#first aid storage box

[sorryclarence]

Great Room Kitchen An illustration of a large country galley kitchen with a medium-tone wood floor and an island, recessed-panel cabinets, medium-tone wood cabinets, limestone countertops, a gray backsplash, and a stone slab backsplash.

[jennyjustbeatit]

Great Room San Francisco An illustration of a large country galley kitchen with a medium-tone wood floor and an island, recessed-panel cabinets, medium-tone wood cabinets, limestone countertops, a gray backsplash, and a stone slab backsplash.

[someotherdog]

she jumped back the moment his eyes snapped open, but not by much. “soap!” she cried, her voice instantly going from sorrowful and mournful to relieved and grateful. he wasn’t dead! he was near death, but he wasn’t dead. she had saved him. thank you, jesus, god, allah, zeus, thor, flying spaghetti monster, whoever the fuck was out there and listening to her teary, frenzied praying. his hand—the one he had left—grabbed her arm and she let out a keening sound without realizing. it felt like all the air squeezed out her lungs with just one touch of his hand, but she regained it all seconds later when he released his hold.

he released her, just to try and get up. her hands flew up to his shoulders, trying to hold him down. “soap—” honey was just about to be tacked on, but she caught herself. there was no time for terms of endearment, and she knew he wouldn’t appreciate the affection. “wait, stop!” she implored, uselessly trying to push him back down. she’d have better luck knocking over a brick wall with her bare hands. like before, he ignored her and tried to get up again, successfully this time. did he have nothing to say about his fucking arm being blown off? she would never understand that soldier’s mentality, how he just pushed on without dwelling on a single thing. it was baffling to her, a woman that spent most of her life reacting.

ingrid was still on the floor as the men discussed the next situation at hand. her face screwed up as gonzales stated he had dibs on one of the pods. soap threw her a look. her stomach turned. no. he didn’t even have to say it to know he was thinking it, her expression darkening as she stared at the two of them. there was no fucking way in hell she’d been through all of that with soap, just to leave him behind. didn’t he care that she dragged his ass out of an inferno after gonzales tried to stop her? didn’t he care that she needed him? did he care about her at all?

the tight smile he gave her, if it could even be classified as one, did nothing to relax her. in fact, it soured her stomach. he really meant it. he wanted to be left behind to die. how sick! the one bit of affection she received from him was the rictus he was going to wear when he fucking died, probably torn to shreds by one of those creatures or perhaps a self-inflicted gunshot wound. it was unfair. it was stupid. there had to be another way.

even as there were more bangs against the door, mere feet from her, she stayed on the ground and craned her neck to keep her angry stare on soap. it did little to deter him as the escape pods opened with a susurration behind her. soap crossed the short distance between them and lifted her off the ground like a wayward puppy picked up by their scruff. she let out a shallow yell of protest, hanging in the air for a few seconds before he placed her in the pod.

you have to go.

yes, she did. ingrid didn’t plan on staying on the ship, minutes from freedom. she just wanted soap to come along. she didn’t want to die with him, but she didn’t want to live without him, either. there had to be another way, god damn it!

“oh, screw your fucking nobility!” ingrid screamed, full of rage. she saved him just to be shoved off into space without him? in what universe did that make sense? she was being repaid poorly for saving his ass, and it just made her angrier. “don’t just fucking give up, you fucking piece of shit!” she felt like slapping soap, but there wouldn’t be a point. she was shouting into the wind. the decision had been made. “there has to be something we’re missing.“

she knew they were short on time. the banging outside the escape bay was only growing more intense, not slowing down. any creature that missed the first act was coming around for the encore. ingrid strong-armed her way out of the pod and ran towards the other side of the room, where some computer interfaces and panels were embedded into the wall. on one of the screens, she saw a camera feed that showed the hall outside. it was nearly wall-to-wall with those things. fuck.

ingrid was just delaying the inevitable, she knew that. however, that didn’t stop her. over her shoulder, she kept yelling at soap as she opened up drawers and knocked items to the ground, “i don’t fucking care, you’re not staying on this ship and that’s IT, soap! god damn it!” there was a box on the wall above her head, but she couldn’t reach it. that didn’t stop her from trying, straining on her tiptoes, her hand outstretched. her fingers only grazed it. she hadn’t stopped sobbing since they saved soap, chest heaving and tears streaming down her face.

By some divine intervention, Soap's eyes jolted open. His pupils were dilated. Somehow, breathing didn't feel natural. Air felt like smoke filling his lungs and his nose stung with every inhalation. It shot pain through the bridge of his nose and in his tear ducts. Still, he gasped for air, wildly looking around, grabbing for anything he could for a sense of where he was and what was going on. He thought he died.

A millisecond later, he realized he'd grabbed Ingrid's forearm. She was bent over him, this terrified look on her wet face. His shirt felt damp with her tears and snot. Gonzales was over her shoulder, finagling with an operating system linked to two escape pods attached to the wall. Then, all at once, it hit him: Where he was, and what was going on. Holy fuck, they made it. But there was no time to celebrate, hardly any time to feel relieved. Any remaining creatures growled weakly on the other side of the escape chamber door, still in relentless pursuit even after the explosion. And he was sure that, if there were any monsters still left on board who weren't in that corridor, he'd just alerted them all with the pellet bombs. Like ringing the dinner bell.

No time to waste.

Soap shot up, placing his palms on the ground as leverage to pull himself up—wait.

He swallowed.

Where his right arm was supposed to be, there was nothing. Just a singed end at the end of his bicep, covered just barely by the tattered sleeve of his t-shirt. Only the top sliver of his rose tattoo was left. He wanted to scream, but couldn't find the sound. Between the beeping from the operating system and the monstrous growls outside and Ingrid's sobbing right up to his face, he couldn't focus. Everything made up one nightmarish voice.

He pushed himself up once again, this time putting more weight on his left hand, and brushed past Ingrid. No time to waste.

"You're up," Gonzales quipped breathlessly, hunched over the operating system. "The emergency code they gave us doesn't work. It was never supposed to work. No one was ever supposed to escape." He typed hurriedly, trying to break the system, activate some sort of failsafe. "Anyway, we've got another problem. There's only two. And I've got dibs on one..."

Soap glanced over. The escape pods looked like metal coffins and had a small rectangular panel of glass near the face. Unopened, he could see parts of the pod through it: a breathing tube, oxygen mask, not much else. It was fit for one adult, with space for maybe a child. Even if two people could fit in the pod, that wouldn't solve the problem that they'd be shooting into the ether for God knows how long and only had enough oxygen for one person's voyage.

A sudden, but slow banging at the door snatched Soap's attention. It sounded like only one creature was outside so far. No doubt, though, others would follow.

His eyes darted to Ingrid, and by the look on his face, he hoped she knew what he was thinking. If there's only two, she had to be in one of them. No questions asked, no protests. And Soap didn't care whether Ingrid was kicking and screaming at him, he would get her to do what he wanted.

After all of this, with his life on the line and one arm gone, he was still bent on finishing his mission. Whatever it meant at this point. Before all of this, he hadn't had much left anyway. His army buddies were all dead and gone and whoever was left alive in his family didn't give a damn about him. Soap was all there was that was left, and it made sense, he thought, for him to die on this ship. Something in the pit of his stomach told him that it was all supposed to unfold this way, anyway. One way or another, he was going to die, and for some reason, life thought it appropriate to make him the last one alive. Maybe watching everyone die was supposed to teach him something important, but the revelation never came. And it never would.

Just one escape pod left. He shared one final look with Ingrid, almost like the one they'd had before they left the infirmary—but this one felt different. More final. Because he thought it'd make her feel better, he smiled. It wasn't a big smile by any means, and it could hardly be classified as a smile, but after all this time maybe Ingrid would come to appreciate it and knew exactly what it was—the way his tired mouth thinned ever so slightly and a stunted sigh left his nose.

If things went according to plan, she would go back home and tell everyone what happened. Bring some justice to every innocent person who'd died on the ship and shine light on a new alien life force that could potentially be dangerous if it ever found earth. In his head he imagined her hunched over a petri dish, watching the mutation happen to a cluster of cells just like it happened to all the passengers on this ship. And she'd be sure that nothing like this ever happened again.

But even if things didn't go according to plan or didn't have that credits-roll finish, all he'd wish for for Ingrid was her to live peacefully.

That was it. This was it.

A second later it sounded like more than one creature was banging at the door now. Their mutated and mangled faces slobbered all over the glass panel on the escape chamber door. At the same time, Soap heard a beeping—and the pair of escape pods hissed open.

"Fuck yes!" Gonzales cheered, taking off all of his gear and getting ready to board one of the pods.

Soap reached for Ingrid, intent on grabbing her and shoving her in the pod. With only one arm, she had more space to fight back, but he managed to lift her by the shirt into the pod. Her feet lined up with the markings on the ground. Two feet, for one person. He took the oxygen mask and shoved it against her chest.

There was no thank you. No goodbye. Just, "you have to go."

He turned to walk over to the operating system, big bright letters on the screen reading READY.

[triptuckers]

nothing without you - remy lebeau

Request: nope Pairing:  remy lebeau x reader Summary:  remy loses his beloved cards and you figure something out about him Warnings:  mentions of anxiety, mentions of blood/wounds (nothing big), remy is a lil sad :( Word count: 1.5K A/N: do I know anything about gambit or his lore? no. I do know I went to see deadpool & wolverine again and now I need him to call me chéri. enjoy!

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you knew remy loved his cards. after a while you'd lost track trying to count them. in every pocket of every piece of clothing he owned, you'd find a deck of cards. it was an entire chore to empty all of his pockets before doing laundry. and still some of them would end up in the washing machine, and they'd come out all soggy and messed up.

if he would round them all up, you're sure he'd be able to fill an entire storage box. he always had at least one pack of cards on him.

but there was always that one favorite pack of cards. the one he took with him on missions, the one he always had on him "just in case".

and now it's missing.

ever since he found out he lost it, remy has been heartbroken.

you helped him search for it, turning the whole place upside down. remy was the first to give up the search. he told you he'd accepted the fact he lost them, but you knew he was just too sad to have lost them to keep on searching.

his powers didn't have anything to do with that specific deck of cards, they were simply his favorite. he'd had them since he was a kid, learned all of his skills with them. of course they were special to him.

you tried to cheer him up by getting him a new deck and talking about his other decks, but nothing seemed to help.

you'd noticed he'd grown more restless since losing the cards.

from the moment you met him, you had only ever seen him with a deck of cards in his hand. safe for the moments where he was doing something that required both of his hands. but his fingers were never far from the cards.

now that he's lost them, he's constantly holding on to other things. you'd never really considered remy to be a very anxious person, but he's fidgeting constantly now.

if you're sitting next to him he's playing with your fingers or the hem of your shirt. he's tapping patterns that make no sense to you on your thigh. he'd repeatedly tap his own fingertips against each other.

right now, he's sitting on the couch after getting back from a mission. he got a nasty cut on his forehead but otherwise he was fine. you just got back from fetching the first aid kit from the kitchen when you see him staring off into space while rapidly tapping his fingers on his leg.

'hey.' you say, sitting on the salon table in front of him.

he blinks a few times before his eyes settle on yours.

'you okay?' you ask.

remy nods, but you can tell something's bothering him. you decide to let it rest until after you take care of him. it can wait.

you scoot closer to him, opening the first aid kid.

'I'll need to clean it first, before I can bandage it.' you say softly. 'it might sting a little.'

'it's okay, chéri.' he says.

you carefully put some rubbing alcohol on a cotton wad and lean in. as you gently press it on his forehead, remy sucks in a breath and closes his eyes.

'sorry.' you say, as you start to slowly wipe the cotton wad over the wound to get rid of the dirt and blood.

you feel something on your leg and when you briefly glance down, you see remy is fidgeting with a loose thread of your pants. they were really his, but you stole them so long ago they're basically yours now. you always had to roll them up a couple of times before you could wear them, otherwise they were too long.

as you get out a fresh cotton wad, you notice remy still has his eyes closed. he really hasn't been the same since he lost his favorite deck of cards, and you're worried about him.

'remy?' you say.

he hums in response as you lean in to finish cleaning the wound on his forehead. you put the bloody cotton wad on the ground next to you so you can throw it away later.

'talk to me. what's going on?' you say.

'I didn't look where I was going, the knife barely missed me but it nicked me. I should-'

'I'm not talking about today's mission, love.'

remy opens his eyes and looks at you with a slight frown on his face. you give him a soft smile.

'you've been... different. and it's okay, I just want to know how I can help you. you haven't been yourself since you lost your favorite cards.'

he closes his eyes again and leans into your touch as you bandage his forehead. his fingers are still playing with your pants.

'they keep my mind off of things.' he says eventually.

'the cards?' you say.

remy nods. 'I've got something to do with my hands. I can think about the cards. not about... other stuff.'

'all done, my love.' you say, when you finish bandaging him up. you press a soft kiss to the bandage and look down to find remy looking up at you.

'thank you, mon amour.'

'you're welcome.'

you get up to put the first aid kit away and throw the trash out. then you get back to join remy on the couch.

his fingers immediately take a hold of yours as he starts to play around with them.

'you know, I never figured you for a very anxious person.' you say.

'I'm not.'

'baby, you can't keep your finger still. and when you're doing something with both of your hands, your leg is always bouncing up and down.'

remy frowns. 'I do that?'

'it's usually something people do subconsciously. then again, being the gambit is a pretty stressful job.'

'I guess.'

you turn to look at remy. 'you really miss your cards, huh?'

'chéri, you have no idea.' sighs remy.

'I'm sorry we didn't find them.' you say.

'it's not your fault.' says remy, leaning in to press a soft kiss to your cheek. he knows it's not anyone's fault but his own. he probably lost them somewhere outside, because they did search the entire house. every cabinet and under every piece of furniture.

'how about we watch a movie? try to get your mind off of it for at least an hour or two?' you suggest.

'sure, alright.' says remy.

'you pick the movie, I'll get the snacks.' you say, getting up to go to the kitchen.

you get out a bowl and half a bag of popcorn. you dump it in the bowl and stuff the empty package in the trash, which is nearly overflowing. knowing it'll only annoy you in the morning, you let out a sigh as you take it out.

after taking it out of the bin - which took more effort than you would have liked - you close it and take it out the backdoor. just as you throw it in the larger bin outside, something purple catches your eye.

you walk over to where it is sticking out from under the bin. as you drag the bin away so you can take a closer look, you see a familiar rectangular box.

remy's beloved cards. his very favorite deck.

you quickly snatch it up and head back inside.

when you get back to the living room you see remy has picked one of your favorite movies.

'hey.' he says, glancing over his shoulder at you. 'no snacks?'

'I've got something better.' you say.

remy looks over his shoulder again and his eyes land on your bright smile, then drop to your hands.

'tada!' you say. 'found them outside under the bin! I knew we didn't lose them and they had to be around somewhere so I-'

you're cut off when remy grabs your face and kisses you. you hadn't even noticed him getting up and walking to you in two quick and long strides.

'mon amour, you're the best!' he says, smiling at you. he kisses you again and you can feel he's still smiling.

he pulls back and takes the deck of cards you're holding up for him. instantly, he takes them out of the case and twirls them around, throwing them in the air and catching them again.

you watch as his face lights up. you're so glad he's got his favorite cards and he looks like your remy again. you watch him for a while, following the cards with your eyes.

eventually, he puts them away and pulls you against his chest, making you laugh as he hugs you tight.

'oh, what would I do without you?' he says as he pulls back slightly so he can look at you.

'well you'd have to find someone new to fix you up after a fight. and to find your cards. and take care of-'

'alright, alright, I get it, I'm nothing without you.'

'and don't you forget it.'

'I won't, chéri, I promise you I never will.'

A/N:If you want to request something, make sure to read my house rulesHere’s the list of characters I write for. Everything that I have written can be found on my masterlist. Please don’t repost, steal or translate my work, as I spend much time and effort on it!! Thank you for reading! Much love, Marit

[crguang]

wasted with longing, part 3

Knowing Kafka is a rollercoaster of emotions you can’t escape from no matter how much you beg to touch the ground.

friends with benefits, f!reader, some domestic bliss before the storm, 6.5k words

A/N: no smut warning woah…. actual development woahhh… cant believe i wrote this much without throwing in some sex i think i might like this criminal :/

part two part four

“So… Can I come in?”

Kafka’s self-assured tone sounds lazy, indifferent to the predicament she finds herself in, and her lips are fixed in that practiced smile like she’s genuinely happy to see you despite bleeding through her shirt on your doorstep. You stare at her disheveled state, a hundred questions dancing on your tongue and unable to voice any of them. Instead, you open the front door wider and urgently usher her into your apartment with a hand wrapped around her uninjured bicep. Kafka makes a sound of surprise, though it fails to convey any. She lets herself be moved and quietly walks further inside your place. 

“What happened?” The door shuts behind you, but you’re already leading her down the hallway towards your small bathroom. “Where do you even come from?!”

Your words quaver more than you would like as you flip the switch and motion for her to sit on the toilet seat. You can feel her eyes on you while you messily rummage through the cupboards beneath the sink, pushing old medicine bottles aside and cleaning products out of the way. The weight in your stomach grows heavier the longer you search for your first-aid kit, shutting the wooden cupboards and throwing open the one behind the mirror desperately. Apart from prescribed and over the counter medication, you find nothing that would be of help at this moment.

“Where is it?… Fuck, where is it?!” You lay your palms flat on the counter, head dropping low to think. 

“Calm down,” Kafka says calmly, a slightly amused lilt in her voice, “I’m not going to die.”

You ignore her horrible attempt at reassuring you and try to recall when was the last time you used the bandages in the kit. You cut yourself cooking some weeks ago but you remember going to the bathroom to fish them out… It has to be around here somewhere. You bite your bottom lip anxiously, your pulse in your ears like an oppressive presence, and force yourself to take in a breath so you don’t succumb to your panic. If it’s not in this room, it must be laying in your storage closet. You spare the other woman a glance to find her already looking at you, obediently silent. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain but you know it’s a facade, you’re only taken aback by how easy it is for her to pretend that nothing is amiss. You straighten up, run a hand over your face to clear your head and order her not to move before walking out to find the aforementioned closet.

