#finals and also being sick is really killing me right now

[justtkatt]

Went to an urgent care because i was sick and I actually started passing out! So to remain conscious I began explaining Red vs Blue to the nurses around me

[outlying-hyppocrate]

well. did you fucking miss me.

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[tititilani]

I can't stop thinking about if Simon had taken Edwin's offer

Like Charles finds Edwin in the hallway as ever but this time there's another boy there too, cowering against the wall next to him. Maybe the dollhead spider doesn't care about Simon, too busy focusing on its favorite target, so Charles is left standing in the hallway with Simon when Edwin is taken.

They get out of hell, but Edwin doesn't confess due to Simon hovering behind his elbow. He doesn't want to confess his emotions in front of his killer, who he probably hasn't even properly figured out how he's feeling towards yet.

The Night Nurse is pissed they came out with an extra soul but Niko's same loophole still applies and Simon stays.

"This is Simon," Edwin says when it's all said and done, finally introducing the boy that's been hiding behind him since the door closed. "He was a...classmate of mine."

"He saved me," Simon says, looking up at Edwin moony-eyed and Charles knows that look and something settles heavy in his stomach.

"Glad to have ya, mate," he tells him even though the words taste sour. This other boy knew Edwin when he was alive, the thought is slightly terrifying to him.

Simon settles in fine with the agency even if the agency feels a little crowded now with five people in it but he continues to moon over Edwin and Edwin just...never tells anyone how they actually knew each other. He reasons it just doesn't matter, that he can't find the right time, whatever.

Charles never really warms up to him, though he tries to hide it, but he sees the looks Simon gives Edwin, a soppy smitten look that is somehow worse than anything Monty or the Cat King ever tried with Edwin because of all of them, Simon arguably knows the most about like Edwardian courting. That, like Edwin, Simon has also survived hell. Charles hates the idea that someone could potentially understand Edwin more than he does.

He hates it so much that nothing further happens between him and Crystal because the idea of Edwin being left alone with Simon bothers him so much. He sees Simon adjusting Edwin's collar one (1) time and it makes him feel sick.

And then there's the fortune-teller.

They only go to her sometimes for cases because she never fails to freak Charles out but her prophecies tend to be accurate like 60% of the time which is pretty good for a fortune teller. She looks at the two of them at the end, because it is just the two of them for once, and then looks just at Edwin.

"How kind you are," she says, the words a compliment but the tone snide. "To house your killer. Pray tell it doesn't come back to you."

"What." Charles says. "The fuck."

Charles is furious, of course, and it takes Edwin a long time to talk him out of smashing Simon's face in with the new cricket bat.

"He's like me," he insists in that quiet but firm voice. Charles wants to scream that Simon is nothing like Edwin - that he doesn't have a fraction of Edwin's kindness or pissiness, that his blue eyes are not nearly as beautiful as Edwin's green - but before he can even open his mouth, Edwin continues. "He...He likes boys, Charles. He likes me."

Oh. Oh.

Charles stares at Edwin who is looking back at him, trying and failing to hide the fact he's terrified, and Charles doesn't give one shit that Edwin likes boys because he's his best mate forever. He's still pissed that Simon is apparently staying but he has to hug Edwin at that. "I'm still pissed you didn't tell me about him," is all he says, swallowing back the other words he wants to say.

Charles grows even more paranoid about Simon being around, who has to get used to the fact that Charles takes to swinging his cricket bat ominously every time he comes within ten feet of Edwin. He finds out that adjusting clothing was an Edwardian courting thing and wants to break something. The very idea the very person who killed his best mate is now trying to put the moves on said best mate pisses him off.

It also makes him think of numerous times Edwin had readjusted his collar or jacket in the past and it makes his non-existent stomach flip.

Eventually, Simon decides he's ready to move on to his after-life and Charles keeps his hands from fisting when he looks at Edwin with that same soppy look. He knows Edwin has forgiven Simon by now but Charles has always been better at holding a grudge and he knows what is going to come out of Simon's mouth before he even asks. He knows that if Edwin says yes, he won't stop him.

Charles also knows that if Edwin does, there is no way he is going to find any kind of his own afterlife.

"You could come with me," Simon says hopefully and the moment after is the longest in Charles' life.

"Thank you, Simon," Edwin says kindly and Charles has to keep himself from crying. "But I have no interest in going anywhere without Charles."

He steps back - away from Simon and back towards Charles. Ears suspiciously pink, Edwin links their hands and they watch as Simon follows the Night Nurse.

[bloodibambiidoll]

What would happen if weird!girl was there during the scene with Hollis instead of Sophia?

(This is based off two asks I got. One about weird!girl finally clapping back & one about her being there during this scene. Also thank you for being so patient with me ik it’s been a while since I posted about them !!) Jealously/possessiveness, choking, hair pulling, unprotected sex, mentions of weird!girl & another man in the past, breeding kink 18+

You know it’s absolutely irrational to be as pissed off as you are right now. But watching Hollis bat her spider leg eyelashes and pucker her years full of filler smudged red lips at your fiancé while she leans over the table with her tits pushed out is making you want to rip her head off. At the beginning of you and Rafe’s relationship you probably would’ve ran in the bathroom and cried because you didn’t feel like you were right for him. You’re not that girl anymore. Rafe has given you so much confidence and security that now you’re walking toward them with a smug smile painted on your face. Everyone on the island knows you and Rafe are engaged and if she thinks you’re going to let her walk all over you like some scared little girl she can think the fuck again.

Your platform boots click against the stone floor as you march across the outdoor seating area with a purpose. Rafe’s scotch is clutched tightly in your ringed hand and the cold condensation on the glass is a welcome cool in comparison to the fire in your veins. Your tiny black dress whooshes as you walk, the slight breeze kicking it up just enough to almost show your ass that’s covered in Gucci fishnets. You’re sick and tired of everyone walking all over you. Men scoff at you and look down on Rafe for being with you. Women constantly flirt with him in front of you like you’re not even there and you’re at your limit. You slide your way under your fiancé’s arm and tuck yourself into his side before holding his drink to him.

“Here’s your drink, baby.” You look up at him with a devilish little smirk and he sends you one of those signature Rafe Cameron smirks right back. His eyes flash from your own to your lips to your tits before he grabs the glass from your hand and places a kiss on your temple.

“Aww, who’s this?” Hollis breaks you and Rafe out of your bubble, making you snap your head toward her with a look that could kill.

“You’re joking, right?” You scoff, and push past Rafe so you can get right up in her face. You paint a condescendingly sweet smile on your lips as your eyes roam over her form. It’s obvious her days as resident cougar are numbered, the build up of Botox is starting to make her face look puffy and that lipstick looks awful with her skin tone. She even has a little bit smeared on her teeth and you can tell she’s slightly tipsy.

“Not only have I lived on this island my entire fucking life, I used to fucking take care of your dogs when you and your husband - oops I mean, ex husband used to go on your little vacations.” You cup your hand onto the side of your cheek and lean in even closer to her so you can whisper-yell in her ear. “You know, before you cheated on him so much he couldn’t take it anymore. Such a waste really, he’s such a sweet, handsome man…”

“Excuse me?” Hollis quickly leans back and scoffs, her hand flying to her chest as if you hit her. Her eyes show a flash of hurt before hardening. “You really ought to learn some respect, young lady. I don’t think you realize what kind of pull I have around here. I could ruin you.” Her lips wear a sinister smile that you assume she thinks is threatening but it just makes you laugh.

“No, I think you need to learn some respect, actually.” You return her smile, but yours is far more sinister than anything she could ever muster up because the minute that Stanley Kubrick esc grin stretches across your lips the one on her own drops and she takes a step back. But you just take a step forward, staying inches away from her face while you tilt your head to the side. “Everyone on this goddamn island already can’t stand me. And they all know Rafe Cameron is mine. But only you and I know that Mr. Robison sought comfort in a young, tight, pussy when you first started stepping out on him.”

“You really are and always have been such a vile little girl.” She sneers down at you and you know you hit the exact nerve you were aiming for. “Jealousy really isn’t a cute look, by the way, dear.”

“It’s not jealousy. It’s possession.” Hollis has gradually been taking steps back from you as the conversation has gone on but you close the distance between the two of you so you can lean up and whisper directly in your ear. “Now get the fuck away from my man before I choke you so hard your eyes pop out of your skull.”

“Ugh! You are a psychotic little bitch!” Hollis stomps her red bottom heeled foot onto the ground with a low growl before turning and stomping off.

“Whose acting like a little girl now!” You yell after her with a laugh and it earns you a glare over her shoulder that you return with laughter. You’re still practically cracking up when you turn to face Rafe who is staring down at you like a deer caught in the headlights. “You good baby? Thought you’d be proud of me.” You pout and your boyfriend's expression hardens as he grabs your wrist and pulls your body flush against his own.

“Oh, bats. I’m proud of you for standing on business, but…” Rafe's large hand grabs onto the back of your neck as leans down so he can practically growl into your ear. “You have some serious fuckin’ explaining to do. Mr. Robinson, huh? You fuck him?”

“And if I did? That was literally years ago before you ever thought twice about me, I think you’ll live.” Your voice holds a hint of defiance that you know for a fact is going to get your ass handed to you very shortly but if you’re being honest, that’s exactly what you want. It’s been a minute since you got Rafe riled up enough to fuck you until you can’t walk.

“You are so fucked. Car. Now. Start walking.”

-

“Tell me whose fuckin’ pussy this is.” Rafe has you bent over the arm of your expensive leather couch while his cock pounds deep into your dripping walls and his large palm shoves your face into the cushion below you. He ripped your dress over your head and tore your brand new gucci tights open at the crotch the minute he got you through the door. Your ass is beat red and decorated with welts the shape of his designer belt, your drool is dripping down your chin and your vision is blurry from your mascara running down your eyes. He fucking loves you like this.

“It’s yours! My whole body belongs to you, daddy!” The attitude you had earlier on in the night is starting to slip and you’re getting to the point that all you want is to come on Rafe’s cock as many times as he will allow you to. And so far? He’s been edging you for the last forty minutes.

“Yeah, that’s fuckin’ right. You’re my little whore.” Rafe’s fingers lace through your hair, his nails scratching your scalp as he gathers the strands between his digits and pulls them tight so he can yank your head back. He uses his grip for leverage as he continues to pound into you relentlessly. “Don’t wanna think about any other man touching you. Especially not some old fuck. As far as I’m fuckin’ concerned you were a virgin when we met.”

“Well, I wasn’t even close… Does that make you mad, daddy?” You let out a borderline evil chuckle as you let your tongue lull from your mouth while you look over your shoulder at him. His blue eyes are practically black from how dilated his pupils are, his nostrils are flared, and his lips are set into a snarl. You can’t help it that you love him like this. “Does it just drive you crazy that you’re not the only dick that’s been in this tight little pussy?”

“Shut your bratty little mouth, did I not beat that ass hard enough yet, huh? Do I need to pull out and make you watch me jerk off while I nut all over your dumb little face and leave you with nothing but a mess to clean up?” Rafe’s nails dig deeper into your scalp when his grip on your hair tightens. He pulls your back flush against his chest while his hips plow into yours, his thick cock stretching you out over and over with each thrust.

“What about you, huh?” You lace your arm around Rafe’s neck so you can drag your pointed nails down his skin. “Resident man slut? This all started because you were letting that dumb old bag fawn all over you with her tits in your face.”

Rafe pulls out of you and uses your hips to flip you onto your back. Your legs are dangling over the arm of the couch and your top half is bent flat against the cushion, propping your hips up so your pussy is on display to him. He lands a smack on your sopping wet cunt that verberates through the room and you barely have time to process before he’s dealing you with another one. His broad frame looms over you when he leans down to grip onto your throat and pin you to the plush leather.

“I was just appeasing her cause’ she was offering me a way I could make us more money.” He hits your pussy again before landing harsh smacks on your clit in succession. Rafe’s palm cups your cunt and he uses the heel of it to rub your clit roughly while he squeezes your throat so tight you see stars. He toys with your entrance with his thick fingers and then spreads your juices on his shaft. He pumps himself a few times before slamming back inside of you in one thrust. “You really think I’d ever trade this perfect fuckin’ cunt for anything in the world? You think you can go around talking about fucking men old enough to be your dad in front of me and not expect me to mark my territory? I’m gonna cover you in my fuckin’ cum.”

“Sounds like somebody is jealous.” You lick your lips and smile widely up at him while the hand on your throat makes your vision go fuzzy. The sound that leaves Rafe is near animalistic, he grips onto your thigh with his free hand and pins it to the arm of the couch. It spreads you wide and gives him the perfect view of his thick cock covered in your creamy juices as it slams inside you over and over again.

“It’s not jealousy, it’s possession.” Rafe mocks your words from earlier, his hand nearly cutting off your air supply before letting go and grabbing onto the back of your hair. He uses his grip to yank you up off the cushion and force your head down until you can see where you’re connected. His thrusts never falter as he manhandles you like a ragdoll.

