting down.”

Joe resisted the urge to throw his hands up in frustrations.

Seconds later the two of them were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. With Joe staring Barry down while he continued to fidget.

“Well?” Joe pushed.

“Joe I need to ask you something,” Barry cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “No actually I more need to tell you something.”

Barry took a deep breath before looking directly at Joe.

“I want to marry Iris,” Barry said clearly and simply.

“Yeah Bar I know,” Joe gave him a weird look. “I've known you wanted to marry Iris since you were twelve.”

Barry's face crumbled a little in frustration but he held firm.

“Well yes that's true,” Barry said. “I meant I want to ask her to marry me.”

“Oh,” Joe said taken aback.

“Soon,” Barry continued. “As in I want to ask her tonight.”

“I see,” Joe said slowly.

“I know you think its too soon,” Barry started to babble. “I know she and I just moved in together. And everything right now is crazy with Savitar and prophecies. Everyone will say I should wait. That I shouldn't rush things and take my time.”

Joe opened his mouth to speak but Barry interjected.

“But I love her Joe,” Barry said with such conviction. “She is everything to me. I want the two of us to build a life together. For the future to be our future.”

“Barry,” Joe breathed out cause he truly didn't know what else to say.

“It would mean a lot if I had your blessing,” Barry's eyes drifted down briefly down to his hands. “There's also something else...”

Oh god, Joe thought to himself, does he mean grand-babies too?

“My family ring,” Barry looked back up at Joe. “The one you've been holding on for me until the day I was ready to propose. That's the ring I want to give Iris.”

Joe let out a long breath he didn't realize he'd been holding in. Somehow by Barry asking for the ring the reality of the situation finally hit him.

“You have my blessing,” Joe said thickly. “You always did.”

Barry brightened up considerably with those words. A genuine smile appearing on his lips since he first walked into the house.

Joe meant it too. No one on Earth knew better than him how much Barry loved his daughter. While he'd never think anyone was good enough for his baby-girl Barry was the only man he trusted to treat her right. To support her, make her the number one priority, and to make her happy.

“I'll get the ring,” Joe said getting up from his chair.

Joe was halfway out of the room when Barry called out to him.

“Thank you Joe,” Barry said sincerely. “It means a lot to know you approve. To know you think I'm worthy of it.”

Joe nodded in return not trusting himself to say anything else without losing it.

Upstairs in his bedroom Joe walked over to his closet and pulled down a wooden box he kept on the top shelf. He wiped off the dust and lifted the lid to the ring box inside. The ring box itself was a unique item, made from sterling silver with etchings along the sides. A remnant of time long past.

Joe knew what that ring meant to Barry. The ring that had once belong to his great-grandfather who fought through a war to get back to the woman he loved. The ring that had been passed down through three generations of Allen men who gave it to the women who'd become their wives. The ring Barry's father had given to his mother. Now Barry wanted to give that ring to Iris. To make the two of them be part of that legacy of spending your life with the person you loved the most. Barry wanted that for Iris, for them. Even with all the darkness in their lives right now all Barry could see was a happy future.

Maybe Barry had a point that the whole thing was crazy and the two of them should wait. Yet Joe could not think of one single reason why two people in love, two people who had lost so much in their lives, shouldn't be allowed to be happy.

Joe could feel his eyes burning with tears. His chest constricting with emotion. The last time he'd seen this ring box Barry had been a broken eleven year old boy who had just lost his entire family. That boy had now grown in the man who wanted to build a future with Iris. His precious daughter who deserved nothing less than to spend the rest of her life with the man she loved.

The tears gathered in his eyes now. Emotions bubbling to the surface. Happiness for how far Barry and Iris had come, and fear that there remained a threat that could tear them apart.

Joe quickly wiped his eyes before heading back downstairs with the ring. He vowed to himself not to let his fears cloud the day. To instead only focus on the two amazing people he was blessed to have in his life and the journey they were about to start together.