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the-eyes-of-andyserkis · 2 years ago

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Chapter 1 - "Storm"

Masterlist

Fandom: MCU - Age of Ultron, Black Panther Pairing: Ulysses Klaue x F!Reader Word count: 2.8K Chapters: 1/5 Rating: Explicit (soon!)

Summary: You're no stranger to taking risks, in fact you prefer the unknown, however when you happen to cross paths with a certain black market arms dealer you find it uncharacteristically difficult to find your balance. (aka "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.")

Warnings: Alcohol, Blood and Injury, Minor Injuries (will be updated as I go along)

A/N: Well, here we go! My first foray into fanfiction writing in something like 18 years? What can I say, Andy Serkis has an inspirational way about him, it seems.

In my mind this is set somewhere between "Avengers" and "Age of Ultron". I wanted to give myself somewhere to go, since I do kind of have plans beyond this! I'm not sure yet if I'll end up extending this work, or start a new one (in a same universe/established relationship kind of deal), but we'll see!

Also I apologize for any weird tense shifting, this started out as something else then evolved to being a reader-insert fic (which kind of unlocked it for me, actually).

Title is from the song "Bringin' Home the Rain" by The Builders and the Butchers.

AO3 Link

Blood-shot, your eyes drop And the skin's all wearing thin There's no one here to tell you ‘Bout the depth of the water Or the trouble that you're in

You're standing on the edge of a precipice.

You can’t see what’s below but you know that it’s a sheer drop with an inhospitable field of boulders lining the river at the bottom. Your heart is pounding hard but steady under your rib cage and if you look down at yourself you can see the tremor of each beat as it ripples through your bones and muscles. In contrast your head feels bright and weightless with anticipation.

You nudge your feet forward until the tips of your shoes are hanging over the edge of the platform that you’re standing on. A gust of wind tests your balance and your stomach lurches as you wobble slightly, but you take a steadying breath and brace your core, keeping yourself rigid from shoulders to ankles Taking one final breath all the way to the top of your lungs you allow your body to tip forward and the moment that gravity finally takes hold of you a helpless, giddy cry releases from your chest as you plummet towards the roaring river below.

No one you’ve ever met would choose to describe you as particularly risk averse, finding yourself more often drawn towards the source of the adrenaline than repelled by it.

You’ve mountain climbed in Yosemite, bungee jumped in New Zealand, and once rode the Ride of Steel "hypercoaster" twenty times in a row on a bet. Your date had been startled by how quickly you took him up on it and insisted that he was joking, the "joke" of course being that you wouldn't be able to handle it. You happily got in the front car and proceeded to laugh gleefully every single time you crested that first 68° degree drop that seemed to point directly at the ground.

Unfortunately your date evidently got bored and decided to peace out halfway through what he had started. After reading his text you laughed even harder than when you were on the coaster, promptly blocked him, and went to find yourself a funnel cake. The next day all of your joints ached and you felt curiously hungover, but you also felt like you had a clear head for the first time in weeks.

You're not naive, though, you understand that taking risks can get you hurt. You received a permanent reminder of this fact when you ended a paragliding trip to the Finger Lakes in New York State with a compound fracture of your humerus. The ride had been almost perfect but as you were coming in to land a rogue gust of wind lifted and then pushed you awkwardly sideways. The sudden shift in momentum and resulting collapse of one side of your glider caused you to slam left arm-first into the ground which, you noted with a detached annoyance, was just as hard as when you had left it.

Fighting off shock you walked a mile to the nearest house, and after the startled couple had calmed down from the bloody sight of you standing on their porch they brought you inside and called an ambulance. They gently stabilized your arm with a scarf while making sure to keep your feet elevated, and didn’t stop asking you questions to keep you talking until help arrived.

You still send Homer and Daisy postcards at least once a year.

Two surgeries, two metal plates, eleven screws and twelve weeks later your cast was off and your cabin fever had you on a plane to Munich because it was October, and why not?.

You’ve traveled solo for most of your adult life. It’s just easier: you don’t have to explain yourself, or wait around for other people to make up their minds regarding plans (or try to change them completely). If you’re able to coordinate with someone you will, but rarely go out of your way to do so.

You spent a week trekking across the moors of the Scottish Highlands (to this day you will attest that the shitty tavern beer you drank when you returned to civilization was the best thing you’ve ever tasted) and visited Cairo which, even before the Arab Spring, was not the safest place for a solo female traveler - as you were cheerfully reminded by just about every shopkeeper and cab driver you encountered. You were regularly offered some sort of local sweets during these interactions, though, so you learned not to mind it too much.

There’s just something that thrills you about figuring out a new place. About setting yourself as a Minotaur at the center of a labyrinth and then figuring out where you needed to go and how to get there, wandering around corners and finding disused pathways, pressing at the edges of a city to find where the pieces came together.

Then, when things got really weird and aliens invaded Earth in the Battle of New York and Superheroes became a very real thing, you lost your mind with the rest of the world for a little while. But as always seemed to happen life quickly picked up the strange new pieces and moved forward. You incorporated the new information into your reality, listened to people complain about how it was just the next thing to be pummelled into your brains during the 24 hour news cycle (Tony Stark certainly seemed to enjoy this), and continued on living because you just..did.

You find work when and where you need to; travel and adrenaline seeking aren’t free, after all.

You started learning to weld in a high school shop class after taking it as an elective and it turned out that it was actually very relaxing for you, almost meditative. You took to the craft quickly, learning that metallurgy was its own art form that was both challenging and rewarding. You find a rare calm in watching the molten puddle form, smelling the Flux burning, the elements of the Earth being reshaped under your hands, and then the ache of accomplishment in your muscles after a long day.

And, honestly, you’d be hard pressed to deny that it also kind of just tickled that part of your primordial lizard brain that got excited at “Fire! Pretty!”

The cutting, prepping and moving materials around doesn’t bother you either, it helps to keep you strong and sure of yourself. The men and occasionally other women that you work with quickly learn that you have zero issues getting your shit done, and so tend to leave you alone.

Your trade gives you the freedom to move around and do what you want since you can find work pretty easily just about anywhere. Of course there will always be those stubborn bastards who staunchly refuse to hire a woman out of some weak sense of tradition, but these days it’s not as much of a fight to get hired as it was back when you were first starting out. It also helps that now most of the holdouts can be convinced simply by making an incredulous face and asking, “Really? Aliens and Gods are real, but a woman welding is just too bananas for you to handle?”

That usually does the trick. Thanks aliens! You really did a sister a solid on that one.

Your work and your wanderlust mean that you rarely stay in one place for very long. You work hard and enough to support yourself and to save up for whatever port calls you next, but as much as you enjoy traveling and learning the world you’ve never felt particularly connected to one place, or person. Outside of the occasional one night stand any relationships you’ve had have been short lived. Not necessarily because the sex was boring (in fact occasionally it could be pretty great) but eventually they would just get tired of a woman who didn’t want to settle down and wasn’t interested in taking care of them.

You might last a few months in any given place - sometimes it’s as short as a couple of weeks - before you’re pulling up the stakes again in search of a new maze. No matter where you are you know that you'll inevitably start to get antsy, like a cat who was becoming unnerved, back twitching furtively in anticipation of something you can’t quite sense the edges of.

It’s on a hot night night in July during one of these periods of in between that you find yourself in a small bar in Utrecht, about thirty minutes outside of Amsterdam.

The walls are decorated with green and white striped wallpaper and an entertainingly prolific number of brass fixtures and ornately kitschy framed art, all bordered by wooden wainscoting painted dark brown. There is a massively thick, ancient dark wood bar top and mismatched tables, surfaces all gouged and scratched, water stains seeping through the decades of lacquer that looks to be at least half an inch thick.

It’s been mind-warpingly humid for the past three days, uncharacteristic for somewhere so close to the North Sea, and the entire city feels on edge. Even now in the evening's waning hours the air is thick and syrupy, the promise of a thunderstorm hanging teasingly in the heavy air.

You’ve positioned yourself in a corner that puts you in the path of a fan plugged in next to the bar, soaking in the relieving sweep of air every time its oscillating breeze passes over you. It’s nearing closing time and you’re nursing a glass of genever, your fingers absently play through the condensation on the surface while you debate giving the very tall and sweet looking local who's been glancing your way for the last hour, a shot at convincing you to let him take you back to your hotel.

The front door opens from the street letting in a gust of air that feels surprisingly cool, you perk up a little and hope that it's a herald of the summer storm the city’s been waiting for. You’re about to down the last swallow of your drink when you glance up at the man that just entered, flanked by two enforcer-looking buddies.

Ice rattles as the glass pauses on its way to your lips, your attention immediately drawn to them. Or rather, to him.

Dark haired and broad shouldered he’s the shortest of the three and yet seems to take up the most space. He’s wearing dark green slacks and heavy boots with a tan fatigue shirt, the top two buttons unfastened to reveal part of a large tattoo across his chest and collar bones. When he turns his head you see more tattoos arcing across his neck and skull under short clipped hair before trailing down beneath his shirt collar.

You set your glass back down, entirely missing the coaster, and unconsciously lick your lips.

It's well past last call but you watch as the dark haired man orders a whiskey anyway. The bartender tiredly starts to let him know that it’s too late, but when he finally looks up and properly takes in the three men in front of him he seems to make a quick mid-flight recalculation. A beleaguered expression shifts to an accommodating if distinctly nervous smile before pulling a bottle off of a high shelf to pour the drink.

You can’t clock if the bartender knows the man or if he simply picked up on the same energy that you had, quickly realizing that this was the kind of person that it was risky to say no to.

The local and his friends had suddenly decided to call it a night, so now it’s only you and a couple of barflies left. You can hear the three men talking but can only make out snippets - something about a “new compound” and then, most interestingly “TIG welders”.

You slowly spin your glass in its little puddle of condensation on the table, the spark of an idea coalescing into half of a plan. You convince yourself that it’s because you're looking for a new direction anyway, that this is just serendipitous timing and you should take advantage of it, that it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the way your eyes keep being drawn to the tattooed man at the bar.

You finish your drink and stand up, wiping your hands on your jeans, then gather your things and start walking towards the door. You pass the bar on your way to the exit but then, making it seem like an afterthought, you briefly pause and then double back to get the man’s attention.

“Hi, sorry to bother you-”

He turns to look at you and your words stop short behind your teeth, your stomach doing a loop the instant that his eyes focus on you.

“Um, sorry,” you stammer, caught off guard, but shake your head clear and push forward. “I don’t know if this is relevant at all but.. I’m looking for work. I’m a welder! I mean. Specifically that kind of work.”

Wow, this is going great, you think and internally roll your eyes at yourself.

He looks at you with a bemused expression, but there’s also a “get to the point” sharpness in his eyes.

”I can do TIG, MIG, stick welding..” you trail off, still waiting for him to say something. “So, uh,” you beg yourself to finish an actual sentence, ‘if you’re looking for people, I’m available.”

When he finally speaks his words are low and measured.

“You were eavesdropping.” It wasn’t a question.

You flush at the admonition and are immediately annoyed that you flush, but quickly recover to defend yourself.

“Well, I wouldn’t say you were making it particularly difficult, what with the whole” - you gesture broadly at the bar around you - “having a conversation in a public place and all.”

“Fair enough,” he chuckles and takes a sip of his whisky. His accented words are clipped, not entirely out of place in the Netherlands, but still not local. South African, maybe? At his laugh you release some of the tension that's knotted itself between your shoulder blades, though it’s replaced by something else when you notice the glisten of liquor on his lower lip.

His hair is curly and up close you can see the salt and pepper threading its ways through. His eyes refocus on you as he puts his glass down and even in the bar light you can see that they shine blue.

“Hmmm,” he seems to consider, rubbing his fingers across his chin. “I might be able to use you”. You try to keep your expression neutral at that because you're flushing again, finding yourself glad for the low light. “But", he continues, "you should know that I don’t work in, let’s say, traditional fields.”. He picks up his drink again and waits for you to react.

Interesting. “What, like, requires an NDA kind of non-traditional?”

He watches your face closely, his attentiveness making you simultaneously want to curl into yourself and stand up straighter. He smiles slowly, the lines around his eyes deepening. “Something like that.”

“Well, I’m always looking to get new experience, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and I work hard.” He glances at your left arm while you speak, and you see his eyes fall on the thick vertical scar between your shoulder and elbow. Most people can’t help but look but then will quickly avert their eyes. This man’s eyes linger, appraising, and he seems to take his time trailing his gaze up along your shoulder, your neck, and finally back to meet your eyes.

You feel warm and - you’re not quite sure the right word - perceived, maybe. Exposed. A voice in the back of your mind is whispering that this man knows how to get what he wants, and you should be very, very careful.

“David”, he says, not breaking eye contact with you as he gets one of the other men's attention. “Give her the contact details for Romania”, he then stops and looks at you inquisitively, prompting, “Miss..?”

You pick up the queue and give him your name, instinctively extending your hand to shake. After a pause he reaches out his own and wraps his fingers around yours.

“Klaue”, he replies.

And now you’re aware of how small your hand feels in his.

Danger, Will Robinson.

And you think that maybe his hand grasps yours a little longer than necessary before releasing you.

Ok, but seriously: DANGER.

Your instincts are now very insistently yelling that you should turn back - find safe quarters, dry land, high ground. Just say thanks but no thanks and figure something else out, you always do, it'll be fine.

Unfortunately your brain ignores these pleas and the adrenaline flooding your system, as has historically been the case, makes you helpless to do anything but continue on towards the beckoning unknown.

You're standing on the edge of a precipice.

Thank you for reading, and bear with me as I set this up! I should have chapter two up this weekend, and after that it's a bit up in the air but I'm hoping to get a new chapter done every two weeks or so until this one is finished.

Anyway, I'm going to go lie face down on the ground for a bit while I process that I actually did this.

#fanfiction #ulysses klaue #ulysses klaue x f reader #ulysses klaue x reader #ulysses klaue x you #mcu #mcu fanfiction #bringin' home the rain fic

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nellyharrison · 2 years ago

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spring became the summer

WHAT IF... Erica Reyes was friends with Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski from the beginning?

[READ ON AO3]

This is an interlude to my Teen Wolf rewrite under the same premise. It takes place between seasons 2 and 3A. To protect herself, Erica cuts ties with Scott and Stiles in a very permanent way. Allison finds out the truth about her mother's death and reaches out to Erica to apologize. Stiles realizes he has feelings for Erica, but will it be too late?

[text from: Superman] Mom’s throwing a 4th of July party this year. She invited some of her work friends, and both of you are invited. Your dad too, Stiles.

[text from: Batman] We��ll be there. You gonna come, Erica?

[text from: Superman] We’ve been trying to keep our distance, but you can’t freeze us out forever.

[text from: Batman] I keep asking Derek about you every time he drops by with updates on the alpha pack, but he won’t tell me anything.

[text from: Superman] Isaac won’t say anything to me either. We miss you.

[text from: Batman] Yeah, and we’ll do whatever we need to make things right. Just tell us how to fix this.

[text from: Superman] Please come to the party. If not for me, then for my mom. She’s been asking me about you.

[text from: Batman] My dad too. He told me one of his friends found out your parents granted you emancipation.

[text from: Superman] We went by your house, but they were gone. You’re gone. Where are you?

Erica stared at her phone, reading the weeks of unanswered text messages Stiles and Scott had been sending her. They’d also attempted countless phone calls, but those went ignored too. She shouldn’t have been surprised they went by her house. It was only a matter of time, which was why she had been so determined to get her parents out of town and herself moved into the building Derek had bought. She had her own loft below Derek’s, with a secret stairwell linking them that he had built for emergencies. It was nice to have her own space, but most days it felt rather empty. She had Ellie, who loved their new home, but she never really imagined living by herself like this.

A lot about her life wasn’t what she had pictured. Just a year ago, she was a completely different person. She had been a nobody, with only two real friends and simple dreams that seemed so immature to the person she was now. It was strange to think that she had given those two friends up, even if she knew it was the right decision for herself. Scott and Stiles, whether they intended to or not, had caused her a lot of pain. It wasn’t the kind of pain she could easily heal from now that she was a werewolf though. It was the kind of pain that required time in order to properly heal, and for Erica, it meant space from the ones that had caused it.

Besides, she wasn’t a nobody anymore. She had more people that cared about her, and a pack that was as devoted to her as she was to them. It wasn’t uncommon for Isaac or Boyd to drop by unannounced, the former usually crawling into bed with her on the nights he didn’t feel like staying at Derek’s. Jackson had also stopped by a few times before leaving for England with Lydia. They were back together and would probably be conquering the halls again next fall, but first, they were going to spend their summer together overseas. He had accepted his part in Derek’s pack before he left, all five of them piling together in Derek’s loft for a sleepover to solidify their bond. They all felt stronger now, and that strength didn’t fade as Jackson left Beacon Hills for the summer.

Lydia had surprisingly kept in touch with Erica after that night in the warehouse, the redhead being the only person outside of the pack that Erica regularly spoke to. The two girls found they had more in common than they expected, and it wasn’t long before they started confiding in each other. Erica helped answer any questions Lydia had that Jackson had been unable to answer about the supernatural world, and Lydia comforted Erica when she finally admitted the feelings towards Stiles and Scott that she had been struggling with. It was nice to have someone Erica could talk to about this sort of stuff, especially since the two people she normally spoke to about her problems were the source of this massive one.

There was one subject Lydia and Erica tended to avoid: Allison. Erica had no doubt that Lydia was still in touch with Allison, but once Erica told Lydia about what had actually happened to Allison’s mom, they seemed to come to a mutual agreement not to bring the huntress up in their chats. It wasn’t that Erica didn’t care about Allison anymore. Deep down, a part of her still considered Allison a friend, even after everything she had done to her. She just couldn’t bear to hear if Allison wasn’t okay. No news was better than bad news, so she appreciated Lydia’s discretion.

Erica wondered if she would have been better off asking Lydia about Allison, as it might have prepared her for when she received a phone call from Allison herself. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Allison greeted. Her voice sounded different to Erica, but she couldn’t tell if it was just because she was talking so quietly or if it was because she was different from the Allison that had attacked her pack that night. “I, um… I owe you an apology. Or a few, if I really think about it.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Erica tried to comfort her. “Gerard was-”

“Not just for that,” Allison cut her off. “Gerard did manipulate me and use me to push his own agenda, and I hurt you because of him, but I… My dad told me. About my mom.”

“Oh,” Erica said, swallowing dryly. No amount of warning from Lydia could have prepared her for this conversation. “You don’t have to apologize for that.”

“She tried to kill you, Erica,” Allison reminded, as if she could have forgotten. Erica heard Allison take a shaky breath, and when she began talking again, her voice was tight as she fought back tears. “She tried to kill you, and you- you protected me from finding out, and I repaid you by nearly killing you. I was supposed to be your friend. I’m so sorry. Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

“Of course,” Erica sighed, laughing softly when Allison practically sobbed in relief over the phone. “We are friends, Allison. Friends hit rough patches. We just went through our first one. We’ll probably hit a few more if you decide to stay in the family business, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Dad and I are done,” Allison assured her. “We’re actually in France for the summer so we can reconnect with our roots and figure out what we want the Argent name to mean for us.”

“That’s awesome,” Erica encouraged. “It would be nice if we could have you on our side instead. You’re a hell of an opponent, but imagine what we could do if we were allies.”

“I like the sound of that,” Allison chuckled. She grew quiet after that, and Erica could practically hear her thinking. “I broke up with Scott.”

Erica bit down hard on her bottom lip and inhaled sharply through nose, exhaling slowly before admitting, “He told me. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Allison asked, sounding less accusatory and more surprised.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Erica countered. “He loved you, and you loved him too.”

“I know that you respected our relationship, but even I could see it,” Allison admitted. “He might not have, but I did.”

“Allison, I-” Erica went to explain, but she was interrupted.

“It’s okay. Really,” Allison assured her. “I think if Scott ever did move on, I’d be okay if it was with you.”

“He loves you, Allison,” Erica reminded her. “Regardless of my feelings, I can’t compete with that.”

“He loves you too,” Allison declared, and it was enough to make Erica’s heart falter in her chest. “I just don’t think he realizes how he loves you yet. I hope he does realize it, and I mean that. You deserve that.”

“I don’t know what I deserve anymore,” Erica scoffed, blinking back tears. “But thank you. I hope you know, I would be happy if you two ended up together. This year’s been really confusing for me, but as Scott’s best friend, I can’t deny how good you were for him.”

“Not all first loves last,” Allison mused. “It would be nice if they did, but that’s not realistic. I think, someday, we’ll all find the people that we’re meant to be with and we’ll all be happy, together.”

“It’s a nice thought,” Erica agreed, smiling softly. “Will you keep in touch while you’re away?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Allison replied. “Good luck with everything.”

“Thanks,” Erica nodded. “Enjoy the rest of your trip.”

“I’ll try,” Allison chuckled, hesitating for a moment before ending the call.

Erica looked down at her phone, feeling like the weight on her chest had dropped a couple tons. Allison had given her a lot of closure, and she hadn’t realized how much she needed that in her life. She needed to regain some clarity, and she figured the best way to do that would be to close some of the doors that were leaving her mind so fuzzy. Standing from her bed, she grabbed two shoe boxes from her closet and began flitting around her loft. A couple of hours later, she had upgraded the shoe boxes to some large boxes she had used during her move into the loft. Stacking one on top of the other, she carried them towards the door and set off for her destinations.

Later that night, Scott and Stiles would return home to find a box on each of their doorsteps. Scott took his box directly to Stiles’s house, shocked to find he had one of his own. They went up to Stiles’s room and opened the boxes, pulling out item after item from their lives with Erica. There were photobooth strips, arcade tokens, movie tickets, carnival prizes, Valentine’s Day cards, past birthday and Christmas gifts, and countless other objects collected over the ten years they had been friends. She had kept so much, and each item they pulled out reminded them of a moment they had shared together.

“Why does it feel like she’s breaking up with us?” Scott asked, his thumb running along the edge of a framed photo of him and Erica that his mom had taken last summer. Erica had joined him and his mom on their trip to the beach, and he had to practically drag her into the water. The framed shot showed him with his arms around Erica’s middle, her hands gripping his arms as she squealed when the wave crashed against their backs. He remembered how tired they both were on the drive home, Erica leaning her head against his shoulder when she fell asleep. He had been so happy that day, which was such a contrast to the deep misery he was feeling now.

“Because she is, Scott,” Stiles muttered, flipping through a comic book he had found in his box. It was The Brave and The Bold, issue #197, which had one of the sweetest moments between Batman and Catwoman in all of the comics. He remembered the day Erica had bought the comic. The two of them had gone comic book shopping together, and it was one of the few issues Stiles had read that Erica hadn’t. He remembered teasing her about how she hadn’t read such an important comic for Catwoman and Batman’s relationship, but all she had done was stick her tongue out at him and place the comic in her arms to buy. Over the years, he had seen her rereading this issue, often admitting it had become one of her favorites, and now he was holding it. Because she didn’t want it anymore. Because she didn’t want any reminders of him anymore. She didn’t want any reminders of either of them. “I guess that’s that.”

“What? What do you mean ‘that’s that’?” Scott retorted. “So she gives us all this stuff back and we’re expected to just give up on ten years of friendship?”

“If that’s what she wants!” Stiles shot back. “What else are we supposed to do, Scott? We have no idea where she is. No one will tell us. And even if we did know where she was, she wouldn’t see us. She won’t even answer our texts. And even if she did agree to see us, what are we supposed to say to fix this? Do you even know why she’s mad at you?”

“Sort of,” Scott shrugged. “I don’t know, but we should at least try, shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t think she wants us to, man,” Stiles pointed out. “That’s why she gave all of this back. This is her way of ending things with us.”

“That’s not fair,” Scott muttered. “I didn’t- I don’t want the last time I saw her to be the last time I see her.”

“It’s not about what we want anymore,” Stiles muttered, closing his box. “Erica wants this. We haven’t been able to give her anything else she’s wanted. Least we can do is give her this.”

Scott stared at Stiles before shaking his head, packing his box up, and storming out. As he walked home, he thought about what Stiles had said, but he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t give up on Erica so easily. He wasn’t sure he could give up on her at all. It felt like all of his memories were tied to her, and the thought of losing her completely, of not making any more memories with her, broke his heart. He threw the box onto his desk with a heavy thud, then fell down face first onto his bed. He felt numb, and while he didn’t sleep, he remained laying there until Isaac showed up a few hours later.

“You awake?” he muttered as he hovered in the doorway, staring at Scott’s motionless body. When he began to move, rolling onto his back, Isaac moved further inside and sat at his desk. He noticed the box and pulled it open, glancing inside. “What’s all this?”

“Erica dumped Stiles and I today,” Scott grumbled. “That’s all of the stuff she didn’t want anymore.”

“Yikes,” Isaac replied, pulling out the same picture frame Scott had and smiling at the happy look on Erica’s face. “Told you two to fix it before it was too late.”

“How the hell were we supposed to fix it when none of you would tell us where she is?” Scott snapped. “If I didn’t know for a fact this came from her, I wouldn’t even know that she’s still in town. Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?”

“Of course she’s okay,” Isaac rolled his eyes, putting the photo down and leaning back in his chair. “She just doesn’t want to talk to you or Stilinski anytime soon and I don’t blame her.”

“How is that fair?” Scott growled. “She didn’t even give us a chance-”

“Bullshit,” Isaac cut him off, standing and pointing an accusing finger towards him. “She gave you ten years of chances, Scott. If it took you this long to realize she was there the whole time, then you don’t deserve her. Neither of you do.” He shook his head and left Scott alone again, deciding he should probably check on his packmate now that he knew what she had been up to.

Scott fell back on his bed again, growling as he rubbed his face. He knew that Isaac was right. Erica had always been there, and intentionally or not, he had taken her for granted. He hadn’t appreciated her for what she did for him, and in the end, he had lost her. If she needed to separate herself from him, and from Stiles, to find her own happiness, then he wouldn’t stand in her way. He only hoped that someday, she would be able to let him back into her life and give him a chance to be someone that made her happy again.

The summer passed slowly for Stiles, Scott, and Erica. They each tried to keep busy, Scott and Stiles spending a lot of their time practicing lacrosse, while Erica threw herself fully into preparation for the battle against the alpha pack still to come. Derek continued to give Stiles updates, and Isaac continued hanging out with Scott, but neither of them gave the two boys any information on their packmate, and despite still wanting to, they eventually stopped asking. Stiles and Scott even resorted to asking Lydia and Allison about Erica once, but that proved just as fruitless, and resulted in almost identical rants that had them regretting ever asking.

About halfway through the summer, Boyd decided to go on a camping trip with his family. It would require going out of state, and being out of contact for the week he was gone, but it was a tradition he didn’t want to miss out on. Derek was worried about letting another member of his pack be so far away, but he had been making a concerted effort to provide his pack with whatever they wanted in life. His priority was still to keep them all safe and alive, but he wanted them to be able to live too.

A few days after Boyd had left to meet his family, Erica ran into his mother at the store. The woman began apologizing, admitting to not having Erica’s number, then handed her the missing poster she was distributing. Boyd had never shown up at the campsite, and they hadn’t heard from him since. Erica quickly wrote down her phone number for Mrs. Boyd, requesting she call her if she found or needed anything, then set off for the loft. All she had to do was hand Derek the flier before he was calling Isaac and the three of them were going out searching.