“You see that shit? See your greedy little pussy swallowing my dick like it was made for her? Tell daddy again who owns that shit. Drop the attitude and tell me you’re my fuckin’ whore if you wanna come.”

“I’m your whore! Please let me come!” You whine as you writhe beneath him, your final resolve leaving you when he grabs onto both your wrists, suspending your back off the couch as he uses his grip on you to pull you back to meet his rapid thrusts.

“Yeah, that’s right, you’re my perfect little fuck doll. Mine to use, as I please, when I please.” You wrap your legs around his hips to pull him impossibly deeper and it has him growling and twitching inside you. “You gonna be a good girl and take my fuckin’ cum? Let me put a baby in you so all these bitches really know who you belong to?”

“Yes, fuck! Please give me your cum, wanna make you a daddy!” Rafe lets your body fall back down onto the couch so he can lean over you with his hands on either side of your head as he pumps his hips deep and hard into you. The angle has him hitting deeper than ever and each glide of his hips has his skin rubbing against your throbbing clit.

“Come on my cock, milk that shit, baby.” It’s like your body is programmed to listen to his words because that’s all it takes to have your walls pulsing around him as you gush around his thick shaft. You lean up and bite his chest before sucking hard on his skin, marking your territory. A few more rough thrusts of his hips and Rafe is coming right along with you. “Such a good girl, such a perfect, tight, pussy. Gonna give you a fuckin’ baby.” He babbles as his cock twitches inside of you and fills you with ropes of his cum. When he comes down from his high his body slumps against yours, his huge frame pining you awkwardly to the couch.

“Fuck.” You giggle as you wrap your arms around his neck and run your nails along his buzzed head. “That was so hot. But, you’re crushing me with your giant fucking body.”

“Yeah? I think you deserve it. I don’t think that was punishment enough for fucking Mr. Robinson before we ever got together.” Rafe groans dramatically as he lets more of his weight crush you.

“Well. I think you’ll be delighted to know that I never fucked him.” You say it in a sing-song tone that has Rafe’s head shooting up and his blue eyes locking with yours. “We just sexted. She found the pics on his phone and lost her shit.”

“Oh! You are such a little shit!” He pushes himself up off the couch and points down at you in mock accusation. “You let me think you fucked him so I would beat your lil’ ass, didn’t you?” Rafe chuckles and your hand flies to your chest while you look up at him with your mouth agape.

“What?!” You gasp. “I would never push your buttons for sexual gain. That would be insane.”

“You are such a fuckin’ brat, ya know that?” Rafe smiles as he pulls you off the couch and against his chest. “I ought to bend you over again, over my knee this time.”

“What was all that about giving me a baby?” You wiggle your eyebrows at him and he glares down at you. “Was that just horny talk or does somebody have baby fever?”

“You know what?” He grabs you and tosses you over his shoulder despite your protests. “I’m gonna spank you till you cry and then fuck you full of my cum until you’re begging me to put a baby in you.”

Tagging mooties & weird!girl lovers: @babygorewhore @cxrrodedcoffin @starkeysprincess @nemesyaaa @oceandriveab @munson-mjstan @cameronsprincess @rafeinterlude @sturnioloshacker @traceymbcm

Divider by @anitalenia

All things Rafe & his weird!girl here

[needle-noggins]

(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.

I've seen a few interpretations of this scene and before we dive into the one that really struck me, let's start with the more... chill one. We're finally introduced to the third gun of Trigun, Vash's angel arm. And the way we're introduced to it involves Knives forcing him to pull the trigger. Of course, since no one knows anything about Knives, the people of Noman's Land blame Vash for Fifth Moon, and Vash likewise blames himself (this is kinda a spoiler but if you've been paying attention, it's just par for the course). However, he's not the one who pulled the trigger, Knives is. It brings up an interesting moral question of blame - do we blame the gun (and Vash, who is being used/objectified as a weapon here), or the person who wanted it to happen? Guns don't kill people, genocidal twins do!

Now for the awful interpretation, the one that makes me cry and wish Vash was real so I could hug him and pay for his therapy. And really highlights how awful Knives is and how far he'd go for his brother in his own, fucked-up way. I touched on this in a previous post about Legato and the Murder Cafe, and the whole time I was thinking about Fifth Moon but didn't want to say anything for the sake of spoilers.

So. Pay attention to the way Vash and Knives are standing. Knives, when he first grabbed Vash's head, was standing in front of him. He moves behind him to better control him and yeah, he's still controlling him via hand on head, and now he's got his other hand gripping Vash's chest, where feathers/wings are manifesting. Knives is assaulting him. If you wanna get crazy with it and say that the angel arm is kinda phallic, you could say... yeah. This is rape. I heard that specific interpretation once and while I accepted it I also don't know if that would be generally accepted or if I'd be called out for it, so I'm trying to tread lightly here.

It also doesn't escape me that of course the angel arm has feminine features like the plants - the plants that, again, humans are exploiting for their ability to create. There's a lot of feminist commentary to be made here but many people have said it better than me. Specifically I'm thinking of this one post I saw about gender fuckery and Tristamp Vash. Anyway.

Also, the atomic bomb/black hole/sun/whatever that is in the middle... It's just so powerful. It's terrifying. The eldritch body horror here is a punch to the gut. What the fuck, Trigun? I thought this was a funky space western!!!

Oh, and here's more commentary on the following few panels:

Vashussy shot, Knives is still right behind him. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about how bad this pose is for them. Knives, you sick fuck.

Vash shoots himself in the leg (a key difference from '98 trigun, lol), because of course he does, but it doesn't free him from the arm.

The arm's getting darker/the light inside is getting lighter! Stampede did an awesome job with their interpretation of the angel arm and I don't think I would have understood it without that. Also, on my first read I didn't notice that Vash is literally levitating, which is cool, but also terrifying because ?? he's not in control of that either??

Finally. A super painful, minimalist, double-page spread. Nightow loves 'em. Vash thinks he's dying (maybe?) and he wishes he had never existed. It's not suicidal ideation per se, but he wishes he didn't exist at all because he's already caused enough suffering. This is a low for him, because he believes so strongly in the concept of the Blank Ticket. (Come on, soupy brain bitch boy, get it together!) He's a monster, it's just how he was born, and he's not in control. Very specifically too, he says "we", and then changes it to "I"... he doesn't blame Knives at all, and that's very him. I want to shake him! Stop playing the martyr, Vash!

[mrsparrasblog]

You're losing me pt. 5

prev. part. first part.

TW: Gun, violence, mentioned rape, gaslighting, medic is shit

It was your last day on sick leave, so you spent it grading papers, cuddling with Winston, and getting distracted by Kyle's messages and his slutty pictures. You were so thankful for Kyle; he never pressed you for what happened with Johnny, just distracted you.

After you send a picture of Winston you heard the bell ringing and rolled your eyes. You knew Kyle never listened when you said not to come over, even though you really needed that time alone right now. Johnny is an artist, even though he didn't admit it, and so was being in a relationship with him. It was like being in a colorful picture, so vibrant. But since you left him, it felt like someone drained out the color; the painting is black and white, no longer golden.

You went to the door, opened it, and to your surprise, it wasn’t Kyle behind the door. She was there, her eyes puffy and red. 

"What do you want?" If she was there to humiliate you, you’re going to throw up. You shortly texted Ky that she was there.

"I wanted to talk to you, I need your help," she sobbed.

Simon always called you one of the nicest people on earth, but right now, it was enough of being nice. "Well, you can ask Johnny for help." You tried to shut your door, but her foot was already between the frame.

"He is the problem."

"What, did he leave you?" you snorted out.

"He threatened to kill me because of the baby." You clearly misheard her. This can't be true, as if you can do anything against Johnny, and as if Johnny would do something against his own teammate.

"Baby?"

"Yes, I'm pregnant, three months." She rubs her nonexistent belly in front of you. Three months? Johnny cheated on you for three months? And a baby? No, this can't be true. Johnny loves babies; he’d never kill a pregnant woman, none of them.

"And he is threatening you?" You asked while slowly trying to pull out your phone again. You knew Si would be here in 4 minutes if you called him.

"Yes, he wants to tell everyone that I raped him, just so I get an abortion." With that, you burst out laughing. This was the worst joke you ever heard. When she wanted you to pull you away from him for real.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid to believe this shit now leave my apartment before I call the police." You already pulled out your phone to dial the number of the police, who are you kidding, dial the number of Simon. Simon and John always explained if something happens to you, call them instead of the police, they solve your problem faster, and that was a gigantic slag-formed problem.

"Bad mistake," she points out a gun to you, calculating. You trained for this situation endless times in school, but it was still different when someone held a gun against you. Would it work to tell her that there are people that love her? Or maybe you should argue with logic.

"When you kill me, they won't forgive you, it's not worth it," you said trying to sound as calm as possible.

"They won't find out," she laughed. God, that woman was batshit crazy.

"Here are cameras," they weren’t recording, but maybe she was stupid enough to believe you.

"They will understand," she said. Maybe she was stupid enough but also crazy enough to not care. There is only the last logical thing you could say to her.

"Then kill me."

"What?" She was surprised at your bluntness, but you knew she couldn’t really kill you, and if Kyle looked at his phone, he would have already been on his way, so you need to get through this for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and you are safe.

"If you kill me, Johnny will find you, Kyle will break you, Simon will torture you, and John will finish your miserable life, my death isn’t worth this." You slowly walked backward towards the counter, there must be a gun. John put it in there when you first got together. You didn't quite know how to use it, but better than nothing.

"You're right," finally.

"So why don’t we put the gun down and just, you know, talk about it like adults," you suggested, still moving tiny steps backward.

"Stop moving, or I'll kill you," the same words over and over again. She sounded like a broken record recorder. You stopped moving, but this wasn’t enough for her.

"Maybe I should kill your rat, so you listen." Rat? Her gun pointed toward Winston. Fuck, she should better kill you than your baby. You lost complete hope in turning her; she is crazy.

"He is Kyle's dog, not mine. If you kill him, he will be sad." The shake in your voice was evident; tears started to storm out of your eyes; you didn't know what to do anymore.

"Three of four are enough, anyways." Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"I can call them; I'll break up with them, just let Winston be safe, okay?"

"Really, you give up your boyfriends for that rat?" She gestured disgusted at your precious baby.

"Yes."

"Okay, call them," you walked to the counter, dialing Simon's number, close enough to the gun. You really hoped they don’t show a sign that they know; they are SAS; they need to understand, right?

"Hello," good, Simon's voice.

"Are the others with you?" You asked, trying not to tremble; she couldn’t find out what you planned.

"Yes, I put them on speaker, luv."

"I'm breaking up with you, with all of you for final this time. John, you're always putting me in danger, Johnny, you're always with her instead of my home, always on deployment with Simon, and you’re carrying all these scary guns with you that make me afraid, and I hate your stupid dog, Kyle." She looked proud and relieved at you, too stupid to realize. But they were smart, right?

"Okay, just give me back my keys to the office, they’re in the cupboard in the kitchen. I don’t want to see you anytime soon, I will pick it up at three tomorrow, bye." She gained heavily, and all you could feel was relief; you looked at the clock; it was 2:57, three minutes, and the gun. God, you loved your smart boys.

"Will you let me go now?" you asked, and she shook her head.

"Just need to make sure that you never go to my boys again, you can understand, right?"

"I'll move abroad if you want, the US, Germany, Italy, call it and I'll be gone." Before she could reply, she heard a loud bang outside, and that was your chance to grab the gun as she turned around, loaded fucking genius John, but not in safety, idiot. And then you shot, closing your eyes. You never did this before; the closest you came was a water gun at the beach; you didn't hit anything major, only her shoulder, but it was enough for her to lose her stance and fall. Seconds after, the boys went in Simon pulled her to the ground like a bulldozer with John. While Kyle and Johnny ran to you.

"Are you okay?" Both men asked, checking you for any injury.

"I don't feel okay."

"We know, love." You wrapped your arms around Johnny and began to sob. You needed him; you missed him and you were so scared. You knew for a fact he didn't cheat on you after that stunt that woman pulled today.

"We'll take care of her; we will be back soon, luv," Simon said with a devious grin while putting his boot on her to press down on her bullet wound.

John and Ghost left with her, and you knew for a fact your shot would be the nicest thing she witnessed in the next few days.

"I shot someone."

"Proud of you, hen."

"Never shoot again, please, babe; you're terrible at it," Kyle joked, but you still felt shitty. He knelt down, hugging Winston tight. "Oh, you've been such a brave and good boy protecting your mama. Let me take you to the park, pup," he said while Winston barked happily. "You two need to talk this out."

"Only we two now, Johnny."

"Aye, only we two."

"Where do we start?"