You make an even bigger mess of your storage closet as you search for the med kit, lifting boxes you don’t recognize and throwing plastic bags full of random trinkets out in the hallway. Your heart is in your throat, you can feel your eyes sting with the familiar weight of unshed tears, but you can’t stop looking. The thought of Kafka bleeding out before anything is done appears in your distressed mind and worsens your anxiety despite the probability of it happening being low. If this wound turns out to be something you can’t stabilize on your own, you’ll call the emergency services. You push aside a basket filled with yarn, letting  out a shuddering breath at the sight of a clear case with a red cross on it. You waste no time grabbing it and heading for the bathroom, not bothering to close the closet door. When you walk back in, Kafka has managed to take off her bloody shirt and is facing the mirror over the sink, a hand still applying firm pressure on her shoulder. She turns your way to acknowledge you and takes a peek at the box in your hands. 

“What are you doing? Sit down,” you swallow the lump in your throat so you don’t sound as strained. 

Putting the kit on the counter and lifting the lid, you take out a few non-stick bandages. From your peripheral vision, you see Kafka complying with your shaky command and suppressing a chuckle. She hasn’t said much so far, which is uncharacteristic of her quick witted nature. You pick up a clean face towel from one of the shelves in the corner and rinse it with warm water. You step in front of her and gesture to the wound.

“Let me clean it.”

Once again, Kafka doesn’t protest. Her guarded gaze is on you, following every twitch of your brows and inaudible intake of breath, almost sizing you up as you lean in close to treat her wound. Her small smile is frozen on her face, and you can’t tell what it’s meant to convey anymore. She carefully takes her hand off her shoulder. The small puncture wound leaves a bloody trail down her skin, but even you can tell that it’s no longer bleeding profusely; the worries filling your head shrink and finally allow you to think more rationally. You bring the wet towel to her skin. You’re more meticulous with your hands than you thought you could be, softly washing away the specks of dried blood on her shoulder and around the injury. At this distance you see faint bluish veins that you had no reason to notice before, they slither down her neck and fade away above her collarbone. You wipe the deep red from her usually flawless skin, brushing over it with a mindfulness opposite from the lustful touches you’re accustomed to; your sole intention is to soothe her pain instead of taking pleasure from her. You are suddenly aware of her proximity in this unfamiliar context. She sits close without the headiness of sex, quiet and alert, and you can feel the warmth of her body from where you stand, your head is bowed and one of her thighs rests between yours. 

Kafka looks up at you through her lashes but you have no way of understanding the light behind her eyes. You think perhaps all of her strength goes to withstand the pain she’s in. You still feel your beating heart against your ribcage, its erratic pace gently growing steady, while her chest rises and falls easily. Your breaths fill the silence around you. As the cloth delicately clears away the blood, you sneak a glance at her and your eyes meet. Your hand falters on her skin. Her rosy-lilac irises speak of tenderness that does not fit her, like a deceiving front to conceal her emotional distance. You see them but there is nothing beyond them, nothing that she allows you to glimpse at. Even so, you’re privy to a side of her you don’t yet know. There’s still traces of blood on her cheek she meant to wipe off before seeing you, and without thinking, you lift the towel higher to clean it off with a few smooth strokes. Kafka blinks once and you do the same rapidly, sharply turning away from her piercing stare to finish dressing her wound. In the stillness of your home, new truths are unknowingly written. 

To stop the bleeding and prevent infections, you take out square non-adhesive bandages and peel one of them off. She’ll have to see an actual doctor for treatment, but you realize that the situation is not as bad as you initially thought. The sight of her bloody shirt and glove terrified you at first glance; you slowly realize that all of it must not have been hers. Unease settles in your stomach a second time. What could she possibly be implicated in to show up at your door with an injury like this?

“Why’d you come here?” You ask softly now that the worst has passed, eyes focused on carefully applying the bandage to her skin. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital for this?” 

“Wasn’t serious enough,” Kafka replies nonchalantly. She gazes at your furrowing brows and incredulous expression like she’s been doing since you opened the door. She doesn’t answer the first question.

“Serious enough? Your shirt is dyed red. How’d you even get this?”

“It’s just a gunshot wound. A little Band-Aid should fix me right up.”

“What the fuck?!”

In your loud disbelief your fingers press into the small hole in her shoulder and Kafka winces, clenching her jaw tightly. You quickly withdraw your hand. The bandage is halfway peeling off from her skin and she brings a gloved hand up to properly apply it herself. 

You step back from her frame, lips parted in incredulity. “You got shot?”

Kafka uses her free hand to peel off the second bandage and apply it over the first one, not looking at you as she does so. “Relax, the bullet didn’t go all the way in and I already took it out. It’s a minor scrape now.”

“You got shot?”

“Ugh, not so loud… I’ve had a long day.”

“You need to see a doctor. Are you insane?”

She raises her head towards you. “I don’t need a doctor, just a place to stay until tomorrow.”

You swallow thickly, lifting a hand to your hairline and pacing back and forth in the enclosed space. You can’t believe what she’s saying. No normal person just gets shot on a random Thursday and acts so nonchalant about it— having seen the proof of it, your mind is reeling with questions you’re not sure you want the answers to. Kafka has always had an air of mystery around her and the kind of confidence that makes you think that she’s invincible. Looking at her now, sitting in your bathroom after you tended to her wound and seemingly unbothered by the favor she’s asking of you, your chest constricts with a foreboding feeling you can’t name. Your gaze drops to her discarded shirt on the floor. You want to ask her what she’s done, whose blood is on her clothes, but your throat tightens as if begging you to keep your mouth shut. Kafka watches the emotions play out on your face and speaks up again.

“You stayed home.”

It takes a few seconds to meet her eyes, your reply agitated, “What?”

“Last time we talked, I told you not to go to work today. Despite your lack of trust in me, you stayed home. Why?”

She seems to be genuinely wondering why, but you don’t have an answer to give her. You don’t know. There was something about the seriousness with which she suggested you call out of work that made you uneasy come this morning, all traces of her usual aloofness were gone, even if she meant for her delivery to be casual so as to not rouse any suspicions. It was a split decision, you picked up your phone and called in sick before fully understanding the implications of your actions. You trusted your gut, not her. 

“Something came up,” you lie instead and confront her, “You knew something was going to happen today— or planned to come by, that’s why you wanted me here, right? You know I get off work at 7 and I wouldn't have been home.”

Kafka gives nothing away but you know she doesn’t believe your white lie. If she feels anything about this show of distrust, she keeps her cards close to her chest. She shrugs with her uninjured shoulder.

“Maybe I just missed you.”

There it is, that flirty, teasing expression you’re used to seeing on her face. She’s deflecting and is for once doing a terrible job at it. She won’t tell you the truth, you know that much. Irritation burns the walls of your throat. In a way, you’re both lying to each other so you shouldn’t expect something you yourself are not ready to give her; then again, she’s the one who showed up at your door with a swelling injury and she has the guts to ask you to stay overnight while blatantly ignoring your attempts at finding out the circumstances of her situation. You don’t react to her taunt, you only cross your arms and stare at her, unamused. Your heartbeat has picked up several paces and you’re uncomfortable with the awareness of it drumming inside you. Kafka sighs in faux-exasperation. 

“It’s only for tonight. I’ll be gone in the morning.” When you don’t reply, she hesitantly adds, “Please.”

You’re torn, her stubbornness will keep her from seeking a medical expert and you have no idea what she did to get it in the first place. Either way, she’s putting herself in danger, and if you let her stay for a while at least you can make sure she doesn’t worsen her condition before her wound stops bleeding completely… You run a hand over your face. Might as well make dinner for two. 

Kafka’s in the shower and you’re chopping the vegetables you bought earlier this afternoon, your mind a few miles away as you move efficiently around the kitchen. You told her that if she was going to sleep over, she should change into more comfortable clothes. Weirdly, she didn’t make any lewd comments and simply accepted the oversized shirt and plaid pyjama pants you gave her before walking out of the bathroom.. She must have a lot on her mind too, you suppose. Maybe she’ll be more inclined to share a little later. The pasta is currently boiling so you get started on the sauce, letting it simmer on the stove while you take care of the veggies you’ll be steaming to eat as a side. The running water quickly becomes background noise while you busy yourself, a sound you’re not very used to hearing when you’re not the one showering, but the pitter-patter relaxes you a touch. You’re no longer on the edge of an anxiety attack, though worry still resides in the depths of your heart considering the situation you find yourself in. You try to focus on the dinner you’re cooking instead of the bloodstained memory of Kafka’s clothes. They’re in the washing machine now, but you remember how soaked they were vividly, crimson and haunting. You instantly thought the worst, and when suddenly confronted with the prospect of losing her, you panicked. Anyone would have reacted the same in the face of a bleeding person, you tell yourself, but you can’t deny that the thought deeply unnerves you. 

You don’t register the sound of the water being turned off. You stir the rosé sauce and lower the heat under the vegetables, then incorporate the pasta into the creamy goodness. The smell of freshly cooked pasta fills your nose and reminds you of how little you ate today. You take out two plates from a cabinet and pour a generous serving in each one, adding a little more vegetables for yourself. You’re gently laying them on the kitchen island in the middle of the room when Kafka walks in with her hair still damp from the shower. Her face is bare, her long locks loose past her shoulders, and she’s wearing the clothes you lent her. The shirt hangs around her thighs over the cotton pants, big enough to be cozy on her. She looks… mundane, more refreshed than an hour ago. In such plain attire, she doesn’t seem as enigmatic or intimidating, but rather like your average citizen. It’s a harsh contrast to the way she presents herself and the cocky, in control woman you usually see. She strides into the kitchen and leans on the island to glimpse at the food you made. You don’t realize that you’re staring until she looks at you and raises an eyebrow, a small confident smile on her lips.

“See something you like?”

You avert your gaze and turn around to take out the parmesan from the fridge. Your skin warms up from the embarrassment of getting caught, but you manage to hide your flustered expression from her sight. Your stomach buzzes with a feeling you attribute to bashfulness. This is yet another side of Kafka you’re discovering, she’s never stayed until morning light before. You’ve long exceeded the limits of what you’re familiar with tonight, the feeling is the same as the night you undressed her for the time; excitement and nervousness swirled in your belly, each caress revealing inches of unexplored skin to your eager touch. You face her again and find that in this moment, you feel no disquiet. 

“Is that for me?” Kafka sits on the stool across from you and points to one of the plates. 

You grate some parmesan on top of the pasta before pushing the portion towards her. She stares at it for a few seconds then lifts her questioning eyes to yours. She seems to hesitate for the time it takes you to pull out a fork from a drawer and give it to her, but she eventually thanks you quietly. She means it for more than dinner. You nod once in acknowledgement. 

You take a seat on the stool next to her and glance at the way she turns the fork over in her hand, looking at the food in search of answers instead of eating it. For a couple minutes there’s only the sound of metal on ceramic as you eat while Kafka is lost in thought, absentmindedly picking at her vegetables. After swallowing another bite, you decide that you’re sick of the awkward silence. 

“You don’t eat pasta?”

Kafka blinks. In an instant, her cryptic smile stretches her lips and she stabs some pasta onto her fork, sticking it into her mouth. Her face lights up after the first chew. “Mmm. Never had a home cooked meal that actually tastes like food.”

“Really?”

“I’m not much of a cook.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She purses her lips, silverware hovering in the air, though she’s not offended. 

“I just can’t picture you wearing an apron.”

“That’s because you usually picture me wearing nothing.”

You make a face but don’t refute her point, to which Kafka’s smile widens an inch. You stuff food into your mouth to give you time to think of a reply. She watches you with an amused look, leaning her chin in her hand.

“Not even a little protest…”

“Oh, shut up,” you shot back indignantly, “should’ve dropped the bottle of hot sauce on your plate…”

Kafka’s deep chuckle compels you to look at your dinner instead of her. “Makes no difference to me. My pain tolerance is pretty high, it might make the flavors pop out a bit more.”

You’re reminded of how easily she kept her composure earlier, as if getting shot at is a regular occurrence for her. Flashes of her bleeding shoulder come back to your mind and you quiet down a bit, poking a broccoli with the tip of your fork. Kafka immediately senses the shift in your mood. She pauses, watches you toy with the vegetable for a short moment, then twirls her own fork in her hand.

“Don’t worry,” she reads your mind effortlessly, “a scrape like that will heal in no time and will barely leave a scar. Besides, you won’t care much for it the next time I’m undressing in front of you.”

You roll your eyes at the innuendo but it successfully brings you out of your thoughts for the time being. You lightly shake your head.

“Is sex the only thing on your mind?”

“Not the only thing…” she drawls, but the way her gaze drops to your chest and leisurely trails up to stare into your eyes, the beginnings of a smirk on her lips, suggests otherwise. She rhythmically taps the island’s surface with a finger. 

“...Just eat your food.”

Kafka laughs softly and complies. You’re thankful for her restraint to make a dirty joke. As you both eat, the atmosphere around you shifts into a comfortable space you don’t feel the need to fill with mundanities. Still, you end up telling her about yourself after some prompting, about your friends, how it felt to move away from your parents and get your own place— even the doubts about your career and how you don’t think it’s something you want to do anymore. Kafka watches you all the while, her cheek in her palm, and comments on certain things but mostly keeps quiet. You don’t realize how much you’ve confided because she’s surprisingly an excellent listener and you get a little high from her undivided attention. Your almost empty plates lie forgotten on the kitchen island. You turn on the stool to face her fully at some point, your knees brushing her thigh, and the casual, innocent contact makes your heart race. Her presence is just as exciting outside of the context of a hookup, your pulse creates a melody for this moment. Unbeknown to you, you've already made up your mind; she looks prettier under the kitchen lights at night. 

“You should quit,” Kafka repeats the advice she told you days ago, following the movement of your head as it tips backwards in exasperation. “You can make money doing anything, you might as well enjoy what you do.”

“It’s not that simple,” you argue, “my life is stable as is. I don’t even know what I want— it would be so irresponsible to drop everything just because I’m not fully satisfied with how things are now.”

“Then find out what you want and execute it.”

You sigh loudly, leaning on the island to rest your forehead on your arm. She makes it sound easy but quitting your research job in an engineering department might damage the fragments of relationship you have with your parents. You only see them a couple times a year, sometimes for a week during the summer, but they make sure to let you know how proud they are that the money they invested in you is paying off. You know they can’t control you anymore and yet, the guilt of them struggling to put you through school is ingrained in your gray matter. Despite the heavy weight they constantly put on your shoulders, you truly do want to please them. You moved to another corner of the world and can still hear your mother’s disapproving voice in your ears. 

“I wish I knew if whatever I end up doing is the right choice,” you mutter, laying your chin on your forearm and staring straight ahead. “It’d be nice to know how this all ends.”

Kafka doesn’t respond immediately. She ponders for a while, fingers drumming on the stainless steel. 

“Mmm. There’s more joy to be found in the unknown, I think,” she says after a pause. “More excitement.”

“More anxiety too.”

“They often come together, don’t they? Both make you feel alive, having one without the other might breed a certain… emptiness.”

You furrow your brows. “You’ve clearly never felt anxious.”

Kafka only smiles softly. “In any case, you can’t live your life fulfilling other people’s wishes. I’ve never found selfishness to be ugly.”

Once the plates and pans are washed half an hour later, you stop by the bedroom to pick up a blanket and a pillow for Kafka to sleep with. You walk back into the living room, items under your arms, to see her sitting cross-legged on the couch, TV remote in hand. The screen is bright in the dim light and illuminates the room around it, painting moving shadows on the walls. You put the pillow down on the armrest with the folded blanket over it. Kafka is scrolling through your streaming applications and stops to acknowledge you. 

“Want to watch something?” She asks. “I don’t remember the last time I sat down for a full movie.”

The invitation is so ordinary that you hesitate for a few seconds. Watching a movie after cooking her dinner…? A corner of your mind is screaming that this sounds like a casual date but you quickly shake that thought away for its absurdity. She needed a place to stay for the night, that’s all. Once again, she’s more using you than anything else, you’re a safe place to come to because you have trouble refusing her. You prove your own theory right by accepting her offer and closing the hallway and kitchen lights before taking a seat next to her, putting a reasonable distance between you. You fold your legs on the couch and lay a forearm on the armrest as Kafka continues to scroll through the different apps. She lets out comments like “sounds boring” and “ugh” after skipping certain movies. She’s mostly talking under her breath, eyes fixed on the TV screen. The blue light applies a similar hue to her skin tone and adds vitality to her irises, they appear more vivid and alert. The sharp shadows in her hair are even darker against such a vibrant source of light and the sight of her brings to mind a beautifully composed photograph. You take a mental picture of her like this, in sleepwear with her hair free of the ponytail she puts it in every day, staring intently at the screen like a kid who’s been allowed to stay up past her bedtime. 

“What about a horror movie?” You propose, taking your eyes off her frame to look at the TV.

“No. They’re never scary. This one looks less mediocre than the others.”

You read the synopsis of a psychological thriller together. The movie doesn’t particularly speak to you but you tell her it seems nice anyway. You’re not surprised to learn that she enjoys mind games. Kafka adjusts her position on the couch so that she’s mimicking your own and presses play, leaning an elbow on the armrest to rest her cheek on top of her fist. You try to focus on the movie, the pacing is too slow to catch your tired mind’s attention for more than ten minutes at a time, and an hour passes with you sneaking glimpses at the woman next to you from your peripheral vision. She’s not close enough that you can feel her warmth like you could in the bathroom earlier, but the air around you feels the same; a sort of domestic intimacy that has no place between the two of you because you can’t imagine meaning that much to someone like her. You can’t snuff it out, no matter how many times you tell yourself to look at the scene in front of you. Since she’s waltzed into your kitchen hours ago, you can’t help noticing habits that give you the false impression that you know her. Her fingers twitch when she’s lost in thought, they typically drum on whatever surface she can get her hands on or subtly move in the air like she’s conducting a symphony. She eats her vegetables last. She doesn’t shy away from eye contact when you speak. These little things don’t make up a person, and yet, for someone who doesn’t reveal much of herself, they’re quirks that few get to see. 

Kafka is watching the movie with an unimpressed expression, which has you suppressing a smile. Occasionally, she comments on whatever is happening—mostly complaints about the direction the movie is going or how much better it would be if the human responses were more realistic. You simply nod along, already somewhat dozing off near the climax of the story. The aftermath of your anxious evening is catching up with you and you’re in a comfortable enough position at the moment, it doesn’t take long for fatigue to descend on your body. Your eyelids can’t bear their own weight and you rest your eyes for a couple of minutes, leaning your head on the armrest. You don’t witness how the movie ends. You’re falling asleep on the couch, the TV acting like background noise, and you forget that this is where Kafka is supposed to sleep. You don’t register soft fabric being laid over you, only catch sweet notes of vanilla belonging to the soap you use in the shower.