They started at Boyd’s house, picking up on his scent that was a few days old, which confirmed that he hadn’t been there since he had left for the campsite. As they followed it out of town, they came across Boyd’s car abandoned on the side of the road. All of his camp gear was still inside, but there were broken windows and a claw mark along the passenger door. Carved into the driver’s seat was the same triskele that had been marked on Derek’s door at the beginning of the summer. The alpha pack had Boyd.

“We have to tell Jackson,” Erica insisted as they made their way back home.

“I think we should tell Scott,” Isaac added, his eyes widening when Erica glared at him. “What? Even if he’s not in the pack, he’s connected to us. He could be in danger.”

“We should bring everyone in,” Derek decided. “The alpha pack has declared war and taken one of our own. I will call Jackson. Erica, I want you to reach out to Allison. Isaac, you’ll tell Scott and Stiles. We need to find the alpha pack, but once we do, we’ll need as much help as we can get if we want to get Boyd back and beat them.”

“Yes alpha,” Isaac and Erica replied in unison.

“You two don’t go anywhere without each other from now on, okay?” Derek instructed. “They got Boyd because he was alone. We’re stronger together. If you’re not at home, you’re together. Understood?”

“Yes alpha,” Isaac immediately agreed.

Derek glanced over at Erica, raising an eyebrow to prompt her, “Yes alpha.”

Once they returned home, Isaac and Erica went to her loft while Derek stalked off to his. They could hear him working out his anger above them, but they settled onto her couch, leaning on each other as they both worried about Boyd. Erica put on a Harry Potter marathon on TV, then they each pulled out their phones to reach out to their assigned people. Allison promised to talk to her dad and to get a last minute flight home if they found the alpha pack before she was planning on returning for the start of the new school year.

“You know you’re going to have to talk to them, right?” Isaac asked, not looking at her as he continued tapping at his phone. “We’re going to have to work with them, so you can’t keep ignoring them.”

“If it means getting Boyd back, I don’t care,” Erica replied, swallowing dryly as she inhaled through her nose. “It won’t change anything anyways. I’m not getting involved in their mess again. I closed that door.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if giving them all of the stuff you kept over your ten year friendship is what I would call ‘closing that door’,” Isaac disagreed. “Especially since all it did was make them want to make up for every single wrong they’ve ever done to you. You know Jackson told me Stiles asked Lydia about you?”

Erica sat up at that, staring over at Isaac with wide eyes. “He did what?”

“Mhm,” Isaac nodded, glancing up from his phone to meet her eyes. “I guess Scott asked Allison too, because she and Lydia had, like, an hour long phone call about it when Jackson and Lydia were supposed to be going out for dinner.”

“You’re lying,” Erica insisted, but she knew by his steady heartbeat that he wasn’t. “Why would they do that?”

“Because they’re going crazy without you?” Isaac proposed. “Maybe they’ve finally come to their senses.”

“No, shut up,” Erica snapped, standing up and walking away from him. “Why do you keep pushing this? I told you I was done with them. I told you everything that has happened between us. You know how much they’ve hurt me. Why do you keep pushing me to forgive them?”

“Because you’re going crazy without them too, Erica,” Isaac pointed out, standing and taking a step towards her. “Look around!” He gestured around her loft, and for the first time, she noticed how bare it looked. So many of her belongings had gone into those two boxes for Scott and Stiles, and without them, her home- her life looked empty. “You are not you without them, and you know it. I’m not asking you to let them close enough that they can hurt you, but ignoring them forever is going to kill you.”

“Loving them nearly killed me too, Isaac!” she shouted, covering her face with her hands as she felt herself start to tear up again. “Ugh, I’m so tired of crying over them. You’re right. My whole life was wrapped up in them, and now look at me. I don’t know who I am without them. That’s not healthy! That’s not normal!”

“You’re a teenage werewolf. Nothing about you will ever be normal,” he retorted.

“You’re not listening!” she growled, charging him and knocking him to the ground. They grappled for a few minutes, knocking over some of her furniture before she finally pinned him. “Until I figure out who I am away from Scott and Stiles, I can’t be around them. Not the way we used to be. If I go back to them too soon, I’ll just get wrapped up in them all over again.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Isaac told her, honest but coming from a place of concern.

“Then it’s my mistake to make,” Erica replied, getting off of him and helping him to his feet. “I’m going to make sure Derek’s okay. Clean this place up.” She gestured to the mess they had made while fighting, quickly leaving her loft and missing Isaac’s exasperated groan. She glanced up at Derek’s loft above, but then found herself making her way downstairs and outside. She would go and check on Derek eventually, but her insatiable curiosity had her leaving the building and making her way to Stiles’s house instead.

As she got closer, she started listening to the house and realized Stiles wasn’t alone. His dad was gone, the cruiser not parked in the driveway, but the heartbeat was familiar. Scott was with him, and they were talking about Boyd. At least, they had started by talking about Boyd. She climbed up the outside of the house and settled with her back against the wall next to Stiles’s bedroom window just as their conversation shifted.

“So, uh, I’ve been thinking about it,” Stiles began. “And I think I like Erica back. I don’t know if I love her, because I’ve only ever loved Lydia, but I’m losing my mind not talking to her.” He paused, and Erica crept closer so she could look inside to see him scratching the back of his neck. “I miss her. A lot.”

“I miss her too,” Scott admitted, his back to the window. “But how do you know you miss her because you like her back and not just, you know, because she’s your best friend?”

“Because I’ve been dreaming about her,” Stiles confessed, a hopeless grin growing on his lips. “That’s never happened before.”

“What kind of dream?” Scott asked, his shoulders tensing slightly.

“I don’t know,” Stiles shrugged. “Sometimes we’re just hanging out in my room, reading comic books or listening to music. Sometimes we’re driving around together, but uh, in those ones, we’re usually holding hands. Sometimes we’re at the formal, and she’s wearing that black dress again, and I ask her to dance instead of Lydia. Sometimes we’re kissing. Those ones are the worst because I wake up and wonder if kissing her is like how it is in my dreams.”

“It’s better,” Scott blurted out, staring at the floor as he remembered what it had been like to kiss Erica last year. When he looked up and saw Stiles’s expression, he cleared his throat. “I mean, she’s a good kisser.” He hadn’t been in his right state of mind when it had happened, but he remembered exactly what kissing Erica was like and how it had felt. “Does this mean you’re over Lydia?”

“Lydia’s with Jackson,” Stiles reminded him.

“That wasn’t the question,” Scott replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I don’t know, okay?” Stiles stammered. “Maybe? It’s hard not to think it’s not actually going to work out between us when she goes off to England with the guy she’s in love with.”

“But you think it could work out between you and Erica?” Scott questioned.

“Yeah,” Stiles nodded, sitting up a bit straighter. “I mean, maybe. I’d at least like to try.”

That was more than Erica could take, her feet stumbling over each other as she rushed down to the ground. She didn’t stop moving until she was far from Stiles’s house, her heart racing with every step she took. Stiles liked her. Stiles had been dreaming about her. Stiles had been dreaming about kissing her. And on top of all of that, there was something she had noticed and couldn’t seem to get past. Scott had been quick to admit she was a good kisser, even though he had only really kissed her once when he was under the influence of the full moon. More than that, he had seemed jealous over the idea of Stiles and Erica. Her mind was reeling as she took off running faster, as if she could run fast enough to escape all of the confusion she had just stepped back into. She shouldn’t have gone to Stiles’s house. She should have just gone upstairs and worked out with Derek like she had told Isaac she was going to.

One minute, she was running, and the next, she was being tackled to the ground. “Get off of me!” she shouted, struggling to fight off the figure that had attacked her. They were too strong. They were stronger than a human, certainly stronger than a normal werewolf. Her eyes widened when she realized it must have been one of the alphas, but just when she opened her mouth to howl for help, she was being knocked out with a hard punch to her face.

The next morning, when Derek went to check on his betas and only found Isaac, he became angry. When Isaac told him that Erica had said she was going to go up to see him last night, he became furious. When he tracked Erica’s scent from the loft to Stiles’s house, he became enraged. When the scent disappeared the same way Boyd’s had with the same triskele carved into the ground, he became panicked. Isaac and Derek tried to track her down, backtracking and checking the surrounding areas, but she was gone. The alpha pack now had two members of his pack, and they still had no idea where they were hiding.

His instincts as an alpha were to surround himself with as many people to protect himself, but he knew by doing that without a plan of attack, he was just putting those people at risk. He texted Jackson to tell him about Erica’s abduction, but ordered him to stay in England until they found the alpha pack. Jackson promised to get a private flight if necessary to get home as soon as the alpha pack was found, but agreed to stay put for the time being. He then asked Derek if he could tell Lydia and Allison, and Derek hesitated before agreeing. Together, Derek and Isaac made their way to Scott’s house, slightly relieved to find Stiles already there with him. Melissa was gone, likely at work, so they walked right inside and up to Scott’s room.

“What are you two doing here?” Scott questioned, standing from his bed while Stiles shot up from his spot at the desk.

“Where’s Erica?” Stiles added.

“They got her,” Derek told them, his jaw clenching. “Last night.”

“They-” Stiles muttered, falling back into the desk chair as his jaw dropped.

“Where are they?” Scott growled, his hands clenching at his sides.

“We don’t know,” Derek admitted. “Not yet.”

“Then we’ll find them and we’ll get her back,” Scott declared.

“Her and Boyd,” Isaac reminded.

“They could still try to get to any of you in the meantime,” Derek warned. “I know you’re not technically pack, but you need to be careful. Jackson, Lydia, and Allison are staying away until we’ve found the alpha pack, so it’s up to us. Scott, I’ll need you to go out looking with Isaac. Neither of you should be alone until we’ve found them.”

“Are they going to kill her?” Stiles asked, his voice so quiet, they might not have heard him if they weren’t werewolves with enhanced hearing.

“I don’t know,” Derek said honestly. “I know we’ll feel it if they do. When a member of your pack dies, it’s like… It’s like losing a limb.” He looked away, thinking about all that he had already lost. He couldn’t lose the pack he had made. He couldn’t lose the family he had found. “The sooner we find them, the less of a chance they have of killing her.” He nodded to Isaac, and the two of them left, leaving Scott and Stiles in ruins on their own.

They spent the rest of the summer scouring Beacon Hills for some sign of where the alpha pack had taken Boyd and Erica. Neither of their bodies popped up, which they considered a good sign, but as the weeks passed, they started losing hope. A couple of weeks before school would start up again, Isaac and Derek woke up in the middle of the night in agonizing pain. Derek managed to carry himself to his beta as he called Jackson, who answered the phone whimpering from the ache echoing throughout his body. Derek had to take a few slow breaths before he could explain what had happened and try to help his betas through it. He had no idea who it was, but there was no denying the awful truth: Erica or Boyd had been killed by the alpha pack.

#erica reyes #scott mccall #stiles stilinski #scirica #teen wolf #teen wolf fanfic #vernon boyd #isaac lahey #allison argent #my fic

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ninjago-bingo · 2 years ago

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Final Recap!

Welcome, everyone, to the final recap of Ninbingo Round Two! It’s been awesome having you all this year, and I hope you’ve all had a good time :D

There may or may not be another ninbingo next year; I’m planning on maybe hosting a different event in the first half and so I might be event-ed out :D However, if you enjoyed (or not! all feedback is good feedback!) would you consider dropping your thoughts either in the askbox or this form? It would really be appreciated.

Our bingo achievers for this round were @21st-century-ninja @ace-of-spaces @emisnt2; you can view all their works (and everyone else’s) here! Super epic congrats to everyone, but them specifically for their dedication!

Lastly, if there’s any late straggler submissions over the weekend, then just tag me in them and I’ll update this post :D Thank you again, everybody, and have a great rest of the year!

Art (low res, click the link to go to the original post):

Change and fate by @sebilini

cw: blood

“DAD!”

Lloyd, the Green Ninja.

Lloyd, the one chosen by Fate.

Lloyd, the one who has to see his beloved father undergo a painful, tragic transformation.

His father is being possessed by the Overlord.

His father is in pain, in agony, he is screaming in anguish.

And Lloyd, the Green Ninja, is destined to defeat this father of his.

It hurts. His stomach feels sick, he wants to run to his dad and hug him, tell him it’s okay, that he’s there for him. But he can’t.

It’s Lloyd destiny to defeat his dad. Perhaps it means killing him.

Tears are streaming both of their faces.

Ghost and regret by @/sebilini

cw: death

In a dark cave Morro, the master of wind, has died. He looks down on his dead body and feels nauseating, burning, choking regret. He could have had family. He could have been loved. His regret turns into anger and hatred. He will have revenge on those who caused this.

Rough-housing by @kaiyc-arts

so basically Kai and Lloyd consistently fight over snickerdoodles (its a sibling thing)

Small and never by @ninjago4life

Fic:

_IN_A_O_ by @ninjago-happens-here. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: games

Ninjago Singapore

Awfully similar names, wouldn't you agree?

This is a slice of life fic set in a less American Ninjago, where walmarts and targets are instead fair price and cold storage.

"don't age just yet" "I'm not!" by @master-of-fluff. tumblr || ao3 || prompts: secret and smile

The ninja throw Lloyd a surprise birthday ft. Waffles, a scavenger hunt, and siblings being siblings

got a crown on my head by @21st-century-ninja. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: hugs

The ritual was to bring back the evil part of his father, the oni part, and so Harumi drew on the darkness that lay latent in his bloodline and dragged it into the open.

Lloyd grips the edge of the bathroom counter, trying to calm his heartbeat. The ritual is over. They stopped the ritual in time, and Harumi’s being carted off to prison, and the ritual is over so why haven’t the horns gone away?

or:

Lloyd looks like a monster. At one point, Cole did too.

Reference Letters by @/21st-century-ninja. tumblr || ao3 || prompts: reveal and confrontation

Kai thinks about what Lloyd said at the beginning of their conversation. How many people have pretended to be this kid’s friend, only to stab him in the back? He doesn’t have anyone.

And, well, Kai happens to have a friend group dedicated to hating Garmadon anyway, so there’s only one natural conclusion to be drawn here.

Lloyd needs to join the Secret Ninja team.

or:

tasked by Green to find new recruits for the team, Kai finds his eye drawn back over and over again to one particular person. Now if only Green would get over whatever issue he has with Lloyd Garmadon joining.

The Act of Giving by @unknownuncut. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: hugs

Jay really needs to think before he acts.

The Candlestick and the Electric Bat by @frozensoapbubble. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: laughter

Kai and Jay are fooling around with their newly discovered elemental powers: a pre-season 1 ficlet.

What It Means To Come Home by @/unknownuncut. tumblr || ao3 || prompt: bonds

Just like Alice, Zane falls down the rabbit hole.

@weekend-whip @k1ngtok1 @crappy-coffee @morro-owo @grollow @master-of-cosmos @the9thghost @roantheboat @art-i-sticks @viioletpixels @miserable-flamango @ninjas-that-go @the9thghost @thepenguisalive7 @marsipain @destinymanticor @redefine-your-identity @obsessedbee @legonerd @pangolinsandnewts17 @apprentice-s @vampireautism @the-inky-isles @highfiveu-withaknife @peachyninjago @applecranberryjuice @abunnsburrow @mitzle @ice-emperor-zane @strangermask @curious-corvius @kumamoo-hq @demigod-of-the-agni @kaiyc-arts @noisyrex

#ninbingo #ninjago #update #recap #ninbingo 22 #thank u all again!!

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justasimptm · 3 years ago

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The Bride

There’s something about knowing you’re going to die that's peaceful, even if at first it isn’t. There comes a pint of acceptance, when the fear and anger melts away and you’ve decided, ‘ yeah okay, this can be it,’ and you stop fighting.

I was there. I had accepted my death, welcomed it, because death would be softer, more gentle, than life. But fear? Fear can make you do anything. Fear is what was pushing my toxic blood through my collapsing veins, fear is what made me run faster than I had my entire life. Fear is what made me fight for a life I had prayed to have ended.

My mother had left early, travelling to some doctor to try to save us. She hadn’t accepted our fate. She wanted to live. When she returned it was nearly dusk, and something was wrong. One of the maids had rushed into my room, torn me from bed, frantically trying to pull me from my room.

“We need to hide,” she said, voice small and uneven. “There’s a monster in the castle, please Miss!” A loud crash bellows from the foyer, followed by a scream, emphasizing her point.

“My mother-” I start, allowing her to tug me along as I glance towards the stairs.

“Please, I’ll explain after, we need to go now,” She pleads, stress bleeding into her tone as more screams and an odd squishing sound saturates the air. We make it to the door when I hear a familiar laugh from below, causing me to stop short and whip my head around. It was my mothers laugh. Sensing my hesitation my maid all but shoves me through the door, hard enough to make me stumble and nearly fall from the force. “That isn’t your Mother. My Lady, she-she isn’t the same.”

Another loud crash echoes and the sound of heels on the staircase spurs her into action as she darts into the room, closing the door hard and fast, seemingly uncaring about being heard. The maid, one of our newer girls Marie, latches onto my arm and leads me over to the window. I lean against the wall as she throws open the curtains and yanks the window open, trying to catch my breath. Just as she turns back to me something bangs into the door, shaking it.

“Go go go, hurry,” Marie urges, helping me over to the window. Fortunately she knew the layout well enough to pick the one room from the third floor that was right above a balcony that leads to the courtyard. “The snow will help break your landing, you’ll be okay. I’ll be right behind you. Please Miss, we need to go.”

Whatever it was slams into the door again, and it audibly cracks. At this point the terror coursing through me pushes me to start out the window before the maid even reacts. A third, final crash hits the door, splintering it as I’m nearly out, shocking me, causing me to jolt backwards.

My stomach drops as I do, hitting the snow below me hard enough to knock the wind out of myself. Marie gets one leg out before something latches onto her and tears her back inside the room. Her scream is short and resounding, filled with fear. Faintly I hear her beg before there’s an odd crunch and she falls silent. The wet slopping sound following the quiet is what then shakes me from my stupor, clambering to my feet.

“Y/N, daughter, where are you hiding?” Mother’s voice calls out, calm and melodical as it always is. “Come on out sweetheart! I found the cure!” There’s something different about her voice, like it’s coated in slime. Through large gasping breaths I manage to stumble back to my feet, shaking cold from the snow. I turn towards the stairs, glancing back up at the window I fell from as I try to quietly move forward. A hand curls its way over the window sill, promptly followed by a second.

“Ah, there you are darling, what are you doing out in the cold!” She calls, leaning her torso out, causing me to gasp. She is nearly covered in blood, her eyes seem like they’re glowing, and if it weren’t impossible I would swear she had grown. “Here, let me come get you.” And then she’s gone, heavy steps fading as she walks. Whoever that was, the maid was right, it isn’t my mother. With every ounce of strength I have left in my body I force myself to start moving, having to go slower down the stairs so I wouldn’t fall on the ice, but speeding up as I got to firm ground.

I nearly make it to the gates of the courtyard when I hear her call out to me again, sounding far closer than should be possible.

“Where are you going, daughter? I have a wonderful gift for you,” She says, snow crunching under her step as she draws towards me. I risk another glance behind me and I cannot stifle the sharp gasp the sight tears from my lungs. It is true someone is following me, but there is no possible way that they could be my mother. They wear her face, and have her voice but they can’t be her. My mother was nothing short of perfect, always made up and dressed finely, hair pinned, clean and stunning. This person? This person looks like a monster.

They’re practically giant, clothes torn and bloodied, eyes alight, hair wild and talons extending from their fingers. The sight alone spurs my steps faster, breaking out in a sprint as I whip my head back forwards. The creature behind me releases a scream of rage as it begins to follow me, its steps shaking the ground beneath its feet.

“Get back here now!” It shouts, but I don’t stop, I push and push and push, even as the air in my lungs starts burning and my legs start shaking. I haven’t left my home in years, having barely left my room in that time, my surroundings now unfamiliar, having changed in that time. A corridor that used to lead out now is blocked by a wall, no paths leading out, effectively trapping me.

I turn to try to run out, to try to get away, but it’s already there, stalking down at me.

“I raised you better than to ignore me.” It seethes, shooting a hand down at me, slamming me back against the stone. “You’re lucky you’re my daughter, you know. It’s how I know this’ll save you. Like it saved me.” It smiles then, a familiar smile, the one my mother used to give me when I would start feeling better. A comforting smile, but one that is short lived as its face begins to change. A shudder to black courses down from its head, down its arm and directly at my chest where it has me pinned.

The substance rapidly seeps over my torso, warm and sticky, growing up my neck, down my arms, and no matter how much I try I can’t get away, I can’t get it off. And then it starts burning, the pain so intense my vision blacks out. I’m faintly aware of the pressure being removed as I slump backwards, clawing at my skin trying to get it to stop. A soft shushing sound trickles through the air, so quiet I nearly miss it.

“I know darling, I know. You’re okay. It’s almost over, and then you’ll be like me. We can be together, no more pain. Just let it in.” The voice says to me gently. “This part was the worst for me as well. You’re much stronger than I was, you’d suffered so much more. You can hold out a moment longer, and then you’ll see.”

Uploading here and on AO3, AO3 will be updated sooner, check the link if you want more sooner!

https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/77525462?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#comment_427036898

#karl heisenberg #heisenberg x reader #lady dimitrescu #resident evil village #Karl Heisenberg x reader

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crescentsteel · 4 years ago

Text

Keeping a Secret - Part 8

pairing: Tsukishima x f!manager of Sendai Frogs genre: sexual tension/crack/fluff/slow burn wc: 7.4k [a/n]

Thank you so much guys for being patient. I’m feeling so so much better now, but still recovering.

Updates will still be slow but doing my best. I want to pay attention to my other hobbies again (dance, sing, games, cosplay).

AO3 link is in the masterlist page.

Let me know if you want to be part of the taglist.

Part 7 || Part 9 || masterlist

He wakes up from the slight trickle of light seeping through his room’s window. Did he not close his curtains before sleeping? He always makes sure they’re closed because he hates waking up to the brightness of the sun. Even the slightest rays of light cause him to wake up. He sits up and rubs one eye as he tries to make sense of why his curtains are open and why his head feels a bit funny that morning.

His hand stops moving and his whole body goes stiff when last night’s occurrences flash in his head. There’s not one single moment omitted from his memory.

He remembers drinking in that foul place because he was so upset that he even bothered going there in the first place. He remembers every little foolish thing he did - the immense amount of flirting from his end, his inability to walk straight, talking to his fucking keys, and getting caught drunk by his brother.

He looks at the space beside him for a while and groans, regretting everything last night.

The only pleasing memory from last night was when you laid down on his bed… and everything that followed after that. Yet that seems to be the only thing he imagined apart from the rest of what he can remember.

He’s been repressing the urge to kiss you ever since you broke the deal. So much so that his brain probably conjured up a scene that would satisfy that desire.

It felt so real though. You were so pliant and inviting. Even now, he can still remember how you whimpered his name and how you arched your body closer towards his touch.

He gently shakes his head.

You probably decided to go home after you changed and he was probably asleep by then, dreaming the whole thing. He reaches for his eyewear case and wears his glasses. He seats himself at the foot of his bed, gathering his thoughts once more before he stands up.

He hears his door open and doesn’t bother looking up. It’s probably Akiteru. He’s very sure he’ll hear from his brother about him being drunk and brought home by you. He doesn’t have any valid explanation as to why he got himself drunk... so he keeps his head down to avoid his brother’s gaze before the taunts come.

“Please don’t tell me you have a hangover.”

The voice is definitely not Akiteru’s. He slowly lifts his eyes up to see if it’s truly who he thinks it is.

When he does, his eyes land on your figure leaning back on his door with your arms crossed as you regard him with both worry and chagrin.

You’re wearing his clothes, like you were in his dream. Was it really a dream though when you’re actually in his room right now wearing the exact same clothes?

No, it wasn’t. It really happened. You slept with him, in the most literal sense, with your hands clasped together. He takes in your appearance again. Without his glasses last night, he didn’t notice how big his clothes actually are on you. He really doesn’t pay much attention to your build. Your personality makes you standout and your presence is bigger than most people he has met.

But as he stares at you now, you seem silly acting all high and mighty when you look like a mouse wearing his clothes. He keeps a straight face despite being amused at your appearance.

Unable to read Tsukishima’s expression, you feel your frustration rising. Is he still dazed? After all the effort you put last night, does he have a hangover? He’s staring at you far too long without saying anything. “I will give you the worst earful you’ll ever get in your life if you have a fucking hangover,” you spit out. You did not suffer last night’s horrors only for him to have a hangover this morning.

“I don’t. I’m only trying to recall everything last night,” he says with his voice back to normal, devoid of the previous evening’s teasing and uncharacteristic flirtatiousness.

You two regard one another carefully, traces of what happened clear in each other’s eyes. Yet, no one dares speak of it.

You decide to break the ice first as you smile your best at him. “I hope you remember how you talked to your keys,” you say with mirth glazing your tone.

He squints at you while you maintain your cheery grin. He averts his gaze and answers, “I did no such thing,” even though his demeanor clearly says he fully remembers he did.

You snort before getting your clothes last night from his desk. You place the bottle of water you grabbed from their kitchen to his desk. “Drink up. You’re still probably thirsty,” you tell him with a tone almost similar to Coach’s when someone from the team is acting up. Then you head to their restroom without saying anything else.

When you finish changing back to your clothes from last night, you check your reflection in the mirror. You look a bit tired but still okay, considering what you’ve been through. At least Tsukishima is no longer a flirting menace and you’re no longer a blushing virgin.

You dump his dirty clothes in their laundry basket and go back to his room to let him know you’re leaving.

“You will attend this afternoon’s training, right?” you ask just to be sure. He stands up and narrows his eyes at you. “Why wouldn’t I?”

You grin at his response. The Tsukishima you know is back and is as nasty as you remember him to be. “Great to know. Anyways, I’ll leave now. I have classes soon and I still need to go back home to change,” you announce before going for his door.

But before you even touch the door knob, you feel him grip your arm. “Hey,” he says sternly. You turn around to face him, curious about what he has to say that he has to touch you to stop you from leaving. “What?” He answers by dipping down to reach your lips. He plants a chaste kiss on them that it makes your heart tumble from how uncharacteristically tender it is. He pulls back, remaining only centimeters away from your face for a while before he completely withdraws away.

You gape at him dumbfounded, uncertain what to make of what he just did.

“I’m confused,” you admit.

He cocks one brow up but the rest of his features are still unreadable.

“I thought you’d be smart enough to get what it means,” he says before a smirk creeps up on his lips, turning his blank expression to a smug one.

You scoff and look away with disbelief, but you quickly recover as you face him again with a smirk of your own. “You really this snarky in the morning, Tsukishima? You could’ve asked nicely if you wanted to be kiss buddies again,” you taunt him for you know he won’t openly admit it.

“I already did. Last night,” he answers, his eyes and tone no longer sneering.

He did?

‘We already broke that deal, Tsukki.’

‘Then let’s bring it back.’

He did.