--------------------

Taglist: @cod-z , @kaoyamamegami, @postmortem-angel, @jackrabbitem , @sseleniaa , @thigh-o-saur , @littlechomper @ab12305 @darkangel4121 @thychuvaluswife

A/N : so I added the picture of Eliot to make up for the Angst I write 😭

For any who has a light belly (do you say that in english or only in German lol?) the next chapter will be half torture of her and the other half Johnny and Reader <3

[strawberriesoup]

lollipop٠࣪⭑

── .✦ You make a deal with Jisung.

word count: 2.1k

genre: fluff, skater!jisung x female reader, friends to lovers, neighbor au

warnings: cursing, reader is kind of a brat, kissing, borderline making out, much fluff

taglist: @jisunggy

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Maybe this deal wasn’t such a good idea.

Your most recent obsession, Stardew Valley, had you begging Jisung to play just one game with you. planning to bug him into submission, you would bring up the game every chance you got. After about a week, he finally relented and agreed to play with you. On one condition. You had to let him teach you a trick on that goddamn skateboard of yours.

You from this morning had agreed. You from this morning was an idiot.

Now, you’re sweating your ass off on a dingy green park bench in the middle of July, chugging what little water you have left out of your regrettably small bottle. It had been what, three hours now? And you just couldn’t get the damned trick down. If you have to hear the words, “One more time! You were so close!” again, you might commit a war crime. The plastic of the bottle crinkles as you crush it and toss it towards the nearest trash can. You miss.

In an attempt to get Jisung’s attention, you sprawl your limbs obnoxiously over the length of the bench.

“You’re trying to kill me.” You groan, theatrically draping an arm over your face, “Your sick games won’t work forever.”

“Maybe if you weren’t such a whiner you would get the hang of it faster.” Jisung suggests helpfully as he successfully throws your bottle in the trash and takes a seat next to you, shoving your leg out of the way to make room. He’s sweaty as well, and proceeds to take over any space that is left on bench.

You are most definitely not thinking about how you would love to devour him whole right now. No, that would be silly.

Five years ago, Jisung moved into the neighborhood. Both of you being in freshman year of high school, it started with you two carpooling to school. Which turned into doing homework on the weekends. Which resulted in the two of you being permanently attached at the hip.

And the whole time, you’ve had the biggest, juiciest crush on him.

That little smirk when you’re teasing him? Smitten. When he raises his arms and you can see a sliver of that waist beneath the folds of his hoodie? Good lord. And don’t even get you started on his habit of running his hand through his hair.

But of course, you’re too much of a chicken to actually tell him about it. Besides, he probably doesn’t even like you like that, and you’re not about to make a fool out of yourself to find out.

“Well excuse me for not particularly enjoying having heatstroke. I’m done.”

Arms crossed, you challenge him to say something. Unfortunately, he’s gotten pretty good at dealing with your shit over the years.

In favor of a response, a pointed look is sent by Jisung, one eyebrow raised along with a just barely suppressed smile coloring his features. A bead of sweat rolls down the left side of his flushed face, suggesting that he’s probably just as warm and uncomfortable as you and he’s not complaining. Whatever. You’re still going to bitch about it.

“But you were almost there, I swear! Just one more time, pleasee?” Jisung pleads, widening his eyes and sticking out his lower lip. Not this tactic again. You hate it when he does that. He knows you can’t say no. It’s an unfair advantage.

Skateboarding with Jisung had been a nearly daily exhibition for around a year and a half now. Well, you say “skateboarding” but it really just consists of you riding to and from the convenience store at the end of the block every couple of days. Which you manage to do without falling over, thank you very much. Jisung was just a natural at it, always had been. You were, quite frankly, not.

You had never attempted a trick, content with simply watching Jisung in his element. There’s something theraputic about watching a master of their craft in action. Also you were scared of falling and breaking an arm again.

Fine. Fine. You’ll try one more time.

“Okay, one more time. But this is the last try, or I swear to God I’m going to feed your hamster to Bagel.”

Jisung grips the front of his shirt in mock offense at the threat, his gasps of, “You monster!” trailing you as you stomp off with your skateboard onto the open pavement.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

“Now remember, left foot on the back edge…”

A small breeze had started to pick up, alleviating some of your discomfort. The surrounding air was less stifling now, the wind bringing the scent of freshly cut grass to your senses.

What was this trick called again? A strawberry milkshake? It was one of the “easier” tricks, according to Jisung. If by “easy” he meant that it’s the mental equivalent to stepping on a lego, he was right on. This shit is hard.

The firm hold that Jisung’s hand currently has on your waist makes it even harder. He’s really not helping you focus on the task at hand.

With a deep breath, both in preparation for the trick and to quiet down the rushing of blood in your ears, you repeat the same motion you had been working on for the better portion of the afternoon.

Front foot off. Wrap around. Land.

By Jisung’s reaction, you would think you had won the lottery. He’s pumping both fists in the air and shouting, completely beside himself. You landed it! You really did!

You then proceed to wipe out on the pavement.

Yeah, that checks out.

As you’re brushing the fall from your pants, you are nearly bowled over by Jisung, who sweeps you up and spins you around in a tight hug. The rush of the breeze around you has you laughing breathlessly, holding on to him for dear life.

“Yes! Holy shit, see? I knew you could do it! That was awesome!” He sets you down, looking at you with beams of pride spilling from his crinkled eyes and heart-shaped smile.

“I did it! I finally did it!” You squeal, the adrenaline and genuine excitement of the moment taking control of your body as you bounce up and down, gripping his fingers as you do so.

The grin Jisung gives you is bright enough to light up even the darkest corners of the world, you’re sure of it. You want to keep him in your hands forever and never let go.

But, you do. After a minute of joint celebration, you inform him that you’re going to sit down for a minute to catch your breath.

Finding a nearby tree, you settle beneath its branches, eyes adjusting to the newfound shade. The grass is cool beneath your palms, calming your sun-kissed skin.

As you watch Jisung continue to skate you’re reminded of just how good at this he is. He navigates his skateboard like it’s as simple as walking, every one of his tricks are landed with precision and ease. His habit of biting his lower lip in concentration anytime he performs an air is doing nothing for your sanity though.

Your crippling sweet tooth prods at you, so you decide to reward yourself. Rustling through your bag, you pull out a lollipop, popping it into your mouth. Its tart sweetness bathes your tongue, and you cross your legs, humming contentedly as you resume your attention on Jisung.

After about ten more minutes, he’s jogging over to you with his skateboard in hand. Your heart noticeably picks up its pace. Stop that. Calm down.

Taking a seat next to you, Jisung runs his hand through his sweat-damp hair, one arm supporting his weight and the other coming to rest on his knee. He looks ethereal, skin glowing with the gentle brush of light falling from the tree above.

Then, without so much as a “hello”, the lollipop is yanked from your hand and held out of your grasp.

“Jisung, are you serious? Give it back!” You shout in exasperation at the loss of your sugar source. Is he seven years old? Who does that?

“Nuh-uh, what’s the magic word?” He stretches his arm away as you basically tackle him, reaching vainly for the candy.

“I’m not the one who should be saying please here!”

You have an idea. Grabbing the front of his shirt, you pull him towards you. This is definitely the dumbest thing you’ve done all week. But it’s too late now. You can see his eyes fly wide, trying to process the situation as you plant a kiss right on his lips. He’s soft. And warm.

When you pull away, you take the opportunity to snatch the candy back from Jisung’s now limp hand. Popping the sucker back into your mouth, you grin at him smugly. It worked.

Jisung sits there, unmoving. Lips slightly parted, he stares at you, his gaze shifting from your eyes, fluttering down to your lips, and back again. Shit, was that a bad idea? That was a bad idea. You probably should have asked first. What the fuck were you thinking?

Before you could blurt out any sort of apology, he’s grabbing your hand and the candy is pulled from your lips with a pop. It falls onto the cool grass below.

A shaking hand slots underneath your chin with barely suppressed eagerness and he pulls you to him, capturing your lips in a proper kiss. The heat from his body and the sweep of his breath over you are all-consuming. blocking out the world, save for him.

This. Him. Everything about it just feels… easy. Natural. The way he cradles your jaw firmly, but with a careful gentleness that is entirely and solely Jisung. The way his free hand drapes down your side, coming to rest on top of your hip. The way his lips move in perfect harmony with yours.

The tree’s rough bark presses against your back as he leads you backwards, the sweetness of the lollipop being traded between your mouths. A flame starts to burn in your chest, spreading like wildfire until your whole body is alight with the flicker of butterfly wings.

Drawing away to look at you, Jisung runs his tongue over his glistening lips.

He’s holding himself back. He wants nothing more than to consume you, your essence, everything. He wants to show you how much he cares. He also wants to suck every last drop of sweetness from your lips. But he won’t. Not yet. Not until he knows you want it as much as he does. But, God, you drive him crazy. His eyebrows pinch and he shakes his head, trying to clear it.

You feel the loss of his ministrations on you like a load of bricks. Wrapping a hand around the back of his head, you pull him onto you once more, wanting -no- needing more of him. He needs more of you too, as is evident by the way his hands tighten and by his quiet gasp of breath when you oh-so gently nip his lower lip, teasing him.

This time, you’re the one to pull away, giggling awkwardly as he squeezes his eyes shut, clearly attempting to pull himself together.

Peeking at you, he finally makes eyes contact, feeling the need to say something, anything.

“Wow…” Is all he manages out, and your giggles morph into full on laughter. You make a kissy face at him which earns you a shove to your shoulder, and Jisungs ears turning a bright red.

“Hey! Don’t make fun of me!�� he complains, bringing out that pout of his again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you say, patting his shoulder, “you’re just such a dork.”

With your side of the deal completed, it’s his turn to pay up. With the steadily setting sun lighting your way, Jisung accompanies you to your house after the silent agreement to play games now, sort out weird feelings later.

epilogue ─☆

As your game loads up, Jisung decides to sit on the couch as far away from you as possible, curling up and hunching over his respective screen. Occasionally, he glances up at you, looking like he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Okay. What is he hiding.

You (with grace) crawl across the couch to him, taking a page from his book and snatching the switch from his hands. He yells and kicks you in protest, but not before you had seen his screen.

J.one J.one’s Farm

Day 9 of Winter, Year 3 124,196g

Hours Spent: 106

One hundred and six hours. Jisung had told you that he’d never heard of the game before, let alone played it, and had very begrudgingly agreed to humor you. This whole time he’d been playing it? Why didn’t he- oh.

Jisung looks up at you with a sheepish grin, having been caught in his little scheme.

“I just wanted you to skate with me- ow!” he exclaims, bringing up his hands in defense as you bonk him with the switch.

“Next time maybe just ask?”

“How would I have gotten my kiss then?”

[nastybuckybarnes]

In the Ring

Pairing: dbf!bucky x reader

Summary: Bucky takes your dad out boxing.

Warnings: Violence, Language, minor angst, fluff, age gap relationship and all that goes along with that, minor injuries

Word Count: 1.7K

A/n: Here's a little thingy thing for this series... im open to asks for this one as well as my inspiration for it is starting to fizzzzzzle up

~*~

Bucky steps into the ring, his heart hammering in his chest as he cracks his neck.

"Interesting choice for today," your dad says, securing his boxing gloves then bouncing up on the balls of his feet.

"Figured it's about time we got back into the ring."

In truth, there are a few things he wants to talk to your dad about, and he's expecting a good beating for them anyway. Might as well make sure they're wearing the proper protection.

"Glad you finally got a break from work, house's been real empty without you there. Think even (Y/n)'s startin to miss your ugly mug," your dad jokes.

Bucky swallows hard and nods, holding the pads tightly as your dad starts swinging slow and controlled.

"Yeah, that's uh… kinda one of the things I wanted to talk to you about."

Your dad pauses, his brows furrowing in confusion.

"You know how for the past few months I've been… well… happy?"

Your dad says nothing, only eyes him warily.

"It's because I've been seeing this woman. She's… gorgeous and fun and smart and an absolute spitfire."

He eases up a bit and starts throwing loose punches again.

"Yeah, when are you going to let me meet this chick, anyway?"

Bucky winces and takes a deep breath before finally spilling the beans.

"You already have."

Your dad's brows draw together as he tries to remember ever being introduced to his best friend's mystery woman.

"What's her name again?"

Here it is.

"(Y/n)."

He doesn't see the punch, only recognizes it when he stumbles to the ground with the side of his face throbbing.

"Are you serious right now?!" Your dad's chest is heaving, fury filling him as Bucky pushes to his feet, dodging another swing.

"That's my daughter! My baby girl! You're fucking sick!"

He swings again, chasing Bucky around the ring while the brunet tries to reason with him, holding his hands up in surrender.

"No! Hear me out! Please!"

"No!"

This time when your dad swings, Bucky ducks under his arm and kicks his legs out from under him, giving him a moment to try and defend himself.

"I love her!"

"Bullshit!" Your dad spits, pushing to his feet. "You have a new girl every week! I've had toothaches with more commitment than you!"

If the man wasn't actively trying to kill him, Bucky might laugh at that comment.