A sore ache in your neck pulls you out of a dream whose contents now elude you. Your brows twist indignantly, a muted groan vibrates along your throat, and you drowsily turn over on the couch to face the back cushions. You hear the bathroom door open and close, which eventually reminds you that you’re not alone in the house. Your eyes slowly blink open at the thought, momentarily blinded by the living room’s semi-darkness. It takes a minute to regain your bearings, you turn over a second time and notice soft threads of morning light seeping through the cracks of the closed blinds. It must be a new day already, though not very early based on how gloomy it still is outside. You have the reflex to check your phone for the time and realize that you don’t remember its last location. The cozy blanket falls to your lap when you sit up to look around the room. You’re rubbing the sleep out of your eyes as you recall the events of last night; Himeko calling, opening the door to a disheveled Kafka, rushing her to the bathroom for basic treatment… In between two of those, you must have discarded your phone somewhere here out of panic and didn’t touch it once afterwards, too preoccupied by the dizzying sensation of finally seeing past Kafka’s usual demeanor. Pulling the blanket off of you, you quickly scan the coffee table and check the couch cushions in case you threw the device on it yesterday and it fell through the cracks. Your fingertips touch the silicone of your phone case deep between the cracks of back pillows. You only struggle to pull it out for a few seconds, sighing in relief when you have it back in your hands, Tapping open the screen, you learn that it is currently a little past 5 in the morning and curse under your breath at the reminder of work in a couple of hours after spending the night on your couch. You scroll down the notification screen to see if you got any last night.

You’re confused at the amount of text messages you didn’t receive due to your phone being on silent. You blink rapidly at the dozens of concerned texts wondering how you are coming from your friends and some coworkers you get along with. You got a message from Himeko right after you hung up on her, but it’s just three question marks in succession so you make a mental note to call her back this evening. Opening the multiple texts a coworker sent you, you don’t comprehend them immediately. Your thumb hovers over the screen as you read the words “Stellaron Hunters” and “infiltrated”, and in a moment of denial, you exit the conversation to open another from a friend repeatedly asking if you’re safe. They sent an article attached to the first message; it’s a publication dating from around 6 PM last night posted by an IPC affiliated news company popular in the city. You don’t feel the instant your chest stutters at its contents. Unblinking, you stare at the urgent sentences reporting an incursion in the building you’ve worked in for years by a group of people you’ve only vaguely heard of from gossip around the office. The Stellaron Hunters, interstellar criminals notorious for their worth in credits, had the means to break into the mechanical engineering research lab of the Intelligentsia Guild with the goal of stealing hardware for a machine you remember personally working on about 8 months ago. You were part of the team of researchers assigned to this project to make sure it was a viable one before it could be produced. Once the green light is given, it gets sent to the lab and is out of your hands. You recall doing extensive research for it in a small time frame because it was a priority for your supervisors to start working on it as soon as possible. Now, the key component was the target of a larceny. 

As you read, the world outside of the screen and the muffling in your ears disappears. Your digit quivers over the words “multiple casualties”. Most of them are security guards who attempted to stop the thieves in action, but some of the engineers you once met in person have also been stated as losses. Your eyes sting from being kept open for longer than a minute, you can’t hear the trembling breaths clumsily tripping past your lips either. The death toll is 19 human lives— all for a piece of hardware. Your collar seemingly constricts your throat, choking you silent. You are trapped by sudden guilt, it teasingly snakes around your guts and squeezes them tight like tentacles around an easy prey. What-ifs rush at you as if mocking your cowardice; what if you hadn't worked on this project and hadn’t allowed it to see the day, what if you switched careers like you’ve been wanting to for a long time… You don’t look at your hands but your mind supplies the image of them dipped in blood regardless. The white page of the article burns your retinas, yet you scroll further down to read the end of it. The IPC has taken matters into their own hands and sent out forces to apprehend the culprits while they still hide in the city, which does nothing to alleviate your distress because the Stellaron Hunters wouldn’t have earned a reputation if they were so easily caught. You dread the idea of facing your coworkers again after such a tragic event, even more so the simple thought of walking back into that building knowing what transpired there. You finally squeeze your eyes shut with a shaky exhale, trying not to picture red stained floors and mechanical equipment. When you open them again, the attached pictures at the end of the publication freezes the blood in your veins.

This is your first time associating faces to the group of criminals who are only ever mentioned by their faction name. The phone screen turns dark from inactivity but the wanted poster is seared into the walls of your occipital lobe, creating a reality-perfect image of the woman’s enigmatic smile and unmistakable rosy irises. Your reflection stares back at you, expressing consternation, and in the same instant, the bathroom door opens again. Heeled footsteps make their way down the hallway like a foreboding rhythm, clacking across the wooden tiles on a mission to reach the front door. The weight on your chest grows heavier once they’re close, and they eventually come to a stop behind the couch you’re sitting on. Your fingers tremble at the sound of her voice near your ears. 

“You’re awake.”

It hits you, then. What happened last night, how Kafka received that gunshot wound, her advice from earlier this week—- it was a warning rolled in a layer of passivity, a peculiar request she couldn’t tell you the extent of without revealing her hand. If you had gone to work yesterday, one of the casualties could have been you. Her and the Stellaron Hunters must have been planning this for a while, perhaps weeks or months. You feel as though you’ve fallen in the ocean from a great height in the middle of the night, an icy wave of hurt clogs your ears and has you succumbing under the tumultuous waters. 

Kafka tilts her head to the side and makes a teasing remark about you not being fully up and about, rounding the couch to wave a gloved hand in front of your face. Your head mechanically turns to look up at her. She’s dressed in the clothes she wore yesterday that she put in the dryer as you were washing the dishes. Her hair is in its everyday loose ponytail, aside from the sunglasses over her head and down to her asymmetrical boots, she’s ready to go. Her coat is on, leading you to believe that she planned to slip away while you were still asleep. Kafka observes the brewing emotions on your face and the heavy rise of your chest, then takes a quick glance at the phone still in your hands. Her relaxed smile drops an inch. You stare at each other for a moment and she doesn’t say another word during that time, reading you through the purse of your lips and the contempt in your eyes. After a minute of quiet, she lazily crosses her arms under her breasts. 

“You don’t seem scared,” she says without breaking eye contact, like she’s close to figuring you out but is missing an important variable.

You don’t dwell on the fact that you are indeed not afraid of her or what she’s capable of, mainly wounded by the amount of stuff she’s kept from you. If you knew who she was back in that store, you would have never let her approach you no matter how intriguing she looked. It’s as you think this that you realize something else; her efforts in pursuing you coincide with the time you had just finished working on that major project and you can’t help thinking that all of it might have been premeditated. Your stomach churns. 

You manage to find your voice, swallowing once to wet your dry throat. “Were you never going to tell me?” Your sentence comes out weaker than it should have, bordering on pathetic affront.

“No.”

Her honesty gives you whiplash. For all she’s lied about and omitted, she chooses to be honest when it hurts the most. 

“It was always going to play out like this,” she continues, “some things are inevitable and all possibilities are already written. This way is less gruesome than the others, don’t you think?”

“What does that mean?”

Kafka smiles with her eyes closed but instead of a comfortable familiarity, it raises the hair on your arms. 

“Well, I’m happy to know that you heeded my advice. I even looked for you and got hurt in the process. Quite chivalrous of me, isn’t it?”

Her lighthearted comment sounds like it’s meant to assuage the maelstrom of feelings mounting inside of you. It is so ridiculous, so devoid of genuine meaning, that it only stokes the burning embers under your skin. You struggle to contain your outrage, the sight of her pleased smile and indifferent posture has your fingers curl into a fist.

“Aw, don’t make that face,” Kafka uncrosses her arms and pulls at the ends of one glove so it fits snuggly on her hand, “this is the best possible outcome. I made sure of it.”

“Out.” You’re surprised the word made it out of your clenched jaw, and by its frigidity. She looks you over and even after everything, you notice the slight dip of her lips. You repeat yourself. “Get out.”

“Still upset?”

“Leave, or I will tell the authorities where you are.”

In a flash, a light glimmers in Kafka’s eyes and her features twist with amusement. “Really? You’d be accused of complicity.”

You know that. Your anger is impulsive and a darker part of you wishes to cause her turmoil like the one she’s putting you through. Kafka watches you closely. Her attention doesn’t fluster you anymore. She finds whatever answer she’s seeking in the determined stare you’re giving her. 

“Gutsy…” Her muttered reply is more directed at herself but betrays her attraction. Her eyelids drop as she glances at your lips, then she meets your gaze with a fake sigh. “Oh, fine. I’ll see you later, then.”

“No—”

Kafka lifts a hand up to wave at you cheekily and is outside the door before you can tell her that you don’t want to see her again.

[marvelfanfn2187a113]

Where to Run

Sam and Dean Winchester & little sister!reader

Requested by @deansobssessedgirl

Synopsis: you’re on the run from the British Men of Letters, and you meet your big brothers for the first time.

Entering the United States unnoticed had gone better than you thought it would. As soon as you got through passport control, you dug into your backpack—the only luggage you had brought with you, and it contained all you owned—and pulled out two pieces of paper. You considered them both for a long moment—one, an over a decade-old letter with the name of a small city in black ink in the middle of it, and the other a list of cities, one circled in red.

The list would take you to a nearby Men of Letters bunker in Lebanon, and the letter…

The letter might just lead you to your father.

…

“And you’re sure we haven’t already been to this one?” Sam asked his big brother as they pulled up to a storage facility.

“Of course I’m sure. I would’ve remembered one so close to Lawrence,” Dean said.

“What do you think dad kept in here?” Sam questioned, his curiosity getting the better of him as Dean led the way to the right storage room.

“Who knows?” Dean shrugged. “Let’s just hope one of these works.” He jangled a small set of keys on a ring that John had left in the car—they contained a spare key for the Impala as well as John’s old truck, and several storage facility keys. Dean had thought that he and Sammy had been to all of John’s secret storage places, but after scanning John’s journal for the hundredth time, he caught sight of an address scratched in the corner of a page with a storage number.

“It’s this one,” Sam spoke up, grabbing the keys from Dean and trying a few before one finally worked.

The room was small, but packed full. Sam and Dean—after carefully scanning for traps—split up and began to go through their father’s things.

“Hey, I think this file cabinet’s locked,” Sam said from one corner. Dean lifted his head, but didn’t go to his brother’s aid, too busy going through a box of odds and ends.

“Or you just didn’t pull hard enough—maybe if you had any muscle in those noodles—“

“Ok, ok,” Sam interrupted with a scoff. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t dismiss Dean’s theory—he yanked hard on the file cabinet, and it jerked open in a cloud of dust. Coughing, Sam reached down to shuffle through what was inside. “Hey, there’s only one file in here.”

“Fascinating,” Dean said in a tone that said exactly the opposite.

“There’s a birth certificate inside,” Sam said, and suddenly his voice caught. “With…with dad’s name on it.”

“Dad’s birth certificate?” Dean asked, mildly intrigued.

“Dean…not dad’s.”

“What?” Dean was by Sam’s side before Sam had even seen him move.

“Y/N Winchester, born to John Winchester and…Jane Doe.” Sam frowned, his brow crinkling. “I wonder why dad would use his real name when the mother used a fake.”

“This can’t be real,” Dean insisted. “I mean…I know with Adam…but another one?”

“Let’s see,” Sam mumbled, putting the certificate inside and checking the rest of the file. “Pictures.” Sam held up a stack, which Dean immediately snatched from him. Sam ignored this, because he’d found his own details to focus on. “And letters.” Sam grabbed the first letter from a stack of dozens, and began to read. “Dear John…our girl turns one today…”

Dean tapped Sam’s shoulder and held up a photo of a little Y/H/C girl blowing out a singular candle on a pink cake.

Sam moved onto the next letter, skimming it.

“Dear John…I put Y/N in gymnastics because it’s the only way I can get her to work on strength training and endurance.” Sam’s brow crinkled in confusion, but he was distracted when Dean held up a photo of the same girl, a few years older, in a gymnastics leotard on a balance beam.

“What do you think she meant by training?” Sam asked. “Do you think she was a hunter?”

“Could be.” Dean shrugged. “Maybe that’s why she signed her letters Jane Doe.” Dean pointed to the bottom of the letter, where “love, Jane Doe” was written.

Sam was about to pull out another letter when his fingers froze on the paper.

“Dean…”

“Hm?” Dean asked distractedly, still going through photos.

“Dean look at this.” Sam flipped the paper around, and on the back of it was a watermark—an indicator of who made the stationary.

It was the Men of Letters insignia.

…

“Lebanon, please,” you said to the taxi driver. “I’ll direct you to a more specific location when we get there.”

The man shrugged, unbothered, and began the journey.

You desperately wanted to go to Lawrence in search for your father, but you had to be realistic—you hadn’t eaten all day, you were jet lagged and exhausted, and you needed a plan of action. You needed to recover and regroup, and you needed to do it in a secure location; you needed to feel safe. In fact, you were so wound up that you flinched when the radio came on.

“—o one seems to have any information on who is causing the recent string of murders. The chief of police has offered no comment, other than a warning that the people of Lawrence should stay indoors when possible, and be alert. But there’s no denying the oddity of the case—the mass murderer seems to have some kind of vampire ideologies, with each of its victims drained completely of their blood. In other news—“

“Hey, driver!” You called out, and he glanced over his shoulder to indicate he was listening. “I changed my mind. Take me to Lawrence.”

…

“It’s gotta be another djinn.”

Dean would’ve groaned if he didn’t have a mouthful of hamburger to swallow first.

“Not those again,” he said after a gulp of beer washed down the last of his burger. They’d finished going through John’s things—Sam taking the file of your pictures and documents with him—only to leave and stumble upon a case. Dean had wanted to stop at a diner on the way back home, but he hadn’t expected to walk past a news stand to see a paper with “vampire killer” written across the front. It took Sam less than ten minutes of reading the paper, as well as a little time on the internet, to render the paper completely wrong.

“It doesn’t fit with a vampire. No teeth marks, no signs of struggle, the bodies were found in a different location from where they were taken—it’s definitely a djinn.”

“Ok, so silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood.” Dean sighed. “We happen to have one of those?”

“I think we still have the one we used last time in the trunk,” Sam said.

“Then let’s get going.”

…

You picked up a machete after being dropped off by the cabbie, hoping beyond hope that the radio had been right (even if they were kidding) about it being a vampire—there were several monsters known to drink blood, and if it was anything other than a vamp then things might get tricky. Normally you would be more prepared, but it wasn’t like you could get your weapons through customs when traveling to America, and you’d had to travel light so you could move more quickly. The British Men of Letters worked quickly, so you couldn’t take any chances. And buying up strange kinds of weapons near an old Men of Letters bunker was definitely too high a chance to take, so all you could do was hope that it was a vamp.

You’d done so much research about Lawrence that you barely even have to wonder where the creature might be hiding out—while researching Lawrence, you’d almost automatically noted the places where a supernatural being might be inclined to hide, so all you had to do was see which one was closest to the bodies that were dropping.

Then you were ready to hunt.

…

“I’m telling you, this has to be it. It’s nearly equidistant to all the bodies, and it’s the perfect place for a djinn to hide out.”

“You don’t have to sell me on the location, I believe you,” Dean told Sam. “But you do have to tell me how to get there.”

“Turn right here…yeah, and a left at that stop sign, and then we’re there.”

“So are we just not gonna talk about it?” Dean asked after a beat of silence as he followed Sam’s directions.

“Talk about what?”

Dean scoffed. “I don’t know, maybe our little sister?”

“I don’t know what to say, Dean,” Sam sighed. “There’s no address anywhere in the documents or the letters, and we don’t even know her mother’s name, or if Y/N even goes by Winchester. Her mother used an alias, it makes sense that the kid would go by one, too. We have no reason to believe that she’s going by the name on her birth certificate, so we don’t have the first clue on how to find her.”

“Well it feels like we have to do something,” Dean argued. “I mean we don’t even know if this kid knows about dad—for all we know, she thinks he’s still alive. She deserves to know.”

“Why the sudden interest?” Sam questioned. “You didn’t seem all this interested when we found out about Adam.”

“That was different,” Dean sighed. “With Adam…Adam was just some normal, innocent kid who saw dad once a year for a baseball game and knew nothing about the life. This kid—Y/N—with the talk in those letters about training, and the Men of Letters insignia…she’s in this life, Sam, I can feel it. And since dad’s not around anymore…I think it’s our job to make sure she’s ok.”

“And I’d be happy to do that,” Sam insisted. “If only we knew how to find her. But for now, let’s do what we can do—take out this djinn.”

…

The sight of a car in the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse worried you—even if it was a beautiful car.

“Chevy Impala,” you mumbled to yourself. “67, I think.” You shook yourself, moving your mind back to the task at hand, rather than the conversation you were having with yourself. Hopefully the car here didn’t mean that its owners were anywhere near the warehouse—the last thing you needed was some innocent people getting in the way and getting hurt.

Seeing no one around, you hefted your machete and headed inside.

…

Dean gestured at Sam to be quiet as he peaked around a corner. Signaling that the coast was clear, Dean led the way through the warehouse, the silver dagger gripped in his steady hand. Dean was just signaling Sam to wait so he could check around another corner when—

“Hey!”

“Jeez—what?”

Dean stopped himself just short of cutting not a djinn, but a Y/H/C girl wielding a machete that was aimed at him.

“Hey, easy.” Dean took a quick step back, raising the knife and his hands in the air. “We’re not—“ Dean’s words died in his throat when he got a good look at your face.

“Dean,” Sam breather from beside him. “It’s—“

“No kidding.”

“What are you talking about?” You demanded, lowering the machete just a little bit. “Who are you guys, what are you doing here?” You didn’t want for an answer. “You have to get out of here, there’s a—“ your eyes fell to the silver dagger.

Sam’s gaze followed your own to the weapon in Dean’s hand before he looked back at you.

“It’s not a vamp,” he said, gesturing at your machete. “It’s a djinn.”

You lowered your machete completely.

“You’re hunters?”

Dean couldn’t keep the astonished smile off his face.

“And you’re Y/N Winchester.”

The machete was back up in an instant.

“Who are you?” You demanded for the second time. “Men of Letters?”