You just didn’t think he actually meant it. You were convinced that it was just an alcohol-induced volatility.

Your confusion turns to something you can’t fully describe, something exasperating yet delightful at the same time.

You chuckle as you roll your eyes. “Indeed, you did,” you say before stepping out of his room, but for the second time, he stops you from leaving.

“You haven’t given me an answer yet.”

With your back facing him, you smile when you hear his persistence.

You hastily turn around and latch an arm around his neck, pushing yourself against his body. You tip your toes to reach him and press your lips firmly against his.

Before it even sinks in him, you quickly pull back with your arms slowly dropping on his chest. You give it one tap and quietly say, “There’s your answer.”

You swiftly release yourself from him and third time’s a charm, you successfully get out of his room.

He watches you hurriedly close his door, then sighs when you’re no longer in sight.

“How annoying,” he utters.

Yet there’s the tiniest smile on his lips as he starts getting ready for his day.

—

Even though your secret deal is back, no one speaks of what almost happened that night on his bed. Both of you are aware that it did, but no one dares mention it.

The secret kisses you share are also back to how it was - passionate but still harmless, nothing like the sensual one you had when he got drunk.

There’s also been no repeat of the hugging disaster you did at the Sendai gymnasium. Things are back to how it’s supposed to be.

Yet you can’t shake off the feeling that something changed.

Whatever. Maybe you’re just overthinking it because the project is ending soon. When it does, your little secret will cease to exist and you’ll become nothing more than his manager. Things will be back to how it was before the unfortunate pairing your professor did.

Was it really that unfortunate though? You stare at nothing for a while then take a deep breath to brush off your unnecessary thoughts.

You should be focused on the upcoming game, not on what happens with you and Tsukishima behind closed doors. You better go down to the benches with them than staring at the court when there’s not even a game taking place.

“Fancy seeing you again, Miss Manager.”

You turn your head to the side to see who’ll be this match’s receiver of your rejectorama streak. You’re a bit surprised when it’s not someone in their jersey, but someone in a business suit regarding you with a professional smile. You know this guy. You’ve met him somewhere for sure.

Ah, yes. He’s that guy talking with Bokuto when Tsukishima introduced you.

You return the guy’s smile as you tilt your whole body to face him. “Sir Promoter,” you acknowledge quaintly. “How may I be of any help to you today?”

“I was wondering if you can tell me more about the Frogs this year,” he says kindly, all too kindly for your taste. You’d brush him off but you might just be reading into it too much. He might be actually only doing his job.

“I’d love to, but we have a game. Maybe another time, Sir Promoter,” you maintain your goody two shoes act to mirror his nice guy demeanor.

“How about tonight then?”

There it is - the slight tug of his lips and the hint of mischievousness that quickly flashed by his eyes. It was there only briefly but you saw it. He accidentally bared the fangs he’s hiding.

You take a step closer to him and give him a calculated smirk. Something tells you that you can’t pull the same antics you use to drive others away with this guy. You remember how he was studying you when you met the first time. You know he was into you or liked how you look at least.

As quick as he is to slip to his playful demeanor, he’s just as fast to be back to being well-mannered and polished, which you’re not totally sold on.

He’s playing a different game from others who have tried to ask you out. So you decide to change it up a bit and be upfront with him rather than creep him out with your weirdness.

“Are you asking me on a date, Sir Promoter?” you ask with unbridled mischievousness designed to throw him off.

Your plan works as you see him catch off his guard a bit with your direct question. However, he instantly recovers with his civil smile back on his face.

“Me? Sorry to disappoint but it’s purely for work.”

Your brow shoots up at his response.

“It won’t be a date or anything,” he says with the same nice guy facade right before he tears it down as he smirks and leans down to whisper in your ear.

“Unless you want it to be.”

A smirk shows itself from your lips before you can suppress it. You have to admit. This guy is good. He knows that part of your job is to provide the information he needs from the team. He’s using that to his benefit and make it seem this invite is completely for professional purposes.

You might have believed it and might have been completely fooled if you haven’t met him yet before.

You laugh a bit as you internally admit your defeat.

“After the match then, Sir Promoter.”

He pulls away and stands straight back up with a grin. “It’s Kuroo, in case you forgot,” he reintroduces himself. “I didn’t.” You wink then pass by him without saying.

Kuroo chuckles to himself when you leave. He doesn’t mix business with pleasure. He really needs to get the updated profile of the Frogs for their database. He also needs to know which players he can include for their collaboration with Molten.

He planned to keep things professional and tried to keep his business pants on. But he failed to keep it for long when you easily noticed how attracted he is to you.

He shakes his head with a smile then heads to the benches where he’ll watch the game himself.

—

You clap your hands merrily after you tally the last winning point made by Kyoutani. Two more games and your team will be up against a team from Division 1.

The Frogs have only been successful in achieving a game with Division 2 in your first year as a manager. After that it’s been mostly at the top 3 or 4.

This year, you’re confident that you’ll advance again among other Division 2 teams.

When the team disperses for some down time after the match, you approach Coach Mira. “Hi Coach, I won’t be on the bus going back. The VBA promoter wants to ask me stuff about the team. I’ll gather everyone when it’s time to leave then meet the guy. Is there anything else you need me to do, Coach?”

She looks at you and smiles gratefully. “Nothing else, y/n. Thanks for your hard work as always.”

You smile back appreciatively before you turn around to get back on your tally sheet. You need to review the statistics of each member who played in the games.

“Hey,” you hear Tsukishima’s voice behind you before you grab your notebook.

“Hmm?” you respond quizzically, wondering what he might want from you after a game. “You’re meeting Kuroo later?” he asks with his usual empty tone and expression.

“Yeah. You know him?”

You know that Tsukishima knows Bokuto, but you’re not sure if he knows the promoter Bokuto was with at the time. The Kuroo person might have just been there. Tsukishima nods. “He…,” he trails off, sounding unsure of what he’s going to say next.

“He what?” you ask as you get your tally sheet from the bench.

“I trained with him too, along with Bokuto. He taught me how to block.” You put down the tally sheet and gape at him. “Really? That guy is your mentor?”

You supposed that Kuroo has the build. He’s tall and even with his suit on, you can tell that he has some muscles going on underneath it. Now that you think about it, he’s actually kinda good looking. It’s just that a lot of athletes are buff, tall, and good-looking too that you’re desensitized to it now.

“Yeah,” he responds. “I see. He’s asking me about the Frogs, something for his job I guess. I’ll meet with him right after I make sure all you guys are on the bus on the way back.”

You expect him to walk away and go to the restroom like he always does after a game, but he just stands in front of you saying nothing. “What?”

“You should ask to reschedule. It’s already late.”

You look at your phone to check the time and it really is late than the usual time the games end. The slot the team got was the last match for the day and the earlier games were delayed so the team finished at already 9.30 pm. “It’s fine. I don’t think it will take long anyways.”

He takes a few seconds before he answers. “Right,” then he walks away. You finish summarizing your tally sheet then gather the members of the frogs. You make sure everyone is on the bus before you take your leave and go back inside the gymnasium where you agreed to meet Kuroo.

You see him against the railing where you were watching from earlier. His elbows are leaning on the banister with his hands on his pockets as he grins at you who’s walking towards him.

“Shall we commence this professional get-together?”

“Yes, we shall. Would you prefer going somewhere else?” he smiles as he asks.

“I’m all set here if it’s purely Frogs’ information you’re after,” you answer craftily, attempting to make him admit that there’s another kind of business he’s going for.

“Here it is then,” he responds with a grin, resolute in his stance that he’s not going to ask you out tonight. He clears his throat and stands up straight, his deviousness gone as he starts asking questions.

Damn, you were mistaken about this guy. He was just toying around with you earlier but really had no plans to ask you out. He must be like you who just likes to mess with people every once in a while. You probably came off cocky to him this morning.

More than being embarrassed, you’re amused. He’s actually interesting.

“That’s that, y/n. Thanks for your cooperation on this one,” he says politely.

“No worries. It’s part of my job.”

“Do you have a card so I can get back to you if I need anything again?”

You get your cardholder from the pockets of your pants, but you don’t feel anything even as you reach even the deepest parts of them. You check the pockets of your jacket as well but it’s not there either.

You most likely left it at home.

“Uhhh. I don’t have it with me right now. You can just take my number,” you suggest.

He raises one brow quaintly but brushes it off immediately as he hands you his phone. You take his phone and as you’re about to enter your contact details, you suddenly feel uncanny with giving him your number this way.

You look at him and ask. “It’s the same thing, right?”

He frowns. “What is?”

“Putting my number like this on your phone and giving you my business card,” you answer.

He chuckles lowly and glances at you with a very amused grin. “For you sake, I’d say yes, they’re the same.”

You enter your contact number and hand it to him with a smile. When he gets it, he raises his brow and looks back at you. “Manager of Sendai Kermits?”

You nod. “That way we keep it professional.”

His grin spreads wider as he pockets his phone. No one would put that kind of name in their contact details and genuinely think it’s professional.

“I have to be honest, y/n. You’re making it really hard for me to keep it strictly that way.”

You feign innocence as you put a gentle hand on your chest. “Me? But I’m not doing anything.”

Right, and Volleyball is a sport played by monkeys in pink dresses. “Sure,” he agrees and lets it go before he does something out of line like asking you to have late dinner with him since the game ended late already. “We done?” you ask.

“Yeah. Sorry, I took longer than I expected,” he apologizes. At times, he’d get drawn in with how you speak and how entertaining you look while doing so that he got distracted. “How are you going to get home by the way? It’s late already.” If you’d ask him, he can take you home. Though he highly doubts you’d ask that of someone who’s practically a stranger.

“I think I can still catch the bus,” you casually respond.

“I can walk you to the bus stop if you don’t mind,” he discreetly offers, making sure that you’re comfortable with the idea.

“Hmm,” you ponder. Unlike the girls who he has gone out with, he can tell you’re not playing hard to get by delaying your answer. You’re really deciding on whether you’d let him extend what little time more there is to enjoy your company.

You grin at him genuinely, none of your pretentious facade whatsoever. “Alright!” you stand up and don't wait for him as you start walking already.

He shakes his head then easily catches up and walks beside you.

“How long have you been a manager?” It wasn’t a question to start a small talk. He’s seriously curious how long you have been doing this. He only got the promotion recently so he does not know most people aside from his friends and acquaintances from his Volleyball time in high school. Previously, he only had to work at the office. He’s establishing his own connections only now.

“Three years and counting,” you respond with your eyes straight ahead.

You’re a year ahead of him in this industry then. He got his job at the VBA two years ago. “Three years, huh? Isn’t that when Tsukishima joined the team as well?”

“You’re really that close with him, huh?” You remark with intrigue as you two continue walking towards the exit.

“Taught the boy everything he knows about blocking,” he comments with a grin even though you’re not looking.

Your rich laughter fills the empty hallway as you finally glance his way. “Why do you sound like a 40-year old man?”

“What can I say? I’m full of wisdom,” he counters immediately, causing you to raise an eyebrow to go with your amused smile.

“Forgive me, Mr. Promoter, but I have to say you're full of shit.”

He cackles uninhibitedly from your sharp-witted retort. He knows you have one hell of a personality based on the little interaction you had when he first met you, but you’re proving yourself to be a whole lot more than what he anticipated.

“Am I that easy to read?” He asks with traces of his laughter still in his voice. You scrunch your nose quickly before smiling prettily at him. “I’m afraid so.”

As you two are about to reach the exit, he decides to just go for it. You’re getting more interesting and more interesting as he talks with you and there’s not really a rule that he’s not allowed to date people from the professional teams.

Since the meeting is done, this right now is technically not part of his job anymore. He’s doing it to spend more time with you.

“Actually, y/n. I have my car parked outside. If you don’t mind, I can drive you home instead,” he offers more at ease this time.

He seems like a legitimately good person who can grasp your sense of humor and hold a fun conversation. Most importantly, you somehow feel comfortable around him. Besides, it would be nice if you don’t have to take the bus or hail a cab to go home.

So you don’t take too long to decide. “Su-”

“Hey.” Someone cuts you off as you reach the outside of the Sendai Gymnasium. You look at your left where the familiar voice came from and see your favorite middle blocker. He’s still wearing the Sendai Frogs’ jacket, but now has pants on instead of their official shorts.

“Hey,” you respond with a puzzled look as to why he’s still there when you clearly remember he was seated at the back of the bus before you stepped out of it.

“Tsukishima,” Kuroo acknowledges his presence cordially with a grin.

Tsukki bows a bit to the promoter with an impassive expression, then looks at you again but doesn’t really say anything..

“What are you doing here?” you ask since he doesn’t look like he’s going to explain on his own.

He doesn’t answer and remains silent with his eyes glued on you. Your brows furrow a bit as you ask again. “I said what are you-”

“Coach asked me to wait for you.”

You blink at him several times while holding his gaze. You look down for one quick second then turn to Kuroo with a huge, dumb smile on your face. “I’d have to pass tonight, Kuroo. Coach might worry if I don’t go with him,” you point to Tsukishima as you say it.

Kuroo notices how you smile differently, more earnestly, with Tsukishima’s presence. He turns his attention to Tsukishima whose eyes are still on you despite the blank expression on the blonde’s face.

Tsukishima said he’s there because their Coach said so but Kuroo doesn’t buy it one bit. He can’t imagine Tsukishima willingly abiding the Coach’s orders to play nanny for you. Unless Tsukishima himself wants to do so.

Kuroo knows that you and Tsukishima are not dating. If you were, you wouldn’t be so surprised that he’s here waiting for you. But that gives Kuroo confirmation that something is going on with you two.

He looks back at you and returns the smile. “No worries. Maybe next time?” He asks casually albeit the meaning behind that laid-back question.

“Maybe,” you giggle softly as you answer. “I’ll see you around, Kuroo.” You give him a brief wave then head to Tsukishima’s side. The blonde, on the other hand, gives him a quick nod and bids him, “Good evening, Kuroo-san.”

You turn to him as well, “Good night!” Then pour your whole attention to the other guy beside you as you two walk away from him.

He remains where he is and watches your animated expression from afar. He really likes you. It’s too bad you like someone else though.

When you two are out of his sight, he walks to where he parked his car.

“So, Tsukki,” you grin at him. “Coach really is that concerned about me that she asked you to.. wait for me?” you ask with your tone dripping with amusement because you know that Coach will never ask that of someone, especially him. Coach Mira thinks he despises you and even if he doesn’t, she still wouldn’t. Coach Mira knows you can take care of yourself.

“Shut up,” he says lowly, but nothing more. You’re expecting a snide response but it doesn’t come.

“As thanks for last time, I’ll take you to your dorm,” he says with his eyes straight ahead.

You keep your gaze on him for a few more seconds then turn to the same direction he’s looking at. He never did thank you for it, but it’s not like you were expecting him to. You helped him get home out of concern both as his manager and his partner in class.

You didn’t expect that he’d still be thinking about it even after a week. Although, it makes sense that he does. Obviously, he’s never been in that state wherein he needed help getting home. He probably feels like he’s indebted or something.

Tsukishima glances briefly at how you’re still smiling even when you’re not talking. Earlier, he was battling himself on why he got off the bus and chose to wait for you. Sure, it’s pretty late, but it’s not like you can’t go home on your own. If he’d be honest, until now, he still doesn’t know why he chose to get left behind and stand outside for who knows how long.

But seeing you as you are now, he knows he made the right decision to stay.

---

The timetable you planned for you and Tsukishima has long been messed up. You were supposed to finish this project a month ago. But a lot of things happened during your private meetings that you lost track of how you’re progressing along.

It isn’t only until that afternoon where you receive the last write up you need from Tsukishima for the project that you’re made aware that today is your last day together.

After you get the notification in your email, he glanced your way.

“What else do you need?” he asks.

You try to think of what else he can contribute, but you come up with nothing. Everything is set. You’re just restructuring your output as a whole so it’s coherent.

“Um. Nothing. We’re all good now,” you announce blandly instead of rejoicing that it will finally be over today.

You look at Tsukishima and find him looking at your screen. “Let me look at it,” he says to verify if it is as good as you say it is.

You slide a bit to your right so he can check the document himself. He skids in front of your laptop and scans the draft of the document you put up, checking for any possible room for improvement.

But you really are exceptional in organizing reports. It’s as cohesive as it can be, which ultimately is good news for you and for him. The project will be done by tonight. “It is all good now,” he confirms.

When he glances back at you, you two share the same look - dismal. He knows that the project will end, even the semester is coming to a close soon. But he did not anticipate that your last meeting is today.

“Alright,” you break the uneasy air as you swat your hand to shoo him away. “Let me work this through so we can completely finish it.”

He’s not certain whether you’re asking him to leave already since he’s done his part or you’re just making him go back to his own laptop. Not wanting to embarrass himself, he asks, “Should I pack up and leave now?”

You narrow your eyes with displeasure. “Of course not. You’ll stay here until I finish the damn thing, Tsukishima. Don’t think I’ll let you off the hook that easily.”

He doesn’t complain and remains impassive as you watch him return to his seat. He fights off the grin that was threatening to surface on his lips while he starts doing his requirements for another class.

When you see him comply, you return your attention to wrapping up the project. The truth is you can send him home already. You don’t need his presence to finish the report. You just want to keep him longer, one or two more hours will do.

Then you longer have any reason to meet with him outside training hours. You’ll finally stop your private meetings along with your clandestine kisses.

You’ll be back to being solely his manager.

Even though you still have a lot of things to do for another subject, you take your sweet time with what you’re doing. You start typing like an old man whose reading glasses no longer work. Then after you’re done, you conduct a spell check which you normally don’t do because you correct typos as you go along, not after the output is done.

After an hour of dilly dallying around trying to clean the already clean word file, you reckon it’s time to let it go.

You look at Tsukishima and softly call his name, “Tsukki.”

He stops typing and faces you. “Done?”

You nod with a faint smile. “Yeah, we’re done.” Done with the project and done with whatever you two had.

“I already sent it to our professor as well,” you add.

“I see.” He packs up quietly then stands up to leave. You stand up as well and open the door for him. You stopped opening the door for him when he leaves, but since this is the last, you thought it was fitting that you send him out.

“Tsukishima.”

He pauses as you say his name, turning his head to face you and waits for what you’re going to say. You don’t really have anything to say though. You just stare at him. And he stares right back, his gaze studying your face carefully until it lands on your mouth. That’s when you figure out why you stopped him from leaving.

You want a last kiss.

When you started your agreement, you’ve never been afraid or shy to go for a kiss. Only now.

“What is it, y/n?” he asks calmly even though his eyes are on your lips. You know he wants the same despite the apathetic demeanor. If not, he wouldn’t be looking at you as he is right now.

Yet you don’t want to initiate.

Obviously, neither does he.

It’s kind of stupid. After the countless kisses, none of you moves to instigate the last one.

You don’t know how long you stare into each other, but since this seems to be going nowhere, you decided to just leave it as is.

“Good night. I’ll see you in training,” you say instead.

He seems to have recovered from his own daze as well when he responds with a dry, “Right,” before stepping out of your room.

You close the door behind him with a certain gloom you can’t make sense of. Months ago, you two wanted nothing more than to finish this project. Now that you’re finally free of each other, you feel... sad?

Ridiculous.

You shake it off and get back to what you’re supposed to be doing. You and Tsukishima had good teamwork. Although he has some rude comments here and there, they usually have no bite to them. Other than that, he was easy to work and hang around with. The liplocking was just a fun perk. Nothing more, nothing less.

You enter the gym and find that not much of the team is there yet. It’s Kogane, Tsukishima, Eiji, and Coach who’s only there.

You put your bag in one of the benches and get your report on the previous match of the team. You walk towards Coach Mira and hand it to her. “Thanks, y/n,” she says with a pleasant smile she doesn’t show to anyone else from the team. “Can you set up the other net?” She asks while going over the report you gave her.

“Yes, Coach,” you answer agreeably then head to the other side of the court. You pull up a stool chair and stand on it as you tie the net to the pole.

“Y/n.”

You’re startled by Tsukishima’s voice behind you that the chair along with your ankles shake when you flinch. You try to grab the pole to steady yourself but you can’t reach it anymore.

“Shit!” You curse beneath your breath and just accept you’ll flat on your butt. But instead of falling, you feel a pair of huge hands on your waist that thwarts your ass kissing the floor.

“What are you doing?” You hear Tsukishima ask impertinently as he gently eases you back on the chair. “Do you need help getting down?” he follows up with his hands still on your waist.

You turn around carefully and place your hands on his shoulders to support yourself as you jump down on your own. You grin at him which is probably why he takes his hands off you. You turn around to tighten the bottom part of the net.

“Did you need something?” You ask as you continue tying the knot. You finish what you’re supposed to do and he still hasn’t answered so you face him again.

“What’s up, Tsukki?” You’re a bit confused why he’s silent when he’s the one who came up to you.

“Can you tape my fingers?”

The situation reverses and now, you’re the one who’s not responding. Three years as their manager and he’s never asked for help taping his finger.

“Uhh. Sure. Do you have your bandage with you?”

He gets it from the right pocket of his jacket and gives it to you. You get it and take his right hand to tape it first. Even though this is the first time he’s asked you to do it, you’ve done it before with Coach’s orders. Every single time you do, he has a disgruntled look on his face as he does his best for his eyes not to land on any part of your face.

But now, you can feel him staring at you while you work on his fingers.

“Something on my face, Tsukishima?” You ask teasingly.

“Yeah. You still have coffee on your chin,” he answers seriously.

You stop abruptly and shove the bandage on his palm to hastily wipe your chin. “Is it still there?” You look up to him as you ask.

He presses his lips together before he looks to the side. However, you catch the sligh tug in the corner of his mouth prior to turning away.

“What? Did I not get it?” You ask a bit worriedly as you try to remember the people you greeted on your way here. You beamed cheerfully at them and all this time, you had a smidge of coffee on your chin.

His shoulders start shaking and you can hear his suppressed laughter as he’s turned away from you.

You narrow your eyes at him and cross your arms. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

He returns his gaze at you with an entertained smirk. “If you stopped drinking coffee like it’s water then maybe you wouldn’t fall for such a simple ploy.”

You give him a sarcastic smile as you yank his hand to continue taping him. “Real mature, Tsukishima,” you remark dryly.

“You’re one to talk,” he instantly counters.

You snort and shake your head amusedly. In the past, you’d think it’s an insult, but at present, you can tell that it’s just benign banter.

While you tape his hands, there’s comfortable silence between you two that you only feel when you’re seated beside each other when you’re doing the project. You didn’t expect you’d feel it again even when you’re in the gym with other people around.

You’re almost done with his left hand when you hear Coach Mira call you. “Coming, Coach!” you yell from where you are and finish the tape on his middle finger.

“And it’s done,” you grin briefly at him then turn to where Coach is.

Before you go, you hear him utter a low, “Thanks.”

A faint smile forms on your face as you saunter back to Coach. When you reach her, she frowns a bit at you.

Your smile disappears, thinking that you made some error that Coach caught after you submitted it to her. “What’s wrong, Coach? Is something off with the report?” You ask a bit troubled.

“No. It’s perfect as usual,” she remarks commendably.

You ease up knowing that your write up is still quintessential. “What else can I do to help?” Since there’s nothing wrong with the report, she must need help for another task.

“Actually, I wanted to ask if you’re dating Tsukishima.”

Now you wish there’s something wrong with the file you submitted instead. You’d prefer that than having Coach suspect there’s something like that between you and Tsukishima.

Nothing’s going on with you two except for the project you had together. Usually, you don’t give a shit what other people think of you. But not Coach. You don’t feel comfortable that she is dubious of your relationship with the blonde middle blocker.

“What made you ask, Coach?” you ask, wondering where she got the idea.

“You two seem more.. I don’t know,” she struggles for the next words while you wait anxiously for it. “more at ease with each other now,” she continues.

You feign a laugh and respond casually. “I’m just messing with him as usual,” you lie because it’s the other way around.

Coach glances back at Tsukishima then at you. “He looks like he’s enjoying it this time though. He’s even staring at you when I called you here.”

You turn your head his way and see him practicing his serve already. You face Coach again and smile bemusedly. “I wonder why.” You really have no idea why he was staring.

Coach studies your face for a few seconds then shrugs. “Alright. I’ll let you get back to work instead of being a nosy middle-aged woman,” she smiles at you then returns to the report you gave her.

You nod politely then turn around to go to the stockroom. When you’re almost there, you glance discreetly to Tsukishima and reflect on Coach Mira’s suspicion.

Does it really seem like you have that relationship with him?

You thought of doing your uni requirements in the library today for a new work setting. As you’re approaching the entrance of the library, you open your bag to get your ID.

Several minutes of rummaging your bag and you still can’t find it.

Shit! Did you lose it?

The last time you actually saw it when you used it to enter the bar. Did you drop it from your pocket? But you put it in your back pocket so you won’t accidentally lose it when you get your phone.

You close your bag and try to remember the whole night. Who were the people you talked to?

A lot. You talked to a lot of people but you really had no reason to take your ID out.

You can only think of two possible ways you lost it. First was in the cab with Tsukishima. You shifted too much on your seat that it may have slid out of your back pocket. Second would be in their restroom where you changed clothes.

You get your phone and text Tsukishima.

‘Tsukki! By any chance, did I leave my id there or sumthin? >_<’

Tsukishima hears his message tone as he descends their stairs. He waits until he reaches their couch and then opens his phone to read the message.

ID? Did you lose it?

Even if you did, you shouldn’t be too worried since it’s almost graduation. You won’t need it anymore.

He types in his reply.

‘Why bother finding it? You won’t need it soon.’

“Kei.”

He lifts his gaze from his phone before sending it when he hears his brother’s voice. “What is it?” he asks.

Akiteru sits on the other couch adjacent to the one he’s sitting on. “Any plans after graduation?”

He’d feel pressured and irritated from the question if it was asked by someone else. “I have an interview at the Sendai Museum next week,” he answers blankly despite feeling a bit certain of applying for the post.

“I didn’t know you were already looking for a job. That’s great though!” Akiteru comments brightly.

“Yeah,” he answers lowly then looks down on his phone again. “Alright, then. I was just curious.” His brother smiles caringly then stands up.

“Nii-san,” he calls before Akiteru leaves the room.

“Yes?” His brother looks at him still smiling.

“Did you see an ID that’s not mine around?” he asks ambiguously because he doesn’t want to mention your name on the high chance that Akiteru hadn’t seen it. His older brother has bugged him about it non-stop after you took him home last week. He doesn’t want to remind Akiteru about it unnecessarily.

“Silly me! I forgot to tell you. The other day, mom saw y/n’s university ID in the washing machine when she was hanging clothes. She gave it to me because you were still not home then. I’ll give it to you in your room later,” Akiteru grins widely then waves at him before heading up the stairs.

He’s relieved that he heard no more than that. He was honestly expecting more teasing, but fortunately, his brother seems to have toned it down now.

He gets to his phone again and types instead.

‘Yeah. It’s here.’

Not more than a minute later, he receives your response already.

‘Can u bring it in class or training? :D’

He easily types ‘Okay’ since it’s just a small favor. Then when he’s about to send it, his thumb hovers above the send button.