"When was the last time you heard me talk about another woman? Hmm? All this time it's been her! For the past year, the only person I've been talking about has been her! I tried going on a date with someone more… my age, and the whole time I couldn't get your daughter out of my head."

They stand on opposite sides of the ring, Bucky with his hands out ready to thwart another attack while your father slowly lowers his hands.

Has it really been a year? His daughter and his best friend have been having a secret relationship for a year?

"What are you saying?" He asks, panting hard.

"I'm in love with her, with your daughter. I love her with my entire heart to the point where I would bring you here to beat the shit out of me because I can't keep it from you anymore. You're my best friend, but you're also the father of the woman I love. I have a lot of respect for you, but even more for her, and I need you to know that your daughter… she's a woman that I could see myself marrying."

Your dad's fist is connecting with Bucky's face once more and the brunet curses, jumping out of reach again.

"In due time! I'm not asking for your blessing, fuck!"

Your dad stands there silently, glaring at Bucky for a long moment before sighing and rubbing the back of his glove over his forehead.

"That's my baby girl," he whispers, heart aching. Sure, he knew one day you'd find some jackass that doesn't deserve a fraction of your heart, but he never thought that jackass would be Bucky.

The same Bucky who was there when your mother died.

The same man who's been a rock throughout your and your father's lives.

"I know, believe me, I do. But you know me. I would never do anything to hurt her, not on purpose. All I want is for her to be happy, and for there to be no more secrets between us. I can see how much it hurts her to keep this from you and… it's not her responsibility to tell you. It's mine."

Slowly, Bucky lowers his hands and takes a step toward your dad, huffing out a sigh.

"If you want to hit me again, I understand. Fuck, I'd hit me too. And… I understand that my history… I haven't exactly been the type of man a woman's excited to tell her dad about. But the way your daughter… she makes me want to be that man. Be a better man than I've ever been. And this is where it starts."

Your dad groans, his face screwing up in disgust.

"So over the summer when you would check up on her while I was away on work… oh God, I don't even wanna know."

Bucky tries hard to bite back a grin at the memories, he really does, but his lips twitch upward regardless.

"Like I said, I love her with my whole heart. And I fucked up, so all I want is to try and fix this."

This catches your dad's interest.

"What did you do?"

Puffing out another breath, Bucky shakes his head and jumps on the balls of his feet to keep himself warm.

"I guess now's as good a time as ever to come clean."

Your dad rolls his eyes and raises his fists once more.

~*~

You touch up your makeup, looking over your appearance once more before heaving a sigh.

You've spent the last week or so locked up in your room like a hermit, and today it seems like your dad has finally had enough.

"Put on a nice dress - I'm tired of seeing you rot."

"We going out?" You asked, pushing yourself out of your bed and shoving your hair out of your face.

"Get dressed."

Adorning your body is a lovely deep blue dress, with a slit in the left leg and delicate straps criss-cross across your exposed back.

Finally satisfied with the way you've done yourself up, you exit your bedroom and carefully descend the stairs.

"You look gorgeous, kiddo," your dad says, a proud smile on his face.

You can't help but smile back, the smile fading when you notice he's still wearing his pyjamas.

A throat clears behind you and you whirl around, your throat tightening when you see the man behind you.

Bucky stands, tall and dashing in a tux, his hair slicked back and his beard neatly trimmed. He's got a nasty bruise on his right cheekbone that wraps to his eye, and for a moment you're concerned.

"You look stunning," he says softly, his eyes gentle.

You swallow hard and look between him and your dad as your heart begins to race.

"What's going on?"

Your dad wraps you tightly in his arms, sighing shakily.

"Have fun tonight, kiddo." He pulls away and cups your cheek, nothing but pride (and a few tears) in his eyes.

"And you," he points to Bucky, "Don't have her out too late."

He pulls you into one more tight hug, bringing his lips to your ear.

"We've got a lot to talk about tomorrow," he whispers.

You pull away and look between the two men rapidly, still not fully comprehending what's going on.

Bucky comes up behind you, gently taking your hand and spinning you to face him

"I'll take good care of her," he whispers. The words are said to your dad, but his eyes are focused on yours the whole time.

"You'd better."

You're all but walking around with your mouth agape as Bucky leads you outside.

"What… what's going on?" You finally ask when the door closes behind you.

"Your dad didn't want you to miss out on the banquet just because I fucked up. And if you don't want to go with me, I'll understand and so will he. I just… I miss you and I know how excited you were to go."

You feel a little breathless, and you're glad he's got your hand held tightly in his.

"You told him about it?" You ask quietly.

He gives you a soft smile and squeezes your hands tightly.

"Babygirl, I told him everything."

Your breath hitches and you feel tears well up in your eyes at his words.

"You… he knows…?"

Bucky nods.

Your fingers tug from his and he feels his stomach drop, only to settle when you trace over the bruise on his face.

"Is that where you got this?" You ask softly.

He chuckles and leans into your touch.

"Your dad's quick, I'll give him that. It took a while and a few punches but… he knows about us. About how I feel about you, how you make me want to be a better man. I want to take care of you and provide for you and I never want to hurt you the way I did. And he… he understands."

You stare up at him, eyes full of wonder and awe.

"You did all of that... for me?"

He presses a sweet kiss to the back of your hand and nods.

"I did. I did it for us. Because I'm tired of keeping you a secret. I'm tired of other guys lookin' at you like they can have you, and I'm tired of not being able to show you off. You're not an object, but you're mine. And, more, importantly, I'm yours. I always will be. You may not know it, but my heart is entirely yours. And if you want to throw it on the ground and give it a stomp, I wouldn't blame you."

You're shaking your head at him before he's finished speaking.

"I would never..." You trail off, looking into his eyes as tears well up in your own.

"I love you, sweetheart. I really do. And I'm sorry I've been so shit at showing it. But, if you'll let me, I'll spend the rest of my life tryin' to prove it to you."

You can't help the small shy smile that pulls at your lips, and you duck your head to nod.

"Well, I guess I can't stop you from trying."

[mphoenix-7]

Bitter Allies [Soap x Reader]

Chapter 5: The Cabin: Day 1 (pt.2)

Summary: Soap being gone for so long has you extremely worried. When he finally shows, you have an exchange of words, and Soap learns that you are human after all.

Word Count: 4,000

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, swearing, strong language, angst, slight panic attack, Soap is still mean?, suggestive language, partial nudity 

A/N: I’m ahead in writing by two characters, but expect weekly updates! Let me know how you’re liking it so far! Also comment some possible scenes you might want to see, sometimes I include them! Enjoy ~

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Bitter Allies • Part 5

The cabin, which had no electricity, was dark now. The sun was setting over the lake, which was beautiful, but you didn't have it in you to enjoy it right now. All you could was pace in the kitchen, the only light and source of heat coming from the embers in the wood stove from when you made food.

Soap was gone. He'd been gone all day. You didn't know what time it was when he left, but the sun had been high in the sky and now it was setting. Your mine was racing.

What if he had gotten hurt and couldn't get back? What if a bear or something killed him? Were there even bears where you are? What if-

There was a groaning sound as the cabin door opened. You gazed snapped over to the door right as Soap was walking through it. He looked tired, but that was to be expected. You don't know where he went or what he did, but you know he hasn't eaten. Unless he ate some berries or something during his time in the woods, but you doubted it.

A mix of emotions hit you as you look at him. Anger at him for being gone for so long, relief that he was back, and conflicted feelings when you feel your eye start to burn with tears. Truth was, you did care about Soap to some extent, and him not coming back after an hour or two scared the hell out of you.

Despite your current state, and after everything that happened this morning, you wanted to keep your voice calm when speaking to him. You didn't want to yell, start another fight, or add more stress. However, the moment you open your mouth, anger burns in your chest like lit gasoline. Knowing you'll combust if you try to speak, you pause, hoping he'll speak first, and stay in your spot in the middle of the kitchen.

Soap's eyes were down as he walks in, not even acknowledging you. His lips were tightly pursed shut, and his body language was tense. He doesn't even spare you a single glance as he makes his way to the where you'd carefully placed all your food rations.

Taking a deep breath, you try to swallow the anger and address him.

"Where have you been?" Your voice shook the slightest bit, but you managed to keep it fairly steady.

Soap doesn't respond. You hear a faint annoyed sigh from him, but that's it. Your anger is boiling over at this point. You tried to ask nice, tried to be calm, but he was going to give you the silent treatment? Act like nothing had happened and like he hadn't made you worried sick for at least the last four hours?

"Soap, where the hell have you been?!" You were shouting now, and your raised voice finally makes Soap's gaze shift over to you. He looks you over a bit before rolling his eyes, returning to flipping through MREs packets to find a meal he wants.

"Don't fucking ignore me, Soap! You can't just leave and be gone for hours like that!"

"Fuck off, States." He grumbles, continuing his search for food. You stare at his back for a long moment, a bit taken back by his response. He really thought it was fine to go out into the woods for hours? To just leave you alone in the middle of the woods wondering if he was ok? Could he really not see how much distress he'd caused you by being gone? Or did he just not care?

You'd been worried about him.

Your chest tightens a bit, hands clenching into fists at your sides. You hated Soap with every fiber of your being, yet you worried when he was gone. You hated that you felt this way about him. You hated that he made you feel this way and now he was acting like it wasn't a big deal.

"Fuck off, States..."

"Don't tell me to fuck off! What gives you the right to leave like that? I didn't know if you were coming back or not." He just keeps ignoring you, his shoulders tense, and you snap. "John! Fucking turn around and answer me!"

That finally gets his attention. He looks back at you, jaw clenched tightly. "What have I told you about calling me that!?" He shouts at you, but you ignore him.

"Can you just listen to me!? I was worried about you, you stupid fucking idiot!" You shout at him, feeling your breath hitch a bit as a sob boils in your throat. You couldn't stop it. Tears started to run down your cheeks. You tried to brush them away, but they just kept coming.

"I sat here for hours! I didn't know where you were. I went outside, and I looked, and looked for you, and I couldn't find you. I thought you got hurt, or-or killed, or a bear got you, or you-you got lost. I didn't know if you were coming back, and I was scared that you weren't going to, and I didn't know what to do!"

You're sobbing by the end of your outburst, giving up on wiping tears away or keeping the sobs down. The stress of the day had gotten to you, and Soap leaving had been the final thing to make you break down. Now you just stood in front of this man that you hated, feeling scared that he'd died while he was gone, and sobbing uncontrollably into your hands.

Soap stood there frozen as he watches you. He'd never seen you cry before. No matter how bad the fights got, you never cried. Or at least not in front of him. He didn't really know what to do, but you were really upset. You're starting to hyperventilate, and he had to admit, he was getting a little worried.

"States, just calm down, lass."  He says in the most gentle voice he's ever used when talking to you. "Stop crying, you're fucking up your breathing." His voice is still gentle, and there's a tinge of worry behind his words as he stays frozen in place.

You try to stop, you really do, cause crying in front of Soap isn't something you like doing, but you can't stop. Now that the wall has been busted down, the water wasn't going to stop until the pressure had been released.

Soap finally moves when you can't seem to stop and turns to one of the shelves behind him to grab a cantina. He unscrews the top and takes your hands, wrapping them around the bottle and then brings it up to your lips. "Here, lass, drink some water. Take some deep breaths for me too, aye?" His hand pressed into your upper back, just steadily remaining there for support.

You do as he says, trying to take a few small sips and wiping at your eyes again. It helps a little, enough to settle you down a bit. You meet Soap's eyes, still sniffling and hiccuping softly. He still had his hand on your back, but he removes it to take the cantina back when you're done.

"I was worried about you..." You repeat, this time in more of a whisper as he puts the bottle back on the shelf.

Soap sighs softly and looks away, down towards the floor. You start to sniffle again, which makes him look at you once more. "Hey now, don't start that again."

"I'm not trying to. I can't help it. I was scared." You defend yourself, breath stuttering slightly.

"Look States, I... I'm sorry. Ok? I didn't mean to make you worry."

You're shocked. Absolutely in pure shock that this man is apologizing to you. He's never apologized to you for anything, and the thing is, he looks genuinely sorry. You stare at him for a long moment, making him uncomfortable.

"Don't look at me like that." He shifts nervously in place, a frown on his features.

You shake your head a bit, snapping yourself out of your state of shock. "Sorry, I've just never... I-I'm glad you're back." You rub your arm nervously. "Please don't.. please don't ever do something like that again."

"I won't." He says simply. "Stop all your crying now, aye? Go wash your face."

Normally you would have snapped at him for telling you what to do, but he's still talking to you softly. Like he's telling you to do something to make you feel better, not just to belittle you. So you nod and make to grab the flashlight to walk out to the pond. Before you get to the door though, he's calling out to you.

"Aye, States. Are you hungry? I'm going to make some food. You want some?"

You look back to him, surprised that he offered. You'd eaten a few hours ago, but you hardly had anything all day. Plus all that worrying you'd done had worked up quite an appetite. "Yeah... That'd be nice." You agree, getting a nod from him as he turns back to picking something from the cabinet.