“Easy, easy,” Dean said, taking a step back as you advanced on them. “I’m not—“

“Guys!”

Sam’s warning proceeded the arrival of the djinn by a split second—just enough time for Dean to dodge the blow that the djinn tried to land on him.

“Hey!” Your call turned the attention of the djinn, who grabbed hold of your arm before you had the chance to move away. He twisted your arm behind your back until your machete was crashing to the ground and you were crying out in pain.

“Here!” Dean’s call came a second before the silver dagger was hurtling at your face. You snatched it up with your free hand and twisted it so it was facing the djinn a moment before you plunged the dagger into the djinn’s side. He howled with pain and released your arm, giving you an opportunity to spin around and stab again, this time in the neck.

The djinn went down without a sound, and the thud of his fall echoed through the empty room. For a long moment, only the sound of heavy breathing could be heard. That is, until Dean took a step towards you.

“Back off!” You yelled, raising the blood-soaked dagger.

“Are you serious?” Dean scoffed. “Hey, I just helped save your life.”

“I’m not going back!” You were starting to look panicked as you backed away from the brothers. “So-so just tell Lady Bevell, or Ketch, or Mick, or whoever recruited you that I’m done! I’m not a part of the Men of Letters, and I never will be!”

“Hey, hey, easy,” Sam soothed. “We’re not Men of Letters.”

“Then how do you know who I am?” You challenged.

“Because of John Winchester.”

Sam’s response froze you in your tracks.

“J…John Winchester?” The dagger was slowly lowering. “You know him? You know where he is?”

The hope in your eyes was like a punch in the gut to both brothers. However, it was gone in an instant and replaced with a harsh suspicion as you raised the knife higher again.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“That’s how we know who you are, kid,” Dean insisted.

“Here—“ Sam’s hand was halfway to his pocket when you pointed your knife at him and he froze. “Easy, ok? I’ll go slow.” He slowly reached in, and you relaxed slightly when he pulled out a small bundle of papers. “We’ve got letters that your mom sent to him, with some pictures.” Sam held them out, and you hesitantly took them, thumbing through the stack while occasionally glancing warily at the boys.

“They stop,” you mumbled.

“What?” Dean asked.

“The letters, they stopped…at least ten years ago.” You looked back up at the boys as you spoke. “Is…is there more, or…”

The despair on the boys’ faces spoke for itself. Your lip was already quivering as you tucked the letters away, still holding onto the knife but keeping it pointed down.

“Is he…is he dead?”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “About ten years ago.”

Sam could tell you were trying not to cry, trying to act like they hadn’t just ripped the rug out from under you.

“You know, I—I didn’t even know him—“ your voice cracked. “But I…gosh, I re-I really wanted to.”

You let Dean take the knife from you after he put a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“Um, so.” You wiped your hand over your face, trying to brush away any stray tears as you tried valiantly to pull yourself together. “So how did you two…”

“He’s…he’s our dad, too.” Sam said. Your eyes widened slightly as you absorbed this information.

“Wait, you…were you…from his wife?”

“You knew about her?” Dean asked.

“Not really,” you admitted. “John…dad, he…he never liked to talk about his past, but he did mention his wife in one of his letters…he said her death was what made him become a hunter.” Your lips quirked up as you remembered. “He said if I ever saw a yellow-eyed demon, send it to hell for him.” Your eyes went back to Dean and Sam. “Is…is that how he died? Hunting demons?”

“Kind of,” Sam said. “It’s…it’s a long story.”

“What about you?” Dean said suddenly. “If you know Lady Bevell and the rest, and you know they’re here recruiting, then you’ve got something to do with the Men of Letters. Not to mention their insignia on the back of those letters.”

Just the mention of the Men of Letters had you on edge again.

“Maybe we should talk about this at a more secure location,” you suggested. “There’s an old Men of Letters bunker not far from—“ you cut yourself off when you caught the look between the two brothers. “What?”

“We know,” Sam said. “We’ve been living in it.”

Dean noticed your fingers twitch, as if you were thinking about reaching for a weapon.

“And I’m supposed to believe you’re not Men of Letters?”

“Our grandfather was one,” Dean said. “He left us a key.”

You seemed to consider this. Dean watched as your eyes got a faraway look, and he knew you were trying to remember something.

“Mom said that John was from a line of the Men of Letters. It was one of the ways she tried to get him to join.” You shook yourself of the memories. “Fine. I’ll go with you, but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

Dean couldn’t help the way a smile twitched just slightly on his lips before he dropped it.

“Fair enough.”

…

You were quiet the whole way to the bunker, and although your brothers had questions they sensed you were tired and on edge, so they refrained. Dean kept glancing at you in the rearview mirror the whole way, and he was happy to see the way you slowly put your guard down—mostly out of exhaustion—as you relaxed into a light slumber.

You awoke with a start when Dean pulled into the bunker’s garage, the echo of Baby’s engine reverberating loudly.

“Home sweet home,” Dean crowed as you stepped out of the Impala. You didn’t say a word as he led you inside, but the moment the three of you settled down around the kitchen table, you finally started to talk.

“John met my mother on a hunt. She was just visiting America, vacation or something, but she happened to stumble on a case. They met…and well, I came along.” Both brothers noticed you skipping over the details, for which they were grateful. “But while mom was still pregnant she tried to convince dad to join the Men of Letters.” Sam noticed the way you kept switching between dad and John, as if you either weren’t sure what to say, or you weren’t sure what the boys were comfortable with. “He didn’t like the idea, and he didn’t want that for me, either. They fought about it, and mom left the country to go back to England. She was still pregnant…” Dean saw your fists clench and unclench as you blinked rapidly. “Dad, he…he never saw me in person. Any-anyway, she still wrote to him, and she let me read his letters. She said he deserved that much, at least. Dad was always telling me hunter things—I think he was hoping I’d end up a hunter, like him.”

“Why did you?” Sam spoke up. “I mean, if your mother raised you with the Men of Letters…”

“She kept a lot from me,” you said. “The…morally ambiguous parts.” At Dean’s strange look, you scoffed. “Ok, let’s be real, the straight up evil parts.” This got a grin from both brothers. “But she, uh…” the lightheartedness in the room was gone in an instant. “She died last year, and well…people stopped lying to me. I realized all the crap they really did, and I ran.”

“And what, they’re after you?” Dean questioned. “I mean it’s not like the mafia, right, I mean you can just leave.”

You nearly laughed out loud.

“I wish they were as sloppy as the mafia. No, you can’t just leave, especially not me—just because I’m a kid, doesn’t mean I couldn’t have over a decade of Men of Letters’ secrets stored in my brain. That’s why I came here, I…I wanted to find dad. To find family, protection.” You took a deep breath. “I want to be a hunter, not a Man of Letters.”

Dean found himself speaking before he even thought about what to say.

“Why do you have to be either?”

“What?” You said at the same time as Sam. Dean glanced between you before continuing.

“You’re just a kid—you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You don’t have to be either, you could be whatever you want.”

You blinked up at Dean, as though the thought had never occurred to you.

“I…I don’t…”

“Look,” Dean began. “Don’t decide just now. John may not be here, but we’re family too, kid. There’s an empty bedroom down the hall, you should get some sleep, get settled in…then maybe we could talk about this hunting stuff, ok? The important thing is, you’re safe here. Let’s just say we don’t like the British Men of Letters anymore than you do. They’re not getting in here, and they’re not getting to you. Everything else can wait for later.”

You felt a smile—a true smile—etching its way into your face for the first time in so long. You looked up at this man—your big brother—and you couldn’t help but feel that everything was going to be ok. Whether you decided to hunt or not, or whether the Men of Letters came after you, you knew one thing for sure—

You really had found your family.

Taglist:

@nyotamalfoy @mrvlxgrl @chocorade @aestheticdaisies @inlovewhithafairytale @that-wannabe-vangoghgurl @casmustdiee @987coley @deadlymistletoe

[1d1195]

Dolcezza I

You know me and my need for love at first sight.

This is where I’ll keep her: Dolcezza

Warnings: mostly fluff, mentions of stalking

~5.5k words

Definitely multi-part. This part is mostly from the MC perspective. The very end peeks into Harry's brain and the second part will likely pick up more onto his POV.

Hope you enjoy!

“You really don’t need to trouble yourself,” she promised.

Harry turned pausing by the shelf pressed against the wall. “D’you really want me t’leave?” He asked with a frown. “M’sorry. I jus’... really want t’help you, kitten,” he explained. “S’like I need to. S’almost... compulsive... but I’ll leave if y’want me to.”

“No, I’m totally fine, thank you,” she said into her phone.

“Are you sure?” Eleanor asked. “I can send Louis over.”

“No, no, that’s so unnecessary, El. Really. I’ll be fine.”

She could hear her best friend sigh heavily into the speaker. Eleanor was nearly a thousand miles away. She got a new job and while the benefits and everything about it were great, and would make Eleanor wildly successful, she was sadly away from her platonic soulmate. It was extremely hard to let her go. Worse, Louis would be joining her just as soon as he nailed down a new job out there.

But Louis was around for now, which was a great relief for Eleanor. Her best friend was a lot of things, but aware of how scary her situation wasn’t one of them. Louis knew he was essentially filling as best friend for the time being and he was expected to drop everything to get to her aid if Eleanor said so.

But that would only last so long.

Eleanor didn’t want to think about that right now.

She was carrying a box from her car toward the building. Her shoulder pressing her phone to her ear as best she could. Beside the building was a small little alley where her entry way to her new place resided. As much as it killed her to pay for it, she got a whole moving company to bring her furniture in already so at the rest was pretty standard. Her family, God love them, didn’t even think that she might need some help. If anything, she would have had to bribe them into helping her. Even if it was just for the furniture. If Eleanor was in town she would have helped with the boxes and other stray things she had heaped in her car.

Even with Eleanor’s presence closer, she felt alone. Eleanor had Louis and she would never fault her for that. Louis was everything she would want in a best-friend-in-law. But there was always this element of not fully having Eleanor—not like when they were in college and sharing a dorm room. It was different now. Not bad, but different. Her family was great but a little self-centered at times. Part of the problem, she dropped everything to help them whenever they asked but they rarely returned the favor. She did it all, so why would she need help?

Fortunately, moving allowed her to downsize quite a bit so her mid-sized SUV was able to hold almost all of her boxes in one trip from her storage unit to the new place. Maybe, this even helped her explain away her family’s lack of help.

But her brother was either busy working at the college dispatch center most of the weekend or playing beer pong at a frat party. Her sister was so wrapped up in her high school love life or maybe just being the princess her mom and dad made her out to be by never making her do anything of importance. Her parents were probably waiting on her hand and foot without even realizing. If not, they were probably creating some sort of computer-virus havoc on their home computer that for some reason her sister wouldn’t be able to fix. Or maybe they finally started fixing the kitchen up as they said they would for the last year waiting for their oldest to come home and fix all the little things they broke in the process.

If she thought about it too long, she would get annoyed. Her brother and sister were more than capable of helping and they just didn’t. It drove her nuts. So, at the end of it, she couldn’t bother her family for help. Because it barely felt like they could help themselves.

She was lucky because the alleyway wasn’t creepy. Not even at night. The whole street was a dream come true really. Part of her thought that despite the circumstance, this was actually a much-needed move. It was almost lucky that she found such an amazing place. Her own parking space right out front of the building, a coffee shop—a mere stone’s throw from said parking space—almost everything she needed was within walking distance. It was perfect.

Of course, the best and most wonderful selling point of all was by far that her new apartment was right above an Italian restaurant. It smelled like fresh pasta, garlic, and just the most comforting of scents. It reminded her of Sunday’s making meatballs with her dad and watching sports with her brother and sister.

When her coworker Mitch told her about the place, she thought it was too good to be true. But Mitch knew someone who worked at the restaurant. The owner, Antonio, was looking for a tenant after he informed Mitch’s friend that he was outgrowing the space. It was a generous size. But it was meant for a place to stay and keep watch over the restaurant—max two people and that was pushing it. The little place could not support Antonio, his wife, their first born, and another little one on the way. Four people was too big for this place.

But it was perfect for a girl who loved garlic bread and spaghetti who needed a new place and wouldn’t mind the smell of olive oil all hours of the day.

“How did you find this place?” Eleanor asked, her third-degree questioning tone was present in her voice.

“A friend of a coworker,” Eleanor already knew this.

“Mitch?” She clarified.

“Yes, Mom, Mitch,” she rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know how you can be so blasé about all this. It’s serious!” She reminded her. “I’m not even there to protect you.”

She didn’t need to be protected. She had a restraining order. The police in the area were well aware of the situation and she was almost always at home or traveling one day a week to work. If she ran errands, it was always in public spaces. She only ever worked out at a public female-only gym. Plus, she had given Louis her location. All of it was nearly a non-issue. “I don’t even know how I got a stalker,” she muttered grumpily. The whole thing was an inconvenience. If it wasn’t for Eleanor, she probably wouldn’t have even gotten the restraining order.

“You’re too nice,” Eleanor reminded her.

She sighed, tired of the story. It had been almost a year since the creepy sensation of the guy following her had started. Eleanor had approached him on more than one occasion to get rid of him. But the whole thing seemed like a bigger deal than it needed to be. The guy was basically harmless; if not just a little bit more on the creepy side. He couldn’t take the hint that she wasn’t interested and had a hard time letting go. He kept a huge distance from her—she wasn’t even sure she knew the color of his eyes from how far away he followed her. If he was around, she hardly noticed. “Well, I’m moving to a whole new place now so it should be fine now.”

“You didn’t tell anyone else about your address change?”

“Nope, just HR,” she promised. “As far as everyone knows I’m still living in that crummy apartment.”

“Well, maybe this is a blessing that you’re out of there anyway,” Eleanor sighed, relief in her voice. “How do you like this place?”

She smiled dropping the box in the middle of the room before she closed the door and descended the staircase back to her car to grab more boxes. “El, it’s literally perfect. It’s like the apartment of my dreams.”

“How come no one at the restaurant wanted it?”

“When you come visit, we can go and ask all the questions—”

As she entered the alleyway from her apartment entrance she was pushed to the ground. The rattling of glass bottles clinked, clattered, and broke on the pavement. She already felt the bruise forming on her tailbone from landing so hard on the ground. In the process she dropped her phone, and she could hear Eleanor shouting from the speaker. “Ouch,” she muttered.

“Don’t move!” She turned to the sound of the guy in the alleyway with her—he was hurrying to his feet having also toppled to the cold, hard ground. He was wearing all black. Short sleeves even though it was a chillier fall day—showing off an array of tattoos that lined his muscular arms. His black pants had fingerprints and handprints of flour on them. There was something dark colored—probably tomato sauce—dried on the half apron around his hips. He clearly worked in the restaurant. The bag of bottles he was previously carrying ripped open and was broken on the ground. “M’so sorry, Principessa,” his voice was smooth and warm. “Antonio told me y’were moving in today. Should’ve been more careful,” he frowned grabbing her wrists without a thought and hauling her to her feet to get her off the cold ground and away from any broken glass. “M’so sorry,” he repeated making sure she was steadily on her feet. He turned her hands over inspecting them so delicately. Like she was the glass that had broken at their feet. “Are y’alright, Principessa?”

The silence coming from Eleanor on her phone was nearly deafening. She blinked a few times as she gazed at the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life. His hair was the color of melted milk chocolate and looked like it had been sculpted of the very substance into the most unfairly beautiful curls any man should have been allowed to have. His cheeks were smooth except for the stubble lining his incredibly sharp jawline. His lower lip was chapped, and she realized how close she was to face to notice such a thing. Probably from the way he was biting it with the worry that he had hurt her. But they were still very rosy—like pink wine and much like the rest of him, very, very pretty.

He picked up her phone out of the debris. Wiping it on his apron then brought it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Oh, God,” she whispered to herself, trying to process the last two minutes. Eleanor was going to lose her mind.

“Uh... m’Harry... She’s fine—I think... Are y’okay, Principessa?” His gaze turned back to her.

It felt like her heart stopped as her eyes connected with the beautiful green ones looking back at her. It was unfair someone like Harry was that pretty.

She nodded, holding her hand out for her phone. He returned it to her immediately and she cleared her throat. “I’m fine, El. Promise.”

“Principessa?!” She gasped. “Oh. My. God.”

“I’ll call you later,” she whispered feeling her face warm as Harry inspected the mess.

“M’sorry, Principessa,” he repeated for a fourth time. If he called her Principessa again though, she might fall right back on her sore tailbone. “Wasn’t expecting you t’come out the door,” he frowned. “Did y’get cut at all?” He asked, scanning her quickly from head to toe. She was dressed for moving on a cool fall day. A chunky sweatshirt, a pair of joggers, and trainers. Her hair was pulled tight to keep out of her face.

She was the furthest thing from looking like the princess that he kept calling her. “Oh...no... I’m alright,” she promised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“Don’t apologize, kitten, s’entirely my fault.”

She shook her head rapidly trying to get some neural networks firing. “Really, I’m okay,” she smiled gently. “I should have watched—”

“M’serious, s’my fault,” he interrupted again.

“Harry, what’s the hold—” Antonio entered the alleyway but stopped his train of thought looking at the pair of them. “Oh, hi, tesorino,” he had called her that a lot since he spoke and met with her. “See you’ve met Harry,” he looked at the broken bag and the glass. “Did he hurt you?” He asked.

“No!” Harry glared at him, a frown adorning his pretty lips and a matching pinch between his brows. Harry looked adorable when he was angry. “I didn’t Principessa, did I?” He turned back to her looking apologetic again.

“No, I’m sincerely fine,” she promised shoving her phone into the pocket of her joggers. “I should have watched where I was—”

“No, no, tesorino,” Antonio shook his head. “It’s Harry’s fault. M’sure.” What kind of reality was this? Antonio reminded her of Louis or a much older brother—maybe even a young dad, but not like her dad. She imagined Louis saying the same kind of taunting thing to Eleanor or even herself. It was surreal. A cute guy bumped into her when she was starting fresh. It was like fate—a new start and a new guy. “I’ll get you a broom, Harry. Make sure she’s alright.”

“Yes sir,” he nodded firmly. Antonio disappeared back to the restaurant to get the broom.

“I’m really fine,” she promised.

Harry was smiling now, he bent down to get the big pieces of glass that shattered and carefully placed them on the broken plastic bag. “M’glad, Principessa,” he hummed quietly.