He deletes it and sends a different reply.

‘No.’

You frown when you read his response. You thought he’s somehow warmed up at you already but seems like he’s back to being a salty ass. It’s just an ID. It weighs like nothing and can fit in his pocket. What’s the deal?

You’re drafting your reply when he sends another text message.

You quickly tap the notification that briefly flashed on top of your screen and raise your brows when you completely read it.

‘Get it yourself. It’s in my room.’

After a few seconds, you shake your head and chuckle at what he meant with his superficially rude message.

Tsukishima, you smooth tsundere bastard.

Part 7 || Part 9 || masterlist

Taglist (those crossed out can’t be tagged)

@ameliaxo @suikrem @akaashisslave @tsumurai @loving-unicorns106 @flairlust @geektastic84 @anaiss97 @berna-dette @just4readingfics @suteorra @xxekitten69xx @simp4tsukkii @music-is-all-i-need @keshinslittlegirl @raspberrysunshinebby @iminlovewhaikyuu @pdiddy11 @lightyagamami @sailorscout1902 @lovershaikyuu @expectonothinfromme @finnydraws @namelessidentity @hqbeesun @yatoatyourservice @mrkozume @suzuyamitsuki @celestialarchiveshq @yongboxerrr @gomenpudding @kutiekoge @fizzfrick @flamingosis @korean-bbq @ihaterainbowsprinkles @red-lint @backtonormalthings @borpcorp @lonelyheartxn @venomouscreatures @lucyrocks86 @shawtiie @honestlysora @sunanyaa @my-dream-universe

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima fluff #tsukishima smut #tsukishima angst #haikyuu x reader

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amjustagirl · 4 years ago

Text

Chapters: one. ~ two. ~ three. ~ four. ~ five. ~ six. ~ seven. ~ eight.

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: Being with Miya Atsumu is like chasing a storm - equal parts exhilaration and danger. After all, it’s impossible to tame a storm.

Notes: Multipart fic, slow burn. Updates to come soon (and dw, fic’s completed, so you won’t be left hanging ^^)

Masterlist here

AO3 Link here

‘You sure you want the job?’ Miya Osamu asks her when she turns up at his shop, application in hand, responding to the advertisement in Onigiri Miya’s window for part time staff - general help needed, ability to ride a scooter a plus point - it had read.

There are only fifteen seats in Onigiri Miya, and hardly any space for her to fit her backpack between her knees, but sunlight streams in invitingly from the glass shop front and there is a faint smell of grilled rice and fried fish that reminds her of weekly lunches at her grandparents’ home.

‘Yes’, she answers, gesturing with her thumb at her scooter parked outside the shop. ‘I think I’m a good fit for this job’. The corner of Miya Osamu’s mouth lifts ever so slightly, and he leans forward in his seat, hand extended to her.

‘Welcome to Onigiri Miya then’, he says before proceeding to brisk walk her through the ins and outs of the shop, the scope of her responsibilities, work schedule and (most importantly) her wage, leaving her head spinning at the end of the impromptu briefing. Miya Osamu seems passionate about his craft, his face brightening up with enthusiasm when he talks her through the various onigiris he sells, the type of rice he buys (from a boutique rice farmer in Hyogo, apparently), and he’s generous enough to offer her a decent wage, more than what she could be making working in a combini.

She stands by her bike on the roadside, tilting her face to the setting sun. There is the faintest smell of rain in the air.

She soon falls into the rhythm of Onigiri Miya.

Osamu is strangely territorial over food preparation, so her tasks in the kitchen are mainly limited to washing rice (thrice in clean water, drained thoroughly) and doling out cups of tea and bowls of soup. When he finds out that she’s studying accountancy at Osaka University, he immediately places her in charge of the cash register (and later, in charge of their books). Her scooter comes in handy when he needs her to do urgent stock runs or deliveries to customers.

She learns the name of their regular customers - Abe-san, who only ever orders salmon onigiris with a side of pork bone soup. Kawasaki-san, who spends half her meal complaining about her aches and pains to a sympathetic Osamu. Mina-san, who turns up every day for breakfast after Osamu includes spam onigiri on his menu after he overhears that she misses her hometown of Okinawa.

Osamu calls her over at the end of her shift on a busy Saturday night. ‘I’ve a large order for an old customer of mine. D’you think you could help deliver it?’

There is a gleam in his eye that she does not quite like.

‘You sound like you’re sending me out to slaughter’ she comments half-jokingly, to which he responds with an amused shrug of his shoulder. She considers whether it’s bad form to throw her shoe at her boss’s head, but decides not to waste her time. So she shoulders the large sack of food, heading off on her scooter to a neat apartment building in a quiet neighbourhood.

Well – it would have been a quiet neighbourhood but for the music blasted from the top floor of her destination. She has to cover her ears the minute the elevator opens and wonders if their neighbours are deaf or dead because there is no way otherwise the apartment wouldn’t have copped a noise complaint. Grimacing at the tape over the doorbell, she knocks politely on the door.

There is no response.

She knocks once more, less politely this time, but still the door does not open. ‘Hello, your delivery is here!’ she calls firmly, slamming her fist down on the sturdy wooden door.

There is still no response.

She’s about to turn around when the door crashes open and a blonde head pops out. Her jaw falls open because standing before her is the spitting image of her boss that just sent her out with this order, albeit blonde and ever so slightly broader.

‘You’re not ‘Samu, but you’re pretty’, he leers, leaning against the doorway.

She’s tempted to deck him but she’s pretty sure that would mean losing her job. So reminding herself that all that’s standing between her and her bed is this delivery, she bites her tongue and extends the bag of food to him. ‘Your order, sir. Payment please.’

‘Didn’t ‘Samu mention that I don’t need to pay?’ The blonde Osamu replica tugs the bag of food towards him, frowning when she refuses to let go.

‘Not that I know of - and I can’t let you have your order unless you pay for it’, she answers firmly, foot against the door.

He straightens into his height in a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate her - and while he’s at least six foot of solid muscle from what she can see, it’s thanks to years of working in her father’s shop with men at least a full head taller and broader than her that she’s not afraid to tip her chin up at him with her widest, sharpest grin until he looks away to draw out a couple of thousand yen bills from his pocket, enough to cover the bill.

‘Fine, fine - tell ‘Samu he wins’, he grumbles, slamming the door in her face.

She waits until she’s back at her scooter and a good distance away from the apartment before she dials Osamu’s number.

‘What was that?’ she asks without preamble when he picks up.

‘What was what?’ Osamu answers, sounding uncharacteristically amused.

‘Don’t play cute with me! Did you just make me deliver food to your brother?’

‘My twin actually’, and he ignores her squawk of indignation. ’Did he pay up?’

‘What do you take me for - of course! I didn’t let go of the food until he did.’

‘Huh’, Osamu responds, sounding surprised. ‘That’s the first time he actually gave in’. And with that, he laughs merrily and hangs up on her.

She shrugs it off as one of her boss’s weird quirks.

Except it doesn’t stop as being a weird quirk but turns into an annoying habit.

Atsumu quickly becomes a regular customer (she learns during one of the twins’ many bickering sessions that he’s back in Osaka after several competitions), and Osamu latches on pretty fast that she’s far better than he is at forcing Atsumu to pay for the food he eats, so he sics her on Atsumu every time the blonde setter shows up at the shop for a meal.

‘Pay up’ she orders Atsumu for the fourth time this week. Her tone gives no berth for refusal so Atsumu reaches for his pockets even as he grumbles his complaints about ‘cowardly scrubs’ and ‘ crazy bitches’ at a grinning Osamu.

‘You should give me a raise for managing your brother’, she complains to Osamu later, and though he raises an eyebrow at her, to her surprise, he does exactly that.

Osamu proceeds to take advantage of said raise to send her to man their stand at MSBY’s first match of the season, armed with a few hundred onigiris. Business is brisk, but she finds her attention diverted by the sheer speed of the plays and the way the players all seem to have wings in their feet.

Atsumu in particular catches her eye. Osamu explained to her over a slow day at work about volleyball positions and basic plays, and he boasted about Atsumu’s talent as a setter, how ‘he always takes the best care of his spikers’. Watching him now, even to her untrained eye, she can see how much thought he puts into each of his plays - the way he tricks the blockers to let his spikers fly high above them, the quick side stepping of increasingly frustrated attackers, the dump shots at the most unexpected of times.

She’s impressed, though she doesn’t want to admit it - because Atsumu has the personality of a puddle of muddy rainwater, and she's fairly sure he'd never let her hear the end of it if he ever finds out.

So it isn’t surprising when she spots him being hassled by a large gaggle of his fan girls outside the sports hall. They’re hanging off his arms begging him for autographs - and probably something much less innocent from the way his eyes are bugging out of his head. It’s tempting to walk away from him – it’s not as if he’s been particularly nice to her after all, but a few of the more rabid fan girls seem to get a little too close for comfort and she figures even he doesn’t deserve that . Plus he probably can’t just shove them off because that might cause yet another PR debacle that she and Osamu have become accustomed seeing in the news, so she breathes a sigh through her nose, cursing her conscience.

‘Oi asshat, your ride’s here’, she shouts as loudly as she can, shouldering her way to the center of the crowd. His fan girls stare in stunned silence, but Atsumu catches on after she shoves her spare helmet into his chest, and grabbing her wrist for dear life, they sprint all the way to her scooter.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never ridden before’, she snaps as he fiddles helplessly at his helmet.

‘Of course, I have, what d’you take me for, some scrub?’ he retorts when he manages to strap his it on to his head. Her scooter groans under his weight.

Yes - she itches to retort, because he’s clearly lying. He fights to keep upright as she loops her way through bends on the road and maintains a white knuckled grip on the back of his seat until she comes to a stop two streets away where his fan girls are unlikely to see him.

‘So, where to?’ she asks him as he wheezes, trying to catch his breath. ‘I could let you off here, or we could grab some food - your choice.’

‘Eh… Could we drop by 7-11?’ he chuckles sheepishly.

‘Really? You want me to take you to a combini when your brother literally owns a restaurant?’

‘I’m cravin’ an egg mayo sandwich, what’s wrong with that?!’ he yells as she revs off, and she laughs when he squeaks and clings on to her waist.

They end up at a combini anyway. Atsumu buys his egg mayo sandwich. And a bucket load of oden. And a bagful of karaage. And two pudding cups (singly packed, none of the triple cup kind for him thank you very much). At least he steers clear of the onigiri section, because Osamu might explode otherwise if he ever finds out.

‘You’re paying the fine if my bike gets impounded’ she tells him sourly.

‘Relax - it’ll be fine’, he waves his hand airily at her. ‘’Sides, what’s a girl like you doing with a bike?’

‘A girl like me?’ she echoes, tilting her head in confusion.

‘Y’know - kinda square and all? I assumed so, since ‘Samu mentioned you’re studying to be an accountant’, he clarifies through a mouthful of food.

‘Square?! ’ she mouths at him, outraged, and he grins unrepentantly back at her, crunching on karaage. She abandons her annoyance to scoot back to avoid the ensuing spray of crumbs.

‘Do you want me to answer seriously, or was that a rhetorical question, gross pig?’

‘Please, I’m always serious, darlin’, he drawls.

She steals a fishcake from him in retaliation and he tries to rap her knuckles with his sandwich. They only settle down when the combini staff glare at them mildly in reproof.

‘I’ve always wanted to ride a bike ‘cos it seemed like it allowed its rider to be free’, she says, shooting a fond look through the window at her own scooter, rusty and old it may be.

‘I mean it allows you to get from one place to another, what’s so special about that?’ he asks, cocking his head in confusion.

‘Mm…well, not just that. You see, when I was younger, I used to be so jealous of my older brothers getting to ride their motorbikes. They refused to let me borrow it, so I stole it one day when they weren’t looking and took off - but because I was so excited, I hit the thrusters so hard on the way up a hill that I ended up crashing on the way down. But right before I crashed, there was a moment when I was on the top of the world with the wind in my face - it was the first time I truly felt alive .’

She closes her eyes at the memory, her mouth lifting into a smile. ‘And that’s what I become addicted to - chasing that feeling of being completely unfettered from the world, like a bird in the sky.

He stares at her meditatively, as though she’s a puzzle he can’t quite solve.

‘What!’ she exclaims, the tips of her ears flushing pink, suddenly self-conscious.

‘Nothin’, darlin’. Just thought that you’re more interesting than I thought’. Ignoring her indignant ‘ what?!’ , he stands up, brushing the crumbs off his lap. ‘Shall we get goin’? It’s about to rain.’

The ride back to his apartment passes in a blur of streetlights and gathering rain clouds, but thankfully it’s not as unpleasant as it was before as Atsumu eases into his seat, moving with her when she drops into a bend, loosening his hands on her waist. Still, she suspects it’s all bravado, as he stumbles stiff legged off the bike when they reach his apartment.

But as to be expected from a seasoned athlete used to the spotlight, he manages to plaster on a grin, cocky and charming enough to make her blush.

‘Thanks for the ride’, he says. ‘I wouldn’t mind coming out again with you for a ride sometime’.

Then he smiles at her, and it’s soft, shorn of the sharp edges she’s used to seeing. It plants an unfamiliar seed of warmth in her core that survives her race home against the storm.

775 notes · View notes

thedumpsterqueen · 4 years ago

Text

Standards of Performance

Here it is!!!!! First chapter of my first fic on my new AO3! This is a multi-chapter, slow burn work. Please let me know what you think, I welcome screaming and incoherent asks about our fave special agent in my inbox. Full text under the cut, or you can find it through the AO3 link below.

AO3 link

Summary: You're the BAU's newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 1, Coffee Stains and Neckties

Words: 2388

Rating: Explicit, 18+

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

Warnings: Not much for this chapter specifically, but let’s just assume general gore and murder stuff, explicit language, and sexual content are fair game form here on out.

Enjoy! I’ll try to update weekly, if not more often. I’ll let you know when I have a more defined schedule!

“Fucking SHIT!”

You cursed as you felt the (very, very) hot coffee soak your new skirt. Grabbing as many paper towels as you could with one hand, you tried to sop up the mess on the floor. The stain on your outfit? A shame, but nothing compared to marring the assuredly expensive cream color of the BAU’s breakroom carpet.

A low chuckle sounded off behind you, and you froze.

For the love of god, please don’t be…

“Morgan! Please tell me you have carpet cleaner, oh my god. I don’t even know how that happened.”

Morgan grinned, as he typically did, sauntering into the breakroom with his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, the janitor's got it later. I was looking for you, team meeting in five. You all good? You look a little - ” he paused, probably searching for a descriptor that wouldn’t sting too bad, “ - rushed.”

You stood up, sighing. He was right, after all. You had stayed up late last night poring over psychology textbooks and only just woken up in time to leave your apartment. As the BAU’s newest profiling intern - whatever the hell that actually meant - the pressure of performing to seasoned profilers’ standards manifested in spending practically all your free time buried in research. Hence why your hair was coated in unbelievable amounts of dry shampoo, you were wearing your unflatteringly oversized glasses instead of your usual contacts, and why your frantic attempt at pouring yourself a cup of coffee when you got into work had resulted in the giant wet spot currently soaking your skirt.

At least the skirt was black.

“You’re right. Late night,” you said, rolling your eyes at Morgan’s suggestive eyebrow waggle.

“Not like that, I wish. Just trying to catch up. Don’t really want to repeat last week’s disaster,” you mumbled, referring to the first time you actually got to question a suspect, which had ended up with a wad of saliva hawked in your face. It was only your third week in the position, but damn, if that hadn’t let the wind out of your sails a bit.

“Hey, what did I tell you then?” Morgan asked, as you walked out of the breakroom together. “You’re not a true profiler until you get assaulted by a serial killer!”

“I’m not a true profiler until I finish the year long training program,” you pointed out, “so I think I could do without the spit in the meantime.”

Morgan laughed, opening the door of the team’s briefing room for you. “Well if we’d known you were gonna be so picky, we might have gone with someone else.”

“Who’s picky?” asked Emily, looking up from her seat.

While Morgan laughed and launched into a dramatic retelling of the event as if the entire team hadn’t already fucking seen it in real time, you took your seat at the table. Reid nodded in acknowledgment, and you returned it with a small smile. Damn if he wasn’t handsome, and ridiculously smart to boot, but you were pretty sure your chances with him withered and died when you asked him what he was doing after work last Friday and he answered with, “Reading.” Point taken.

Hotch swiveled in his chair to face the table and you suddenly became acutely aware of how much of a mess you probably looked. It’s not that you cared about his opinion regarding your general appearance beyond the basic standard of professional attire, but his always-intense gaze and stony expression had a way of making you second guess even your most confidently held opinions.

“Sit,” he said, his voice cutting through the rest of the team’s animated chatter.

It would have been hard not to notice how quickly they obliged, not out of fear, but rather a respect and deference so deeply ingrained that it almost gave you goosebumps. You’d never thought of yourself as a follower, per say, but if Hotch was what a leader looked like, you certainly didn’t fit into that category either.

He scanned the table, stopping on you. “New glasses?” he asked, with a single, slightly raised eyebrow.

“I, um, not really, just didn’t have time to put my contacts in,” you stammered.

“Hm,” Hotch said, “They look nice.”

Your cheeks suddenly felt hot, and you thanked him quickly, looking down at your shoes to conceal the pink that was probably spreading across your face. Hotch had a way of speaking that made everything he said sound like the absolute truth, which was probably why such an innocuous little compliment had disarmed you so much.

Still though, jesus christ. Get it the fuck together. You’re not Reid; you’re not smart enough to be this awkward.

Hotch, blessedly ignoring how painful you just made that interaction, addressed the team while JJ passed out files. “We have a new case. Three bodies, all found completely drained of blood in various woods, off hiking trails. Cause of death appears to be blood loss from severed carotid arteries, meaning they were likely strung up and drained before being moved to where they were discovered.”

Reid spoke up first. “Erm, what exactly do you mean by various woods?”

“That’s the unusual thing,” Hotch said, pulling up a map of the southwestern United States on the screen behind him. "Each body was found in a different state, one here, one here, and one here,” pointing to spots in California, Arizona, and Nevada. “However, local police discovered the bodies within hours of each other due to anonymous tip offs, and medical examiners estimate approximately the same time of death for all three.”

Morgan whistled lowly. “So what you’re saying is, this guy kills three victims around the same time and takes a road trip to hide their bodies in places he knows won't be discovered until he calls in.”

“That’s how it appears, yes,” Hotch confirmed.

Rossi shook his head, twirling a pen that probably cost more than your entire wardrobe. “So, how are we splitting this up?”

You whipped your head in his direction. Splitting up? Of course, you should have known it’d only make sense considering the ground to be covered, but your quick mental calculations told you that there were six of them, evenly split into three groups of two, and one odd man out, both in skill and number - you.

“So, who’s getting stuck with me?” you asked, trying to beat everyone to the punch. Not that any of them would voice it, but if you couldn’t project confidence, you figured self-awareness would do.

When you entered the internship as a recent college grad around a month ago, you knew you’d be in way over your head. Everyone else on the team was a seasoned expert, and you were a 20-something with a degree in psychology who somehow managed to charm her way through the interviews of the BAU’s flagship internship program. It’s not that you weren’t smart, you were, of course, but comparatively? You were pretty sure this was shaping up to be a glorified babysitting program, and you were the baby.

“Oh, hush,” JJ said, smiling and shaking her head. You smiled back. JJ had gone out of her way to make you feel welcome, which you were unspeakably grateful for. Between her and Morgan, you sometimes felt like maybe when this year was done, you could actually belong on this team.

Hotch interrupted your pity party. “Rossi, you’re with Reid in Phoenix. JJ and Emily, you’re going to Vegas. Morgan, you and I are going to San Diego.”

He turned to you. “You’re coming with me.”

Your stomach flipped at his words. You knew he had the most to teach you, and you could observe him coordinating the entire investigation from San Diego, but the idea of your performance being directly scrutinized by your boss in such a small group made you more nauseous than excited.

“Please be aware,” he continued, “Garcia is going to have to deal with three times the inquiries as normal. I recommend you only contact her if the information you’re searching for is genuinely too difficult to find yourself.” He gave Morgan a pointed look, to which Morgan raised his hands in mock surrender, grinning.

“We’ll drop teams off as we go,” Hotch said. “Wheels up in thirty.”

____________

As you settled into your seat on the plane, your mind spun, trying to review every piece of psychology knowledge you’d ever encountered. This wasn’t your first case, but it was the first one you got to travel for, which made it feel much more real.

The hours ticked by as the team reviewed the case. You contributed - not much, and nothing they wouldn’t have thought of without you - but it was something. Narcissist, craves attention and spotlight, physically confident enough to detain and murder three women at the same time. The method was throwing the team for a loop, however. Bleeding the victims out was clinical, relatively painless - uncharacteristic of the sexual injuries found on the corpses and the bravado with which the killer executed the rest of the crime.

When you, Hotch, and Morgan trudged off the plane in San Diego, you had been going at the potential profile for hours and even Morgan’s patience was wearing thin.

“Look, Hotch, let’s hold off on speculation until we see the crime scene in person, alright?”

Hotch nodded, and took that as a cue to head straight to the crime scene. You groaned internally - having barely showered this morning and spent half the day on a plane, your greasy hair and coffee-stained skirt would have greatly benefited from a stop at the hotel to freshen up.

It’s not like you have to look good to go stare at a patch of dirt where a dead body used to to be though, right?

____________

Turns out the aforementioned patch of dirt was actually a wooded grove off a hiking trail leading to a nude beach, much to Morgan’s delight. The site itself was uninteresting except for the way the body had been buried - covered up very securely, implying remorse, another characteristic that didn’t make sense with the initial profile.

This commonality between all three crime scenes was hotly debated on the video conference between the entire team when you got back to the hotel. Cross legged on the bed in Hotch’s hotel room, you listened to Reid and Rossi snipe back and forth on the laptop about what the burial method could mean for ten-plus minutes (“It’s clearly just a functional tool to properly hide the body, Reid.” “But you don’t know that, the significance of burial practices can tell us so much more beyond function, it can even tell us about his religious upbringing…”) before Hotch put a stop to it.

“What do you think?” Hotch asked you, turning and looking directly into your gaze. You were suddenly hyperware of the proximity between you two - sitting close enough on the edge of the bed that your thighs were almost touching. Morgan had abandoned his position on the other side of you to stretch out in the armchair by the window halfway through Rossi and Reid’s debate. Hotch’s eyes boring into yours from only a few feet away and the expectant silence of the other team members on the video call spiked your heart rate, and you took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself.

“I… agree with Dr. Reid. I think it means something. The position of the hands, they were crossed across the chest, right? He didn’t need to do that. I don’t know if it means he was remorseful, but it was on purpose. I think.”

Hotch nodded, not breaking eye contact. “Good. Let's move forward with that theory.” He turned back to the laptop. “Let me know how interviews with the loved ones go tomorrow. Let’s find the connection between the victims. Call me if you need anything.” After shutting the laptop, he turned to you and Morgan. “Let’s call it for tonight. Meet me in the lobby at 7 tomorrow.”

Having been excused, you and Morgan made your way to your hotel rooms next to Hotch’s. Morgan wished you goodnight, and you unlocked your door and practically sprinted into your shower.

After you got out, you looked around the room, towel drying your hair. It was nice, much nicer than anywhere you’d ever stayed. The abstract art on the walls and the modern, clean white lines of the furniture were lit by the soft glow of the sunset filtering through the sliding glass doors leading to the balcony overlooking the ocean. You poured yourself a glass of wine from the minibar (a reimbursable travel expense, right?) and stepped onto the balcony, breathing in the ocean air.

“Nice night, hm?”

You jumped, nearly spilling your drink down your front for the second time in less than 24 hours. Hotch was sitting in a chair on his balcony to the left of yours, reclining with his hands behind his head. Despite wearing nothing but your thin hotel robe, you felt the urge to avert your eyes from him. His suit jacket was shucked, tie undone and hanging around his neck, and the top two buttons of his white, collared shirt were unbuttoned. You felt like you were seeing something you shouldn’t have, like the cold stoniness of his exterior had shifted just slightly and allowed you a glimpse underneath.

It’s just a couple buttons, calm down. You’re the one who’s barely clothed in front of your fucking boss.

“It is. Shame we can’t go to the beach,” you replied, keeping your eyes forward.

Oh my god, three women were murdered and I just complained to my boss about not being able to go to the beach.

“You’re welcome to get up early and go tomorrow; might be a bit cold,” Hotch replied. You could tell from his voice he was smiling.

You mumbled in affirmation, continuing to avoid glancing in his direction. “Well, I just wanted to see the view, um, I’m gonna get to bed. Goodnight, Agent Hotchner!” You ducked back into your room, and you could have sworn you heard him chuckle before you slid the door shut.

After getting ready, beating yourself up mentally for your complete social incompetence, and tucking in under the plush, white duvet, you drifted off to sleep.

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wanderingchocolateeclair · 3 years ago

Text

A Frayed Thread of Hope

[Part 3] (this was written quite a while ago, just a heads up for the quality of it)

Ao3 Link here! :)

Finally got round to transferring and posting this chapter to here!!! It’s taken a little while, but I’m hoping that this being in here might remind and motivate me a little more to write the next part out...the fic is up on ao3 and will be updated on there first when I get round to it and then transferred over here at some point too :)

Tagging (you can ignore if you’d like, or tell me if ya wanna be tagged or taken off the list. This is just a repost of a chapter that’s already up on ao3 so sorry if you’ve already read it 😅 I also haven’t posted in a while so sorry if I’ve accidentally tagged you or forgotten to tag): @kouricaesar @chaotic-trash-can @kiriderp @theshisthings

TW: slightly graphic description of injury, mentions of blood, slight mention of nausea, a lot of crying and sad.

——————————————————

(Flashback)

‘No no no, please-’ Shinya panicked as he heard the lack of response coming from Jeanist’s side of the raid. Minutes prior to this, he had felt his heart drop and a ringing sound echoed through his head. He knew that this was not a good sign, but pushed it away as he helped to apprehend the LoV. ‘Please, please be okay...’

Dammit. He knew that he should’ve tried to stop him. He saw it in his eyes...those eyes...his eyes. Tsunagu knew that something was going to happen and that the worst part would hit his team, he always knew when the worst would happen, and it always had to happen to him.

‘That’s why he looked at me like that...Dammit....DAMMIT! Shinya, you are such an idiot!’ Shinya’s mind was racing as he made his way towards Kamino with Endeavour, where the other team was based.

“We can only hope that we are not too late.” Endeavour said harshly, knowing that he had to reassure the other man but unaware of how to do so.

Shinya simply hummed in response, taking a large leap from one building to another. He wasn’t really listening, his mind was way too busy to hear anything but his own thoughts. ‘Tsunagu....why? You knew that this would happen, and you knew the pain I’d be in once I found out...so why?’ He found himself trailing off into thought, ‘heh....nevermind....even if you could answer me now, your words would always stay the same - that it was “the only way I’d prove myself to be heroic” by taking a hit that could kill you, for the sake of others....’

“Dammit....”

(end of flashback)

————————————

Shinya was torn away from his rapid train of thought by the sound of footsteps hurdling towards him and Tsunagu’s family. Before even he could react, cold hands grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently, a pair of red wings knocking over several items along the way.