"Alright. Go wash up. I'll get started." He says, his back to you now. You hesitate a moment more before stepping outside into the cool air.

It's quiet outside, aside from some frogs and an owl. The fresh air feels nice and helps to settle any remaining stress you had. You hear Soap inside, putting more wood onto the fire to get the oven going. It didn't seem real what just happened. You weren't quite sure what to make of any of it.

Sighing softly, trying to push everything that happened today behind you for now, you click on the flashlight and head towards the water. The sun has gone down and the moon is casting a soft light on the water's surface. Once you reach the edge, you scoop some water into your hands and splash it over your face, letting the icy water soothe your puffy cheeks. It feels nice despite the bite it has from the cold. It's just what you need.

Realizing you don't have a towel or anything to dry your face with, you end up just gently patting your face dry with your shirt. You'd be changing for bed soon anyway. You were regretting, however, packing your shorts and an oversized teeshirt to wear as pajamas. They weren't going to be very warm, and despite what you hoped was a new development in your relationship with Soap, you still were not fond of him seeing you in something like that.

The thought of your pajamas made you remember your lack of a bedroll. Maybe you should apologize to Soap for getting so upset with him earlier. It was technically your responsibility to keep track of it, and you doubted Soap would purposely do something like that to you. He was mean, but you didn't think he was that mean. Plus he had just apologized to you. Maybe you should return the favor. Extend the olive branch.

That was going to be hard though...

You sigh softly and get up, heading back into the cabin. Soap managed to get the fire going and now had a pot of what looked to be beans on the stovetop. He'd also laid out two pieces of bread on your plates. You stayed by the door, trying to warm your hands a bit as you watched him stir the pot. After a few seconds, he breaks the silence.

"Feeling better?" He asks, eyes focused on the food he was preparing.

"Yeah." You answer, yelling at yourself to just get the apology out. It was stuck though. Apologizes weren't really your strong suit. Plus making them to someone you had a bad rivalry with made it all that much harder. Instead, you find yourself clearing your throat and changing the topic.

"Uh... So I was thinking maybe we should make a few rules. For both of us to follow." You watch him for his reaction, not sure what you were going to get.

Soap surprisingly nods. "Sure. What were you thinking?" He asks, still not looking at you.

"Well... Maybe rule one should be that we can't go off into the woods alone for more than an hour? Just for safety." You start, which is met with silence. "If we need to go somewhere to cool down, maybe we go to the lake. Or somewhere else close by. I just don't want to have to go looking for you if I need you."

"Sure." Soap finally answers. "I can do that. Anything else?"

You think for a moment, not fully prepared to come up with all the rules by yourself at that very second. "Maybe just small things. Like we can alternate who cooks every night. Let me know before you go bathe. Don't leave dirty clothes or food lying around. Stuff like that." You shrug, watching as steam begins to rise off the pot of beans.

Soap stops stirring them and bangs the spoon on the side of the pan a few times. "That sounds reasonable." He agrees, surprising you by how accepting of this he was. "Come get what you want. I'll eat the rest." He tells you, standing out of the way so you can scoop the beans onto your plate.

You pick up your plate that he'd laid out for you and get your spoon, looking at him before looking down at the beans in the pot. You must have hesitated too long because he's rolling his eyes at you a moment later.

"Come on, I didn't poison them or anything." He grumbles, bits of the old Soap coming back.

"Well, I wasn't thinking that until you said something." You attempt to joke, though you aren't sure if Soap thought it was funny or not. He let out a huff, which might have been a laugh, but you're not sure.

"Just get your beans. I'm starving." He mumbles.

"Yes, sir." You say, getting reminded that he hadn't eaten all day. You didn't want a hangry Soap on your hands.

As you scoop up what you wanted, a very small portion so that he can have more, you hear him actually laugh. It's not a full belly laugh, but he does let out a small, single, chuckle.

"Now that's something I could get used to you saying." He mutters, making you roll your eyes this time. Though for once you aren't really annoyed.

"Yeah, well, don't get used to it." You tell him, setting your plate on the small table in the kitchen and sitting down.

You wait as he dumps the rest out onto his plate. You fully plan on sitting and eating with him. Sure, it still felt like you were walking on eggshells a bit around him, but this was by far the most civil you'd ever been with him. Once he's done scooping everything out onto his plate though, he's heading towards the bedroom without another word.

"Where are you eating?" You ask him when he walks past the available chair.

"On my cot." He answers, pushing the door open and shutting it behind him without another word.

You feel stupid now thinking that Soap was going to sit and eat with you. You don't know why you'd been expecting him to, but, now that he wasn't, it hurt a little bit...

Things probably hadn't actually changed. He was just being a littler nicer because he saw you cry. You stare down at your food, feeling a lot less hungry now, but you eat anyway. No point in wasting it.

Once your plate had been cleaned off the best you could, you set it on one of the shelves, planning on cleaning it tomorrow morning. You then make your way to the bedroom door and knock softly. You don't get a response, and if you listen really closely, you can hear gentle snores.

Opening the door carefully, you see that Soap had fallen asleep. His plate was on the floor next to his cot, scrapped clean. So much for your rule of keeping a tidy space. But you'd let it pass this time since it had been a long day.

Running a hand over your face, you step inside and pick his plate up, carrying it out to the kitchen. You set it alongside yours on the shelf and then you go back to the bedroom to grab your pajamas. You opted to change in the kitchen, just in case Soap woke up, and did so in record time. He was still asleep though when you came back in. However, the second you sat on your cot, making it squeak loudly, he woke up.

"Ah, that damned bed of yours." He grumbles, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

"You were the one who stuck me with this bed." You remind him, making him grumble as he sat up. He places his feet on the floor, looking to the ground.

"Where's my-" he starts, but you already know what he's going to ask about.

"I already put it on the shelf for tomorrow." You tell him.

"Oh. Alright then." He mutters, standing up. He starts to take his shirt off, which had you blushing and raising your brows at him. Then he's taking his pants off, which instantly makes you cover your eyes.

"Oh my God! Don't change in here! I don't want to see you naked!" You yell at him, which has him rolling his eyes at you.

"Oh haud yer wheesht! I'm not getting naked! I sleep in my underwear."

You can hear the sound of his pants being pulled down, and you press your hands more firmly against your eyes. "I don't want to see you in your underwear either!"

"Well I didn't think we'd be sharing a room! I didn't pack pajamas!" He exclaims. "Besides, you're not even wearing pants!"

That made you uncover your eyes, your cheeks burning. "I'm wearing shorts!" You pull your shirt up enough for him to see the shorts you had underneath, and also get an eyeful of Soap in nothing but his underwear. He's in army green boxer briefs, which made his ass and what he was packing in the front look... Not too bad.

"That's practically underwear you're wearing." He claims. "Just think of these as shorts!" He balls his clothes up and tosses them into the suitcase with his clean and still unpacked clothes.

"Those are not shorts! I can see every..."

You trail off, not really wanting to admit that you can see the outline of his dick. You don’t want him to know that you looked. In your defense, it was pretty prominent and obvious feature. You know he isn't even... worked up... yet you can still clearly see it. You didn’t have to stare directly at it to see it.

"Just fucking get into your bed." You say instead, but by the look on Soap's face, he knew exactly what you were going to say.

"No, no, go on. Out with it." He crosses his arms over his chest and stares down at you expectantly.

"Soap, I swear!" You're looking straight ahead, holding up your hand to shield your peripheral vision from him.

"If you like something you see, you can just tell me." He continues to egg you on, making you all the more frustrated with him.

"I'm gonna punch you in the thing I see if you don't get it over to your cot!" You threaten, making him finally leave you alone. He holds his hands up in mock surrender as he goes to his cot.

"Alright fine. Just do me a favor and don't squeak that damn cot of yours all night." He grumbles, getting onto his cot and into his sleeping roll. He rolls onto his side, back facing you.

You finally look over at him once he's laying down and then settle onto your own cot. You lay down on your back, staring up the ceiling and feeling thankful for the chilly air as it cools down your reddened cheeks.

Very quickly though, despite the wood furnace next to you, your arms and legs start to get cold. You tuck up into a ball, cot squeaking while you move, but it's not a position you were going to be able to maintain all night. After only five minutes your legs were cramping up, and you wanted to stretch out again, which caused more obnoxious squeaking.

You keep shifting like this, trying to find the best position to keep yourself warm. It doesn't take long for Soap to let out an annoyed groan.

"States, I swear." He grumbles.

"Sorry, I'm cold." You grumble right back, tucking your legs back up again.

It's silent for a little bit as you try to keep from moving around. You're shivering just slightly, but it wasn't a violent shiver by any means. Sleep was going to be difficult though. You sigh softly, your exhale a little shaky.

"Fucking hell." You hear Soap curse, followed by the sounds of him rustling around.

You'd been lying with your back to him, so you look over your shoulder as he gets up. It was hard to see exactly what he was doing. Despite his bed only being a few feet away from yours, it was dark over in his little corner, and his back was to you. The distinct sound of him unzipping his sleeping roll can be heard though.

"Here." He says after a moment and throws something over at you.

You jump slightly, sitting up to grab at whatever he's just thrown. Feeling it over, you quickly realized it was the thermal liner of his sleeping roll. It wasn't as comfortable as a blanket would be, but it was meant to hold in heat. It would keep you warm.

You look over to Soap, watching him flop back down onto his cot, his back to you once more. You're too stunned to move at first. You never expected Soap to do something so... nice. Especially for you.

"Thanks.." You mutter, getting up slowly to better lay out the lining on your bed.

"If it makes you stop squeaking that damn bed." He grumbles back.

You weren't going to argue with him. Whether he was only giving it to you to keep you from moving around or if he really felt bad you were cold, you didn't care. You were just happy to have some warmth.

The inside of the liner is warm already due to Soap having used it right before. It even sort of smells like him a little bit but, surprisingly, not in a bad way. It smells faintly like cologne, but you can't pick out the specific fragrances.

You lay on your side, facing him this time. The apology you wanted to give him earlier is on the tip of your tongue. It was the least you could do since he'd give you the warmest part of his sleeping roll.

"Hey, Soap?" You call out softly, biting the inside of your cheek as you wait for a confirmation he was listening. He grunts a bit. "I... I'm sorry for what happened earlier." Soap doesn't say anything, and you're not sure what he's thinking. It begins to feel awkward after a moment, so you continue, feeling the need to fill the silence. "...I shouldn't have yelled at you like I did."

"It's fine, States. Just go to bed." He mumbles, making you bite the inside of your cheek again.

"Ok." You mumble back. "Goodnight."

"Night, States."

Silence falls over the room then, and you close your eyes. Soap's liner, while not the most comfortable thing, keeps you warm. The day had been long and stressful, and you weren't sure how things would be tomorrow. You just hoped the days would go by quick.

One day down... six to go...

[iouinotes]

Beautiful Boy | Alex Walter

pairing: Alex Walter x female!reader

show: My life with the Walter Boys

warnings: mostly fluff and love confessions, but a bit of implied sexual activities

word count: 4,6k

summary: You are completely in love with your best friend. When the chance is given, you decide to finally take it and show your love.

a/n: The story will mention a review from the past, where they play truth or dare. So, I was inspired to write that scenario: match made in heaven is here!

He's everything I ever wished for. It´s silly, thinking about it, really. My ongoing crush for him since the first time I met him all these years ago.

It was during the first day after the winter holiday. It was dark outside, very cold and rainy weather. Well, unfortunately it did not look like that in the morning, so I instantly panicked after school, because I forgot to bring my jacket. Normally one of my friends picked me up after school and drove me home, but she was sick today and I heard about her being ill, last minute.

So now I´m standing in the hallway, debating if I should better start to go to the bus station (probably getting soaked) or if I just walk to the school library, hoping that the weather cools down. I was drowning in my own thoughts, when I first heard his voice.

"Are you okay?" The second my eyes landed on him, I was gone for good. Because the boy in front of me was utterly beautiful. Handsome round face, freckles, warm brown eyes and a shy smile. One look at him and I fell in love with his beauty. Little did I know, I would soon fall head over heals for his personality or the way his voice sounds when he is making fun of me, because I believe in love at first sight. How could I not, when I have met him?

He was very caring the first time we met. Even though I was embarrassed of my situation, he made me feel comfortable. When I told him about my difficulty, he instantly helped me out. He told me, that his brother also picked him up from school every day, so it wouldnt be a problem, if I came along. Not only this sweet gesture made me speechless, it was also the way he stripped out of his jacket and gave it to me without hesitation, when we went outside and he saw that I didnt bring a jacket.

"What? No, I can´t-" I tried to argue, but one blink of his lashes, one look at his eyes, was enough to keep me occupied. "My mom would kill me, if I didnt. It´s okay, I dont mind." He really was the sweetest. His jacket kept in fact, keep me warm. And it also smelled like him, thats what made me blush in the end. I didnt know, if he noticed me looking at him from time to time (but then again, he nowadays didnt noticed it either), but I could not contain myself.