“Uh...” she smiled awkwardly and stepped to the side. “I should get out of the way...” she trailed off and started for the street to gather more of her stuff.

“Here,” Antonio reappeared with a broom and a new bag, passing it off to Harry. “Tesorino, are you sure you’re alright?” Antonio had an Italian accent. It made her smile and even if she was hurt, she was sure that she wouldn’t—couldn’t feel any pain because it was so comfortable being around an Italian restaurant where people worried about her.

“I’m really, truly fine,” she promised.

Harry was quick to pick up all the glass and took a few steps around the area to catch any of the broken pieces. It seemed this wasn’t the first time this had happened. It was like she was glued to her spot watching Harry take the collected glass down the alleyway to one of the dumpsters. “Do you need help moving your stuff upstairs?” Antonio asked.

“Oh no, that’s alright, I’m fine—”

“Harry, help her with her stuff,” he ordered, ignoring her brush-off. “Her car is out front.”

Harry handed the broom back to his boss and hurried to the front of the building. “Hey!” She frowned and looked at Antonio. “I don’t need help—”

“Tesorino, please. S’no big deal. Harry would be happy to help.” Harry was already coming back with what she knew was a heavy box labeled ‘kitchen’ and heading for the stairs. Truthfully, she was dreading carrying that one, so she was grateful Harry was literally doing the heavy lifting for her but didn’t want him to feel like he had to. “He helped us move our stuff out already and into our new home,” he shrugged. “Come down for some lasagna for dinner,” he said heading back toward the front.

The entire interaction had left her so completely confused. Harry was beautiful and clearly a cook of some sort in the kitchen of the restaurant. Currently, he was up in her new apartment putting her box in the kitchen. Right as she came to the door to head after him, he bumped into her again, reappearing from the door so quickly, she almost fell right back to the ground. This time, Harry caught her around the waist. “M’sorry, Principessa. I don’t know why I keep getting in y’way,” he frowned.

He released her waist just as quickly as he caught her before heading back for her car. The warmth of his arm around her body lingered as she followed him. “You don’t have to help.”

“S’no problem, kitten,” he shrugged grabbing a box labeled ‘bedroom’ that she knew had an array of random things including an assortment of old CDs, a few pictures, and everything from her nightstand—including a box of condoms. Just the knowledge of knowing he was carrying them was enough to make her face warm. She frowned, hurrying to grab a box herself. “Y’don’t have any friends t’help you?” He asked over his shoulder as he made himself at home coming to stop in front of the second door in the little hall at the top of the steps. Beside her apartment was a second office for the restaurant. Antonio assured her that he was the only person who used it and at this point in time, it was mostly storage. Either way, she didn’t mind. The place was a steal and beyond helpful for her new start. Especially with Eleanor breathing down her neck worrying about her.

“I don’t like to bother people with something I can do myself,” she explained quietly while pushing the door out of the way for Harry to enter—but he waited for her to go first. A silent direction in his eyes as he stood still with the box in his hands. After an awkward pause, she went in first.

Unfortunately, she was compelled to fill the silence with more explanation. “My best friend got a new job—so she’s unavailable. She offered her boyfriend but he’s working. My other friends... no one wants to help move. You know?” She explained. But it was hard to hide the catch in her throat while she spoke. No one wanted to help her.

It was weird to have a conversation with Harry like that. It was a little personal, nothing crazy. But apparently, it divulged enough. “S’unfair, Principessa,” his voice was so gentle. “M’sure you’d help if they asked—or even if they didn’t ask.”

How on earth could some stranger possibly know that about her without so much as speaking for more than ten full minutes? There was a jolt of sadness that washed through her. But she pushed it aside and frowned at the stranger who seemed to read right through her without so much as a second glance. “They would help if I asked,” she murmured. But it felt like sand in her mouth as she said it because she knew it was a lie.

Harry didn’t harp on it though. He glanced around the empty space. “Are y’new to the city?” He asked.

“No... not really,” she shrugged. “I used to live just a couple towns over.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “D’you have a lot more?” He asked.

She shook her head. “No, not really. You... you grabbed the heavy kitchen one. So, it should be easy from here on out.”

“Great,” he smiled. “I’ll get Niall, we’ll be done in half an hour.” Harry left her breathless for more than one reason. He hurried back down and stopped outside of the restaurant. She was practically running to catch up.

Dolcezza was written in cursive script above the big window showcasing the beautiful restaurant. Most Italian restaurants always seemed so darkly lit. This one looked so warm and cozy and on the brighter side. It reminded her of her grandparents’ house.

Harry pulled the door open. “Niall!” He shouted. Without waiting for whoever Niall was, Harry turned to her car to grab the next box.

Niall was a little less than half a foot shorter than Harry. His eyes were the color of the sky in the middle of June, and he had an adorable smile. “What’re you doing?” He asked Harry as he walked by with a box. “Hey tesorino,” he winked at her.

“Grab a box,” Harry nodded his head toward the open car and continued for her apartment once more.

What the heck!?

She stumbled to get a box herself and hurried to follow the two guys moving her stuff into her new place. But she had to give credit where credit was due. Harry was right. Thirty minutes, and everything in her car was now in the apartment. Niall headed back to the restaurant without a word, but Harry stayed behind. “D’you need help with anything, kitten?” He asked sweetly.

She couldn’t possibly imagine him helping her more than he already had. “N-no, thank you. That was...really helpful. I can take it from here.”

“Jus’ come grab me from downstairs if y’do think of something, kitten. Antonio won’t mind,” he promised. He smiled at her once more and looked around. His gaze stopped on the tall bookshelf. He walked toward it and looked at each side. He pulled a little bag of screws that were taped to the side and put it in plain view. “Make sure y’anchor that bookshelf before putting books on it. Don’t want it falling on you,” he mentioned kindly. She frowned. In her old place, her bookshelf was recessed into the wall. Having built the new shelf so the movers could take it the other day, she truly hadn’t thought about it. She only taped the little bag to the inside of the shelf so she knew what it belonged to when she created a junk drawer in the kitchen.

“Er... right,” she nodded—unconfidently.

Harry looked her over again, sizing her up, as if he knew she didn’t know how to do that and was too proud to ask. “I’ll come back up before dinner t’do it. D’you have a screw gun and such?”

“I can Google how to do it if I need to,” she assured him knowing that if he didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t do it. “I doubt I can put holes in the wall like that.”

Harry snorted. “Don’t worry, Principessa, I’ll tell Antonio. He won’t argue.”

“It’s really—”

“M’offering myself, kitten. S’nothing t’worry ‘bout. M’happy t’help. S’no trouble at all.”

It was jarring. That was the only way to describe it. It was as if Harry could read her thoughts and see on her face that she didn’t want to trouble someone on her behalf. “Antonio s’not kidding ‘bout lasagna either, Principessa. He’ll want y’down between five-thirty and six. Come down t’eat or he’ll make me come up here t’get you.”

*

“Who was that?” Eleanor asked in greeting as she answered the phone.

“Hi Eleanor, the move has been going well. I’m about to start unpacking boxes and arranging everything. How has your day been?” She answered with an eye roll.

“Shut up, tell me about the guy, principessa,” her voice was nearly hysterical. Her tone was almost mocking with the nickname Harry had bestowed upon her. It made her stomach flip to hear even Eleanor say it.

Sighing, she put her head on the counter of her new kitchen. She eyed the heavy box Harry had put there on the floor. “His name is Harry. He works at the restaurant,” she explained. “Antonio had him help me with all the boxes and stuff, his friend Niall too.”

“I don’t care about that. What does he look like?!” The pause was telling. She knew it. “Wow,” Eleanor sighed. “He is so hot, you’re speechless.”

Rolling her eyes again, she was glad Eleanor couldn’t see her cheeks burning red at the correct assumption. “He’s cute,” she managed.

“Oh puh-lease,” she gasped. “What a cute little story you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren.”

“Can you relax? I talked to him for twenty minutes and mostly about moving.”

“Mostly?!”

“Sweet Jesus,” she sighed pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes trying to think of the fastest way to get rid of her friend from making her crazy. “He correctly identified that I have shitty friends who wouldn’t help me move even if I had asked. He also got his friend Niall to help with the boxes in my car. And when I came back from the storage unit with a second load, they ran out in the middle of a lunch rush to help anyway.”

“You could sell movie rights,” Eleanor sighed dreamily.

She rolled her eyes. “His boss made him help.”

“His boss made him call you principessa too?”

“He called me kitten too.”

“Oh, you’re so going to marry him.”

“I have to unpack my house now.”

“What does he smell like?”

“You are insane.”

There was a knock on her door.

“Wonder who that is,” Eleanor practically sang. She glanced at the stove clock. It wasn’t even five o’clock. Not time to head down for lasagna. After the crazy afternoon she had, she wanted to make sure she didn’t give a reason to the funny cooks and owner downstairs that were helping her a reason to waste their time with her. She truly planned to head down for lasagna as they asked. But part of her thought Harry was joking about the bookshelf.

With the phone still against her ear, she pulled the door out of the way and found Harry. He was not joking. There was a screw gun at his side. “Hi Principessa,” he grinned so brightly it made a dimple in both cheeks appear. “M’gonna anchor y’bookshelf and then take y’down t’get lasagna,” he maneuvered right by her without so much as an okay.

“You really don’t need to trouble yourself,” she promised.

Harry turned pausing by the shelf pressed against the wall. “D’you really want me t’leave?” He asked with a frown. “M’sorry. I jus’... really want t’help you, kitten,” he explained. “S’like I need to. S’almost... compulsive... but I’ll leave if y’want me to.”

“Don’t you dare let him leave,” Eleanor said to her ear, her voice was practically a sigh. She and Harry stood feet apart gazing at one another.

But it felt so bad getting help from Harry. “Well...er... if you’re really sure it’s not a bother,” she murmured.

“Not at all, Principessa,” he smiled. “Promise,” he nodded. “S’jus’ a couple minutes and then I’ll bring y’down.”

“Eleanor, I gotta go.”

“I can’t wait to give my maid of honor speech at your wedding.”

She hung up on her friend. Harry was quick. He was shifting the bookshelf away from the wall. He snagged the little package of screws taped to the side. “Can I help?” She asked tossing her phone on the couch.

“I think m’alright, principessa. Thank you,” he said kindly, like he wasn’t doing her a favor by doing this. It was quiet while he worked. At one point he did drop one of the little screws and she was quick to grab it and place it in his hand for him. “Thanks, kitten,” he hummed quietly. His expression was so concentrated as he fixed up the shelf.

It wasn’t much, honestly. She knew that. It was just a bookshelf. But it was somehow so much more. Her heart felt so out of place. Her throat felt tight with emotion bubbling to the surface. No one had ever done anything like this before. A near stranger at that. Probably because it was so much more. It was a worry about her safety which people nearly forgot—unless they were Eleanor and by extension Louis.

She turned away briefly and busied herself with pulling throw pillows from the box labeled living room. Harry hummed quietly to himself. It was soothing. For a moment she forgot about who she was and that she had moved because she had a stalker. If she was a little more vulnerable feeling, she might have cried. It wasn’t the time, but she felt like she had known Harry her whole life. But she had barely spoken more than a hundred and fifty words to him. It was feeling extremely domestic in her new place even though hardly anything was unpacked.

The whole place was one wide open room kitchen and living area. There was a little space she designated for a table for sitting at and along the front wall by the window she planned on putting her desk. There was so much she needed to do. There were three doors along the back wall of the apartment. A bathroom, a bedroom, and a little alcove where a washer and dryer resided. She was lucky the owner lived here previously as she was certain there wouldn’t be a washer and dryer otherwise and that may have deterred her from taking the place. The idea of lugging her laundry up and down the stairs to a laundromat was not something she wanted to do in her late twenties.

“Oh crap,” she frowned. Realizing her state of being at the thought of walking up and down the steps all day.

Harry paused and turned to her. “Y’okay, principessa?” He frowned as well. His eyes looked her over with worry.

“Yeah...no, I just... I have to change before I head down there,” she sighed.

Harry smiled and turned back to his task. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Oh, y’could go like that, I think y’look beautiful,” he said sweetly.

Her heart rate took off rapidly. She could feel her cheeks warming but she knew her hair was pulled back and little pieces had frizzed and fallen from the elastic. She knew she was sweaty and there was simply no way she looked beautiful.

She snorted awkwardly. “Uh...thank you,” she cleared her throat. “But I would feel better if I changed.”

“I’ll wait outside, then,” he promised. “Jus’ finishing this last bit,” he murmured his attention focused on securing the screws perfectly.

“I’ll be quick,” she promised.

“Take y’time, principessa. M’in no rush,” he stood after finishing the final bit. He stepped back outside the apartment. God, he was nice. It had to be the fastest time she had ever gotten ready for anything. Changing out of comfy clothes and into jeans and a blouse that she would wear to her team meetings, so it didn’t look like she was wearing pajamas to work. She slipped on a pair of the first presentable ankle boots she could find a pair of in the box of shoes that was still unpacked. After she found a clip to pull her hair back in a more presentable fashion.

“Oh, wow,” Harry smiled dreamily as she stepped into the hall and locked her door. “Didn’t know y’could get any more beautiful. In less than five minutes too. M’gonna faint when y’have more than a minute,” he smiled and headed down the stairs as if he hadn’t just stolen her heart.

She was a little surprised he went down the stairs first, but she was grateful because maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell she was shaky and gripping the railing to keep her upright after Harry’s sweet compliment. But she realized it was merely so he could open the door carefully and make sure she wouldn’t bump into someone in the alleyway. Once he decided the alleyway was cleared, he gestured for her to exit first. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“For what, kitten?” He smiled as he closed the door behind him.

“Being helpful and nice. I... I’m not really used to that,” she admitted.

The grin on his face was kind. He shoved his freehand in his pocket and shrugged. “Happy t’help y’principessa,” he winked and headed for Dolcezza, surely to open the door for her first.

“Why did he name it Dolcezza?” She asked following behind him.

Harry smiled and glanced over his shoulder to wink at the pretty girl. “It means sweetness. Antonio met his wife when he was studying business, called her la mia dolcezza. He always wanted t’own a restaurant but never knew what t’name it. He knew the second he met her,” he shrugged. “S’a cute story.”

“Very sweet,” she smiled as she walked by Harry to enter the warm and homey restaurant. She was correct in her assumption that he would hold the door open for her. He chuckled at her joke.

There was something about the girl he literally bumped into and proceeded to fall for instantly physically and emotionally. He wasn’t lying when he said it was compulsive to help her. The warmth he felt inspecting her hands for injury and the worry he felt when she didn’t seem sure of anchoring her bookshelf. The thought that she was just above the restaurant that he nearly lived at more than his own place was comforting. A tug on his heart he didn’t know where it came from but couldn’t help it. Harry had never felt such an emotion like this for someone he had just met. It was like he had known her his whole life and he hadn’t spent more than an hour in total speaking to her. But he wanted to spend forever talking to her now that he had a glimpse of someone so beautiful and gentle.

It took every bit of inner strength for Harry to refrain from telling her he would name every child, every restaurant, anything he could name, he would dedicate to her.

--

general taglist: @justlemmeadoreyou @daydreamingofmatilda @sunshinemoonsposts @youdontcaredoyou @tiredinwinter @loving-hazz @likeapplejuicenpeach @straightontilmornin @freedomfireflies @littlenatilda @kathb59 @babegoals @angel-upon @lilfreakjez @mleestiles @ameliaalvarez06 @canyonmoondreams @summertime-pills @daphnesutton @l4rrysh0use @perfectywrong @foreverxholland @lolyouallsuck @buckybarnessimpp @stylesfever @harrysxcarolina @haarrrys @lovrave @st-ev-ie @pandeebearstyles

Dolcezza: @matildasatellite

I'm sorry if I missed anyone in the taglist. Please let me know if you'd like to join, if it didn't work, if you no longer want to be included, etc. :)

If you like this, check out my masterlist for more of my writing.

[ladyquietus]

watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and knowing Hobie Brown has gotten me feral. Could not stop thinking about being that man’s lover and oh the things he could do. Jesus.

Getting Real

Hobie Brown x Fem y/n: Smut Read

© ladyquietus

AN: a bit older y/n from another dimension, some smut, fluff, cussing, nicknames, semi age gap, the works.

W: I apologize if I’ve made any mistakes, English is not my first language.

Minors, ageless blogs do NOT interact.

>> Long read ahead

“Oh, I bet you think your honey taste like sugar. But honey, sugar don’t taste that bitter~ Baby, you ain’t sweet. Look at what you did to me~…” y/n sings to the lyrics, tapping her foot on the floor. The music blaring from her headphones, getting distracted from doing homework infront of her.

She adjusted the frames of her glasses, licking her lips and continued humming to the tone. Failing to notice the flashes of bright, sharp lights beaming through the bedroom window behind her.

It was heavily pouring outside, the shut window slowly rutted opened. Slim fingers appeared on the frame, pulling a bit more force Til the figure could come through the window.

The masked vigilante made his way inside, patting off droplets of rain. He took off his mask, letting his full blown hair pop up.

He smirked at the sight of y/n, sitting infront of her desk, Clueless about this presence. The music she was listening and the loudness of the rain made y/n unaware of Hobie approaching her.

Hobie posed finger gun on his right hand, pressing the tips of his fingers on y/n’s upper back.

“Hands where I came see em’ lil’ lady” he jokes, feeling her tensed.

Y/n quickly pulled off her headphones and spun around, looking at a chuckling Hobie in disbelief.

“You ass,” she glared at him, pushing him off.

“You’re gonna get robbed easily love, I won’t be around you for that.” He holds his hands up in defense.

“Luckily, we’ve got another Spider-Man here huh, what’re you doing here anyways?” She questions, crossing her legs on the office chair she was sitting.

Hobie plopped down on her bed, wincing a bit when he noticed a small stain of blood on his shirt on the left side where his ribs lie.

“Shit.” He cussed, pulling off his leathered spiked jacket.

“What’s wrong?” Y/n stood up concerned, slowly made her way towards him and sat beside him.

“Just a graze, don’t worry. Must’ve gotten caught a crossfire between these crime families back home, what nasty lil’ shits.”

“And you didn’t feel that until now? You must’ve been in a load of adrenaline, It must be wearing off.” y/n sighs, kneeling down beside the bed and pulled out a storage box. She took out a first aid kit and sat back again beside Hobie.

“You’re cute when you’re concerned doll, it’s like you’re forgetting I have massive pain tolerance.” He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, feeling her worry for him a bit made his heart swell.