“Edgeshot-senpai! You’re okay! Well, you look okay! Are you okay?” The flustered young man exclaimed in a panicked manner, blond hair ruffled across his head as messily as a bird’s nest.

“Ah, Hawks...yes...Yes, I’m alright. Ju-just still a little shocked, I guess...what about you? What are you doing here?” Shinya shakily answered, his mind still thinking back to what happened.

The winged hero sighed in relief, giving a small apologetic bow to the family that was scattered around him. “Isn’t it obvious? I heard the news and came as quickly as I could! All Might-san retiring, Endeavour-san...moving...up the ranks...” Hawks eyed the end of the corridor wearily, “it’s all a lot to take in right now...for everyone.”

The ninja hero nodded, gesturing for the other to take a seat. Hawks simply shook his head in response and mumbled something about feeling too uncomfortable to sit down in this situation, making Shinya chuckle lightly in agreement.

“Hey....Shinya-san...”

“Hm?”

“...Tsunagu...” Hawks trailed off, staring cautiously at the door standing opposite them.

The mention of the fiber hero’s name caused Shinya to snap his head up a little too fast, making him wince at the sudden pain that shot through his neck.

Hawks paused for a moment, before slowly carrying on. “Tsunagu-san....will...will he be okay?” He looked at Shinya with sad eyes, nervously fiddling with a small marble that he held in his hands.

“I-” Shinya’s voice cracked as he tried to find an answer, looking down at his own hands, that were still bloody and shaken. “...we don’t know...we- we can only hope...” he blinked rapidly to try and clear the tears that blurred his vision once again. ‘Not here, dammit, not here. You are so weak, Shinya, don’t cry- you can’t...’

They shared a small silence, standing there, gazing at the closed door in front of them. Just as one of them was to try and break this silence, a rather loud buzzing came from the winged hero’s jacket, causing him to fumble around for his phone.

After exchanging a brief conversation with the mysterious caller, Hawks looked up at Shinya apologetically and lightly grabbed his shoulder. “Ah, sorry, urgent call from the commission...I gotta go...”

Shinya smiled slightly. “Of course. That’s understandable. Thanks....thanks for checking up on us....”

“Yeah,well, someone’s gotta do it. We wouldn’t want our favourite parental ninja to pass out from shock all by himself!” Hawks exclaimed brightly, his wings spreading out even more, almost hitting Ai in the face. “Oh, Rumi sends her regards, by the way. She’s busy so she couldn’t come in person, but she said for me to tell you ‘if that jeans bastard dies I’ll kill him, give him a good thump ‘round the head when he wakes up, will ya’ so....uh....yeah! Um....well, please make sure you let us all know how he’s doing...”

“Heh, yeah I will, don’t worry,” Shinya chuckled at the other’s enthusiasm. Waving at the winged hero, he watched as he briskly disappeared from his sight.

Shinya sighed, leaning his head back against the wall, his mind overflowing with doubts and worries yet again. He thought back on the sight of Kamino, destroyed and in ruins. All might’s thin and frail form, barely holding back that monster....and.....Tsunagu... ‘dammit! Stop it!’

——————————————

(flashback continued)

As they arrived, they realised that this was no ordinary villain, and that the LoV had already managed to escape. Shinya scanned the area anxiously, trying hard to mask his panic but failing to do so. ‘Where......where are you....I’m here, please, Tsunagu where are you....’ he tore his attention from the ruins and glared at the madman that was loitering in the air. He was absolutely filled with rage, his body shaking, he could barely breathe. He wanted to lunge forward and completely rip this...thing...apart. He wanted to completely let go, just like he did all those years ago, this time with no regrets. But he knew that it was not his fight to do so. He knew that he was only there for support, with the rest of the heroes, to help All Might.

A huge gust of wind from one of All for One’s blasts knocked him over, sending him tumbling backwards. He was never brilliant at going against power types (he’s a light little man, leave him alone) but this was troublesome. Bracing himself for the impact of a harsh landing, he was startled when he felt himself being caught by something wrapping around his arm.

“Edgeshot-senpai!” Kamui called out, catching the other man before he could hit the ground. He set them down, away from the main fight, sheltered by a huge chunk of a building. His shoulder was occupied by a rather unconscious Mount Lady, but he had another in his arms...

Shinya gave a brief nod of thanks, before noticing the condition of the lanky figure that hung loosely from the other hero’s grasp. ‘Oh please- please, oh god, no...’ he felt his heart drop.

He started panicking as he took in the sight in front of him. Eyes lifeless, staring out at him. Hair, messy and dirty. Tsunagu’s body laying limply, now on the ground, his arms and costume bloody and torn. What’s worse, is the gaping hole that was present in the middle of his stomach. He wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t moving, it was as if his life had been drained straight from his body.

Shinya felt as if he was going to be sick, his body shaking too hard for him to stand. This feeling....this feeling was way too familiar. He was so worried in finding him, but when he finally found him...when his partner’s body was lifted from the rubble...he felt even more hurt than before. He started choking on the tears that he couldn’t hide....that he wouldn’t hide....gasping for air as he stared at Tsunagu’s broken form, imitating that of a torn rag doll, riding the edge of death as if it were a knife with which to cut the rest of the strings that connected him to his life.

“No no no, please, no- not again....not again....why- why? Tsunagu, why you....why my family? Why is it always my family?! The people I love....mother...father...my....why did it have to be you?!” He blurted out, unable to contain the rest of his pain. He held onto Tsunagu’s unconscious form, clutching it tighter as more and more tears soak into his mask. He would hide his anguish, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. He didn’t care who saw him crying. He didn’t care who heard his silent screams and cries of lost hope. He ignored everything around him as he hugged his partner closer.

“Senpai....I’m sorry....I’m...we really need to get him to hospital....he’s...it’s...” Kamui spluttered out quietly. He watched as the ninja hero lost all of his hope and felt his heart beat rapidly at the thought of what else could happen. “We are...we’re out of sight from everyone else...it’s- it’s...”

Shinya sniffled. He looked up at the younger man, his eyes still blurry and unfocused. “Thank you....I’m sorry....I....”

“No...it’s okay....I understand.” Kamui replied, cradling Takeyama in his own arms gently.

(end of flashback)

————————————

His thoughts became muffled, his ears ringing, and only one sound echoing through his head.

“Shinya...”

It was Tsunagu’s voice. He snapped back to reality, looking around anxiously.

“Shinya.....I’m sorry...”

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amaru2020 · 4 years ago

Text

Hey everyone! So this is a Raya and the Last Dragon fic co-written with my amazing friend @hazellevesque4life! Go check out their blog it’s awesome! It will also be available on their AO3 which I will link right here https://archiveofourown.org/works/30246006/chapters/74537121#workskin

don’t forget to leave plenty of kudos! We’ll try to update as often as possible! Now without further ado, let’s begin.

Chapters written by me, @amaru2020 will be marked like this 🟣

Chapters written by @hazellevesque4life will be marked like this 🔴

Summary: Raya and Namaari have to go on a road trip across kumandra to cure sisu's siblings of a curse

Cursed love

Chapter 1 🔴

“Namaari, I’ve been looking for you,” Virana called.

Namaari turned to face her mom, startled.

“Hi, Mom. I was just looking for Raya,” Namaari said.

Virana sighed. “You can find her later. First, walk with me.”

Namaari began to protest. She had to apologize to Raya for accidentally triggering an apocalypse.

But Virana stopped her before she could say anything. “I’m not saying you can’t talk to her, but this is more pressing.” She began walking.

She slipped her hand in her pocket and squeezed Raya’s golden hairband. It would be weird if she didn’t give it to Raya now. It might seem like she was trying to keep it. But her mom had just been turned to stone. And it would be horrible of her to not be there. Namaari released the hairband from her grasp. Namaari walked at the same pace as her mother.

“What did you need to talk about?” she asked.

“We need to head back to Fang.”

“What? We just got here. And Fang was destroyed by the Druun. Heart is the only place that has enough resources. We can’t go back yet.” Namaari hoped her mother didn’t think she was getting too riled up over this. But she still had things she needed to do here. Things she needed to tell Raya.

“That’s exactly why need to go back. Who do you think everyone is going to blame once the dust settles? We need to get ahead of the fray so that we aren’t reliant on Heart. We don’t know when they’ll turn on us. We need to rebuild so that we are strong when that happens.”

“But, shouldn’t we at least stay for a little while,” Namaari retorted, suddenly feeling anger swell up.

“We have to leave. To protect our people.”

And that was it. Her mother was the chief, and so her word was final.

Or it would’ve been. If Namaari hadn’t seen how the other had looked at her when the Druun cleared. After years of resentment, distrust, malice between everyone, there had finally been trust sent her way by people not from Fang. The last time she had seen that was when she was a child—again with Raya.

And even that hadn’t lasted long. Because of Fang’s need to protect themselves before anything. She wasn’t doing that again.

“No, Mom. We don’t have to leave. If you want to leave, I can’t stop you. But I’m staying here, trying to mend the bridges you burned.”

Virana looked at Namaari, contemplating. “Okay,” she said finally. “I trust you. But I’m not staying. If the other nations turn on us, I’m not having our people be helpless.”

Her mother was many things, but stupid was not one of them. If there was a way for her to make sure that Fang was self-sustaining while also keeping their relationship with the other nations, she would take it. None of them wanted conflict.

That calmed Namaari’s anger a little, but it didn’t completely soothe it. Her mother still expected conflict. She watched, wordlessly, as her mother turned and walked away.

Whatever. She couldn’t dwell on this. This was just more of a reason to go talk to Raya. Now if only she knew how to find Raya. Heart was weird, not like Fang at all. With its spiraling cityscape. Fang was contained on a much smaller piece of land, but Heart didn’t have that restriction. The buildings here were so much harder to navigate. Where would Raya be?

She thought back to the last time she was here. There was a huge central area, she recalled. Maybe Raya would be there, helping the people who had just arrived. Trying to use her foggy memories of the last time she was here, Namaari walked through the streets of Heart.

Finally, after too many confusing turns, Namaari found herself in front of the familiar hall where she and Raya had first bonded. The sounds of chatter echoes through the walls. So Namaari was right.

Taking a deep breath, she shoved the door open revealing people sprawled all over. And just like last time, it was people of all nations. This time, though, she noticed that more people were talking amongst people who weren’t from the same nation as they were. Namaari forced herself to stop thinking of that and to look for Raya.

She scanned the room, looking for Raya’s obnoxiously large hat. Her eye caught immediately: Raya, talking to her Ba.

Namaari stared at her, unsure of how she should talk to her when, mortifyingly, Raya looked up from her Ba. Their eyes met. Shit. Namaari lifted her hand in a small wave, trying to play it off as an accident.

Raya’s expression changed to —ugh— amusement. She motioned for Namaari to come over.

Mentally berating herself, Namaari walked towards Raya. She got a couple of curious glances from the other people of Fang.

“Hi, Raya,” Namaari said when she reached her.

“Hey! Are you okay? You were sort of staring at me from the doorway?” Raya was still looking down at her Ba, as she finished replacing the old bandages on his thigh with new ones where the crossbow bolt had hit him so many years ago. Namaari immediately felt a pang of guilt.

Oh, so she had noticed. “Yes. I’m fine.” Namaari refused to try to meet Raya’s eyes. “I, uh . . .” She what? Wanted to say she was sorry for telling Raya that Sisu’s almost-death had been her fault? Wanted to give back the golden hairband that she had kept like a creep? The words dissolved at her tongue. She and Raya hadn’t talked much since the Druun had been defeated. “Wanted to ask if you knew where Sisu was,” she lied.

“Oh,” Raya looked up. “I haven’t seen her all day actually. I’d check the clearing where her siblings were turned to stone the first time.”

Namaari wanted to shrink down. “I- I don’t know where that is.”

Surprisingly, Raya’s Ba spoke. “You should go with her.”

“But Ba, your leg-” Raya protested.

“Will be fine. It’s important to treat the other nations with respect.”

“. . . Okay,” Raya said, but the concern didn’t leave her face.

They walked together in complete silence. Namaari tried to keep track of the turns that they made so that she didn’t have to be led around like a child again, but Heart was too expansive that it was useless. She’d have to ask for a map or something.

Namaari was knocked out of her thoughts by Sisu’s voice.

“—Raya! I’m so glad you’re here, I was looking for you.” Panic laced Sisu’s voice.

Namaari sent Raya a concerned look. Raya glanced back at her. They spoke at the same time.”

“Sisu? What’s wrong?

“Are you okay?”

Sisu let out a strangled noise. “There’s something wrong with the other dragons!”

Chapter 2 🟣

Sisu gripped her tail with both paws as she began to pace, muttering things under her breath. “ “First Amba, then Pranee, now Jagan and Pengu…”

“The dragons? What do you mean there’s something wrong?” Raya said, finally finding her voice.

Sisu stopped to sit on her haunches. “I was hoping you could tell me! One minute they’re

normal, the next it’s like they didn’t even recognize their own sister!” She buried her head in her paws.

Raya and Namaari shared a worried look. Raya had never seen Sisu this distraught, which was cause for some concern. Raya felt Namaari give her a soft nudge before taking a couple of steps back. Raya raised an eyebrow over her shoulder in question, the only response she got was a gesture and look that could only be interpreted as ‘Not my place.’

Raya let out a small breath before cautiously beginning to approach the dragon. She tried to emulate the calm she had seen her Ba use many times in the past.

“Sisu... it’s ok, why don’t you just calm down and-“

Sisu’s head snapped up. “I’m calm, okay! It’s only my siblings turning into feral monsters, no big deal!”

Before she knew what was happening, Sisu had Raya dangling upside down from her leg, mere inches away from her furry snout. The whole situation gave Raya an intense feeling of déjà vu.

“I mean sure I did almost get attacked by my big brother today, but fine, let’s try it your way and stay, “calm.”” She used her free paw to make air quotes over the last word.

Raya only rolled her eyes. “Hey, at least I got you to speak in complete sentences.”

“That’s not the point!” Sisu said as she gave Raya a firm shake. Raya smirked and held up her hands in mock surrender. “Alright, but you need to still explain what’s going on. Can you do that?”

Sisu nodded.

“Good. Now put me down?” Raya asked as the blood had already rushed to her head.

“Right, Sorry.” Sisu said, chuckling sheepishly. She placed Raya gently on the ground, a nice change of pace from being dropped face first in her opinion.

Sisu frowned and picked up her tail and began to fiddle with it. Raya gave her an encouraging nod and touched the side of her neck, reminding the dragon she was there. This seemed to do the trick as Sisu finally began to open up.

“It all started with Amba, she’s usually so sweet and bubbly, she started to change. we thought it was just her having a hard time adjusting to being back after so long, and the stress of watching over Tail, but then when she attacked Jagan the other day, we knew it wasn’t that simple. then it slowly started happening to the others...” she trailed off, sounding remorseful.

Raya’s heart had dropped down to her stomach by the time Sisu finished her story. She had never heard of anything like this happening before. And for it to happen so soon after the Drunn wasn’t ideal. Raya rubbed her hand up and down were it was placed on Sisu’s neck at an attempt to comfort her.

“Don’t worry, Sisu. We’ll just let my Ba know what’s happening and I’m sure he’ll-”

“No!” Sisu yelped snapping out of her revere. She brought her head down so she could look directly into Raya’s eyes.

“No Ba! No people! No one can know about this!” “I know how tempting it is but we just can’t.” Sisu’s violet eyes bore into her own. Raya frowned. She wasn’t about to keep something this serious from her Ba. Especially not after all the time they had been apart. She tried to not let her annoyance seep through into her voice “Sisu, there’s no way we’re keeping this a secret. People, my Ba included, need to know what’s happening. They can help.”

Sisus' face turned indignant. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think you would want a repeat of the past six hundred years?”

Now it was Raya’s turn to look indignant. “How can you possibly compare the two when you don’t even know what’s going on?”

“You’re right, we don’t know what’s going on! Which is why we can’t say anything about it. Fear of the unknown is even worse than fear of the known!” Sisu said as she tugged at her mane.

“Sisu, I’m not keeping this from everyone, we’ve-!”

“Raya, doesn’t Heart have an archive or something

that might be able to help?” Namaari, who hadn’t said anything since they had arrived, interrupted..

Raya startled, nearly forgetting the other girl was there. She turned to face her.

“Well, yes but nobody is allowed inside. Sacred texts and all that.” Raya said.

“Except for the princess of Kumandra and her dragon and people friend?” Sisu asked, sounding more than a little hopeful. Raya shook her head. “Only the chief and the archivists are permitted to go inside. And besides, if I’m not allowed in, I doubt they’d let you two in. More so Namaari, no offense.”

Namaari gave a small shrug. “That’s fair.”

“Besides if we get caught, let’s just say I would probably never see either of you again.” Raya said.

“Then we won’t get caught.” Namaari nodded to Sisu. “And she’ll make sure of it.” Raya could practically see the gears turning in her head. They shared a look of understanding before looking back to the dragon, who was now looking a bit wary. And rightfully so.

“What? Why...are you two looking at me like that?”

#raya and the last dragon #raya and namaari #rayaari #Raya and the last dragon fic #this is my first fic posted on here so go easy on me lol #rayaari fic #I needed to get back into the practice of writing #I wanna say thank you so much again to @hazelevesque4life for putting up with how long it took me to finish the last chapter #alright that’s it #hope you enjoy!

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grainjew · 4 years ago

Note

Random ask time! Care to name ten fics, any fandom, that you have or plan to reread? (Not necessarily your top ten because top ten is hard but ten that you genuinely enjoy.)

hi lynse i can’t believe you slightly switched the ask subject from what you were contemplating sending in dms. yes i do care to do this!!! fics follow

these are arranged in literally no order whatsoever except vaguely the order I remembered they existed and tragically they will mostly not be readable for you lynse on account of us sharing fandoms basically never. but in any case!!! let’s go!!!!

A Professor and a Student - LeDiz - Pokemon Anime (Alola) - multichap, complete - Professor Kukui’s pov outsider on Ash, through interstitial set during the first season of Alola anime. This fic is the fic that got me into pokeani in the first place, and I have reread it all the way through at least once and specific chapters genuinely so many times. it’s good! it’s got so many fun reveals! it’s even got a surprise plot! if someone is in pokeani fandom though there’s like a 95% chance they’ve already read it, so it’s kind of pointless to recommend

Broken Rules and Consequences - Redring 91 - Doctor Who (All Eras) - series, ongoing i think - This is one that i’m planning to reread rather than one i’ve already reread: I first read it back when i was originally into dw, in like 2013, and honestly lynse the timing was probably right for me to have recced it to you back then. in any case i have a friend who vouches for its continued quality, and it was straight-up the only dw fic i kept up with for several years after i first fell out of the dw fandom. it’s a really excellent exploration of all the times the doctor has met their past and future selves, and i highly recommend it. it’s also very long, so watch out!

An Unexpected Greeting - kimirice - Pokemon Anime (Alola) - threeshot, ongoing - it’s a fic in the “cynthia runs into ash in alola and dumbfounds his entire class” genre and it’s a good one. my favorite one. i reread it whenever i want to feel serotonin in my bones. serotonin does not go in bones. whatever, this fic is such a joy, it’s pretty short, please read it if you too want serotonin in your bones on account of revealssssss

Phone A Friend - TheBigCat - Doctor Who (Seventh Doctor Era / Gallifrey Audios Era) - oneshot - this is another “reread when i want serotonin in my bones” fic. it really is amazing just how much joy can be stored in a single 1K oneshot, it makes me so happy, that’s ace’s space dad........... wahhh the au - everything’s fine tag on this one really carries it right into my heart

dreamt you a kinder future - Sixteenthdays - Dream SMP - multichap, ongoing - my FRIENDS forcibly got me into the damn MINECRAFT RP. this is all you will see of it on this blog ever because i do have SOME dignity left but if you HAVE gotten bodily dragged into caring about the block men yourself please do enjoy this time travel fixit about pre-plot Dream getting dropped into post-Doomsday era canon and dealing with the fact that his future self is evil and ruined all his relationships. its very good i reread the ranboo chapter regularly

The Red Coast - Maldoror_Chant - One Piece - oneshot - genuinely hilarious pov outsider on post-skypiea straw hats via some idiot bounty hunters who think they‘re easy prey. it’s a lot of fun and it took me three entire rereads to catch the punchline, which i am still mad about. please read this fic i am shaking my fist at it

Though She Be But Little, She Is Fierce - Izzyaro - Pokemon Anime (Kalos Era) - multichap, abandoned(?) - a few years after the kalos crisis, Bonnie sets out on her own pokemon journey. told through the eyes of her very alarmed traveling companion, who so incredibly doesn’t know what to make of her. yes, it only has two chapters and hasnt updated in years. i do not care. the chapters stand alone as oneshots and this fic has done so much for me. its like 90% of the reason i write bonnie the way i do its such a joy

Keeping a Welcome - Gramarye (ao3 | ffn) - The Dark is Rising Sequence - oneshot - did you ever wonder, gee, zeph, why do you write so much loyalty content? and why is it all Like That? well, the answer is that i read this fic at a formative age and imprinted on it like a baby bird, and then subconsciously was shaped by it for the next decade. genuinely it is SO good. it’s so good guys. guys it’s so good im going to cry just thinking about it. o a t h s ,,, wahhhhhhh gramarye is probably my favorite fic author ever i love their stuff SO much. so much. i am going to cry im telling you!!!!!! (also while I'm here I also recommend everything else theyve ever written, especially the Eirias Triad, which i have reread probably as many times as there are fingers in my house, and which is only not on an entry on this list on account of me wanting to keep it at one rec per author)

Nah - soomin - One Piece - oneshot - the straw hats have been stuck in a time loop of their entire lives for many, many years, and boy are they having a good time causing chaos. this is one of the only op time travels that i feel like accurately captures what would actually happen if luffy did a time travel, and i love it. they’re having so much! infinite retries for the best adventure ever!

Insomnia - tikitikirevenge - The Legend of Zelda (Majora’s Mask) - multichap, abandoned(?) - novelization of majora’s mask with a twist: instead of resetting the three day loop every time, link gets exactly 5 cycles, and the whole thing is a stable time loop. its true it hasnt updated since 2015, but it was my favorite zelda fic back in middle school and i still reread it every few years to confirm that it’s just as good as i remember: it somehow always is. and every time, i forget just how agonizing (complimentary) the link&tatl friendship slowburn is like dear lord does this author know how to write a slowly developing relationship hh i wish more people would read this fic it’s really just very good ok dont mind that its abandoned just before the snowpeak temple

#i feel very much like i am committing a grave betrayal with how few of my friends' fics are on here but my friends write things that cause m #e to have emotions. i have enough of those already!!! i dont need more emotions!!!!!#long post #recs #zephflix original #chatter tag #asks and ask memes #pokemon #pokeani #doctor who #sighs......#dream smp #i GUESS that tag has to exist on my blog i GUESS #one piece #the dark is rising sequence #the legend of zelda #majora's mask #i tried to keep these summaries short but i feel like they got longer as i got further down the post. whoops #sorry this took so long to answer!

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quixotin · 4 years ago

Text

*slips you a twenty*

Hey kid wanna read some lit fanfics?

I just updated my blog with a link to all my AO3 works

Also...... Chapter 8 of The Wall Between Us is up and it’d be cool if you read it or whatever, a bunch of us are gonna be there, we’re gonna cry and order pizza and suffer for the love square it’s gonna be cool

Read Chapter 8 on AO3 Start from the beginning here

Or on this post below the cut!

The Wall Between Us

Summary: Marinette is left to pick up the pieces after losing her chance with Adrien and having Master Fu give up his memories to protect the Miraculous Box. She struggles to find her ground as the new Guardian, and finds unexpected support in Luka Couffaine. Simultaneously, Adrien is learning how to navigate his emotions and slowly growing into his role as future co-guardian, and in the process realizes important truths about his feelings for Kagami, Marinette, and Ladybug. When Ladybug tells Chat Noir that as the Guardian, she is okay with not only revealing their identities but also entrusting her secret to close friends of hers, things become unequivocally complicated for the superhero duo. Will Marinette and Adrien be able to sort through their feelings and do what’s best for the Miraculous team?

Chapter 8

By the time Gabriel and Natalie had returned from their business trip to Seoul–and really, Adrien wasn’t even sure they had been gone at all due to the fact Akumas were aplenty during their absence– he had already extracted a good volume of information to make a case for his suspicions.

He hadn’t found the evidence he needed to prove that his father was indeed Hawkmoth, but instead he had found years of badly-filed fiscal reports, personnel that had been hired and fired under very mysterious conditions, some sort of project for the mansion that his father paid millions for which Adrien had never seen, and the one that irked him the most: audits from France’s Child Protection Services, fines, and ‘cease and desist’ letters warning Gabriel that he was putting Adrien under too many work hours.

That, he discovered, was the real reason why Adrien had been allowed to go to school in the first place. It wasn’t that Natalie had made him a favor: They enrolled him so that Child Protection Services would get off the brand’s neck for forcing Adrien on a part-time job when he wasn’t even sixteen yet.

All of Adrien’s findings were pretty incriminatory, not to mention infuriating, but none were exactly what he was looking for. And yet, it was one of those things that once you have considered, you cannot help but keep seeing.

“Adrien, would you like to explain to me why you have been missing your extracurricular activities for the past two weeks?” Natalie said with a stern voice one morning, as Adrien meticulously chewed on his oatmeal breakfast.

The fiery urgency to flip a table, which had taken a hold of him lately any time Natalie or his father addressed him, surged like a geyser.

“I just didn’t feel like attending,” he said politely, without looking up.

Natalie was taken aback by his answer. “Excuse me?”

Adrien looked up this time. “I didn’t feel like attending,” he repeated. “You weren’t here, and I just didn’t feel like going.”

“You know if you start doing poorly, your father will have you homeschooled again and–”

“And what? He’s gonna lock me up again? Is that it? Wouldn’t people start asking questions?” he demanded.

Natalie blinked, completely caught off guard by Adrien’s sudden rudeness. “This is no way to be talking to your–”

“My what? My dad’s assistant? You’re not my babysitter, not my teacher, and certainly not my mother. I can do whatever I want.”

Natalie composed herself and marched swiftly out of the dining room.

“Kid, what the hell?” Plagg hissed from inside his shirt. “That’s a dumb way to get caught.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered back. “I’m just… I’m so angry at them! I can’t stop thinking about all this stuff that I found, and just… the idea of them being–well, you know who. It’s making me see in red.”

He marched to the patio and went into his car, where, to his surprise, he found he’d be sharing a ride with his father.

He felt Plagg jabbing his little paws at him as if to say, “I told you so.”

“F-father. Good morning.”

“Drive, George,” Gabriel instructed. After a silence, he spoke again without looking at Adrien. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Disrespecting Natalie like that, blatantly disregarding your responsibilities, and giving the brand bad publicity.”

He threw a newspaper at Adrien’s lap. It was from a few days ago. Apparently his sudden outburst at the crowd of harassers in the skate park had made it into the news.

“I’m beginning to think it was a mistake to give you this much freedom.”

Adrien gulped, shuddering with sudden terror.