He was a gentleman, shy and adorable. He was all I wished for in a guy. When his brother - who I idetified as the most popular guy of our school- Cole, came in sight, only then it clicked. The boy in front of me, with his nervous smile, was Alex Walter.

When the car parked and the headlights were visible in the rain, we quickly ran to the blue vehicle. His brother didnt talk much, so the car ride was mostly quiet, my eyes were out the window and my thoughts were on Alex previous gesture of holding the door open for me. He didnt intend for me to fall in love with him, but I couldnt think of anything else to do, better than exactly that.

"I didnt get your name?" was all he said, when the car stopped in front of my house. "Oh right, sorry. Im y/n." He smiled again at me and my heart wanted to jump out off my chest. I didnt really notice Cole in the front and his famous "Cole effect". I was all catched up, by the beautiful boy next to me.

"Alex" he shook my hand and it made me giggle. I saw his ears turning pink at my laughter, so I smiled at him, so he knew I wasnt making fun of him. He relaxed then, but much to my dislike the blonde brother spoke up, before I could say something else. "I dont have all day, so are you two done looking at each other or can you go now? I swear, I saw y´all nearly kiss." At that, I was the one who turned red. "Sorry, thanks for the ride and-" as I wanted to strip off the jacket, Alex stopped my movements. "Oh no, you can have it. I mean- it´s still raining outside, I-I dont want you to get sick." Maybe I was already at that exact moment, falling in love with him. I also think, that his words made my cheeks turn a shade of red, that wasnt even on a scala anymore, because it was so high.

"But when do I give it back to you?" The last thing I wanted to do, was crossing a line with the Walter brothers. And maybe I also hoped to see him again. "Tomorrow? I will be in the gaming room in third grade. If thats okay with you?" He spoke quickly, because Cole kept getting more annoyed. "No, its fine. Thank you, Alex." I kissed him on the cheek (dont know where that one came from) and before I could look back, I was already out of the car and running towards the house. When I opened the door and the warmth embraced me, I looked out of the window from my house. The car was already gone, but I remember smiling so bright, I almost could not contain the happy feeling that consumed me.

That was the first time, my diary heard of Alex Walter.

The next day, I searched through three gaming rooms before I finally found him, starring at his laptop. As soon as I tapped him gently on the shoulder, he turned around and looked at me suprised. When he asked me, if I had had any trouble finding him, I said "what no, it took five minutes", when in reality it took 20 minutes, but he sounded really sincere, so it didnt matter.

That was the start of our ever-lasting friendship. We became best friends quickly and are verly close ever since, he is my other half. We are always together, in the hallway, at lunch, we see each other at the weekends and we even got the price "the best of best friends" by our friendgroup. I mean it was funny and its nice, really. But it says everything. We are just friends.

It´s very funny actually, because he knows me better than anyone and I can´t keep one secret from him. He just knows, when something is up. But my biggest secret of all time, that was the part where he was clueless about.

My love for him.

He just doesnt notice and I tried to not show it, but everyone knows I like him. Well, expect for him. When I look at him too long, because I (again) got lost in his eyes or looked a second too long at his lips, while he talked, he thinks he has something on his face. When I compliment him, for literal anything, he thinks I make fun of him, so he doesn't take it seriously. And I tried almost everything, so he could finally notice. Maybe then he could make the first move.

I once talked about my ideal type, because it was a truth or dare on my birthday party and I literally described him - he didnt notice. I swoon on a daily basis over his beauty, his intelligence , his personality, his habits, his cute flaws like staying up all night to play a video game - he doesnt know. I tried to learn his favorite video game, I read the Lord of the Rings saga, I even watched baseball games with him, I do anything so he will notice, how much I care about him. But he just doesn't get it.

If I would know, he simply didnt like me that way, I could somehow cope with that. But then, there are moments, where I would catch him starring at me, where he seems to be the one wanting me. He watches romantic movies with me and lets me cry about it after, when I´m sad about the ending, Sometimes I even get to lay on his chest. He listens when I talk about my newest book obsession, he goes shopping with me, even though he hates it. He helps me studying and I can tell him anything, he´s always there for me.

So it could be, that maybe my feelings were not completely unrequited. But then again, why didnt he made a move by now? Nevertheless, it keeps me awake at night. Because I want nothing more than to kiss his soft lips, feel his skin against mine, to look at his eyes and study every single freckle from his neck to his forehead. I want to love him. In a way, he knows it.

These feelings, these thoughts are constantly in my head. Especially now, when I sit across him and simply look at his concentrated face. His eyebrows are drawn together, he´s currently biting on his bottom lip, his nose scrunched in a frown. The light of his room shows me every little detail of his face. In moments like this, on a friday evening, where we study together for a biology test, I wish he would know how I feel about him. Because it would make everything so much easier.

Its currently raining outside, a remember of our first encounter, the clouds are dark and I hear loud thunder since the last couple of minutes went by. "Do you think, it will get better? The weather clearly looks bad." I shift my gaze to look at him and when I catch him starring at me, my heart swells in my chest.