He always kept his heart up on his sleeve, meeting y/n months ago somehow changed that despite they’re still friends. He also knew that she was older than him, two years older in fact and it must’ve set her back.

They met when he and Gwen came to her dimension, looking for their villain of the week that somehow skipped across dimensions and landed on hers. She was a med student, walked in a parking lot alone at a convenience store. Not knowing she was being followed a creep whom Hobie took action on.

The rest was history.

“Putting your schooling in good use aye?” He jokes again, taking off his shirt after seeing her getting crossed.

Thou shall not poke a pissed off y/n.

“Glad you find this funny, what would happen if you got hit somewhere serious huh Hobie?” She clicked her tongue, throughly disinfecting his flesh wound.

“Relax, you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.”

Hobie’s relentless teasing didn’t lighten the situation, it just made y/n worry more whenever he’s not around. She would never really know the next time he’ll come back.

He felt it, she was always the worrywart. Somehow he could read what was going on through her pretty little head.

“I’ll always come back to you, my love. So please stop worrying, I’m here with you right now and I promise you I’d want to go through everything for you.” His voice softens, his gaze never leaving hers.

He leaned just a bit closer, caught a whiff of her lavender shampoo and declared that it was his favorite scent.

“Hobs…” she quietly says, feeling the tension between them. Her eyes meeting his, couldn’t help but noticed he kept glancing on her lips.

“Mhm, yes mamas?” He couldn’t help but inch a bit closer, grazing his lip on hers.

Just a lil bit of tease.

The slight cold of his steel lip ring had made y/n’s skin crawl with goosebumps. His rough, firm hand radiated a lot of warmth on hers. Yet his thumb caressing the top of hers made something stir up inside her.

The new nickname he gave her wasn’t helping, she felt a bit guilty she wanted to hear it more from his lips.

He was waiting for her, he didn’t want to freak her out if he was too forward. But he was too damn excited, he’s been wanting to kiss her for a while now.

It was eating him up inside.

y/n closed the distance, letting her lips connected to his but it was only quick and subtle. She was nervous as hell, the last time she kissed someone was her ex-boyfriend a year ago.

“Babe that’s not enough, not enough at all.” His voice was heavy with need, in need of her.

Hobie raised his left hand, enclosing his slender fingers on her jawline. Grasping it softly and pulled her closer, wrapping his other hand around her waist to pull her on top of him.

Y/n squeaked In surprised, Instinctively holding on to his broad shoulders.

“Hobs-”

His lips immediately crashing to hers, he loved how soft it felt and the taste of earl grey tea still lingered on her tongue.

y/n moaned on his mouth, it was music to his ears and he wanted to listen to it more.

The kiss was sloppy, y/n was struggling to keep up. Her nails dug into his skin, making him grow excited beneath her. She surely felt it and subconsciously started to grind on it through his leathered pants.

“Mm mas, You’re making it hard to stop,” he says in between kisses.

She grew too fond of it, she didn’t care if her lips had start to swell or bruised. It was addicting to make out with Hobie Brown.

“Mmm,” were the only sounds she left out. Taking the lip ring between her teeth and pulled slowly.

Hobie’s grip on her waist and thighs got tighter when she did it, almost made him cum on that spot. He swore this woman was gonna be the death of him if she keeps it up.

y/n’s hands started to trail, from his shoulders to his chest. Feeling every detail of him, how warm he was despite the nonchalance he always gives off to most people.

She reached right above his pants, Hobie was sensitive to what she has touched.

y/n dragged a finger over the tent, her wetness grew at the feeling of how hard he was of her.

They both finally pulled away, heavy breathing. Hobie leaned against the headboard, still not loosening his vice on her as if she were to disappear any moment.

Looking at her all disheveled and swollen lips, her eyes kept screaming at him to just take her then and there.

“Love, I’d want you to shoot me in the head if I ever say no to you but have you even done it before? I wouldn’t want to rush you to something you’re not comfortable with.” He reassures in a soft voice despite his lustful gaze.

y/n couldn’t care less anymore, she had too much pent up frustration. She was still a virgin, the only farthest thing she had done with her ex was giving and receiving oral sex.

“Hobs, if you won’t fuck the living daylights out of me- I will be putting a lock on that window the minute you leave.” she huffs, palming his hardness.

“Damn mamas alright, I’ll take that as a yes.” He chuckles, both of his hands crawling their way to her ass. A bit frustrated that she was still covered in shorts and a baggy shirt, it may look cute on her but Hobie preferred much that she wore close to nothing at all.

“Gonna need these off first,” he mumbles, burying his face on her neck, leaving lazy kisses and soft bites.

“Couldn’t agree more,” she replied, closing her eyes and biting her lip to moan out loud.

Hobie ripped out her shorts, tugging the cloths away and was surprised to feel her wearing a thong.

“Jesus, love.” He smiles against her neck, immediately groping her cheeks and slapping the right.

He pulled on her thong, making her wet slit grind against the thin fabric.

“Fuck, Hobs…”

“You’ve been wearing this kind of panties around me all this time?” Another slap on her right cheek.

“Mmm sometimes,” y/n started to enjoy this too much.

Another slap before his firm fingers started to spread her cheeks apart, groping and gripping them all around.

Without warning, Hobie pushed her over on her back. Making them switch sides. He was on top, wouldn’t even stop smiling at her.

“Do you know how many times I keep thinking about you being underneath me?” He caresses her cheek, placing a peck.

He lowered himself more, placing more and more small yet sweet kisses. Raising the disruptive shirt to her chest til her breasts were on full view to his pleasure.

Hobie already loves them, they were perfect to him. They weren’t too small nor too big, mouth started to salivate at the size of her areolas.

Letting one arm to support himself, he cupped one of her breast and kneed on the erected bud. Licking her lips for another neediness.

“Something tells me it’s gonna be more than once,” y/n managed to whimper out, Hobie taking the whole bud in his mouth.

His hand caresses it’s way to her swollen pussy lips, eating the thin line of cloth. He could feel how needy and wet she was for him, and God she was soaked.

She squirmed, bucking her hips for more of his fingers. Meanwhile, Hobie’s mouth was occupied- switching between one tit to another.

His fingers itched to plunge deep inside her ache, he pulled the thong to the side and started rubbing her clit.

“Hobs… fuck, that feels good,” she mewed, kept on squirming.

Hobie hummed in pleasure, feeling her wither from his touch made him smirk.

Y/n’s body jerked when she felt a sharp and pleasurable pain when Hobie softly hit one of her nipples.

“Hobie!” He chuckles, licking the aching nub soothingly.

“If you’ll let me mas, I need to taste you. Need to fill my hunger for you right now.” He left her chest, licking and biting his way down to her abdomen. Leaving so much marks, he’s gotten too proud and wanted to mark her more.

She couldn’t say anything but whimpers. She nodded her head in response, but this only wanted Hobie to tease her more.

Without warning, both of his fingers plunged inside her. Feeling the walls tightening around him, it was so warm- he started imagining how amazing it must feel if it were his cock.

“Use your big girl words, love.” He curled his fingers, hitting that spot that made y/n grip her hands all over his body.

“Hobs- eat me out please,”

Hobie didn’t waste any time, he’d gotten too needy- placing his lips on her sex. It reeked of desperation.

Both his left hand and mouth enjoyed giving y/n too much pleasure, His right gripping on her inner thigh to keep her open for him. Y/n still kept on squirming, her legs begging to close in on his head.

It was too much.

She bit her bottom lip too hard, she swore she was already seeing stars as Hobie kept on abusing her pussy with the combo. She couldn’t help but let her moans out, a few cusses and whimpers of “Hobs” kept escaping from her mouth.

She felt this wave, this urge for release.

“Wait Hobs- Hobie! I’m gonna pee- stop,” she started to pull away, gripping on the sheets as if it were to help her.

Hobie didn’t say anything but looked at her, meeting her eyes but didn’t stop. He went faster, flicking his tongue all over her wet sex and fucking it with his fingers.

“Hobi- Hobie,” she couldn’t escape, Hobie kept on pulling her back. The more she struggled- the closer the release.

“Hobie” her toes curled, letting the wave overcome her.

It came in spurs, she started squirting all over his mouth and face. Hobie immediately started lapping her up, trying to drink every little drop.

That’s a first, even my ex wasn’t able to do that with me. Her chest was heaving, thighs still trembling from the aftermath.

“If I knew you tasted this good, I would’ve done this sooner.” He smiles, giving her pussy one last kiss before kissing her lips a few times.

“Mmm- sorry, I made a mess on your face,” she breathes out, pussy still sensitive as Hobie’s huge girth was pressing against it.

Hobie unzipped his pants, quickly taking it off and freed his aching cock from his boxers.

“You’re gonna have to make another mess, mas. Whole lot more,” grinding the tip at her wetness, giving special attention to her swollen clit.

“Hobie… I just came,” she glanced nervously at his size, it was a good guess of 6-7 inches with a bit of a wide veiny girth.

“Better then, I’ll take care of you darling. Don’t worry, you’ll be wanting it more soon,” Hobie slowly pressed on his hips, the tip slowly making its way inside her folds.

As he leisurely pressed it inside, she could feel him stretching her out. Her walls adjusting to his size, but surprisingly she only felt a scale of 5/10 pain.

“You okay, my love?” Hobie asks, each of his hands holding her hands down. Kissing her cheek and neck to reassure her.

“Mhm, just keep going. Is it even fully in yet?” She groaned.

“Not even close, but fuck I’m only half way through- the tip’s kissing your cervix already.” He laughs a bit, then groaned at she kept gripping around him.

The pain started to retreat, and all she could feel how full she was of him, and he was right- she could feel his hard tip pressing on the entrance of her cervix.

“Hobie, move. Please.” She begged, looking at his pained expression.

“Mmm, love. You’re still adjusting,” Hobie groaned, hearing her say those words almost made him pound into her to oblivion.

“Please Hobs, start fucking me. I won’t say it again.” She says sternly, something inside her grew excited. Her nervousness soon started to diminish and was replaced with yearning.

He looked down on her, wringing her wrists together above her head and slinging his web- bounding them together.

“As you wish.”

He placed one of his hands under her ass, pulling her up a bit and started to pull his length out before plunging it back in her.

Y/n’s bound hands immediately placed themselves at the back of his neck. It was a slow pounding but she was hitting it too deep, the tip pounding her cervix at every thrust.

The squelching noise that both of their sexes made overwhelmed their senses, their animalistic groans filled the room. Both couldn’t care less if their neighbors could hear them fucking away.

Their sweats began to mix, everything what they’re doing made them intertwine with one another. Y/n’s wetness was already covering Hobie’s cock, pummeling her has gotten easier and more of his length disappeared in her.

“Shit, mas, Your pussy’s swallowing me. I can’t stop.” Hobie gritted his teeth, being inside her made him addicted.

She felt that familiar urge again, but it was stronger. Hobie’s merciless pummeling edged her closer.

“Hobs,” she whimpered.

“I know, I know love. Cum all over me, make a mess.” He connected his lips to hers, muffling her loud moans as she let herself succumbed to his commands. Her whole body bucked and quiver against his.

Hobie hissed, sensed he was nearing to his end. But he wanted to finish feeling all of her crumbling first, then pulled out. Just barely, spurs of his hot cum landed on her stomach.

It took them a moment, giving them both time to come back to the real world.

Hobie plopped himself on top of her, she didn’t mind the weight. It was rather comforting, feeling him against her.

Hobie placed himself beside her on the bed, pulling her in- not caring they were both buck naked. Ripping off the web on her knotted hands.

She snuggled closer to him, knowing there was no turning back after what they’ve done.

“I know I’ve said I don’t believe in labels and consistency but, I’d prefer to make an exception for you, my love. Only you. I want this to be real for us,” Hobie broke the silence, playing with the strands of her hair and caressing her back.

“You better keep your word, Hobs. I have liked you for quite some time now.” Y/n started to trace her fingers on his chest, savoring each moment they have.

“I think we’ve gone way past using “like” love, doesn’t really match the way you’ve been needing me earlier.” He teases, groping an ass cheek.

[simdertalia]

🌺🌴 ACNH Paradise Planning Set: Part 1 🌴🌺

All the items you'll need to recreate The upstairs of the Paradise Planning office in your TS4 game. Most items came with only 1 swatch each. There are lots of items that I added extra swatches for. *See bottom of item list for links to the handful of items that have already been made in other sets. Set 2 coming very soon!

Sims 4, Base game compatible | 67 items

💡As always, turning the brightness down on my functional lamps will make them look better (not overly bright) due to my vertex paint issue in Blender. I am trying to figure the issue out.

Always suggested: bb.objects ON, it makes placing items much easier. For further placement tweaking, check out the TOOL mod.

Use the scale up & down feature on your keyboard to make the items larger or smaller to your liking. If you have a non-US keyboard, it may be different keys depending on which alphabet it uses.

I hope you enjoy! ☺️ Download below, all in a zip file or pick & choose!

Set contains: Buy: -Bongos | 3 swatches | 1192 poly -Books 1 & 2 | 3 swatches each | 236, & 274 poly -Bookshelf (long) | 3 swatches | 242 poly -Bowl Stack | 7 swatches | 558 poly  -Box 1 | 4 swatch | 78 poly -Box Stack | 1 swatch | 514 poly -Cactus | 3 swatches | 586 poly -Canisters | 5 swatches | 238 poly -Cart | 1 swatch | 1102 poly -Chips Bag | 1 swatch | 276 poly -Chips Bowl | 8 swatches | 866 poly -Coffee Table | 3 swatches | 434 poly -First Aid Kit | 1 swatch | 166 poly -Food Chocolates Plate | 4 swatches | 1982 poly -Large Wood Shelf | 3 swatches | 659 poly -Lei | 1 swatch | 1636 poly -Light Bulb Lamp (turn brightness down in game for best look) | 2 swatches (second swatch is whiter) | 544 poly -Locker 1 & 2 (2 items) | 3 swatches each | 954, & 1288 poly -Magazine Stack 1 & 2 | 3 swatches each | 581, & 421 poly -Mirror | 8 swatches | 986 poly -Notepad & Pen | 5 swatches | 44 poly -Open Magazine | 4 swatches | 140 poly -Paint & Brush | 5 swatches | 332 poly -Party Decoration (wall) | 6 swatches | 1252 poly -Pencil & Pad | 1 swatch | 594 poly -Pen Cup | 1 swatch | 432 poly -Picture Frame 1 | 3 frame colors, 10 images, 30 total swatches | 210 poly -Pillars (3 items, Small, Medium & Large) | 1 swatch each | 312 poly -Pillow Stack | 6 swatches | 1697 poly -Pizza | 2 swatches | 447 poly -Plant 1 | 5 swatches | 1101 poly -Polaroids & Postcard 1 & 2 (2 items) | 2 swatches each | 144, & 176 poly -Pottery | 1 swatch | 382 poly -Rug: Large & Small (2 items) | 2 swatches each (second swatch is brighter) | 480, & 10 poly -Seashell Bowl | 2 swatches | 2214 poly -Small Drawers (slotted) | 3 swatches | 81 poly -Soup Decor (2 items: Steam & No Steam versions) | 24 swatches each | 1270 poly -Spray Paint | 1 swatch | 182 poly -Starfish Bowl | 2 bowl colors, 4 starfish colors, 8 total swatches | 850 poly -Storage Cabinet (2 items: closed door & open door) | 7 swatches each | 222 poly -Storage Chest | 1 swatch | 2022 poly -Teacup (2 items: Steam & No Steam versions) | 11 swatches each | 188 poly -Teapot | 11 swatches | 746 poly -Tissue Box | 9 swatches | 606 poly -Toolbox | 1 swatch | 124 poly -Toolbox 2 | 2 swatches | 822 poly -Trophy | 3 swatches | 1040 poly -Wall Calendar | 1 swatch | 306 poly -Wall Clock | 3 swatches | 458 poly -Wall Flags | 3 swatches | 154 poly -Window Shade | 3 swatches | 124 poly -Wood Crate | 2 swatches | 730 poly -Wood Shelf | 2 swatches | 437 poly -Work Papers | 1 swatch | 83 poly -Wrench | 1 swatch | 124 poly

Build: -Floors Wood | 1 swatches | Wood -Walls Plaster | 2 swatches | Paint

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The rest of my CC

[doctordeathawaits]

INFO - LIST FOR TRANSABLED AID ACCESS

A list of discreet access of assistive aids , ways to hide assistive aids , and euphoria inducing replacements .

Where to get assistive aids ?

01 , An obvious choice would be online shopping , although discreet shopping can be a bit difficult . Buying many things at once so you get a big / couple of packages could be a way to not turn any eyes , especially now that the holidays are coming up . " But I live with people who have the tendency of opening my packages " , there are a couple of options of what you can do - use a p.o box or locker service ( ex: amazon locker will send you an email with pickup instructions ) , choosing a specific delivery time of when you are only home / you have time to be the first one to pick it up ( tip : have delivery notifications on so you can be the first one to receive it ) , have delivery instructions to specify where to put the package ( ex : behind a pot plant , under the steps , etc ) , have it delivered to your friends / work . " But big shopping sites aren't safe for me " , Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist could be a better option for you , may be also safer as you can request the person selling you the item to make it discreet / can also be on the cheaper end , as they tend to be used . It can also be safer on the end of simply picking it up , making it so that there isn't any sort of electronic transaction that can be seen on a bank / phone receipt . 02 , Thrifted / Yard sales are also a good option - not only is it generally more discreet , allowing you to take it home by simply putting it in your bag without any other notice , but it's also generally cheaper , seeing that often times its used items still in a somewhat good condition . " What / where do I look for ? " , I would often suggest Goodwill , as they tend to have a wider range of mobility aids . You can also find them at your local small shops - try calling ahead and asking if they have anything , as they mostly will have more time to look through their storage . " How do I know it's worth it ? " , shopping out is a greater option as you can test out if the aid is good for you . When shopping for aids , test if they are sturdy , if they are the right size for you / there is any ability to diy fix it to your measurements , and how you would be able to put it away / hide it .