“Perhaps it will be better if you go back to being tutored at home. Or even better, I’ll send you to a boarding school where I don’t have to deal with your carelessness anymore.”

Adrien gasped. “Please… please don’t. Don’t send me away.”

“You’re not feeling so brave and boldened now, are you? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Adrien didn’t move. He didn’t dare speak, breathe, blink.

The car had stopped already, they were at the steps of the school. His friends were all hanging at the entrance and had spotted him.

“Your lack of words doesn’t surprise me. You’re just a naive, spoiled little boy who can’t begin to understand the sacrifices I make for this family… You’re dismissed.”

Adrien opened the door, not yet getting off the car.

“Are you going to take me off school?”

“No. Take it as a gesture of good will, and a warning. Stay. In. Line.”

“I-if you send me away, people will start wondering what happened,” he said with a small voice. “They’ll ask questions.”

“And what sort of questions would those be, son?”

At Adrien’s silence, Gabriel sighed. “Close the door. Have a good day.”

He got up and stood in front of the car, breathing deeply so as to not give into the urge to cry.

“I can’t wait to be eighteen to get away from you,” he said and smashed the door close as hard as he could, then sprinted into the school building, afraid that Gabriel might order George to stick him back in the car.

Regrettably, all his friends, Marinette included, saw the display unfold.

It was Nino the one who ran after him.

“Hey, dude, everything alright?” Nino said, as he caught up with him in the locker room.

“Hey Nino, good morning!” he chirped with sunny disposition.

The sudden contrast between what he had seen at the school entrance and then, gave Nino whiplash.

“Erm. Yes, good morning. Don’t ignore my question.”

“Nothing happened,” he said shrugging. “Come on, we’ll be late for—”

Nino yanked the strip from his messenger bag and forced him to stop. “Cut the crap, Adrien. I saw. Is everything alright?”

Adrien’s mask of optimism wavered, but he fought hard to keep it in place. “Yes, Nino. Everything’s alright. I promise.”

Nino sighed, not impressed. “Okay, if you say so.”

As they went into the classroom, Adrien saw from the corner of his eye how Nino shook his head discreetly at the girls. He had been right not to tell him. He knew those two would also want to know what happened. He didn’t want to cause hysteria. However, a more pressing thought occupied his mind for the rest of the day.

Given his regrettable display of temper, and though his father said he wouldn’t pull him out of school, Adrien knew not to trust it. One could never anticipate what his father would do just to stay in control. It worried him that he may have crossed a line that would be difficult to come back from. His father might increase his security, might actually pull him out of school. Not ideal, if his hunch was actually right.

He had to tell Ladybug what he knew as fast as possible.

On the lunch break, he excused himself to the bathroom, taking the burner phone with him to send Ladybug a message:

I DECIDED I’M READY TO REVEAL MY IDENTITY. SOMETHING CAME UP. DON’T WORRY, I’M NOT IN DANGER. BUT WOULD IT BE OKAY IF WE MEET AT THE HANG OUT TODAY? PLEASE WRITE ME BACK AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS.

He kept inconspicuously checking the burner phone for the rest of the day, getting no answer from Ladybug whatsoever. It made him restless. What if she was in danger?

No, she couldn’t be. There would have been an Akuma attack or something.

Still, he was worried, and he knew he couldn’t afford to go back home that day without having told Ladybug about his suspicions, so he resolved to drop by the hang-out anyway later that day. Natalie and George would pick him up after fencing, which gave him enough time to swing there and come back.

It only occurred to him that this might not be the greatest idea once he found himself sans transformation, standing at the door of the hide-out.

What if she wasn’t there today? What if she’s shocked by learning who he is?

He shook his head. No. This was an emergency. He had to do it now, so he ringed the bell.

He texted: LB DID YOU GET MY MESSAGE?

Almost immediately, he got a text back: YES :) I AM HERE. WAIT A SEC. WILL OPEN THE DOOR SOON.

His heartbeat so fast he could hear his pulse. He was short of breath and felt as if his knees would buckle under him at any second.

He heard some voices, then someone approaching to open the door.

Adrien felt temped to open it himself just get over the painful anticipation. The seconds extended for an eternity.

And then, all of a sudden, he was greeted with a most confused Alya Cesaire.

“Alya?”

She crumpled her face, perplexed. “Adrien? What are you doing–”

From inside the house, Adrien distinctly heard the voice of none other than Marinette. “Alya? Is that him?”

It took him a fraction of a second to figure out something that had taken him two–almost three now– years to realize. It felt as if time had stopped and then abruptly resumed, pushing him into a turbulent shore of angry waves.

All of a sudden, it was hard to breathe, impossible to buoy to the surface for a gasp of air. His voice caught up in his throat.

He figured it out.

“Alya?” Marinette repeated from inside the house as Alya stood petrified in front of Adrien, realizing exactly who he was.

“Don’t–” he said gasping. “Don’t tell her,” he pleaded and then darted away as fast as he could possibly run, only stopping when the tears completely blurred his vision.

Back at the house, Marinette was trembling from the utter anticipation. She had requested that Alya come with her to meet Chat. She wasn’t sure she could take it by herself and she needed someone for moral support.

The seconds of wait stringed into whole minutes of silence and Marinette forced herself to march to the front of the house, where Alya was still clinging to the frame.

She was… were those tears? Was she crying?

“Alya?” she asked with trepidation. “What happened?”

“Chat— Oh, Marinette!” She gasped. “Chat was here. He was–he wasn’t transformed.”

Dread came over Marinette’s expression. “Where is he?” she insisted urgently, “What happened?”

“He– he’s gone. Mari, you need to talk to him. You–we… we know him.”

She blinked, too shocked to let fear take ahold of her. “What? Who is he?”

Alya shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why?” Marinette demanded.

“Marinette, I can’t tell you. You’ll never forgive me if I do… Just… You have to go talk to him, Mari.”

Marinette sprinted outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of ‘someone she knew’, but it was the beginning of rush hour and the streets flooded with commuters, anonymizing everyone. She called and called and called him. Left him voice mail after voice mail, message after message:

CHAT NOIR PLEASE PICK UP! I’M WORRIED, PLEASE!

CHAT.

CHAT PLEASE.

ALYA SAYS YOU KNOW HER, SO MAYBE YOU ALSO KNOW ME... I’M SORRY IF YOU’RE DISAPPOINTED IT’S ME. CAN WE PLEASE JUST TALK?

MINOU. PLEASE. TALK TO ME.

CHAT NOIR, I KNOW YOU’RE MAD. PLEASE, JUST… PLEASE PICK UP.

Chat Noir did not pick up the phone and Marinette, well, Marinette had not been this brokenhearted since Adrien had started dating Kagami, and that was saying something.

Adrien didn’t sleep that night. He hadn’t cried this much since he lost his mother, hadn’t felt this much either.

He never was one to give into negative emotions, but when they got the best of him, they pulled him deep into an abyss that was hard to crawl out of. If any butterflies came flying his way, he wouldn’t have known. Plagg kept guard the entire night.

“I can’t do this anymore, Plagg,” he confessed. “I can’t–I can’t be Chat Noir anymore. It hurts too much.”

“Kid don’t say things like that,” said Plagg as Adrien sobbed. “I’m sure there’s a way to fix this.”

“She loves someone else,” he cried. “I can’t… She’ll never love me, Plagg. It doesn’t matter if I wear the mask or not.”

“That’s not true,” Plagg said, fetching the burner phone. “Look at how worried that poor thing is for you.”

Adrien kept crying. “She doesn’t love me the way I love her. I won’t stand in her way.”

The next morning, Adrien had to put on very little effort to act indisposed for school. He hadn’t come down with anything, but he felt sick. At one point during the night, he had been so caught up in his crisis that he ended up emptying his stomach. In the morning he had woken up from the few hours of sleep he managed to clock in with an insulting headache and even worse nausea than before.

He called in sick and remitted to his room for the next couple days.

It was funny. He never remembered feeling safe or at home in his room. It was too big, too cold for him and somehow at the same time, too small, too stuffy. It was as if his dad had tried to fit in the entire world inside it in the hopes that he’d never want to see the real thing himself.

It wasn’t comfort what made him feel like he belonged there. It was the fact that for once, his surroundings completely matched his state of mind. This is how he felt: as empty and grey as the mansion had been since his mother disappeared, as much of a prisoner as his father intended for him to be.

He groaned at the sound of his civilian phone chiming non-stop with messages from Nino asking if his father had done something to him, Marinette offering him any help if he needed it–these were the ones that hurt him the most to read–, and finally, Alya, who was not sending messages so much as entire monologues begging him to answer at least Ladybug.

He turned off both his civilian phone and the one for Ladybug, hoping there would be no Akumas while he was in this state.

With Chat gone, Marinette regressed into the sort of grief that shut her down when she became the Guardian. She didn’t stop showing up to school, mainly at Alya’s pressing insistence, but it was evident to the class that something was going on with her again.

A few of her more curious friends and acquaintances ask her if everything’s alright with Luka, which only added to her mortification. She hadn’t been herself these past days and she wasn’t exactly sure she’d be able to explain to Luka why she was so brokenhearted without giving her identity away; why Chat’s sudden rejection was way more painful than anything she ever had to go through. So, against her better judgement, she decided to ignore him for a couple days, at least until she was able to sort her head through the situation.

The truth is Chat’s disappearance–not only this one but every time he’s been convinced he’s not cut out to be her partner–hurled her into a spiral of helplessness not just because she couldn’t fathom doing this without him. There was another reason, one she always purposefully ignored.

It’s like she had told Alya: She had feelings for Chat Noir. It had become easier to ignore them with time, and especially when she could just invest all of her romantic attention on Adrien before Luka came around. But the thing with being in love with Adrien is that she was in love with the idea of him. The idea of being together if she could only one day bring herself to tell him. He was an outlet of sorts–more often than Marinette liked to admit out loud– to feelings she could never show, as they were forbidden.

The second reason why Marinette always fell into despair when Chat Noir surrendered or try to surrender his ring, was because she actually loved him. If she was honest, completely, absolutely honest, she loved him. But she could never tell him, it was Master Fu’s orders not to get involved with him, not to reveal their identities. She maneuvered through those restrictions by effectively fooling herself into believing that one day, in the far future when Hawkmoth was defeated and the stakes wouldn’t be so high, she’d tell him and then everything would be okay. She’d tell him the way you admit to a school crush on one of those high school reunions or unlikely encounters as adults.

Chat surrendering his ring always cut that fantasy short.

What is worse, Marinette realized, was that this time she wasn’t using the idea of someone to distract herself from the way she felt. She was using Luka. Luka, who has been nothing but supportive and absolutely selfless. Luka, who loved her, who didn’t deserve to be treated like this.

Marinette cried in part because this was Chat being typical Chat. But also, because she realized she would eventually need to let go of Luka, and she didn’t want to do that, no matter how wrong it was to keep him to herself. Maybe she just needed to try harder, maybe she just needed to shut down the idea of Chat as she had done before.

The problem was that ignoring him was impossible in this circumstance. Ladybug was about to lose her Cat for good.

“Mari,” Alya said softly as she rubbed her friend’s back as Marinette sprawled over her lap. They were in Marinette’s room. “I think he was just shocked. He’ll come around.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” she asked desperately. “I can’t do this without him, Alya. You-you wouldn’t understand. I can’t explain it… I just can’t do it if he’s not there.”

Alya gave her a pained smile.

Oh, this was all so rotten, Alya thought. And Marinette didn’t even know the beginning of it. Alya found herself wondering what would have happened if they had actually revealed their identities before things got complicated off and on the hero costume. It probably would have saved everyone a whole lot deal of pain.

“He will,” she reassured him. “Trust me, he will.”

Alya gave it a few days. But when the end of a week arrived and there was still no sign of Adrien, she decided she probably overestimated him. Nino was mad at him for virtually disappearing, Marinette was growing worried that something had happened to him, not to mention that his disappearance as Chat Noir was truly causing a number on her.

So, she did what she did best: take action.

She asked her teachers for Adrien’s homework worksheets and on she went Friday after school to confront what would be very possibly a mess even bigger than Marinette’s.

She sighed, rang at the gate of the Agrestes’ mansion and waited for the camera to activate.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Miss Sancoeur. I’m Alya, I’m in Adrien’s class. I’m here to give him his work for the week he missed.”

“Deposit it on the bin, please,” Natalie said, as an automated door slid open. to receive the packet of books.

“Actually, I was hoping I could see him? There’s a few things that our Social Studies teacher asked me to explain to him about a specific assignment,” she said, beaming.

“Adrien has come down with a bad case of the flu, I am sure it wouldn’t be safe for you.”

“Don’t worry ma’am. I got all my shots up to date.”

Natalie sighed and after a few minutes of deliberation, the gates opened. She met Alya at the front door and directed her to the floor where Adrien’s room was. “Down the hall, first door to the right,” she instructed. “I have to warn you. Adrien has specifically requested not to receive visitors.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll make an exception,” she said with determination in her eyes. “Thanks!” Alya flashed her a smile and once Natalie had returned to her office, proceeded to barge into Adrien’s room.

The blinds were all drawn, only letting in slivers of light. The air was stuffy, like no one had opened the windows in a good while. It also smelled disgustingly of spoiled cheese.

There were clothes and dishes and all kinds of things lying everywhere. Alya did not remember Adrien ever being this messy.

Both the three displays of his computer and the television were on with different shows each, mixing the occasional strands of yellow light from the windows with the morbid blue of the screens.

A lump, which she supposed was the culprit himself, lay buried in a mountain of blankets and pillows. It seemed he hadn’t noticed her–or in the very least, he didn’t care someone had entered the room.

“That’s it!” Alya announced, dropping her school bag unceremoniously as she huffed and puffed making way through the catastrophe of a room he had, to draw the curtains back and open the windows letting in fresh air and the sounds of the city. She then proceeded to turn off every screen and to yank, almost with unnecessary force, the blankets off of Adrien.

“What?” Adrien groaned.

“That’s it!” Alya said. “Get up. Get up this instant or so help me god, I’m going to toss you directly into your bathtub, clothes still on.”

“Alya?” He seemed confused. “What are you doing here?”

She proceeded to make piles of the different kinds of trash to make it easier to bag them later, and discarded plates and cups as she gagged at the smell.

“Seriously, what is that stench?”

“Camembert,” he explained, not finding it in himself to feel ashamed. “For my Kwami. He doesn’t eat anything else.”

Alya eyed him with disbelief and shook her head. “What are you doing there, just looking? Go take a shower!”

“But–”

“Go. Take. A. Shower. Adrien Agreste.”

A little afraid to continue questioning her, Adrien made his way to the bathroom and emerged a good twenty minutes later still in pajamas. Fresh ones at that, but still.

“You live like a pig,” Alya berated him as she took a seat in the couch in front of the television.

“I’m not– why are you here? Did you just come in to criticize me?” Adrien complained, joining her.

“First of all, no. I came in to make sure you were still alive, seeing as you decided to literally disappear off the face of this earth telling absolutely nobody. Nino is livid, by the way. Will love to see how you explain yourself out of that one. Oh, and there’s been Akumas, not that you’d even get the memo in this bunker, so I had to pitch in as Rena. You’re welcome.”

Adrien looked down.

“Second. I knew. I knew you were going to do this; lock yourself up here and wallow in your self-pity. And I knew somebody needed to come here to make you snap out of it,” she said, giving him a gentle slap on his head.

“Hey!”

“Am I wrong?” Alya demanded. Being met with silence, she nodded. “My point exactly.”

“Third,” she continued. “You think you have it bad? Try being Marinette for a little bit and have your oh-so-trusted partner of years now, suddenly bail on you with no explanation after realizing who she is. How could that possibly look to her, huh?”

“Marinette?” he said softly. “Is… is she alright? I didn’t mean to–”

“Shush. Don’t interrupt, I'll see that you get your chance to apologize to her, don't you worry your pretty face. Fourth. You sir,” she said poking her index finger at his chest. “Need to put on your big-boy pants and deal with your shit like the superhero you are.”

“And fifth,” she said, the fire in her eyes lightly subduing. “There’s homework,” she said pointing at her bag. “I brought it for you.”

Adrien became small in his seat as he took in Alya’s numbered series of complaints. Meanwhile, Plagg came out of hiding, knowing Alya already knew of his and Ladybug's identity.

“I like the way this one talks,” he said, munching a piece of cheese. “Finally, someone with some goddamn common sense!”

“You’re… Plagg?” Alya said.

“Have we met?” Plagg retorted. “Ah yes, Marinette’s friend on the door the other day. Of course. Either way, you have to know. I would’ve kicked him off the bed myself but well, I’m the size of a tennis ball.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Adrien said quietly, gaining the attention of the pair. “I know… I know I keep messing things up. Which is precisely why I’m not going to be Chat Noir anymore.”

“What?” Alya said, widening her eyes.

Adrien brought his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on top of them. “I just make everything worse,” he explained. “I keep messing up. And I… I know she used to have a crush on me, as Adrien. I don’t want to get in the way of her and Luka…”

“Adrien,” Alya said softly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but for such a smart guy, you’re pretty darn stupid sometimes.”

Adrien couldn’t help the sudden chuckle that escaped his lips.

“Why on earth do you think that would be a good idea? Have we not met the same Marinette, or, Ladybug in this case? For a reason that’s entirely beyond me, the girl crumbles if you’re not the one to help her up. It’s like… like she wouldn’t believe anything unless it comes from you. You should have seen the certified dumpster fire the last Akuma was. We were all over the place without you.”

Tears fell down his cheeks, and in that moment, Alya knew to knock down her tough-love strategy down a notch. Yes, this was Chat Noir. But it was also Adrien, and while Chat may react to confrontation, Adrien would do anything but.

She clicked her teeth. “Oh, Sunshine. Don’t cry,” she said as she pulled Adrien into a hug.

“I don’t think I can do it, Alya… I’ll make everything worse.”

“You keep saying that, Adrien. But why?”

“I–I think I know who Hawkmoth is,” he admitted in the quietest possible murmur, followed by a sob.

“What…? Adrien, look at me. What do you mean you know who Hawkmoth is?” she said, eyes wide with concentration.

“I figured it out,” he said, hiccupping as he tried to stop crying. “That’s why I went to the hide-out that day. I wasn’t ready to reveal my identity, but I had been stupid with my dad and I thought he might pull me out of school so I knew I had to tell her what I knew before my dad could lock me up or send me away. The first time she took me to the hide-out, I was browsing through some of the documents… Then I found this, this scanned page about the Peacock Miraculous from one of the grimoires and I knew I recognized it from somewhere.” He looked up with an ominous look. “My dad,” he explained. “He has this safe that I once broke into out of curiosity. And he had the missing grimoire in the set and also the brooch. I snuck in his office to investigate and they weren’t in the safe anymore. Then, I found all these documents… he’s been spending money in weird ways, making orders to companies that don’t exist… If he’s Hawkmoth and Natalie is Mayura… that’s–that’s why I had to tell Ladybug. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if she found out who I was and thought that I was part of it all. Alya I’m so scared… I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Adrien,” she said softly. “And why didn’t you stick around to tell her that?”

“Because I’ve been in love with her since I met her, okay? I panicked,” he said, now a bit more exasperated. “You– I don’t think you and Nino know what it’s like, it all came so easy to you. But for me… It was so hard to get over her as Ladybug, then realizing that I was really in love with Marinette, and now–”

“Wait, you’re in love with Marinette?” Alya interrupted, jaw on the floor.

“Did Nino not tell you?”

“No! We don’t gossip about what you guys tell us!… I mean, unless it's really important, but that's besides the point! Holy shit, this is so complicated,” she said with a long sigh, plopping her back against the couch. She groaned as she processed the information. “Why are you two like this?” she exclaimed, rubbing her face in frustration. “Okay, but about your whole theory,” she said, once she recovered. “I think that doesn’t prove much, Adrien. I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

Adrien shook his head. “I know what I saw, Alya. He had the Peacock Miraculous.”

“But that could mean anything. It could be a replica; I’ve read a lot of studies tracking the history of each jewel. People have tried replicating them to scam others.”

“It’s Natalie, Alya,” Adrien said with less patience. “Natalie is Mayura,” he said. “I just know it…” He sighed. “I don’t know how to tell Marinette. I don’t want to make things complicated for her.”

Alya thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “I got it. What you have right now is a lead, at best. We need to come up with a plan to prove your theories. And Marinette doesn’t need to know how you found it. I didn’t tell her that it was you at the door that day, so really, you could just tell her there’s reason to believe that Gabriel might be Hawkmoth. You tell her your sources is someone close to the Agrestes.”

“What if she asks who the specific source is?”

“We’ll get to that bridge when we cross it.”

“Half-baked plans don’t work on Ladybug,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Perhaps. But she won’t press if she knows your identity is at stake. And for what it’s worth, Adrien, I really do think you should just come clean. About your identity, I mean. It would make everything easier for both of you. I know it must be super scary but... At least promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

-- “Well, you look like shit,” Juleka commented a bit amused as Luka joined for breakfast before school. He hadn’t been sleeping well and it showed. He simply gave Juleka a ‘I’m not in the mood to fuck around’ smile and begrudgingly served himself a bowl of cereal.

“What is it?” Juleka insisted.

“I really don’t wanna talk about it, Jules.”

“It’s Marinette, isn’t it?” she asked, sounding more like she already had an answer.

Luka sighed and said nothing.

“She’s still not answering your messages?”

Luka shook his head. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Nothing, probably.”

Luka looked up at his sister, who shrugged at him. “Alya says there’s something going on with her family or something, and she’s really having a hard time with it. It’s probably only that.”

Luka appreciated the fact Juleka tried to cheer him up, but he already knew Marinette wasn’t answering because of family trouble. It had been no secret that Chat Noir had been absent in the last few Akumas. Coincidentally, Juleka had mentioned Adrien had been missing school the last few days, so he knew something must have happened between them. Maybe a fight, it was anyone’s guess. The only thing he knew is that he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t stand that he couldn’t do anything about it, that Marinette wouldn’t actually tell him why she was hiding–to be honest, he also was unsure he even wanted to know. The prospect of her crying to him for a guy who has broken her heart not once, but twice now, did not appeal to him in the slightest bit.

Adrien Agreste was so stupid! He was an idiot! And yet, Luka couldn’t help but wonder if Marinette would ever cry for him like that, even if the last thing he’d ever want to do was to hurt Marinette the same way Adrien had. If she’d ever trust him as blindly as she trusted Chat Noir or love him just the same.

He sighed, trying to push the thought away. Lately, he had run out of strategies to keep his jealousy at bay and so, defeated, he simply tried to ignore his feelings as best as he could, not knowing what else to do. Giving into the feeling made him think horrible things about Adrien, which he was sure weren’t true. Confronting them brought up a proposition that made him break a cold sweat, which although extremely painful, had begun to make a case for itself. It was something he didn’t want to do, but that he suspected would be the best for both of them in the end:

Break up with Marinette.

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tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

Text

Title: A Tale of Two Slaves (7/17)

Summary: “Soulmates don’t exist. Fate doesn’t exist. Everything is a choice.” At that moment, Levi could only watch as she made the choice for him.“

Reincarnation AU. Levi remembers everything from their past life. Hange doesn’t.

Note: I was busy with fic exchange pieces for a while but will be focusing on updating my multi chapter fics now. As always, feedback is very much appreciated :D

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 8

Link to cross-postings: AO3

“So you’re Levi Ackerman?” The woman who had just entered the room looked excited. Too excited.

After being kept waiting that long, Levi was in no mood for anything, especially unnecessary pleasantries. For the past thirty minutes at least, he had been sitting on the couch of a quaint office. It was spacious and there was at least enough room on the couch to elevate his knee comfortably. Probably the reason he had the self control to give a curt nod in reply.

“I’m a fan! I watched a few of your events actually and I’m so glad to have you here,” she said too enthusiastically. She paused for a second and shook her head. “No, I’m horrified about you being injured which caused you to end up here but I’m just really excited to get to know you.”

Levi didn’t feel the need to reply.

She walked to her desk and dropped her canvas bag before sitting on the couch in front of Levi. “Sorry for being a little late. I just came out from another meeting and went out to get something to eat after. Maybe I could give you my number and you could text me if you get here before I do.” She took a post-it out of her purse and scrawled a few numbers on it and slid it towards Levi.

Shouldn’t you have my number? Somehow it was hard to believe that she was a counselor. “Name?” Levi asked.

“Shela. Just call me Shela.”

Levi had met those types of people before who go by nicknames. More often than not, he couldn’t blame them, usually they had a very old fashioned or embarrassing name behind it. He couldn’t believe someone as transparent or excitable as her who didn’t look like she had much control of her filter, would have issues about how embarrassing a name was though.

“I have a very old fashioned first name.” Shela added, only confirming Levi’s suspicions. “Shela… Sierra - Hotel - Echo - Lima - Alpha.”

Levi typed the name on his phone and saved the number.

Last Name? Academic History? He set the rest of the details aside. As long as he knew her name, he could probably get through enough sessions to at least keep both his coach and Erwin satisfied. Going to a counselor was not his idea after all. It was his coach apparently who had requested it and it was Erwin who had pushed for it. Without twice a day training or even the freedom to go wherever he wanted without being completely exhausted within hours, Levi had not much of anything else to do anyway.

Shela brought out a notebook from her purse, opened it to a bookmark paged and wrote something on it before looking up at him. Levi couldn’t help but note that when she wasn’t looking ashamed or overly enthusiastic and she did look like she knew what she was doing.

“I’m going to skip the question of ‘what brings you here’ because I think we all know why you’re here.” She gestured her pen towards Levi’s leg. “Let’s start with something simple. How are you? How are you feeling today?”

“My knee hurts and I can’t train anymore. But I’m focusing on studies now so I think I’m doing okay.” He answered, having prepared that script in his head the thirty minutes he spent waiting for her.

“I’m not asking how you’re coping. I’m asking how you’re feeling today.” Shela’s piercing eyes were a beautiful shade of blue. The serious look she gave him then bore into him. In fact, it felt like it bore into his soul.

Despite the generally bad first impression she gave him, Levi was somehow convinced that she was qualified to do that type of work and his showing up there might turn out to be worth something after all. Levi found himself almost hypnotized by that look she gave him, a healthy mixture of concern, interest and professionalism.

Hiding and watching his words felt pointless and Levi found himself saying his answers as his brain came up with them.

A Tale of Two Slaves

The hospital where he was slated to have his next sessions was that same hospital he had stayed in a week ago. Conveniently, it was a five minute walk from where he had been staying since he got out of the hospital: Hange’s apartment.

Just until I can walk up stairs. Levi had told himself. There were many dormitories clustered around campus yet he had ended up staying in the least handicap friendly one. The first floor had a lobby and a common room and the actual bedrooms were only found at the second floor and the third floor. To top it all off, there was no elevator. He had to note though that it was an old building with only three floors so it would have been useless to put one.

He was on scholarship and it was assigned to him back in first year so he did not have much of a choice. He didn’t need to think too much of it either that past three years of college since he had never been injured enough to the point of being unable to climb stairs

With his leg completely immobilized and a deadweight, Levi was sure it would be a nightmare to brave that everyday. The paperwork and legwork required to change dormitories in the middle of the semester seemed daunting as well. In the end, Hange had offered to let him stay over in her apartment.