I want to break the distant between us and close the gap of our lips. Want to get to know every little detail of his body. But as he speaks up, I clear my head. "I dont know, Danny said something about a storm. I honestly didnt know, it would be that bad." He closes his textbook and stands up, looking out the window. ,,Should I go?" My question suprises him. "Now? I think if you take a step outside, you will get swept up by your feet. It´s not safe." He looks at me unwary. "I dont know, I always wanted to fly. Maybe thats a sign." I grin at him and he laughs quietly. "Yeah, of course. Let me ask my dad, what he thinks is for the best. Maybe he can get you an umbrella and you do your best Mary Poppins impression."

~~~~~~

30 minutes later I find myself in a full-on Walter-family-disscussion. "But uncle! I dont get to have girls stay overnight. Thats unfair!" Lee is looking at George, unable to hide his jealousy. "When did a girl ever wanted to stay overnight with you?" Isaac asks from across the table. Lee just ignores him, an angry look in his eyes.

"Look, its nothing that I will allow forever. But right now, she cant go home, so she is welcomed to stay here." I smile at him, thankful that I´m not getting thrown out. "Also, she is like a thirteen family member. She´s practically living here." George added. One look at Alex and I wanted to know what he was thinking. Was I just like a sister to him? "Okay enough of that. Y/n, dear you are welcome to stay the night. We will figure it out. Nathan is staying with Skylar, so his bed is free." I´m glad, Katherine is here. I thank her and George and by the time, we ate dinner and Alex got me a toothbrush, so I could get ready for bed, it was late after 11.

As I make my way back to Alex's room after using the bathroom to change into my clothes, leaving me with shorts and a shirt, Cole is suddenly standing next to me. "Well, what a great opportunity for you." He grins at me. At his comment, I am visible confused. "What do you mean?" I look up to his smiling figure. "You have him all by yourself, of course. Your chance to finally do something. I can´t stand it anymore, you like him and he likes you. I always thought you were the clever one out of you two, so please put everyone out of this misery and kiss him, because he´s a complete idiot. It's long overdue for you two to get together."

His words leave me stunned. After he´s done talking, he makes his way silently back to his own room and I´m still standing in the hallway, trying to process his words. Kiss him. He likes you. Does Alex really likes me or is that some cruel joke for Cole? I hope not. Because my friends have told me several times, that they think, Alex likes me too. But I always thought, they were wrong.

My heart is heavily pounding as I make my way back to his room, taking a deep breath as I open the door. Alex is playing a video game, as always, but I see that he also changed into something more comfortable. It helps me calm down my nerves, when I see him doing something, he always does. I take a few steps towards his chair and his concentrated figure.

I mean, what was there in life, if I didnt take any risks? If he likes me back, it could be the answer to all my dreams and if not - well, the weather was still going pretty bad and could help me out of the awkward situation.

When I decided to test their he-likes-you-too-theory, I quickly came up with a plan. Okay, so I wasnt the best at flirting, that was for sure, but I could make a move. For starters, I wanted something, I often thought about.

As I stand behind him, I trace my fingers along his shoulders, hearing his surprised breath, that he quickly tries to hide. Well too bad, I heard it.

"Alex?" My voice is quiet.

"...yes?" I can see his muscles tense, while I keep touching his shoulders, going lower until I touch his arm. Something about what Cole said, about Alex liking me, gives me a certain confidence, that wasnt there before. Please dont let the King of hooking up be wrong.

"Could I borrow one of your hoodies? I´m freezing and only have my shirt." I try not to think about the possibility that he laughs in my face and says no. But then again, I know that Alex wouldnt do that. "I-uh, yeah. You can, um, grab one out of my closet." I smile to myself, when I see his eyes nervously scanning the display. He paused the game, even though he doesnt look at me while he talks.

"Thanks." As I turn towards his closet, I get the feeling that he´s secretly watching me choose a hoodie. When I get a hold on a dark green one, I immediately know its the one from when we first met. I take it and walk towards the other bed, getting a glimpse of his eyes, that continue to follow me. And then I do something, I thought I would never do in front of him. I change out of my top, the cold air hitting my skin and I hear him gasps.

When I change into his hoodie, a settling warmth embraces me. I smile to myself, a joy blooms in my chest, the feeling of wearing his clothes, makes me feel too good to be true. The shorts I´m wearing are the same ones as before and I think, that I kinda like the casual look. And maybe it looks fine, that could be a good way to get Alex attention. My shorts cover my thighs, but because his hoodie is bigger than what I normally wear, this way it looks like I only wear his hoodie.

When I turn around and fix my hair, he already started another game again. Okay, mission getting-some-sort-of-reaction, is starting to get interesting. "Soo, what do you think? Too big?" I wait for his reaction. When he slowly turns around, one hand holding up his headphones, I see him trying not to stare too hard. But since I see his eyes scanning my body, it´s impossible for him to pretend. I smile to myself.

"And?" I make a step in his direction, watching him swallow. His eyes wander to the floor and a nervous expression crosses his face. "I- I need to finish this game so-" he turns around so fast, I´m almost surprised his neck didnt broke. Shit. That wasnt part of the plan. I glance around the room, trying to come up with something, another way to keep his attention at me. I sit on his bed, near his computer and decide to watch him play. I hear the sound of the game playing in the background, while I continue to think of a way for him to notice me.

And even though I keep my hands to myself, I see him sqirming in his seat. I laugh quietly. "Everything okay?" it seems he isnt that concentrated anymore. "Yeah, uh, are you bored? You never watch me play." His head turns to look at me. "You could teach me some moves." I say, looking at him and then the game, that shows a spider attacking some creature. He raises his eyebrows at my words.

"You sure? I thought you didnt like video games." My eyes wander to his lap as I quickly come up with a plan. "Maybe I will like it, if you show me some tricks. And also, I like you and you´re really interested in gaming, so I thought I could make an effort." His cheeks are blushing, my eyes are starring at his clueless ones.

A smile tucks at his lips, but he tries to keep his cool. "I mean, I´m really good at this, so I could teach you one or two lessons. Where do you want to sit? I only have one gaming chair, but-" he glances around the room, trying to come up with something.

"Well, we could share?" I ask, my voice sounding sincere and not as much thrilled at the idea, to sit in his lap, even though I am freaking out in my thoughts. His eyes widen, when he realizes what I just said.

"You want to-" he doesn't finish his sentence, stuttering at the idea of me sitting on his lap. "If thats okay with you, of course? I think its the best solution, I mean I do want the full experience. So its fair." I see him nervously licking his lips. "Yeah, yeah. I get that. Okay, cool, how do you want to-" I smile at him and his nervous speech. "Just relax, I dont bite. You do know that, right?" I laugh when I see his ears turning pink.

"Right. So uh, come here, I guess?" He puts his arms on the armrests to give me good access and I feel myself getting nervous. God, I never got to be this close to him. I stand up, his eyes take my form in his sweater in, I see him starring at the naked skin. And when I see something shining in his hair, I act without a second thought.

"You have something in your hair, dummy." It's a little paper ball from Benny, probably from the previous dinner (fight), I lean myself down, facing him forward in his lap and cross my legs over his thighs. I don't notice what position we are in until I lean back to show him the piece of paper and suddenly, I'm just a few centimeters from his face. Shocked by the less to no space we have left between us, he doesn't speak and neither do I. We just look at each other.

"i-i got it." The words leave my mouth, the distance between our faces -god his lips look so soft- leaves me speechless. It takes him a moment, but when he answers he sounds just as out of breath as me.

"thanks."

Again, we sit in silence. Suddenly I loose my balance and I almost fall out of the chair, but his arms are quick to catch me. So now, he has his arms around my waist and my arms linger around his shoulders for support. If I would lean closer, I could kiss him.

The thought of kissing him, makes me sqirm and when he lays his hands onto my waist to still my movements, I feel dizzy. Because Im not just sitting on his legs. Indeed, I sit literally on his lap. So when I feel myself getting wet, because he makes me so touch starved, I completely loose my mind.

"Im sorry- i didnt mean to sit that way. I just-" his eyes are so fascinating, brown, green and warm. It feels like he´s looking at my soul. He´s watching my every move. I know I should probably get up, but its the first time, he is that close to me and I cant stop looking at him.

Without a thought in my head, I raise my hand and touch his cheek. I see his lips breaking apart, so he can draw a surprised breath. "You have so many freckles everywhere." My eyes wander around his face. His voice comes back to life for a second, but only to sign. "Too many, actually." I draw my eyebrows together.

"It suits you and it´s not too much. Thats a perfectly fine amount of freckles. Look-" I start to count them. Each and every one. Starting from his ears towards his cheeks, his nose, further down until I stop at his lips. "You have one right above the corner of your mouth." I mutter, my thumb brushes his lips for a second.

Caught, my eyes sneak back to search his gaze. But he just looks at me. My heart feels like it could break any second, if I dont open my mouth to say something.

"You are" I begin to say "so beautiful to me. Every freckle you have, the colour of your eyes, your hair, your lips, your voice, just you."

I cant hold back anymore.

"i-i love you, Alex. I really do. I thought it would just be a crush that would go away, when time goes on, but it hasnt. You´re in every piece of my heart, you hold it together. You are my joy, my laugh, my sadness, you were everything for me, the first second I got to know you. Because you are the best person in my life, my best friend, my other half, my partner in crime, I would bail you out of jail in a heartbeat. Without you, my heart wouldn't beat anymore anyway. Because you make it live. Every day, every time I see you. Maybe if I would have known better, I would have never agreed to take your jacket, the first time we met. If I would have known, how absolutely in love I would get with you, it would have scared me to death. But now? Now I know better than to be away from you, because I better live as your best friend than without having you in my life. Because now, being away from you would be my death."

In one second, I bail my heart out and before I know it, he takes my face in his hands and leans forward. He stops his movement right before our lips touch.

"I think you will be the death of me too, sweetheart."

And with that, he kisses me.

Slow at first, his lips touch mine, so very soft and gentle. I almost think I´m dreaming, because his lips do feel like a dream to me. His hands caress my back and I clutch to his shoulders, afraid the moment will end. His warm hands strive back to my cheeks, tilding my head in a way he can have more access.

And I let him, mainly because I´m too caught up with this emotion and also because I would let him do anything with me. My hands are in his dark hair, gently tugging at his strings, so I get to hear that little breathless sound he makes, that makes my heart flutter.

I sink in his warm embrace, moving my lips with the same rhythm as him, hearing my heartbeat in my ears. His right hand goes to the back of my neck and this action makes me weak in the knees. And he notices it. Gently he breaks apart, leaving me with the want to have more of him and when I open my eyes - I didnt know I closed them - he looks at me, like I´m the sun and he´s the moon, that was away for too long.

"God, you´re so beautiful." His voice is deep, I can hear him catch his breath. His words make my heart ache until I think it isnt able to comprehend his compliment. I feel his lips again, my eyes flutter at the contact. One hand around my hip, holding me steady and the other one, around my neck, making me unsteady.

"alex-" a moan wants to escape me, but I try to hold myself together. His lips leave my mouth and trail further down, finding a spot at the curve of my neck.

"god, yes. Say my name again." I´m pretty sure, I never wanted him more than now.

My hands linger in his hair, I feel his hot breath on my skin and clench my thighs together. He is making me feel all worked up. As his lips leave that spot, I whimper his name, but as soon as his mouth leaves my body, he reconnects with it.

Brushing my hair aside, he kisses me again for a second before he lets go of me. With that, im completely convinced he hates me, the way he´s making me suffer. I hear him quietly laugh, so I slowly open my eyes to watch his face.

"You look drunk on love. Are you alright?" He smiles at me, looking at me, like he didnt just turn my world up site down (and my panties wet, by the way).

"What?" I ask, catching my breath. His skin glows and as I watch every detail of his face (how could I not), I almost miss his next sentence. "I would have never thought that this was your idea of gaming." I feel his shoulders move, when he tries to keep himself from laughing.

I gently smile and roll my eyes. "You are just too handsome for me, to concentrate on anything other than you." His cheeks turn red and there´s a glimmer in his eyes, that makes me feel completed. "So that´s why you have bad grades in math, maybe I shouldnt be sitting next to you then." His joke makes me laugh.

"Well, maybe you can give me some private lessons, so I could improve." At that, he opens his mouth, but no words are said. "Too stunned to speak?" I lean forward, his eyes follow my lips. "You just never flirted with me, its distracting." He looks up.

I just shake my head. One of my hands sneaks around to linger at his cheek. "Oh, trust me. I have. You just never noticed." His eyebrows rise. "Thats a shame. But I guess I have now." He catches my lips.

Yes, he definitely did notice me now.

[blossomingmoonlight]

⭑ Separate Worlds, Chapter Three ⭑

Main masterlist

Pairing: Michael Gavey x Popular!rich!reader

Warnings: 18+ mdni, mentions of alcohol, michael being a horny virgin, michael being desparate, reader being thirsty, mastrubation.

Summary: Living two completely separate lives you and Michael had never really crossed paths and you’ve never really looked at him before. But when your worlds collide, affections arise.

Word count: 1.2k

Saturday, 15th October 2006

You awoke with an awful headache, you didn’t think you had enough to drink to even get hungover but it had been a while since you last had any alcohol. Your mind flashed back to last night, the argument, running in your heels after Michael, breaking into the library, the dusty attic with the starry night sky, and- him of course. His breathtaking eyes, big nose, sharp jaw and chiselled chin. Your mind started to wander, his veiny arms and most importantly his veiny hands, thick fingers, broad shoulders and just his hair that looked so graspable- Christ. Get a grip. 

You got out of bed as the stinging headache and a wave of nausea hit you. A good shower would fix you, maybe today would be a self care day, just to energise for the week. But even in the shower your mind started to wander, and they got even worse- all you could think about was what his cock looked like, how his big hands would look grabbing your hips as you rode him. And with that image you finished. When you had gotten ready for the day, well at least dressed. You decided to get some food and coffee. 

Once in the main courtyard you ran into Farleigh, Maisie and Eloise. “Hey, you okay? You stormed out on your own birthday last night.” Maisie asked, a bit concerned. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just had too much to drink and it had gotten to my head. But I’m fine now. You guys want to grab some coffee with me?” They stopped questioning you at that and you all hit the nearest Starbucks. 

Sunday, October 16th 2006

You made your way to the library, heart pounding in your chest. All day yesterday you thought about him, after the shower you had to relieve yourself once more when you climbed into bed that night. You didn’t even need to study, but you hoped so badly he would be there. You entered the library with a beaming smile on your face, expecting to see him. He wasn’t there? What?

A sigh left your lips and you turned on your heel. No reason for coming here then. You decided to head to your friend's dorm instead. 

Monday, October 17th 2006

Finally! You felt like Monday couldn’t come fast enough, at last you were able to see him again. Even though it had only been two days since your last encounter, it felt like a week. You knew the second you saw him in class you would bring him the box of crunchies with your phone number and email taped onto it as well as a funny maths pun t-shirt you bought while getting coffee on Saturday. You used your calculator Saturday night and the bastard was right. So of course you had to reward him.

You didn’t even meet up with Eloise like usual before maths, instead you put on your cutest outfit, showered before and wore your strongest and nicest perfume. Surely this would grab his attention. But when you got there a message dinged on your phone. 

Eloise Sinclair: please don't kill me im fucking sick and i cant get out of bed :(((  8:56

(You): No worries, just rest ok? Want me to bring you something after maths?  8:57

Eloise Sinclair: no maisie just got here with supplies. thanks though xxx  8:57

(You): Ok I’ll visit later xx  8:57

Maybe it was the universe sending you signs because when you stepped in the lecture hall you spotted Michael, with empty seats next to him. You almost jogged down the stairs with a huge grin and dropped the box with crunchies, the t-shirt and the note on his tiny desk. He looked at you in surprise as you sat at the desk right next to him. Was he dreaming? “Morning, you were right. You are a genius. So here are the crunchies as promised and also a funny t-shirt I saw when I was out, made me think of you.” You smiled as you nudged the box towards him. 

Michael however was still stunned. Did his dream girl who was way out of his league dump her friends to sit next to him? Did she buy him his favourite treat? Did she think of him while she was out? And most important of all…she called him a genius. Fuck. He was actually hard right now, how pathetic. How does a guy get hard from just some gifts and a compliment? How did- “Helloooo? Earth to Michael?” You snapped him out of his thoughts. 

“I’m sorry, it’s pretty early- uhm- thank you I really appreciate it.” He smiled, and for the first time he smiled properly, showing off his cute teeth. And holy shit did that make you fall harder.  Luckily for him, you hadn’t noticed his boner, he swiftly moved the sweater that was hanging from his shoulders to his lap. You wanted to talk to him more and tell him you left your info in the box too but the professor was starting and somehow, sitting next to Michael Gavey made it so much less boring.