When it comes to what sort of aid is the most discreet : Canes : foldable canes are the most discreet , they are compact and are able to be carried in a bag . Double use canes , such as umbrella canes , are also discreet in the sense of being able to play it off as just an umbrella . Rollator : also good to consider a foldable rollators / walkers , ones that also have a seat can be passed off as just portable seats . Wheelchairs : Wheelchairs , unless you live in a spacious area without any judging eyes , are hard to turn discreet . While folding wheelchairs are a thing , plus lightweight ones - like most wheelchairs , they are expensive , and often are badly fitted / uncomfortable . ++ temporary replacements are a better option . Hearing Aids : Hearing Aids kept in their case can very easily be passed out as to be wireless earbuds / there are many hearing aids that resemble simple ear buds. Although , Hearing Aids bought online aren't the most reliable , and may be even dangerous - so temporary / thrifted replacement is a better option .

Where do I hide my aids if I am in an unsafe environment ?

While hiding things from the people you live with can be draining , it is still suggested for your safety .

01 , Folding Aids - Any aid that is able to be neatly folded and easily stored is the best when it comes to hiding . Placing them in bags in also the best , as you are able to take them out once you leave your place . Another way would be having a designated spot outside your place , where you can easily access it once you are out . More ways of hiding them : in drawers , unused umbrella holders , under your mattress , in coat hoodies , old shoe boxes .

02 , Aids with Wheels - While trickier , definitely able . The biggest suggestion is to have folding versions . You can fold them and store in the back of your closet along the wall . You can put it on the frame of your bed and put a mattress over it . If you have a rug , putting it specifically near / under your bed , and then the aid right under the rub can also be an option . If you have a dresser , sliding it between the wall and the dresser's side can help . On top of closets can also be good . When needing to store it for outside use , big portfolios could fit them . 03 , Hearing Aids - Probably the easiest to hide as they resemble ear buds . Although getting custom / decorated cases can be good for disguising them . Nonetheless , if needed , hiding them in small pockets of backpacks , coat pockets , pencil cases can be extra security . " What if I immediately need to hide something for my safety ? " , when opening your drawer - look past the drawer / take it out , you will see that there is room on the inside of the frame , even with the drawers fully closed . You can throw any smaller sized aid in that space , and then simply take out the drawers to take it back when ready . Another way for more bigger aids - take out all of the drawers from a dresser , put the aid inside , then put the drawers back in . If the back of your dresser is a softer material that's able to be cut , cut a ⊏ shape so that it creates a flap , put your aid in and tape the flap , put your dresser back up on the wall - the flap is an easier access than taking out all drawers . Although if you feel like you are in immediate danger for having an assistive aid in your home , prioritize your safety and take the aid out of your home . You are worth more than something that you will be 100% able to get back in the future < 3

DIY - ING

Everyone should be able to have access to assistive aids - even when it comes to creating their own .

Folding Crutches . ( need to already have simple crutches ) Cane out of yardsticks . ++ easier , You can make a cane by taking hard pvc pipe , sealing the bottom + adding a stopper ( shaped rubber or foam ) , while at the top you cut out to sides of a handle - a top and bottom , glue it with hot glue and attach it.

While it may not be as sturdy - it's still a good alternative .

More affordable assistive aid shopping :

essentailaids.com , affordable canes / crutches / walkers - lots of accessories , has wheelchairs too .

mobilityshop.co.uk , also affordable AND a huge range , so you have some options . Also offers accessories and some more simpler accessibility aids .

argos.co.uk , on the more pricier end yet still quite affordable , also offers joints support and braces .

abilitysuperstore.com , while not as affordable as other sites , still has a pretty decent price range - but has way more options to offer .

[drakulana]

the first spark // trafalgar law x reader

content: sfw, fem! reader, female pronouns, sloooow burn w little resolution, long reader backstory, violence

part 2, part 3

word count: 5.5k

notes: this is my first ever fan fic!!! i’m very proud of it, and i worked on it for a few weeks on and off. i hope you enjoy!!

⋆⭒˚‧₊˚°❀⋆₊⊹ ⋆｡𖦹˚. ͟͟͞☆

The Polar Tang had been under the water for about a month now. Never in a million years did (Y/n) think she’d be in the middle of the ocean, let alone underneath the surface in a submarine, 395 meters down. She had joined the Heart Pirates about 6 months ago and was just now getting used to being underwater for such a long amount of time. She had been having continuous headaches she assumed to be due to the pressure of being underwater for such a long time. They would come and go, some days worse than others. Today was one of the worst days. The chores had been done, and all the tasks were complete. Most of the crew decided to lounge around, hanging out with one another. To (Y/n) it seemed as if all corners of the submarine were occupied, and they all had too much noise to focus. Trying to find some peace and quiet, she made her way down to the boiler room, letting the laughter and chatter of her crew fade as she departed. It was not the first time she had done this, in fact this was her little secret. No one liked to come down here unless it was included in the work that they had to do. Pipes lined the walls, and the low hum of engines from a few doors over buzzed through the room. Finally at peace, she took a deep breath and exhaled.

A week ago, (Y/n) had stashed a book and a blanket down here, along with a pillow and a cushion she found in storage. She tucked herself into the corner, and sat down on the box that had placed the cushion on. She pulled out the book she was reading which was just a volume of some medical book Captain Law had in the library. Principles of Neurology. It was not an interesting read in the slightest, but there really was not a wide variety to choose from in the Surgeon of Death’s library.

Her mind started to wander as she flipped page by page trying to follow along the best she could with what she was reading. An entity of “frailty” has been conceived to encompass the sum of breakdown in multiple organ systems… She read the sentence over a few times. She made a mental note to get a book that was relatively interesting on the next island that they stopped on. Letting out a sigh, she continued to try to read but ended up drifting away with her thoughts. She was still relatively new to the crew, she had been with them for 6 months. Long enough to get comfortable with her crewmates, but not so long that they knew everything about her.

(Y/n) joined the Heart Pirates after aiding Law with intel that he needed about someone he was “researching.” During the process of this, she got caught up with the conflicts of whoever Law was looking into, and was taken hostage. While in hostage, the person pressed her for information of who was after them, how she knew all of their info, who was her informant? Despite the pressure, and the fear of looming death, she did not give out any answers. She chose against ratting out the Heart Pirates. At that moment, she was sure she was gonna die either way. If she gave out the information, the Heart Pirates were sure to come after her. If they were to get a hold of her, she’d have to answer to the Surgeon of Death. However, if she didn’t give out the answers, the man who was holding her hostage could kill her. So naturally, she picked the lesser of the two evils. Her mouth was staying shut. Like hell was she going to answer to Trafalgar Law of all people. She sat back and recalled that day.

She was held in a damp, dim, humid room. She wasn’t too sure on how long she had been there, but it was probably half a day. The interrogation started out like all of them did with questions and threats. After the first few hours of not speaking punches began to be thrown, and weapons were soon pulled out. Somebody’s hasty, she thought to herself as the interrogation took turns for the worst faster than she had anticipated. It was clear the man she had sold out was in a hurry. He was scared. How he found out it was her that sold his information, she didn’t know. All she knew was that this guy found out, and now he was mad and had a dagger. He kept questioning, each unanswered question he got a couple cuts in. Midquestion, a commotion outside the door started. Yelling ensued, then things breaking and then a panicked, “Boss, we have visitors.” The man interrogating you paused his mild torture, faltering as he stepped towards the door, like he was weighing his options. Would he stay in this room, or deal with the inevitable of being confronted by the man who seemed out his information, Trafalgar Law. He turned to the girl who was sitting in the chair. Her hands were tied in front of her, and her feet were tied together. “You,” He pointed an accusatory finger, “this is all your fault!” and you know, he was right, it was all her fault. She gave the intel for a very pretty penny, but how was she suppose to know she was going to get kidnapped and interrogated. How did they even know it was her who gave the intel? Questions zoomed through her head as he stormed towards her with the dagger in his hand. He held it to her throat. “I oughta kill you right here, right now. A life for a life.” The cool edge of the shaky blade pressed into her skin, nicking her in the slightest due to his unsteady hands. Then, with a sharp slice, her warm sticky blood poured down her neck. An involuntary gasp ripped from her throat as she felt the blood gather at the neckline of her shirt, soaking it. This is it, she thought, Here’s where I die. But before he could cut any deeper, the door to the room burst open. A warm yellow light illuminated the room from the hall outside. A tall figure stood in the doorway. It stormed over to the man, grabbing him by the back of his collar, turning him around. The warm light from the hallway casted across the face of the figure, it was none other than Trafalgar Law. Law craned down to the man’s height, paying the woman tied to the chair no mind, “I believe you have something I want,” he said in a low gruff voice. The man trembled in his grasp. “Now why don’t we take a little trip to your laboratory,” Trafalgar Law dragged the man out of the room, leaving the woman in there alone. It was a quick few minutes before she realized she was gonna have to free herself, and this was her only chance.

She looked around the room and spotted the dagger that the man had dropped near the doorway. Seeing her chance of escape, she scooted the chair towards the entrance. She grabbed the knife with her feet. Reaching down with her tied hands, she cut the ropes that bound her. Whoever tied her up did a really shitty job. Finally free, she prepared herself to escape. Dagger in hand, the silver of the blade glinting as she gazed upon the object. She couldn’t help but notice the blood on the edge from the man attempting to slit her throat. She tried to pay no mind to the wet sticky pain that was starting to raidiate down her neck and into her collarbones. Pushing the pain aside, she made her way through the place, careful to avoid anyone who might be lurking. Once she made it out, she let out a sigh of relief. Barefoot and bleeding, she decided she should probably take the alleyways home. She would hate to scare oncoming bypassers, or god forbid someone contact the authorities. Slipping into the alley, she started to make her way home before a voice cut through the night, “And where do you think you’re going?” Her head whipped around, gripping the dagger that she held in her hand. That voice was the one of Trafalgar Law. She met the man’s golden eyes. She quickly took in his appearance. When she first gave him the intel she had noticed his height, but she also wasn’t fearing for her life at the time. The weight of impending doom really added a foot or two to his appearance. “I didn’t tell them anything,” she breathed. “I didn’t say a word, I swear.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, and her voice didn’t sound like hers as it bounced off the alleyway walls. He took a step closer to her, “I know, but I still can’t let you go. You’re hurt, let me look at it,” he stepped closer. Her mouth felt as if it were filled with cotton. She took a step back, “I’m fine,” she gritted while taking one more step back, trying to put enough distance between them just so she’d have a chance of running away. She was just interrogated and borderline tortured, if she had known what the intentions were behind the wanted intel, she would’ve denied the offer. Besides, it wasn’t like the intel was collected for malice in the first place. (Y/n) had a goal, and that goal was to collect the most information she could, and write it all down into a book. This extended from histories of islands, pirates, doctors, scientists, government officials. Few people knew about her knowledges of the world and it’s inhabitants. Every now and then she would get someone wanting some information, and if the price was right she’d give it to them. She never thought it would lead to this, cornered in an alleyway by the Surgeon of Death himself. “I’m a doctor,” Law’s voice echoed off the walls as he slowly stepped forward towards her, like he was trying to approach a scared stray, careful not to spook it. His hands were held out in front of him, as if he meant no harm, however the word ‘DEATH’ tattooed across both his hands stated otherwise.

“I know good and well who and what you are.” Unintentional venom laced her words. She knew all about the reputation that seemed to proceed him. She had done her research whenever she came across his wanted poster a year ago. She never thought she would cross paths with him, he was just another name in her book for the longest time.

“Then you know it’s in your best interest if you just come with me.” With that last sentence from him, she falsely dropped her guard, muttering a small okay. She didn’t think this tactic was going to work, but as soon as she saw him relax his stance, she bolted. Running through the alleyway with no shoes seemed to be a difficult task, impeding her usual speed. Trying her best to avoid glass and nails, she darted in between the buildings, and in and out of the alleyways. She had the advantage, she knew this city. The poorly maintained asphalt stung, but she had no other choice but to ignore it if she wanted to get away.

She finally was able to duck behind a building after what felt like an eternity of turning down random streets and alleys. She leaned against the bricks to catch her breath, gripping the dagger in her hand. Her heartbeat was in her ears, she could feel the blood rushing through every vein. She stilled and tried to stay quiet, the only sound leaving her was a shaky exhale. The adrenaline slightly wore off as the silence of the night settled. The events of the night really started to set into her body. Her arms and legs aches, her lungs burned, her throat was on fire. Despite the pain setting in, she thought she had gotten away by some miracle, but a second later the same low voice she was running from bounced around her again. “You really think you could get away from me that easily?” His voice echoed, giving it a more sinister sound than what he had intended. She met his eyes. She didn’t know if it was the adrenaline making her analyze her situation in full detail, or if she was just delusional, but she found herself taking in every detail of his presence. The eyes that held her eye contact were golden. He had a lean figure, and was undoubtedly in shape. The moonlight poured over his figure, casting an intimidating shadow as he now stood in front of her. She noted the yellow button up that was halfway buttoned, showing a glimpse of the tattoo on his chest. He had on jeans that had spots on them, and a white hat that shared those same spots. Draped over his shoulders was a long navy coat. If she wasn’t running from him, she could’ve admitted that he was quite an attractive man, but in her head he was trying to catch her so he could kill her.

Her grip on the handle of the dagger tightened before hurling it in Law’s direction. The blade rotated in the air before hitting Law in the shoulder. The way the dagger was thrown would’ve been deemed as impressive by him if he wasn’t on the receiving end of the throw. He quickly pulled the dagger out of his shoulder, and threw it to the ground before chasing after her, once again. This time she was only able to make it a few blocks before he finally tackled her to the ground against the rough concrete. She felt the skin of her knees and elbows scrape against the asphalt, surely breaking the skin. Heart racing, and body trembling, the woman underneath him had no choice but to accept her fate. “You’ll be coming with me,” he growled at her, bitterness lacing his tone. He pulled her up and off the ground then led her to the dock on the bay. His grip was more than enough of a reminder that there was nowhere she could go.

The walk to the submarine was silent, and the man next to her was not giving off a very welcoming energy considering he was taking her against her will. Blood slightly bled through his shirt where the dagger had hit him. He walked her down the dock, and onto a yellow submarine that had ‘DEATH’ written on the side of it. Well how lovely is that? She thought to herself. His firm grip on her upper arm never faltered as he guided her down the hallways of the submarine. Several of his crew members moved aside to make way for the two of them to walk down the hall. It was like a walk of shame. Once they reached the end of the hall, he opened a door. The sterile smell of rubbing alcohol and latex filled her nose, as the bright white lights poured out of the room. It was an examination room. “Sit,” he pointed to the examination table. Having no other choice, that’s exactly what she did, she sat.

Without another word, he started inspecting her injuries. He lifted her chin to get a better look at her neck. “This will need stitches,” he said flatly. He examined the other scrapes and cuts on her body. The adrenaline wore off long ago, and pain radiated from her toes to her head. He cleaned the area and prepped his needle. The stitching process was painful. She sharply inhaled when he stuck the needle through. “Be still,” he commanded, “It’ll only hurt worse if you move.” She had to force herself not to flinch at the needle stitching up her wound. Finally having her still, and in front of him, Law couldn’t deny that (Y/n) was very attractive. The way her hair framed her face, the way she held herself with such self assurance. Fear still resided in her pretty eyes, as she stayed as still as possible while he stitched. He ended up doing seven stitches, the cut was sure to leave a scar to adorn her pretty neck. He cleaned the other wounds and bandaged them up. It was silent in that exam room, and then finally he broke the silence. “Why did you run away?” He asked her. She looked at him like asked the stupidest question, and in some way he did. Who wouldn’t run away from the Surgeon of Death? His reputation alone was enough to make a grown man fall to his knees, and she had literally just seen a grown man fall to his knees at the hand of him. After weighing her response, she broke the silence, “Dying wasn’t on my agenda once I got out of there,” her voice quiet, but not weak.

“Why would I kill you?” He asked her. Again, another incredulous look was thrown at him. Was he not aware of the grumbling that went along with his name?

“For knowing too much?” She answered, in a duh tone.

“You don’t know anymore than you did whenever I approached you for intel. I had some of my men go through your files, you have some very impressive intel on multiple pirates including the warlords and emperors. Where do you get all that?”

“Verified sources,” she simply answered, not letting onto her process of gathering information. There was another silence before she broke it this time. “Listen, if you’re going to kill me, just go ahead and make it quick. Medical torture really doesn’t sound appealing.”

He chuckled lightly at this, but it was not one of humor, “I’m not gonna kill you, but I’m definitely not letting you go either. I know what you’re working on, and I want your intel. Join my crew.” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand, and by the way he was talking to her that was very obvious.

“What’s in it for me?” She inquired like she had a choice.

“You can do some more of your research, and we could use your intel,” He stated like it was obvious. “Everybody wins.” Unfortunately, he was right. Going island to island would be great for her research, and it would give her an opportunity to get first count perspective about the things she was writing about. For a pirate, the information that she held would be very helpful, they would never go into a situation blind. However, being a pirate was not appealing. If she joined the Heart Pirates, she’d surely be wanted, especially with the information that she had collected over the years. She had been able to keep the things that she knew on the low, only occasionally being visited by certain people who wanted intel, but the intel always came at a price. It was a very hush-hush thing. Putting aside the fact that she knew more than most about what was going on in the world, she was just an ordinary woman with no devil fruit, no haki, how was she supposed to be a wanted woman? After mulling over his words, she finally spoke up, “I don’t think you know what I do. I’m gathering information to add to a book. I am not a pirate. I don’t have any fighting techniques, I would die as soon as we hit the battlefield. I will slow you down, no information is worth dying for, or putting your crew in danger for,” she argued, trying to convince herself if she made herself look like a burden, she would be let go.

“Your knowledge outweighs your weaknesses,” he stated. He wasn’t budging on this matter. “Join my crew, and you’ll get to gain more knowledge about the world. Think about the intel you could get if you were traveling the seas?” Once again, he did make a very good point.

“What if I say no?” She asked, wondering if he’d confirm her suspicions. A pregnant silence fell over the room again. She knew she wasn’t getting out of this one, and this just might be the death of her.

“You don’t want to say no.” He left it at that, and finished cleaning her wounds and patching her up.

That was six months ago. Six months of being on this submarine. Six months ago and she still didn’t feel as if she belonged, still felt as if she served no purpose. Sure after the first month, her crew mates started to adore her with her little jokes and random fun facts, but what was she really doing out on the open ocean? She sat there pondering until a voice ripped her out of her head. “You enjoying the Principles of Neurology?” It was her dear captain. She didn’t know he had been standing there, watching her unmovingly stare at the same page. She looked up at him, and then back down at the page she had been staring at for what felt like forever. “Sure, I’m having a blast learning about…The Neurology of Aging,” she read out the chapter name.