Her condominium was spacious, it had an elevator and it was walking distance from the hospital where he’d have both his counseling and physical therapy sessions.

Walking Distance. For non handicapped people, it should only take five minutes to walk the two block distance from the hospital to the apartment building. Levi took ten minutes to clear it and by the end of it he was exhausted and despite the chill of mid autumn, Levi found himself sweating as he arrived in the apartment.

It was a Friday afternoon, a week after he was released from the hospital. Nobody was pressuring him to go back to school yet. His professors had been kind enough to send him lecture slides and give him extensions. Some classmates had dropped their own summarized notes and get-well messages.

Levi settled on his bed and propped his knee on his pillow, looking through the lecture slides of his last class. Despite his self imposed week long isolation, Levi just wanted to go back to normal life.

But it never will be normal again. Although Levi did see a glimmer of hope in the possibility of feeling normal again when he went back to school, the realist in him knew it wouldn't happen.

Levi was supposed to be in the process of accepting at least that it would never be the “normal” he used to have and had taken for granted. Something inside him was rebelling the process though.

If I can't live the life I want, then I won't live at all. That something screamed inside him.

That form of rebellion left Levi with little energy for anything else. His mind was slower. His body was heavier. He was seeing little reason to move beyond the mechanical and primal movements needed to survive.

As if by magic, his body that used to carry him over two meter tall bars, suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. The weight crushed him everyday. At times Levi found himself unable to breathe. That was he found himself in that same position for sixteen hours a day, either sleeping or staring at the same white ceiling above him.

In fact, the only time he had left the Hange's apartment was for that one counseling session Hange had prodded him to go to. That was the only time she had forced him to go out of the house as if she herself understood somehow the comfort and at the same time the panic that came with a self imposed isolation.

What else was there to do?

He was alone. He had kept to his own bubble in college, only flitting between the two islands of academics and trainings.He was always either busy or exhausted and the lack of in-between had given him little time to reflect on the state of his mental health. And suddenly he had lost one of his islands, the bigger one, the one that had given him meaning the past few years. That had left him completely and utterly lost. Maybe even desolate.

That was what Shela had pointed out in their first counseling session as Levi attempted to articulate the emptiness inside him, the slight panic that came with idleness, the sudden need to turn off all message notifications and the frequent mood changes that came with Hange's entering and exiting the apartment.

And his weird dependence on Hange.

In between studying for his three subjects that semester and icing his bum knee, what else was there to do? Wait for Hange to come home? Talk to her during that one to two hour window when she wasn't working on her thesis? That was what his life had ended up revolving around anyway.

Levi found himself only replying to anything related to studies or graduating. He had received a few messages from others, suggestions to visit training, offers to visit from teammates and he had ignored them all. Somehow, the reminder of the loss of the one hobby that had kept him busy for the past decade of his life, was mocking. He became someone who waits, someone who just went with the flow of everyone's schedule. Having been busy his whole life, having been constantly needed and looked for and only recently, having been reduced to where he was, Levi felt his life was just a series of wrong choices, wrong choices that only formed a distrust with himself and consequently a refusal to engage in activity.

What else am I supposed to be doing? Levi opened his laptop. For a moment he had tried to go through his school notes at Shela’s advice.

After less than an hour of halfheartedly reviewing his notes and forgetting it soon after, Levi had exhausted his already scarce energy. With nothing else to do, he had decided to move to scrolling through timelines which displayed little to no signs of real life obligations, pinterest and reddit to pass the time. Within an hour of just scrolling through both, he had gotten tired of it too. It was a new feeling. Usually he could drown himself in hours of social media and timelines but at that point, nothing was interesting to him anymore.

Have you tried writing out how you feel? Shela’s suggestion echoed in his head. Like maybe get a journal. It’s a great way to process your thoughts and emotions.

What’s there to write. Levi asked himself and Shela’s voice as it echoed in his head. Levi could only stare at the blank screen, his emotions too non-existent to write. The blank document he had opened in front of him was the best representation of his thoughts and emotions already.

There are no right or wrong answers. Shela had brought up another good point during their session.

You think, therefore you are. You feel therefore you are. As long as you’re processing images, sounds and sensations, you’re thinking. You’re feeling something and you can write something down.

Then why do I feel so empty? Levi had asked.

Shela had compared it to a false bottom. As he continued to stare at the blank page in front of him, Levi was starting to feel for that false bottom in his mind. It was a matter of discipline more than anything, determination to dig into one’s self.

It could have taken hours but as Levi looked at the time on his laptop, he realized much time hadn’t passed. In fact, the time to the lower right of his screen, was still the same. But Levi was starting to think differently.

He did have something to look back on. Stories he hadn’t thought back to in a while, having been occupied by training, Hange’s tests, studies and recoveries. They continued to taunt him in the mornings. With the magic of worldly obligations, Levi had managed to set them aside.

His motivations particularly lay in the fact that his world was a little bigger, he was talking to more people and the idea that these same people he was seeing were the same ones he’d been writing fictional stories for had him questioning his own sanity and had him a little self conscious about having those dreams in the first place.

At that moment though, his inability to think and feel beyond that false bottom had Levi more alarmed and he found himself attempting to articulate those dreams on the word processor just to experience a semblance of something.

Levi at least confirmed one thing, that bottom was false. And the more he articulated those dreams, the more they became real. He was starting to scrape on that false bottom and the first things that were oozing out were dreams. Somehow, the dreams were more vivid that he had ever remembered them to be. He felt almost guilty for having set them aside like some sort of fair weathered friend.

“Hey not bad! Is that homework?”

Levi tensed up in surprise. He should have been able to hear the familiar footsteps and the jangle of the keys from his place on the sofa bed. He never missed it once. Levi didn’t know if he should be proud that he had distracted himself enough not to consider Hange or terrified that she was right behind him at that moment, probably reading through his work.

He quickly closed his tab and looked at the time on the lower right. It was only five. Hange usually went home at seven.

“You’re early,” Levi commented.

“It’s my apartment. I can choose when to go home.” Hange answered. “Anyway what was that? Are you writing?”

“A journal,” Levi explained. There was not much point in lying.

“Did the counselor tell you to do that?”

“Yeah. Something about processing emotions and thoughts.”

“It’s a good exercise. Especially since you seemed pretty out of it recently...” Hange trailed off.

Levi looked back at her and noticed a flicker of what looked like guilt in Hange’s eyes before she looked away.

“Out of it?” Levi knew what she was talking about. He just felt the need to keep the conversation going.

“You spent the past weekend just lying in bed. I never even saw you look through your phone or open your laptop. ” Hange explained. “I’ve seen how these types of things develop so... So yeah, I’m just so happy to see you so focused on something else.”

“I don’t really have much else to get into other than school.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Hange said.

Levi bit his lip, instantly regretting that last sentence. Hange averaged two apologies a day which was a lot given the fact that they only ever had a two hour window to talk in between Levi’s long hours asleep and Hange’s long hours on campus.

“It wasn’t your fault. I was kinda going crazy too...With the jumping I mean.” He added. “And I was the one who decided to make that last jump in the first place. And now you have to change your whole thesis topic.”

“It wasn’t too difficult. Just one week building a new proposal. It’s still the same case study, it’s just I decided to document a recovery. Erwin’s unconventional methods with the recovery makes it worth documenting.”

“At least I’m still useful somewhere,” Levi commented wryly. Hange had explained the thesis to him over the weekend. He should have been relieved at least to know that they weren’t separating anytime soon. Surprisingly though, he wasn’t even happy to hear it. Everything around him just seemed too bleak to celebrate anything. Good news that used to make him smile and celebrate internally suddenly only made him feel a slight sense of relief, the equivalent emotion of seeing a wet floor sign in an area with slippery floors.

Hange sat on the sofa bed next to Levi and looked towards him. She took a deep breath. “I know with what’s been happening, it looks like you don’t have much going for you. And I know things seem pretty dark now but things will get better. You just have to keep living.”

“I’m still breathing.”

“You know what I mean,” Hange said. “When I get up in the morning you’re asleep. When I get back we talk for an hour and half the time it’s just me talking. You barely even answer when I ask what you want. This past weekend I didn’t even see you look through your phone. It’s like you’re practically dead.”

“What else is there to do. I can’t show up for training. My professors aren’t asking me to go back to school soon.”

“Find a new hobby? Continue whatever thing you’re writing. Enjoy the food I bring home. Laugh when you see a funny meme. Or you know, at least smile and do that nose blowing thing people do when you show them a funny meme..”

“My teammates are preparing for the new season. My classmates are at least all caught up in class. I spent too much damn time on that fucking sport. Now that it’s all gone, I feel like I’m just going with the flow of life instead of actually swimming,” Levi said, having taken that last part from Shela’s book.

“Everyone is just going with the flow of life. We’re all at the mercy of time anyway. Live for yourself. See joy in the small things at least. Look at me, I’m simping for athletes like some idiot in between studies.”

“Live for yourself? You follow people’s orders a lot for someone who gives this type of advice.”

“It’s not obeying people. I’m just asking questions and seeking advice. The more relevant facts, information and experience you have, the better the decisions you can make right. So can’t I argue that having more information at my fingertips makes me freer? ” Hange gave Levi a knowing and playful smile

He could tell by the look she gave him that she expected something in return. It was a rhetorical question though, maybe even a premature victory lap for having won that argument. Levi silently looked back at his laptop, not wanting to let her win.

Hange broke the silence. “Okay now that we’re on the topic of asking questions... who’s that Squad Leader Hange Zoe you’re writing about?”

A Tale of Two Slaves

Levi could not pinpoint the exact moment he decided for certain that squad leader Hange Zoe was real, when he decided for himself that the stories he was writing out should have been real.

It came as a gradual decision after incessant questions from Hange that at first, he was determined not to answer. Hange was smart about it, keeping the questions as things that could be answered with one word, and before he knew it, he was giving her too much information, it was pointless to blatantly refuse. After he had answered her more than enough questions, she smiled.

“Looks like you got my personality down,” Hange commented. Levi somehow knew her enough to tell there was no judgement or obligation in that voice. In fact, when he looked into her eyes, he saw that same wonder, he had seen many times before when she witnessed the jumps.

That wonder only carried over from questions on the squad leader to questions on his dreams and finally, to questions on how he wrote his dreams out.

“How do you see the world?”

“How do I see the world?”

“Like what type of camera angles do you see the world in. If I asked you to imagine a tree, what kind of tree do you imagine? Do you imagine it from top to bottom, from trunk to top? Our minds are the most creative producers and cameramen you can think of.”

“Do you notice how well our body blends sensations? When the light turns off then on, there’s a split second where you see shapes when your eyes adjust from light to dark?”

“What are the physical manifestations of emotions? Do you feel your stomach drop? Do you ever get that tingling feeling in your legs and suddenly they’re jelly?”

Did you ever witness something so beautiful that you wish you could live forever just so you could never forget it?

The conversation was a little deep and a little too philosophical for him. It was a ploy to get him writing and maybe a ploy to get him to understand the same wonder she had in the world from what he could tell. Somehow he needed it. The way Hange had described the world, the way she had described reality, only made the line between what could have been his imagination and his memory a little more distinct.

It was around then did he look at Hange Zoe the medical student to see the squad leader from his dreams. Erwin Smith, Hange Zoe and every single one of the soldiers in these dreams. They weren’t just dreams or manifestations of an exhausted mind.

In another life, she could have been real. The angles at which he saw the world, the way his body processed those sensations in his dreams, the manifestations of those emotions, too vivid even more vivid than a catharsis from a good book or a phenomenal ending to a TV show.

The questions continued to echo as Hange turned off the lights and Levi lay in bed awake. That food for the thought left Levi hyper aware of his surroundings, all the way down to the small details --- the way every piece of thread on the bed covers beneath him pressed on to him, the way his breath made a sound in the utter silence late at night no matter how much he tried to quiet it, the way the palpitations in his chest could be felt all the way until his head. He was excited to sleep, dream and take stock of his dreams yet he was too excited to fall asleep.

Like a five year old the night before their first field trip, Levi did not fall asleep anytime soon.

A Tale of Two Slaves

Nobody really questions the logic of dreams.

Sometimes one can find themselves only a few millimeters tall on top of a giant donut. Sometimes they can find themselves having milk tea with their favorite celebrity. Dreams are more felt by the moments they bring to people, not by the logic. It was only natural Levi did not question much of his dreams then.

That night as he lay awake, Levi made the conscious effort to live in his dreams, to take note of every detail from the sights and sounds, to the smells, the emotions, repeating to himself the questions Hange had asked earlier that day. What he had failed to consider then, was the context of dreams.

Were Hange and the others okay?

He found himself on the battlefield and he knew exactly what had to be done. In front of him was a large furry creature which the military had dubbed the Beast Titan and around him were other naked humanoid creatures called titans.

The Beast titan was flinging rocks at them and the soldiers were dying at an alarming rate.

Commander Erwin Smith ordered a suicide mission. All surviving soldiers were to rush towards the Beast Titan while Levi flew from the side of the walls and snuck towards him.

He knew what to do. The movements were natural and Levi had flown before, the gear on his waist had only made the whole mission easier. Somehow, on the battlefield he had the luxury of stock knowledge.

That stock knowledge was what had him slicing through the arms, through the eyes, through the achilles and finally through the nape of said titan. He pulled out a blonde man and pushed the sword through the man’s mouth.

He could feel his blood boiling. From anger? Of course, the man had killed Erwin. For a second, Levi had managed to get a view of the blond commander as he flew from the wall slashing titan after titan. He knew the man was probably dead.

But there was a way to revive him. There was a serum.

Before Levi could give it a second thought, a duck billed monster tore into his view and---

Levi sat up and screamed. He found himself in no hurry to dodge that duck billed titan. He was in Hange's apartment, too injured to be flying in the air in those contraptions anyway. He ran his hands through his body and up to his face, taking stock of his reality. He didn't reek of titan blood nor was he covered in it. He scanned the dark room, or at least what was visible given the moon was his only light source.

Somehow, those few moments as captain Levi had felt so real, watching the moon from his place on the sofa bed seemed almost dreamlike.

Which one is my reality? Levi found himself questioning it all. As quickly as the questions came, they were answered. All he needed was one stimuli, strong enough to root him back into his reality.

"Hey, bad dream?"

The dark room and his own state of mind had made it difficult for him to notice that Hange had settled beside him. That voice though had pulled him out of his trance and he became certain at least that he was not dreaming anymore.

"Yeah," Levi managed to say. At the least he still had control of his voice.

Hange sat cross-legged next to him. The moon was at a perfect angle to illuminate her face and even in the dark room he could see it. Her eyes were looking right at him as if she were studying him a little too seriously.

She brought out one finger to his eye and pushed at the corner. That was when Levi felt it. The small tear spread on the corner of his eye and dried up within seconds. Levi only hastened the process by wiping it himself.

"I'm not leaving you tonight."

"Why?"

"I'll take full responsibility for this. It was my mistake that got you into this in the first place.”

"I've had them before. This is nothing new.” Levi argued. As Hange lay on the sofa bed next to him though, he realized he didn’t want her to leave. His body froze as if understanding that emotion, unwilling to accommodate the protests, the impulse inside him to argue, to force her to go back to her room.

The sofa bed was at least big enough for both of them, wide enough for a comfortable one to two feet space between them. Hange had made sure as well to lie on her side, only widening that space a little more.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you this but I swear I really do mean it every time. I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked as she said it.

Levi only continued to stare at the ceiling above him, listening to her disturbed and hitched breaths next to him as if she was holding back something. He didn’t want to look to his side, not wanting to further aggravate a reaction he sensed was raring to come out of her or to further tighten that knot which had settled itself on his chest. His dim surroundings only illuminated weakly by the moon, did not help at all.

Levi lay awake for a while longer, scrambling for words that could placate her.

This is nothing new. It hadn’t worked.

I’m fine. But he wasn’t.

Things happen. Had he not given that same consolation so many times before?

Eventually the rhythm of her breathing evened out enough for Levi to guess that she had fallen asleep, and as if by some special force, Levi found his breathing slowing down too. He was starting to relax.

The apartment was dark and quiet. It was peaceful, so peaceful that Levi never did notice when exactly he was pulled back into his dream. The dimness of the apartment was gradually replaced by the dimness of the forest a long time ago. The distant sounds of passing cars gradually replaced by the crackle of a fire and the rustle of leaves on a windy night.

He was surrounded by trees. A broken wooden cart lay to the side and a few feet away from it a campfire.

The soft and even breathing next to him stayed though. The same exact pattern, the same exact rhythm, the same hitched breaths--- all signs of the light uneasy slumber of his companion.

That was all Levi needed to hear to have sworn nothing much changed about her.

#levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #levi x hange #levi x hanji #levihan fanfiction #fanfic

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pinkprimrose05 · 3 years ago

Text

GX Month Day 18: This Wasn't in the Rule Book

@gxmonth

Ao3 Version Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33473653/chapters/83310418