The lecture seemed to fly by and the end was near. After the professor made you do some practice assignments she spoke up. “Before next monday I have a little project that I want you to complete, this project will require you to partner up with someone. The project information itself will be handed out before you leave, you can now choose your partner.” The class immediately started to mingle and you turned to Michael. 

“So since you’re next to me anyway, want to partner up?” He looked unsure and turned more towards you. “Uhm, usually I prefer to work alone.” Oh. But when your face dropped he continued. “But I don’t think we really have a choice and I would rather work with you than anyone else here.” He rambled. That made you smile again, the professor handed out the information you needed and you agreed to meet up the following morning since you both had a free period at the same time. 

The second Michael got back to his dorm room he threw the sweater he held discreetly in front of him on his desk chair and quickly moved on his bed. His cock was straining in his pants and he never had needed relief this badly. Your perfume was still lingering in his nose, the way your tits were almost out with that top you wore, the skirt that showed off your silky smooth thighs. It was all too much. He quickly grabbed his laptop that was still on his bed and went to his saved porn, all girls that looked like you with guys that looked like him.

The video started to play and he opened his pants so he could finally relieve his aching cock. He almost came in record time as he released all over his veiny hand, cumming with a loud groan he had to muffle.

Tag list (also want to be tagged in chapters? message me): @sepherinaspoppies

[upsidedownmvnson]

eddie’s annoyed with you when you’re not on time for hellfire.

you know he’s sensitive about starting on time, but still you were running late again. even though this time you promised.

but the mood slowly shifts to something else as time ticks on. you’re always a couple minutes late but nearly an hour? eddie is really frustrated, and his feelings are hurt. he decides to leave your character behind, the party left you alone, sleeping in a cave.

when they return to the cave later, theyre unable to save you from a bandit situation, and your character dies. eddie kinda feels bad, but you know what time the club starts.

what he doesnt expect is steve harrington bursting into the room, looking frenzied. the whole party stared at him, but he was locked on eddie. eddie approached his friend, worried about the look in steve’s eyes.

steve stood up straight, and cleared his throat. weakly he says, “something terrible happened.”

and when steve tells him about your car accident, eddie feels sick. his knees buckle, and steve has to hold him up. he’s totally disoriented by this news. his felt his heart beat pounding behind his eyes, and his ears rang loudly, barely registering the panicked talking going on around him

“theyre alive,” steve was shouting, but people weren’t letting him talk, so he had to keep shouting it over the hundred questions. they wouldnt be able to handle it. not again. not when max still hasnt woken up. “eddie? can you hear me buddy?”

but eddie was in shock. he was trying to blame himself. he was looking for the moment he somehow caused this.

“can you walk? ill drive you,” steve says, as gareth searches eddies pockets for the keys to the van. “dustin, get over here, help me get eddie to the car.”

as soon as they moving, the adrenaline starts moving through eddie’s body. he was able to break free of his friend’s aid and pick up his pace, and the three of them ran through the school and into the parking lot. the dim light steve parked by was flickering, putting a weak spotlight on eddie as he tugged the door handle on the passenger seat

“let me unlock it,” steve snapped, fumbling the keys in his hand. he dropped them, the pressure of eddie’s stare was kinda terrifying.

when they were in the car, eddie was finally alert.

“what the fuck is going on?” he snapped.

no one said anything. there was nothing they could say that would make eddie feel better, or calm down. steve sped out of the parking lot, blowing the stop sign. he shouldnt have, given the reason you were in the hospital.

eddie squeezed his eyes shut. he was wrong. he was petty and hurt and he thought you were being a dick but you were - he was gunna throw up - you were somewhere bleeding. you were laying on the asphalt after a violent car crash and he was thinking youre an asshole

“their character died,” eddie said. “we killed them.”

“its not gunna happen,” steve said, gripping the steering wheel. a statement he couldnt back up.

at the hospital, eddie barely waited for the car the stop before he was running inside, tripping over his own feet as he rushed to get to you. dustin was hot on his trail and steve was parking the car.

eddie saw nancy with her boyfriend, and when nancy saw him, she came over, putting her hands on eddies arms. dustin spoke with jonathan in the background.

“relax,” she said, “please breath. they’re okay right now. they’re in surgery, and its going well, okay?”

“wheeler?” eddie asked, eyes filling with tears he had no control over.

“it has to be fine,” nancy said. “sit with me.”

and with no other options he listened, following nancy to an uncomfortable plastic chair that squeaked when he sat. nancy held his hand over the stiff arm rests, but he didnt find any comfort. he didnt think he would until he was with you again.

jonathan sat beside nancy, giving her a sad smile and handing her a bitter coffee. he sat quietly, letting nancy give eddie her attention. dustin sat on the other side of eddie, also opting to stay quiet. what was anyone supposed to say?

honestly, the only thing eddie wanted to hear was your voice.

might rewrite this properly - its a midnight idea i had and i like it enough to post it 🥰

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

[pia-nor481]

Sick Day

Daniel Ricciardo x reader smut 18+

Season two spoilers for doctor who. This may or may not be based off of how I spent my time while unwell

1.8k words

“I’m back” Daniel yelled through the house as he closed the door. He was so excited to be back with his girlfriend, he was gone for three weeks now and just really needed to see her. he rushed through the hallway and his excitement dialled down as he noticed the silence. Normally she would have some form of music playing rather loud, wanting to drown out the silence of being alone in their shared home.

The sneezing caught him off guard and so he picked up his pace and saw her sat on the sofa; drowning in blankets with her eyes focused on the television. The volume was no higher than ten so he could only hear the mumbling of the actors voices. “What happened to you? baby, you must be so unwell to be watching tv without me.” He walked closer and saw her drained eyes and slightly reddened nose. “Danny, I’m so happy your back, I missed you so much.” Her voice came out strained and nasally. “Oh look at you, you’re so sick. What happened?” He said reaching out to her as she spoke again. “I didn’t wear a jumper when I went out. But I had a scarf on, I promise.” Daniel shook his head at the statement and walked towards the kitchen, turning the kettle on a reaching for the tea. He then poured an unnecessary amount of honey in the mug and placed it on the table.

Daniel finally pulled his hat off of his head and placed it on hers, knowing she was still feeling the chill. He moved the covers slightly to slip under them, and to touch her, knowing it would comfort her. “No, don’t. I’ll get you sick.” She was so happy he was back in a formula one car, she was so stressed for him upon hearing that he had broken his hand during the free practice at zanvoort, then the engine issues at Austin and now, he needed to keep well to ensure he would have a seat next year. “No you won’t.” He almost whispered out leaning closer to her, pulling her body towards him, resting her head against his chest, wrapping his hands over her waist. “Oh right, you’ve got your vitamins.” He laughed out lightly upon hearing her reply.

“So what are we watching?” He said, diverting his eyes towards the screen. “Doctor who.” She whispered, trying not to hurt her voice further, just as the TARDIS came on screen. A smile creeped a way on to his face, he had no idea what was going on as Cathrin Tate appeared on the screen. “So what’s happening?” She leaned further into him and pulled the blankets higher for extra warmth. “Well, the Doctor is really upset about Rose, who’s in an alternate universe with her mum, Jackie, and her alternate universe dad, who saved her life twice, I think. And some how Donna played by Cathrin Tate, has ended up in the TARDIS while getting married.” She explained like it was super simple and he was already aware. Daniel smiled, knowing this was something she enjoyed and so wanted to hear more. “Babe, Who’s Rose?”

“She was in season one with the Ninth Doctor, then he saved her life and became the Tenth doctor. In season two she employed her boyfriend Ricky or Micky, something like that, to help her and The doctor. So they went to a school when the teachers were evolved bat-vampires who were brainwashing and killing students. They also meet the girl that the Doctor originally traveled with and Rose got pretty jealous. But I would be too, David Tennant is pretty hot.” She laughed out lightly, shifting in Daniel’s lap. “Hey, I’m right here…At least he got dark hair, I’ll take that.” A grin covered her face, ear to ear.

“Anyway, they all then go the alternate universe because something happened with the TARDIS, and lots of people have been disappearing and alternate universe Micky or Ricky and his friends are trying to find out what had been happening . They then find out that the people are being turned into cybermen and then alternate Ricky or Micky dies saving everyone, Alternate Jackie also dies at some point, then Rose’s boyfriend Micky or Ricky stays to replace him and be good or something. So her and the doctor travel back to normal earth.” She said, having to pause every now and then to catch her breath. As much as Daniel felt sorry for her he didn’t want her to stop. “So Micky or Ricky and Rose are still dating, even though they are in a different universes?” He said, passing her the tea to sip on, hoping it would ease her throat.

“I can’t really remember but she kissed him before she left so probably. Anyway, some other stuff happens and they end in a Torchwood building because of some random ghosts appearing all over London. Then the find out it’s actually the cybermen slipping through the void and into their universe. And obviously they are trying to kill everyone because reasons, then a metal circle thing opens revealing the last four daleks, they are robots that started a war against the time lords, including the Doctor. At this point I started to hate Mickey or Ricky, because he touched the metal and released a lot of imprisoned daleks who want to kill everyone as they think they’re superior. So the Daleks and Cybermen try and kill each other.” She paused for a quick cough and another sip of tea. “Here, Love” Daniel said, handing her a throat sweet. “Continue.”

“So the Doctor sends everyone back to the alternate universe as they would be sucked into the void because of the travelling, apart form Jackie obviously, but Rose stayed. They have these massive magnets… Don’t laugh at that, I can’t believe you are laughing at the word massive. To continue, the lever moves so rose let’s go of the magnet to fix it and almost falls into the void but Pete, her alternate universe dad, jumps through the universe and saves her, taking her back with him. Then the void closes and she starts crying hysterically because she can’t ever see the doctor again.” She could feel Daniel nod, he truly loved to hear her talk, he wanted to make her feel listened to. “But she’s dating Micky or Ricky, right?” She shifted slightly before speaking again. “Yes, it’s bad right? But they get led to some beach where a hologram of the Doctor appears and she all crying again. Then she’s says ‘I love you’ and he just stares at her for a second, her family are all there by the way, and the Doctor says ‘Rose Tyler, I’ and the hologram fades.”

Daniel gasps, “Right in front of Ricky-Micky. What a hoe.” She laughs a bit louder than expected. “I know, it’s unbelievable.” Daniel always loved gossip, no matter where it was from. “You are such an nerd baby… Oh don’t make that face, I still love you.” He dropped his head into her neck as she spoke, “I still don’t feel any better.” He let her comment sit in the air for a minute, not sure if his idea was a good one, he needed to debate it before making a decision. “I know what will make you feel better.” She looked up at him, still unable to see his face, “What?”

“An orgasm.” He mumbled against her neck with a smile. “Is that so? She replied, trying to move to face him, but his hands were firm, ensuring she wasn’t moving anywhere by keeping them on her hips. “Yeah, I heard it’s really good.” His hand slipped up her top and began to slide down her abdomen and into her underwear. She let a high sigh, just at the feeling of him touching her skin, he’d been away for far too long. “That’s it, Love, relax for me.” As soon as his fingers made contact with her clit she miss out, loud. Daniel began to run slow and teasing circles into her skin, not wanting to build her up too quick. She could feel his touch all over her body, and it just felt so good to be back in his arms, the smallest touch was euphoric. She hummed when he applied more pressure, and he pulled her flush against his chest again, needing to have full control of her body. She pushed her hip against Daniel’s hand as she began to kiss and suck on her neck. He knew this was a massive turn on for her, and so, it would heighten her pleasure. “Uh, Daniel, please” she moaned out, almost over the edge. “Go on babe, you can cum for me.” He climax was so overwhelming that her whole body was shaking, she shook her head side to side involuntarily, and pushed her hands deep into the cushions of the sofa, it felt so phenomenal that she had no control.

“Good girl.” He whisper in her ear, making her whine and squirm in his lap again. They sat there for a while, enjoying each others company. Daniel moved to kiss her lips softly, kissing always felt more intimate than sex, it was one way of showing her that he truly and deeply loved her. She shifted slightly, laying on her side, so her ear was pressed up against his chest, hearing his heart beating. It was relaxing, peaceful even. Daniel rubbed his hands up and down the side of her torso and down her thigh, making sure she felt loved during haze of her climax. “I love you.” She whispered, knowing that he would want to hear it back. It wasn’t as if he was insecure, he just like to hear how much she loved him, it made him feel appreciated.

“Come on, let me up.” He lightly smacked her thigh to move her. He felt a chill run through his body after leaving the warmth of the blankets, and her body. “Hot lemonade and paracetamol, that’s what you need.” He said, noticing her yawning. So he reached in the cupboard for another mug. “Or do you want some nightnurse? it will make you sleep better babe.” He looked back to the sofa, seeing his girlfriend smile sent a feeling of joy through his body. “Hot lemonade and nightnurse it is.”

Daniel picked her up from the sofa and brought her to the bedroom, she was exhausted, anyone could tell that. Once he got her placed on the soft mattress, he tucked her body tightly with the quilt, ensuring she stayed warm. “Danny, you’re so sweet.” He smiled, before reaching for a t-shirt to sleep in. “It’s because I love you.” He turned around to see her fast asleep, all cozied up on his side of the bed and he chuckled. She was perfect, no matter what. “Good night love.” He said as soft a possible as he got under the covers with her, pulling her body against his.

[mypoisonedvine]

I’m gonna be honest I don’t even know if this is how you send one of those little request thingy but I couldn’t stop thinking about soft dom!William Killick teasing wife!reader in public/semi-public 🤭 honestly you could write anything and I’d go feral

oh you're so sick for this I love you omfg

warnings: SMUT!! GO AWAY MINORS!!, dom william being sweet but controlling/possessive, semi public stuff of course, a little choking, housewife kink and sliiiight misogyny (definitely period accurate but also in a horny way)

"You'd let me, wouldn't you?" he taunted. "You'd let me take you right here, show them all who you belong to... like a good little wife."

You shivered, nodding as he reached up with one hand to wrap his fingers around your neck-- but the other was still between your legs, under your dress, making you whimper and look anxiously around the corner in case someone walked in. You should've known he had an ulterior motive when he suggested throwing a dinner party... William liked to keep to himself, stay in with you-- he wasn't especially social. But clearly, he had a use for bringing all your friends here... he wanted an audience, it seemed.

"You'd let me bend you over right here?" he pressed again, petting you more roughly through your panties as you arched your back, pressing your shoulders against his chest as he whispered in your ear. "Claim you, breed you--?"

"Yes, yes," you panted, "I would, William, you know I would..."

"But do you want me to?" he smirked, kissing your neck until your knees nearly buckled.

You weren't sure how to answer that. Your heart was racing with nervousness and your gut seemed to sink even just imagining someone catching you two like this. And yet, it made heat pool between your legs-- it made you throb, more desperate for him than ever. You absolutely loved belonging to him, being his 'good little wife' as he called you so often-- and you loved having him for yourself as well, so it made you a little scared to imagine anyone seeing the intimate moments that you shared with him. But knowing that no one would deny it then-- that they would be so crudely convinced you were absolutely William's property? It was certainly a tempting offer.

"I-I don't think anyone would come to our dinner parties anymore," you choked out instead of a true answer, and his laugh made you whimper just from how deep and dark and lovely it sounded; he slipped his fingers inside your panties, finally, both of you groaning as his rough fingertips slid easily through your soaked folds.

"I think some of them would be eager to come back," he whispered, "I think some of those men would kill to see you getting fucked. Don't you see how they look at you?"

You shook your head, reaching down to hold onto William's wrist as rubbed your clit just a bit too harshly.

"They want you, darling," he growled, "but they can't have you. You're mine, my precious wife--"

"Yours," you agreed in a low moan, thighs quivering as he touched you exactly the way he knew would get you to the edge fastest every time-- you loved how he had your body memorized, expertly turning you into his desperate, needy pet whenever he wanted. He could act jealous all he wanted, but you knew he craved the attention you received just as much as he despised it. Some days he wanted to keep you locked up in the house and never let another man look at you, spoiling you with his own affection instead; other days, he wanted to take you out just to show you off, flaunting you as his prize... this was apparently one of those days.

"I can do whatever I please with you," he reminded you as you purred and rocked your hips, moaning in agreement. "You're my wife, this is my home-- if I want to take you here and now, I will. No one can stop me."

You still didn't really think he would do it, though; you gasped when he tugged your panties down suddenly, pulling up the bottom of your dress and pushing you down by your shoulders so you were bent over before him. "William!" you yelped, "what if someone--"

"They won't come looking unless they hear you," he warned, "so just try to keep quiet."

But he'd opened his trousers in a moment and shoved himself into you roughly-- his pace was sudden and ruthless, and you had no time to adjust and nothing to hold onto. You knew he was going to do his best to make you as loud as possible, probably even order you to shout his name... and you, being his good little wife, were going to obey.