Why yes, it's prompt bending time! Wish this day came a bit later into the month so it was closer to the release date of Duel World ARC-V but, oh well, what can ya do? ...Oops, looks like I spoiled the chapter. Yes, this year's AU prompt also doubles as a celebration of ARC-V coming to Duel Links, and it's probably the one prompt I'm most excited to write because hoo boy I've been waiting for this moment for sooooo long! 8D

~~~~~

"Manual Reboot Successful. Initiate Sign-Up Process? "

"Initiating Sign-Up Process. Establishing Connection...Please Enter WORLD_ID."

"Response Recorded. Initiating Connection to WORLD_ID SERIES6..."

"..ERROR. Failed to Connect to WORLD_ID SERIES6. Continue Sign-Up Process and Retry?"

"Response Recorded. Continuing Sign-Up Process."

"Response Recorded. Aborting Connection to WORLD_ID SERIES6...Connection Aborted"

"...Sing-Up Process Completed. Initiating Log-In Sequence..."

"ERROR."

-----------

Yuuma sat by the river, waiting for something big to happen.

He knew he wasn't support to be there. Tour Guide hade explicitly told everyone to not get close to the Gate during new world maintenance, but being his curious self, he guiltlessly ignored the warning. Why? Because of the aforementioned new world, of course!

From what he knew about it -which wasn't much, but Juudai-senpai had been rambling about all the different Duelists, Decks and weird game mechanics that they might see for two weeks straight and that sort of gave him a general idea-, this new world thing was a pretty big deal in Duel Links, and with it being so covered up, Yuuma was all too hyped to see what it was like for himself, consequences be damned.

He'd tried world-switching to no avail, as he sebsequently found out that the game wasn't only staggering log-outs, it was also staggering travelling through Duel Worlds for however long he was stuck here. He'd tried asking everyone he knew about it over his D-Gazer too, but that didn't work, and neither did begging a sleepy Kaito to try and hack the game for more info..

..Which led back to him sitting by the river, kicking his legs back and forth as Emperor's Key swayed in the morning breeze, dangling from the string in his hand while he kept waiting, waiting, and waiting some more...

"Yuuma?"

"Eek!" The Xyz Duelist practically jumped five feet into the air upon hearing his name being called, thoughts racing in frantic circles as he turned to see someone approaching...then immediately relaxing when he realized exactly who that someone was.

"Three!"

Michael Arclight smiled, waving gently as he tottered to the river bank and sat down next to Yuuma, who sighed in relief at knowing he wasn't in grave trouble for getting caught near the Gate. The two traded greetings, then settled into silence as they gazed at the horizon, at the clear sky and rising sun of their Duel World's landscape. If it were him, Michael would be content with just staying like that and admiring the view, but the ball of excitement next to him wasn't about to share that sentiment anytime soon.

"Sooooooo..." Yuuma began "What are you gonna do today?"

"Hm? What do you mean?" His friend gave him a puzzled look, and Yuuma made a broad gesture with his arms in response, as if that was supposed to mean something.

"You know, about the, uh, the new world? Are you gonna visit that? Duel people there? I don't know what to expect from it to be honest, it's the first time for us and I'm reeaally excited and also curious and I can't wait to see what will happen...but we can't find out anything before the maintenance ends, and it looks like it's gonna take a while and I'm getting bored so, what are you gonna do?"

Michael hummed thoughtfully, glancing at his Duel Disk "Well, I was thinking of waiting until things settled down before doing anything about all of this. A game this big can get quite unstable with such a huge update, you know? That's why I came here anyway, and..." the pink-haired Duelist blushed faintly "..I may or may not have decided to ignore what Guide-san said about the Gate in the process. Please don't tell anyone I was here?"

"Don't worry, my lips are sealed." Yuuma said, mimicking a zipper sound as he ran two fingers along his lips for effect "No one will ever know of your super classified one-time incident of breaking the law...not that that law made sense anyway. I mean, COME ON..."

Michael giggled, listening as Yuuma launched into a full-on rant about how meaningless them 'closing' the Gate area was. He wasn't exactly wrong though; if it was about as dangerous as Guide said, surely there would be some obstacle or lock to stop people from getting too close, right? Surely she wouldn't just count on everyone to not be reckless enough to ignore her, right? Unless...

Unless the error she's dealing with here might cause serious backlash if she tried inputting a new command that also interacts with the Gate, in which case-

Any other thought that would have followed that trail instantly vanished when the Gate suddenly exploded with blue light, and in that moment, Michael's world went quiet.

-----------

"Unacceptable! This is unacceptable! I have a fucking job interview in two hours, how am I supposed to get ready in time for that??"

Yuusei sighed, running a hand through his already mussed hair for what was probably the eighth time in thirty minutes. Tour Guide's sudden announcement of an emergency maintenace -one that somehow overlapped with the new world's- had put everyone on edge, even more so after they found out they couldn't log out until it was over. As a result, every single Duelist currently in the 5D's World had gathered at the Deck Editor and unanimously decided to wait out the maintenance period there...but some of them weren't particularly happy about being stuck in the game for however long it took.

Chief of those was Jack, who kept pacing next to the table Team 5D's and co. clustered around, all while throwing several uncharitable insults at Guide, Isono, Kaiba, and basically everyone affliated with the Duel Links staff.

"Why do they have to keep messing up every time they launch one of those new words?? I swear, if I see any of those little-"

Carly instinctively covered her ears when the Resonator Duelist let out a particularly nasty swear, and Crow shot him a miffed glare from behind. Yuusei sighed again, then slowly pushed himself out from his chair to rest a hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Jack, please go get a cup of coffee and cool down." He said in an uncharacteristically pleading, tired tone "We're all stuck here, we all have important things to do, and some of us haven't slept for twenty-six hours. It'd do everyone a lot of good if you stopped yelling at empty air for a while."

Jack crossed his arms and huffed, but forced himself to simmer down regardless.

"...Fine. I'll go get myself some coffee and 'cool down' or whatever, but not because you asked me to, it's because I need some fresh air." And with that, the former King of Duels strode out of the Studio, coat flapping dramatically in a gust of wind before he went completely out of view.

"Good riddance." Crow let his head drop on the table with a low thud, raising a thumbs-up in Yuusei's general direction, and while he normally wouldn't agree with that sentiment, the Synchro Duelist was currently grateful for the calmer atmosphere of the place, now that Jack was gone. He slid back into his chair, hoping to get some shut-eye to compensate for staying up for all of the night before...

"Guys, we have a problem."

...Or not. Yuusei looked up in time to see Bruno -No, stop it, that's Antinomy- dropping in the chair between him and a barely conscious Kiryuu, the computer in his hands flashing with several warning signs overlapping on top of strings of code, which kept appearing and disappearing at a seemingly random pace. This, the noiret decidedly thought, peering intently at the screen, definitely doesn't look good.

"The energy output is spiking around the Gate area and the ones close to it." Antinomy explained to no-one in particular, his usually passive face set in a stressed frown as he clicked away at the keyboard "It appears that whatever issue that caused this emergency maintenance has gone completely out of control, and while we don't know exactly what that means, compressing so much energy in a certain area, no matter how broad..."

"...is bound to make it blow up." Yuusei concluded, eyes widening as his mind caught up with the implication behind that "This means the Duel Studio and everyone in it will be affected if anything happens to the Gate."

Antinomy nodded "Exactly. It could be that someone is trying to log in, and that's why I'm asking you to go and- dammit!" He swore, fingers moving across the keyboard at a far more frantic pace when the computer let out a series of long, loud beeping sound. Yuusei was pretty sure he got whiplash from how fast he turned to see what was going on-

-but before he could register more than the word "ERROR" bolded in blue across the screen, he felt a shock of static, and then...nothing.

-----------

"Automated Reboot Successful. Log-In Sequence...Complete."

"Connecting to WORLD_ID SERIES2...Connection Successful."

"Linking with.."

"..Sakaki Yuuya."

-----------

The first thing he felt when he came to was a gentle breeze tousling his hair, rays of sunshine lighting up his eyelids, and droplets of water spraying his face every couple seconds. It wasn't raining, that much he gathered, which meant that he'd most likely spawned near a fountain or a river, since there was no trace of the salty scent of seawater in the air.

Yuuya opened his eyes. Sure enough, there was a fountain to his left, its marble structure adorned with a ring of green leaves that carried all kinds of colourful flowers, water flowing from it center and from the sides. Pushing himself up, the tomato-haired Duelist looked around, taking in the rest of his current surroundings, and the first thing that caught his attention was a huge, round portal thingy that hovered in the air, with glowing lines of blue circuitry running through its silvery white perimeter.

That must be the Gate, he thought that's how I came here.

A bit further ahead was what seemed to be another portal, but this one was rectangular in shape, unlike the Gate's circle, and it was completely blue as well. Yuuya watched as the portal rotated in place slowly, the other side of it coming into view with the label 'Duel School' appearing on top of it. Curious, he reached out a hand to touch the portal...

...only to pull back immediately when the pixels forming it fizzled and crackled with electricity, shocking him.

"Ow ow ow ow ow!!" Yuuya clutched his stung hand with the other, hissing in pain at the contact before letting go of his hand. He sucked in deep breath then slowly exhaled, wiping the tears that formed at the corners of his eyes before turning away from the Duel School to keep walking (and to will away the sick, fleeting memory the shock had sparked for a moment).

Yeesh, that wasn't a great first interaction... he grimaced, waving his hand in the air in hopes that it would calm the stinging pain down But that doesn't mean I can't find something good if I keep looking. I wonder where all the other Duelists are.

The path he was walking down split into two at the end. Yuuya turned around, chancing one more look at the admittedly beautiful yet strangely desloate area he started in. He chalked its emptiness up to it being quite early in the morning...but then again, it wasn't morning for everyone around the world, so maybe it was just that the area was mainly used as a terminal, which would explain why he was the only one there...

Wait.

He shouldn't be.

Switching his Duel Disk on with a quick swipe (which was an honestly stupid action in hindsight because damn his hand stung hard from that), Yuuya dialed the very first contact on his list, running the hand with the Disk strapped to it through bi-colored bangs and pushing them out of his face as the device rang once, twice, three times. Where was everyone else? He, Yuzu and Gongenzaka had logged in at the same time, and Sora had told them he'll jump in right after, so why was he the only one to come out of the Gate?

*Din-di-di-din, din-ding...Din-di-di-din, din-ding...Din-di-di-din-*

"Hello."

Yuuya blinked, then did a double take at the soft, young voice that came from the other end of the call. That...that wasn't Yuzu. He swallowed.

"..I'm sorry, who am I talking to?"

A few moments passed before the voice replied "My name is Sera. You must not recognize me, but please don't worry, the owner of this device is safe and sound, and if you wish to talk to her, she is here with me."

The line went silent then. Well, almost silent; Yuuya could hear bits of chatter and the sound of someone fiddling with the Duel Disk...before said someone decided to blast his eardrums full-force, like she always did.

"Yuuya! Where the heck are you?!" Yuzu cried out, and he found himself smiling at the familiar loudness "I've been looking for you everywhere!!"

He winced when her voice cracked on the last word, hand running through his hair again as he laughed nervously "Sorry, sorry! I...honestly don't entirely know where I am yet. Thought we'd start at the same place, but I guess we didn't..." He glanced around for any sort of landmark to pinpoint his position, then remembered where he came from at first and settled on that "Um, can you see the Gate? I'm standing close to it."

There was a beat of silence, then an audible sigh. "I see," Sera muttered at length "Sakaki-san, I think you have logged into a different Duel World than the one Hiiragi-san and I are in at the moment..because we're standing right in front of the Gate."

It took a full ten seconds for Yuuya's brain to register that, and when it did, all that came out of his mouth was a drawn-out "Whaaaaaaat??"

"...You skipped the rest of the tutorial, didn't you?" Yuzu's voice carried a hint of amusement and fondness, before assuming a more serious tone "Okay, look. If you check your Duel Disk, you'll find two arrows in a circle at the top left corner. Click that, and you'll get a list of the five different Duel Worlds in the game. Sera said that something happened before we came here that stopped everyone from travelling between those worlds, and apparently there was a sixth world that we were supposed to log into but didn't...anyway, the highlighted name will show you the world you're in. I'm in the fourth one right now..."

Yuuya listened as Yuzu explained what happened to her after logging into the Duel World, following her instructions all the while. A quick check told him that he was in the second world, the one labeled 'Duel World Series 2'. He nodded along his friends' words, and when she finished, he took yet another look at his surroundings.

"Alright, gotcha, I'm in the second world." He said, and it was then that he decided to head left "I guess I'll go take a look around the place, see if I can find out where everyone else is, and wait until we can all switch to the same world. It's great to hear you're alright, Yuzu. Take care!"

"Hey, that's my line!" She quipped in response, and Yuuya could practically hear the playful grin on her face "But seriously, I'm glad to know you're doing fine too. See you later, Yuuya."

And with that, the line went dead. Not even bothering to turn his Disk off, Yuuya broke into a quick jog, humming a cheerful tune to himself and grinning widely as he started rhyming the tune to his steps. Yuzu was fine, she was okay, they'll find each other soon enough and meet up with their friends, and they'll have tons of fun exploring the game, just as they planned.

Yeah, that's the spirit!

He only slowed down when the smooth, metallic path turned into dirt, patches of grass growing randomly in the way and on the sides, as well as a pair of trees and a few stray daisy bushes. A huge structure that felt so very out of place loomed ahead of him, its futuristic design and neon blue lines contrasting sharply with the simple greenery surrounding it, despite only being separated from that by a ring of gray tiles at the end of the dirt path. Upon closer inspection, there appeared to be a floating label above it that spelled out the words "Duel Studio", and a sliding door that opened on its own when Yuuya came close. The Pendulum Duelist stepped through-

"Ack!"

-and promptly crashed into a blur of black, stumbling backwards as a result. Leaning on the now-open door for support, Yuuya nursed his head with his free hand, letting out a small sigh before he looked up to check on whoever it was that he bumped into...and froze when he locked eyes with them.

That shade of gold was...familiar.

Yuuya's eyes widened, and the brunette facing him mirrored the action for a split second, before his shock faded into a passive scowl that clashed with his fluffy, Kuriboh-like hair. Yuuya opened his mouth to say something, he wasn't sure exactly what, but the taller male turned back to the Duel Studio, subtly motioning for him to come along, and whatever it was that he wanted to say went out of the window.

"Follow me." His voice -slow, deep and clear- carried a distinctly authoritative tone as he strode ahead, and after a moment of apprehension, Yuuya found himself trailing behind. The guy looked like he knew where he was going, and didn't exactly seem opposed to talking to him, which meant he could possibly get some answers to the pile of questions building up in his head, and well, weird gut feelings aside, that was actually a good thing.

The two sat at a round, red table in a distant corner, and then just...stared at each other. Yuuya waited for the Kuriboh-haired Duelist -at least, he guessed he was a Duelist, judging by the strange custom model of a Duel Disk on his left arm- to say something, anything, but nothing came out, and he wasn't sure exactly how to start the conversation, so...he kept waiting.

"............"

And waiting.

"............"

And waiting.

"............"

And waiting.

"............"

And then decided that was enough waiting. "Umm...are you even gonna say anything?" Yuuya asked after a full four minutes, half expecting to get no response..

..but the guy actually rolled his eyes at him, like he'd asked a stupid question or something "What are you expecting me to say?"

Huh. Okay, this man was kinda bad at conversing. Yuuya held back a sigh, plastered on a smile instead, and tried again.

"Hmm, how about an introduction? That sounds like a good start." He held out a hand "Nice to meet you, I'm Sakaki Yuuya. And you are..?"

The brunette's stared moved to Yuuya's outstretched hand, then back to his eyes...and then he sighed, holding his own hand to his temples as he mumbled something in a foreign language Yuuya couldn't make out (but assumed was an exasperated statement, based on the tone of what came next).

"Dear Lord, why is it that every single one of them turns out to be a child?"

"Huh?"

"You can see Duel Spirits," He said, pointing at Yuuya. It wasn't even a question, just a factual statement he threw as casually as someone discussing the weather forecast "and you most likely have a special bond with at least one of your cards, that may even go as far as your very soul being bound to it. Is that correct?"

A few moments passed in silence, and then: "How did you-"

"I knew that was the case. Listen to me, Sakaki Yuuya; I do not know the exact extent of your knowledge about the nature of this world, or that of the darkness you possess, but know this-" gold eyes narrowed dangerously, and Yuuya flinched in spite of himself "Duel Links is not just a game. There are greater forces behind the creation of the Duel Worlds, ones that can tamper with your memories and thoughts, even call back beings that were supposed to be gone forever and link different dimensioms. Your status as a Legendary Duelist means you are directly involved in everything that might happen in the new world, so proceed with caution, or prepare to deal with the consequences."

Yuuya reeled back in his chair, face going white. He stared down at his pendulum, gripping its dimly glowing crystal tightly in his hands -had it been doing that for a while? He had no idea. His head was starting to feel light, his throat got all choked up, and he was sure he'd be shaking if not for how tense his muscles were. What- what had he gotten himself into? If he'd known it was more than a game, if he'd known they'd be thrown in the middle of crossfire again-

Deep breaths, Yuuya, deep breaths.. He told himself before he got too lost in thought, inhaling sharply. Calm down, let it out slowly, relax.....yeah, there we go.

"Why are you telling me this?" The teen asked once he was certain his mini-panic attack was over, and he must've been imagining things because he could swear he saw a ghost of a smile on the other's face when he replied.

"In all honesty," he began slowly, the edge to his voice almost completely gone "I have had enough interdimensional conflict to last me a lifetime, and I would really rather not deal with any more of it if I can. I assume you understand where I'm coming from here?"

Yuuya hummed absently, and that seemed to be a satisfying answer to the brown-haired Duelist, who pushed himself out of his seat and turned to leave, but not without allowing himself another final sentence.

"Very well then. For your own sake, as well as everyone you may care about, I hope you're actually smart enough to follow my warning. Until we meet again...or not."

And with that, he walked away, disappearing behind the staircase to the right. As soon as he went out of sight, Yuuya let his head fall down on the table with an unceremonious flump!, making some inchoerent noises when the sound of some lady announcing the end of the 'Maintenance Break' blasted over the intercom above his head, and he became distantly aware of other voices and some footsteps sounding not too far from him.

*tap*

Alright, so he and everyone else have basically jumped into yet another grand scheme that caused conflict across different dimensions, but this time the stakes weren't as clear as in the Interdimensional War.

*tap-tap*

The thought was admittedly daunting, and he was a hundred percent sure no-one he knew would like to go through something like that again..

"Oi."

But on the bright side, it seemed that they weren't the only ones dealing with this sort of thing, which meant they could easily find many allies in the different Duel Worlds...yeah, if they kept an eye out, they should be all right-

"Oi!"

Yuuya's head snapped up when he realized someone was calling out to him, and when he looked up, he was greeted with the smiling face of..

"You again??"

..the same Kuriboh-haired Duelist?

"Sorry, what?"

Yuuya did a double take. Yeah, no, that wasn't him; the eyes were colored soft brown instead of hollow gold, and he was wearing a red jacket instead of a black robe too- Yuuya mentally scolded himself for overlooking the differences (but also found it somewhat funny because, you know, he had to deal with this kind of confusion more than once before).

"Nevermind, I think I confused you for someone else. My bad." He gave the red-jacketed brunette a sheepish grin, gesturing at the empty chair opposite to his, then watching as he placed his also strange custom model of a Duel Disk on the side of the table before sitting down himself, fiddling with the device all the while. Even the way he composed himself was different; this guy felt far more lax and chill compared to the other one, and it made Yuuya relax a bit in turn, the silence that stretched between them feeling more comfortable.

"So, let me guess..." Red Jacket began a bit later, leaning a bit forward with a curious glint in his eyes "You're one of the new kids?"

A small nod "You can say that, I guess. I'm Yuuya, and you?"

"Yuuki Juudai. Pleased to meet you, kiddo- wait, I can call you kiddo, right?"

"Sure, unless you're somehow younger than me, which I doubt because of the..height difference."

Juudai smiled again "Aight, kiddo it is then. I gotta say though, I'm impressed you managed to switch worlds that fast. Took me a whole week to realize that was even a thing."

He laughed, and Yuuya chuckled with him. "Actually.." he said afterwards, rubbing the back of his neck with a small, bashful smile "A friend told me about it, and I couldn't even use it when I first arrived. Something about an error happening with the new world and shutting down the whole game, I think? Yean, that locked out the switch thing for a while, and it stopped everyone from logging out too."

"Woah, for real?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Damn," Juudai slammed a hand down on the table "you sure had one heck of a first day, kiddo. Guide must be freaking out with all of this going on."

Yuuya blinked, confused "Guide?"

"Oh, you don't know her?" The older teen asked, quirking an eyebrow "She's, ah, the Duel Spirit of Tour Guide From the Underworld. Pretty much the one who manages this place, since the actual owner doesn't give a shit about the shenanigans happening around here, and she also runs the Duel School. You can go hit her up if you have any questions about the game; she's a great help for new players."

"A Duel Spirit..." Yuuya echoed quietly, stare moving down to the Deck slot of his Duel Disk. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at Juudai and asked "So anyone can interact with them here? The spirits, I mean."

"Of course! It's part of the game's charm, y'know?" He answered, throwing a wink at Yuuya before continuing "Being able to hang out with all your monster friends, even if you might not see them in real life..I don't think anyone would pass up on something that cool."

The younger Duelist smiled at that, hand subconsciously touching the top of his Deck, which earned him several happy murmurs and a particularly loud roar as well "Yeah, that does sound pretty cool. I gotta try it sometime later."

"You totally should." Juudai agreed, taking out his own Deck and shuffling through it as he added "In the meantime...would you like a good ol' tabletop Duel? My old-ass relic of a Disk is being particularly laggy today, and I heard you had this cool summon mechanic with the backrow zones- what was it called again? Pendant? Pending?"

"It's Pendulum Summoning." Yuuya clarified, tentatively taking his Deck out of its slot when Juudai did the same "And uh, sure, I can show it to you if you want."

The brunette's smile turned into a wide grin as he whipped out a pair of folded game mats from his pocket and placed them on his and Yuuya's side of the table, putting each of their Decks on the far right before punching a fist in the air "Heck yeah! I'm finally the first to Duel the new kid with the new cards, this is gonna be a lot of fun!"

"Definitely!" He nodded, his own smile widening as he drew his starting hand with a little more flourish than necessary for a tabletop Duel- not that he really cared, what mattered at the moment was that, even if he was going to have to fight again later down the line, he was going to enjoy Dueling to the maximum as long as he could. No use worrying about the future, all he came here to do was have fun, and fun was he going to have.

Watch out, Duel Links, here I come..!

"LET'S DUEL!!"

~~~~~~~

THE END, finally. This, for whatever reason, took me three weeks to finish alongside the other prompts (okay actually Yuuya's POV slipped from me and I barely managed to end it where I did), and I couldn't even make it on time ffs. There goes my plans to deliver all chapters on time...but I at least hope you enjoyed reading. ...Oh yeah, you may have noticed by now that I left some loose ends here and there (like the conclusion of the chapter for the residents of Duel Worlds ZEXAL and 5D's, AKA those poor souls who got a mass reboot error and received no answers as to why), and to that I say...nothing. Yeah, you gotta wait a little while longer to see what happened to them after the reboot. That said, I shall now take my leave and return to the land of Ao3, see y'all on...someday by the end of the month, I guess.

#gxmonth2021 #yugioh gx #yugioh zexal #yugioh 5ds #yugioh arc v #too many characters to tag

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pjo-whore · 3 years ago

Text

Percy In Tartarus

Chapter 1: The Fall, And Gone

ao3 link. if anyone wants to be tagged for future updates please comment!

Annabeth had seen some strange things before, having been privy to the mythological world since she was only seven years old.

Several things she could name off the top of her head was her first time at Camp Half-Blood when she witnessed her best friend die in cold blood, then proceed to be turned into a pine tree; witnessing the Stoll brothers pull of pranks that increasingly defied the laws of physics; and when she had even seen her boyfriend turned into a guinea pig by a vengeful sorceress.

And that wasn’t even half of the craziest stuff she had to deal with on the daily.

But if there was one thing she had never witnessed before, it was cars raining from the sky. If she was being honest, it wasn’t as cool as it sounded.

Like, three out of ten.

Would not recommend.

As the roof of the cavern collapsed, beams of sunlight came through from above, blinding Annabeth. Briefly, she caught a glimpse of the Argo II.

It had used its ballistae to blast a hole straight through the ground.

Giants chunks of asphalt tumbled down, along with six or seven Italian cars. One would have crushed the Athena Parthenos, but luckily the statue’s glowing aura acted as a force field, and the car bounced off.

Unfortunately, that car fell toward Annabeth.

Annabeth launched herself to the side to avoid it and accidentally rolled her bad ankle. Pain washed through her, making her lightheaded. She was only just able to flip onto her back in time to see a bright red Fiat 500 slam straight into Arachne’s silk trap, punching through the cavern floor and disappearing with the Chinese spider-cuffs.

As Arachne fell, she screamed like a freight train on collision course.

More chunks of debris slammed through the floor, riddling it with holes.

The Athena Parthenos remained undamaged, thankfully, but the marble under its pedestal was a starburst of fractures.

When everything settled and debris stopped falling, Annabeth was finally able to calm down and take stock. She was covered with cobwebs. She trailed the strands of leftover spider silk from her arms and legs like the strings of a marionette, but somehow none of the debris had hit her.

Annabeth wanted to believe that it had been the statue of her mother that had protected her, but bitterly, she suspected it may have been nothing but luck.

Around her, the army of spiders had disappeared.

Either they had fled back into the shadows, or they had fallen into the chasm along with Arachne, and there was no lost love from Annabeth for either option.

As natural light flooded the cavern, Arachne’s silk tapestries along the wall crumbled to dust. Annabeth could hardly bear to watch it, especially when the tapestry depicting Percy and her kissing underwater turned to nothing.

But none of it mattered the moment Annabeth heard her boyfriend calling from above.

“Annabeth!”

“Here!” She sobbed. It hurt to yell. “Over here!”

Her terror left her in one massive wave of relief. As the Argo II descended, she could see Percy leaning over the railing, waving to her. Black hair whipping in the wind, smile crooked, he appeared like a god sent from Elysium. His smile was better than any tapestry Annabeth had ever seen.

The room kept shaking, and with no lack of difficulty, Annabeth pulled herself to her feet. Her backpack was missing, along with Daedalus’ laptop.

Her celestial bronze knife, which she’d had since she was seven, was also gone.

Annabeth wanted to cry. It felt like she had lost a part of herself.

Above her, the Argo II came to a stop about forty feet from the floor. A rope ladder was lowered, but Annabeth ignored it as she stood in a daze, head still heavy.

Percy appeared at her side, lacing his fingers with hers.

He gently turned Annabeth away from the pit and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. Annabeth buried her face in his chest and finally broke down in tears.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re together.”

Percy didn’t say “you’re okay” or “we’re alive.” After all the two had been through, he knew the most important thing was that they were together. Annabeth felt fit to bursting for the love she held for him, and she hugged him tighter.

Around them their friends gathered. Nico was there, but Annabeth’s head felt so fuzzy that it didn’t even surprise her. It only seemed right for him to be there.

“Your leg!” Piper exclaimed. She kneeled next to Annabeth and examined the Bubble Wrap cast, fretting over her friend’s injury. “Oh, Annabeth, what happened?”

Annabeth wanted to explain, but when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out. She felt so light-headed, and her tongue felt swollen. Her throat was parched. Percy seemed to know what she needed and called for a water bottle, which Leo grabbed from his utility bet and quickly handed over to her.

As she started, it became easier.

Percy didn’t let go of her hand either, which helped to motivate her.

When she finished, everyone was staring at her in disbelief.

“Gods of Olympus,” Jason said. “You did all that alone – and with a broken ankle!”

“Well, some of it with a broken ankle,” Annabeth said weakly.

Percy broke out in a grin. “But you made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but by the gods – generations of Athena kids tried and failed, but you did it! You found the Athena Parthenos!”

Attention switched to the statue.

“So … what do we do with her?” Frank asked. “She’s huge.”

“We have to take her with us to Greece,” Annabeth said. “She’s powerful. Something about her will help us stop the giants’ rise.”

“The giants’ bane stands gold and pale, won with pain from a woven jail,” Hazel said, quoting the prophecy. Her expression gained a hint of admiration. “It was Arachne’s jail. You tricked her into weaving it.”

With a lot of pain, Annabeth thought humorlessly.

Leo raised his hands in a mock framing, trying to measure the Athena Parthenos. “Well, it might take some rearranging, but I think we can fit her through the bay doors in the stables. If she sticks out at the end, I might have to wrap a flag around her feet … or something.”

Annabeth shuddered at the image. She imagined the Athena Parthenos jutting out from the trireme with a sign across its pedestal that read “WIDE LOAD.”

Then she remembered the other lines the prophecy: “the twins snuff out the angel’s breath, who holds the key to endless death.”

“What … what about you guys?” Annabeth said. “What happened with the giants?”

Percy told her about rescuing Nico and the surprise appearance of Bacchus, along with the fight with the twin giants in the Colosseum.

Nico didn’t say much. He didn’t say anything at all. The poor guy looked like he had been wandering through a frozen wasteland for a week. Percy shared what Nico had learned about the Doors of Death, and that to properly close them, they had to be shut on both sides.

Overworld and Underworld.

Even with the sunlight from above, Percy’s news made the cavern seem dark again.

“So, the mortal side is in Epirus.” The gears in Annabeth’s head begun to turn. “I mean … at least that’s somewhere we can reach.”

Nico grimaced. “But it’s the other side that’s the problem – Tartarus.”

The word seemed to echo eerily through the chamber.

The pit behind the group of demigods exhaled a cold blast of air, causing Annabeth to shiver. The shadows got darker, the pit echoed, and an icy feeling crept up Annabeth’s spine. Annabeth knew with certainty that the chasm went straight to the Underworld.

Percy must have felt it too because he guided Annabeth away from the edge.

Slowly and carefully, the group migrated back to the Argo II.

Annabeth’s arms and legs trailed spider silk like a bridal train, and she wished that she had something to cut the silk off. She almost asked Percy to do the honours, but he leaned in and began talking. He frowned. “You know, Bacchus mentioned something about my voyage being harder than I expected. Not sure why he –”

Suddenly, the chamber groaned, making the Athena Parthenos tilt violently to the side. Its head caught on one of Arachne’s support cables, but the marble foundation beneath the pedestal was crumbling quickly.

For a horrible moment, Annabeth thought the statue was going to fall.

Her stomach dropped.

“Secure it!” She cried out.

Thankfully, her friends understood what she meant almost immediately.

“Zhang!” Leo called, already running. “Get me to the helm, quick! The coach is up there alone!”

Frank shifted into a giant eagle, pausing only for a moment to allow Leo to jump onto his back, and the two of them soared toward the Argo II.

“Don’t worry about running, I’ll be back for you guys in just a second. Just don’t reinjure Annabeth’s ankle,” Jason said to Percy and Annabeth. Then he turned and wrapped his arms around Piper, and he summoned the winds and shot into the air.

“There’s no time, this floor won’t last!” Hazel warned, but Jason didn’t hear her. She turned to the others. “The rest of us need to get to the ladder as quick as possible!”

The group started making their way to the Argo II less carefully, speed the only thing on their minds.

Plumes of dust and cobwebs blasted from the holes in the floor, causing the demigods to inhale the dust and choke. The spider’s silk support cables trembled like massive guitar strings and began to snap. The floor lurched and crumbled.

When they reached the ship, Annabeth watched anxiously as Hazel lunged for the bottom of the rope ladder, which was swaying wildly with the shaking of the cavern. Hazel gestured for her brother to follow. Nico was in no condition to pull himself up, still sickly pale and thin and limping. Hazel had to grab him from beneath the armpits to hoist him up.

Percy held onto Annabeth tighter, shifting on his feet worriedly.

“It’ll be fine,” he muttered. “It has to be fine – we’re so close.”

Annabeth wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

Above, grappling lines shot from the Argo II and wrapped around the Athena Parthenos. One lassoed Athena’s neck like a noose. Leo was shouting orders from the helm as Jason and Frank flew frantically from line to line, trying to secure them.

Nico had managed to climb a quarter the way up when a sudden sharp pain shot up Annabeth’s bad leg, causing her to cry out and stumble.

“What is it?” Percy asked.

Annabeth didn’t have an answer.

Everything was in a haze and her head felt heavy. Confused, she staggered toward the ladder again, only to find that she could not. Instead, she was moving backward. And then her legs were swept out from beneath her in one pull, and she fell on her hands and knees. There was a hollow sound as her head bounced off the ground, and Annabeth saw stars.

“Her ankle!” Hazel screamed from the ladder. “Guys, quickly! Cut it! Cut it!”

Annabeth didn’t understand. Cut her ankle?

Apparently, Percy didn’t understand what Hazel meant, either. He grabbed Annabeth’s hands and tried to pull her back to her feet, but it caused more pain and he stopped when Annabeth began to cry. Then, suddenly, an invisible force yanked Annabeth backward and dragged her toward the pit with the force of Heracles.

Percy yelled out in fear. He lunged for Annabeth, grabbing her arms, digging his heels into the ground. Unfortunately, the momentum still carried him along with her.

“Help them!” Hazel yelled.

Nico jumped down from the ladder, headless of his injured state, and began hobbling in the direction of the pit as Hazel tried to disentangle her cavalry sword from the rope. The others were still focused on the Athena Parthenos and Hazel’s cry was lost in the general chaos.

Annabeth’s stomach dropped when she was yanked back another few feet.

She was terrified.

Now that Annabeth realized what was happening, it was too late. She was tangled in Arachne’s spider silk. She had assumed it was all loose lines, but with the entire floor covered in cobwebs, she hadn’t noticed that one of the strands was wrapped around her foot – and the other end went straight into the pit. It was attached to something heavy down in the darkness. Something was pulling her in.

Percy continued to pull uselessly on her, until something popped in her right shoulder, making her scream in pain. Startled, Percy slipped and fell past Annabeth. A large chunk of marble was upended behind them, granting them momentary pause from falling.

Percy finally seemed to get his wits about him and pulled out Riptide.

Annabeth couldn’t see it from where she was scrabbling for purchase against the marble floor, but she heard the blade hiss as it cut through the air.

With a snap, a wave of relief crashed through Annabeth once the pressure was released on her ankle. She tried pulling herself up, but the ground trembled as the marble cracked further, and the chunk behind them dropped into the looming chasm. Percy, who was behind her, tumbled down the sudden incline and, in a panic, reached out for something to grab – which happened to be Annabeth’s good ankle.

Together, they slipped further from the pull of Percy’s weight.

Terrified, Annabeth screamed and kicked him away. “Let go of me!”

“Fuck!”

Percy disappeared over the edge.

She scrambled backward as Nico hobbled past her and leaned over the edge, eyes wet.

“Annabeth help!” Percy cried. Annabeth crawled back in fear as the floor cracked further. Nico either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Percy was partway into the pit and dangling over the void. He had managed to catch a ledge almost fifteen feet below, but that wasn’t going to help him. He was holding on with one hand, struggling to get a drip with his other, which was bleeding profusely from a large gash across his palm. Several feet away from the hole sat Riptide, blood staining its blade.

No escape.

Annabeth jerked back.

She could have sworn a voice echoed from the pit, mocking her. Bile rose in her throat.

I go to Tartarus, and your loved one will come, too.

The pit shook violently, as if it were eagerly anticipating its next meal – its next victim.

Nico leaned over the edge of the chasm, hopelessly thrusting out his hand to help. But he was too far away. Nico knew it, Annabeth knew it – and Percy knew it, too.

“Percy,” Nico said, “grab my hand!”

Percy’s face was almost white with effort.

Hazel was still yelling for help from the others.

Even if they did hear her over the chaos, they would never make it in time.

Annabeth felt like her whole world was crashing down around her. She couldn’t comprehend that Percy was going to die. Even from a few feet away, she could feel the pull of the pit. She could see the darkness slowly rising, trying to claim Percy.

Percy gasped when the ledge shuddered and shifted. He looked up at Nico fifteen feet above, hand still extended. Percy’s face twisted as something final crossed his expression.

“The other side, Nico.”

Annabeth didn’t understand right away, but Nico did. He shook his head violently. “No, Percy –”

“The other side! I’ll see you there. Understand?”

Nico’s expression turned pained. “But –”

“Lead them there!” Percy said. “Promise me! Please!”

It suddenly struck Annabeth that Percy couldn’t see her. He had his eyes locked on Nico. Beside her, Nico looked lost. He stuttered. “I – I will.”

Below Percy, somewhere from the endless void, a voice laughed in the darkness.

Ice crawled up Annabeth’s spine.

A sacrifice. Such a beautiful sacrifice to wake the goddess.

It finally clicked in Annabeth’s mind.

A one-way trip.

A very hard fall.

And Percy looked scared.

Annabeth couldn’t bring herself to watch anymore.

She looked away, and Percy was gone.

#pjo #percy jackson #annabeth chase #nico di angelo #house of hades #tartarus #percy in tartarus #percy alone in tartarus #house of hades rewrite #most of this was lifted from the og book #angst #heroes of olympus

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