“What are you doing down here?” her captain asked her, curiosity lacing his tone.

“This is my secret hiding place, don’t tell the others,” she mused at him. Their relationship was very professional, and in fact for the first month and a half she was on the Polar Tang, she hardly said a word to him outside of him asking for information about various people and places. It’s not like she had a choice or not to be on the damned submarine. It still didn’t feel quite right to be there, but in the past few months she had started to let her guard down. She always addressed her captain with a professional tone, but every now and then she’d throw in a bit of a playful tone, and most times he would entertain her antics. “What are you doing down here?” she asked. She looked at her captain, taking in his appearance. She couldn’t lie, he was a very attractive man. Whenever she would have thoughts like this she would kick herself. She would remind herself who he was. He was her captain, and that’s all that was.

He looked down at her, discreetly looking her up and down, “I was looking for you. I would like to discuss some information about an island we will be arriving to in the next few days. There is an epidemic there and I will need all the information you have on the island, and the citizens so that we can take the proper precautions upon arrival.” His voice echoed off the metal walls.

“Oh okay, let me go up and grab my notes,” She said as she got up from her box, folding the blanket and placing the Neurology book on top.

“Meet me in my office,” he ordered, as he turned to go up the ladder. She made her way into her bunk and pulled out a notebook and a binder filled with stuff about all the islands she knew about. They were organized by North Blue, South Blue, East Blue, West Blue, Grandline, and New World. She gathered all her things and made her way towards Captain Law’s office.

She entered the Captain’s Quarters with a binder that was bursting at the seams, holding all her notes. As she walked in she took in her surroundings. It wasn’t the first time she had been in the Captain’s Quarters, but everytime she had been in there it was only for a brief period, usually dropping off files and papers from her research. Papers were stacked high on his desk, and there were files and books scattered across the room. It was messy, but it was not dirty. The room smelled like paper, ink, and Law.

She made her way over to his desk and started to flip through her binder. The binder was as full as it could be, and while the different places were organized, the contents of the binder within her neatly divided sections were scrawls of writing and small sketches here and there. “So, where we going?” She asked, beaming. She loved talking about all the things she had researched. She loved gathering information and putting it all together. Her goal was to write a full encyclopedia on the world and maybe one day she could write about the One Piece, if it was ever found. Without looking up, Law answered, “Bronze Island.” She was aware of the location, and she was also very aware of the disease that spread through the island, almost 60% of cases were fatal.

She flipped to the section where the island’s information was found, hesitantly inhaling before stating, “Uhh… I don’t think you want to go there.” Law looked up at her for the first time since she had entered his office, feigning annoyance behind his eyes. “I do think I want to go there,” He countered. She didn’t argue with him, he was the captain after all, but this island was being raided by pestilence.

“This disease has a high mortality rate, and it’s more contagious than the common cold. It’s an airborne disease. It spread mostly through bodily fluids,” she spouted off. “The island has poor air quality which just adds to the mix, making the citizens’ immune systems weaker. The island’s government is riddled with corrupt officials. There have been many uprisings staged, but none of them have aided in the ridding of the corrupt officials,” She set the paper in front of her captain. “If you have any questions, let me know. I’ll leave the rest of these pages to you,” she took a stack of papers out of the binder and laid them on his desk. There must have been at least 20 of them. The pages consisted of information about the epidemic, information on the citizens, as well the island officials. Law looked through the papers, before setting them back down. She used that as her cue to leave, and went towards the door, “Just let me know when you’re done with them.”

“Where are you going?” He asked her as if it were normal for her to stay. He never asked her to stay after giving him her research. He usually just looked at them and returned them. They shared eye contact for a split second before he answered her unasked question of why. “I’m going to need your help on this one.” Without replying, she turned back towards him and sat in a chair that was in front of his desk. The chair was hardly broken in, and it was obvious her captain didn’t really enjoy visitors all that much in his study, unless necessary. A dull sense of pride bubbled up inside of her, hearing that he needed her help. For a second she was able to push aside the feeling of not belonging on this ship. Her captain picked up the pages that she had given him and handed them back to her. “Let’s start with the island officials.” (Y/n) flipped through the papers getting to the officials section of her research, and started spouting off the names and the roles they played within the island’s government. She didn’t know what her captain was planning, nor did she think she wanted to know what he was planning. She was still new to this pirate thing, new to the notion that sometimes some people will get hurt in the crossfire. Hell, she was almost one of those people.

Brushing off her thoughts she skimmed across the paper, coming across some grammatical errors. “Captain Law?” A comfortable softness laced her tone as he caught her eyes. He had never heard her voice sound so sweet, so warm. His heart almost melted. “Could I borrow a pencil?” She asked him, holding his gaze with hers. He mumbled a quick of course before holding the object towards her. She reached out to take it, the tips of her fingers brushing his. When they touched, a jolt of electricity shocked them both. His golden eyes met hers once again, but lingered for a second too long this time. Long enough for her eyes to travel down to his lips, and then back up to his eyes. It felt as if time stood still. It felt like it was the first time she had really taken a good look at her captain since that night 3 months ago. She pulled her attention away, muttering a quick thank you as she took the pencil, hoping the lighting in his office didn’t capture the slight pink dusting her cheeks. She internally kicked herself for letting her eyes travel, for letting herself put him on a pedestal in her mind, even if it was only for a split second. It was wrong in so many ways, she couldn’t let herself think about him in that way. She couldn’t let her guard down. Mutually ignoring their little moment, they both resumed to what they were doing.

After about 2 hours of going through the information about the island and it’s government, as well as its citizens, they wrapped up their work. “Would you like me to leave you these papers?” She asked him. Without looking up from all of the notes that he had taken, he let a single, “Yes,” fall from his lips. She nodded, and put the papers on his desk. “If you have any questions, you know where to find me,” As she was about to make her exit, she heard her name being called. She turned her head to look at her captain, unintentionally savoring the way her name rolled off his tongue. “Thank you for the help,” he said smoothly, hesitating before continuing, “And if you ever need a place to hide, don’t hesitate to come in here to read or to finish your research.” She smiled and nodded her head as the feeling of belonging settled in her core for the second time that night. “Thank you, if you ever need anymore help I’m more than happy to do so,” she replied trying to sound as professional as possible in order to combat the warm feeling that was starting to bubble in her stomach. She turned on her heel and made her way back to her bunk.

That night, against her will, her thoughts were consumed by her captain and the moment they had shared. She felt guilty feeling this way, it wasn’t right to feel borderline giddy as she recalled such minor events. Sure, maybe their fingers touched, and maybe he made her feel like she belonged for once, but it was a moral dilemma just waiting to happen. Internally, she berated herself for even thinking about her captain in that way. Despite her self berating, she let her thoughts drift to her captain as she stared at the metal ceiling. There was a comfortable air around him, one she didn’t like to acknowledge that often. He felt safe, but she knew he could be dangerous. He seemed sane, but she knew he wasn’t. She was aware the longer she stayed with the Heart Pirates the more she let her guard down, and that included Law. She surely was trusted if he was offering to share his quiet space. She thought about how he offered it to her, with softer words than his usual tone. No matter how hard she tried to shake the doctor from her thoughts she couldn’t. That night, she went to sleep with Trafalgar Law taking up the space where her dreams usually lay.

Down the hall, in the captain quarters, Law mulled over what he had said to her before she left the room. It wasn’t like him to just offer someone a place in his study like that. Law worked alone. It was his space. That was the one place he was guaranteed to get some peace and quiet. What was even more strange was that he didn’t even regret offering his space to her. In fact, he was hoping that she would take him up on it and spend her time there instead of in the boiler room. He pushed his thoughts away, rationalizing his offer as just an excuse to gather more of the information she held. If she were to come to the office for peace and quiet, it was inevitable for her to work there too. He told himself that was the real reason he had offered it, rather not acknowledging the warmth he felt when he was around her. He pushed his thoughts away and buried himself in his work for the night, every now and then thinking about his crew member. The feeling that was tugging in his chest would have to be for another day.

⋆⭒˚‧₊˚°❀⋆₊⊹ ⋆｡𖦹˚. ͟͟͞☆

@drakulana 2023 // i do not give permission to copy, translate, or repost without my consent

[bowieandqueen11]

Kissing Roman Roy Would Include...

Request: oh my god! your kendall roy kissing headcanons were adorable! would it be possible to get some for roman as well? i just know that man is touch starved and definitely had an awkward time kissing the reader early on in their relationship. obviously, you can choose to ignore but thank you!

Awww yes of course you can get some my love this man is 100% touch starved you’re so right <3

LADS OKAY I’M COMING BACK TO SAY THIS IS NEARLY 7K AND MY LONGEST FIC BY FAR LMAOO BABYGIRL CODED anyway comments are much appreciated because I am so tired lol ty ty ily all! :)

Warning: mentions of injuries/ blood, childhood abuse, and some swearing! Also MAJOR spoilers for Season 4!!

(I do not own Succession or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @xihatiancai.)

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°

We all really took one look at Roman Roy and went wet pathetic disgusting meow meow man I love you, and I really love and appreciate that for all of us. Because like... if not babygirl, why babygirl coded?

The first time you guys ‘kissed’, you were both around seven years old: on the tennis court, Shiv had sent a ball flying at Roman that had bent his hand backwards, and left quite a nasty gash of blood running down his arm. Instead of comforting the brother she had just bruised for the umpteenth time, the set of Roman crawling down to sit on the grass while cradling his arm just made her furious, and she went storming off towards the kitchen for some chocolate milk to cool down. You had been watching from the doubles side line, dropping your own racket as soon as Roman began to snivel, squeezing his skin back together and wincing as warm blood gushed out onto the grass. You run over to kneel in front of him, the harsh rays of light blushing across your head like a halo as you grab onto his elbow. You press the back of your shirt against it, hoping it will do until a nurse or one of the waiters comes running out with a first aid kit; as you glance up, the furious face of his father comes pacing past the balcony doors, and so you turn Roman’s head to look at you instead, praying that he won’t spot him. It will only make him whine more. It surprises you when he curses curtly instead at the feel of your fingers pressing down hard against his wound, but when you mumble an apology he finally stops scowling down at the ground and looks up: it’s as if he’s seeing you properly for the first time. His eyes light up as you gently lean down and press a kiss against the bloodstains; just the slightest hint of pressure, and tingling warmth of your your lips is enough to send a flourish through his body and make Roman Roy feel nourished. No longer withered, no longer left to rot. Roman gazes up at you: past the dappled sunlight, past the dotted clouds, past the earth and skies and heavens, and past it all he sees you. 

You’re the first and last person he’s ever wanted to kiss. Like craving poison, he knows it will pass through and destroy him if he allows himself to indulge. But by god, if it wouldn’t taste so sweet as it pours down his throat and overwhelms every dilapidated part of his body.

The first time he works up the nerves to kiss you back, is in one of the pool storage huts just past the outer boundaries of his father’s estate. Shiv had finally convinced her father to allow her out into the city to go shopping for some new suits, and Ken had been chained into a business meeting to take notes for Logan, so Roman had been left all alone to wander around the ostentatious shadows and lonely halls of the house he hated to call home. Feeling trapped, like he couldn’t breathe, he wanders towards the ‘safe space’ the two of you had created a couple of years ago: a small nook you and Roman had spent the day nestling out (and nearly breaking his arm shoving unused surfboards and pool cleaning chemical boxes) in the dim, and slightly damp room. Finally feeling at home as he stepped into the mildew-steeped scent cloud that enveloped the square box stuffed full of things his father had wanted out of his sight, his heart is allieved to spot you already there. You don’t even have to look up from your book as he comes dawdling towards you like a puppy afraid it’s about to be kicked. When you open your arm up to him willingly, the true him comes leaping forth: like a darting hummingbird, he comes flying  into your side, nestling his chin on the hard part of your shoulder so he can scan the words lazily past your head. After about half an hour of him gripping onto your shirt, as sweet and softly as infant spring, he glances up towards your face and an overwhelming urge overtakes him. Before he can stop himself, before he can make sense of his decision, before he can chide himself for his weakness, he lifts his head up and presses his lips firmly, if a little harshly, against the side of your cheek. Your book crashes to the floor with a thunderous slap, lifting a small cloud of dust as you raise your fingers to the wet spot in surprise. He immediately shuffles backwards at the noise, before making an awkward, fumbling excuse and running out the door.

He never brings it up again, but whenever you’re round at the Roy residence after that you can feel the intensity of his eyes land on you far more often. He blinks away and scratches the back of his neck nonchalantly whenever you catch him, or sometimes scrunches his nose up and starts biting the edges of his fingernails if he’s really nervous. But the love is there. He just can’t say it yet.

Once, when you were the only person in the house besides Connor and Logan, you were asked by the second-born eldest son to help him find Romie. With a concerned sigh, Connor wanders off to check behind the bathroom door off the living room, his lips forming a tight line as he disappears off down the corridor. Turns out, Logan had found out that Roman had been the one to spill his ice cream cone in the car on the way back from his fencing lesson, and Roman had run off cursing and crying when he heard the roar reverberate out from his father’s office at the news. You know where he is, instinctively. Of course you do: you don’t even need to think as your feet guide you towards his bedroom, and your body shrinks down to scoot under the bed and lie on the pristinely clean floorboards. He’s hiding behind the tendril weeds of his fear, making himself as small a target as possible as he balls himself up, trembling like heavy branches when lanced with frost. From behind his raised elbows that protect his face, he’s sniffling, his feet leaving the ground every few seconds from how harshly they shake. You lie down carefully on your side beside him, so hyperaware of any part of yourself brushing against him, in case the wounded creature decides to bolt. Thankfully, he comes sliding towards you, only stopping when your chest does the job for him; being as physically close as he can get to you, he huddles into your embrace while you stroke back the few curls by his ear. Once you’ve finally managed to choke back your own tears, your lips latch onto the spot of skin by the lobe of his ear, eyes closing and ticking his skin. He warbles against you, shivering, and the kiss just makes him whine more harrowingly against your chest.

Romie’s always around you. Always. He finds it difficult to actually be physically intimate, so it says quite plainly (even if you can’t understand it yet) that you’re the love of his life when he comes barrelling down the front stairs of the veranda and straight into your hug whenever your first foot falls onto the estate. It also means that during family dinners, when he’s finally mastering the skill of slouching back in his wishbone chair and tuning out all the horrible and spiteful things wrapped up in faux sincerity his family are saying about each other, he turns instead to kick your feet under the table. The brush of his ankle against your shoe is soon followed by the heavy pressure of his fingers reaching over onto your lap and entangling with your own. When the two of you are finally excused, you decide not to go back inside straight away. Instead, the two of you go for a dander around some of the verdant fields around the edges of the property: a few green patches here there that are filled with the scent of honeysuckle and freshly blooming rainbows splattered amongst the dirt. You decide to stop and sit for a while on the edge of a cobbled stone wall, laughing as Roman nearly falls off the uneven patch as he settles down beside you. He shrugs you off with a wave of his hand, but he’s smiling as you pluck a daisy from between the blades and tuck it behind his ear. For a while, the two of you just exist: watching the sunset brew violet and lilac gleams across your eyeline, talking shite and poking fun at each other, until Roman shyly takes a break from his rapid talking to blink slowly. He leans his torso forward, and after a bashful burn flickers over his cheeks, he squeezes his eyes shut and plants a wet kiss against your cheek, just like he had done all those years before.

He climbs into your room later that night, and you nearly hit him with a baseball bat when you come strolling out of your bathroom to see a teenager laying splayed out in a heap on your rug, a few pages of your homework flying over your desk from where he had banged his knee and tripped. With a lopsided grin, he decides to just stay lying there (once you had convinced him that you weren’t going to actually hit him). Sometimes Roman just likes to watch what you’re doing: to observe as an outsider what normality, what contentment should and could feel like. As you sit by your lamp and finish off your english essay for the next morning, you notice with furrowed eyebrows that Roman is moochier than normal tonight: he keeps squirming, rolling about and whining as if he’s debating something in his mind. That’s why when he’s gripping onto the ivy and finally climbing back down into the darkness later that night, you grab onto the collar of his sherpa jacket and heave him up through the air like a flustered bird towards you. After his initial surprise at the feeling of you pounding your lips against his own, he melts into you: clumsily, messily, desperately, but with one hand gripping so hard onto your window frame that he splinters the wood. His top lip refuses to let you go: capturing onto your bottom lip over and over and over again, the sweet taste of cherry flooding your senses as you bite down on the lip forcing its way into your mouth. When he pulls away, he looks so uncharacteristically serious for a moment as he hovers a few inches away from your face. His eyes never break from your lips, as if he he looks away the miracle he’s been graced with might fly away and he’ll be left with the hellish nightmare of his normal reality. But it doesn’t, and so you let him go.

He burns a crimson red and starts muttering incoherently as his feet work their way back down the garden lattice, but he’s got this giddy smile and a spring in his swishing walk the whole way home.

I mean, like, of course Connor invited you on the camping trip. And man, I mean the tension that had been expanding between you and Roman over the last few years was becoming more and more obvious to his brothers, and it pierced Roman’s heart with a stroke of fear when he realised it was to him as well. Connor’s little fishing expedition by the river turned out a little differently than he expected: instead of a placid moment between family, learning and teaching new skills together and bonding over one activity they could all share in, it was more of a ‘watch little gremlin Roman flirt obnoxiously with Y/n and, once again, ignore everyone else’ fest. Kendall sat on the shore, itchy against the reeds of grass and sighing every time he looked down at his watch. Connor was still having fun, though, from where he was wading his brand new, and never worn again wellies into the shallow end of the creek. It was just that every now and then he would have to trip over his fishing line and scoot to the right to avoid large splashes of weedy water landing on him; Roman had decided a much better use of his time was to try and pull up handful of mud and chase you around the river side with it. Your squeals, as you ran around the tamarack trees and peered around the sides like a meerkat, could be heard from the campsite. So, too, could Roman’s hyena laugh as he went laughing around the bend after you, and Connor had to spend half the night ignoring your shared snickers as he apologies to camper after camper. 

I don’t even know how, but somehow the two of you managed to convince Connor that it was a great idea for you and Roman to share a tent. Thanks to Kendall’s pointed warning for the two of you to behave and ‘not embarrass the family name anymore’, you were both surprisingly well behaved during the night. Mainly due to the fact that before you fell asleep, you leant over and left a chaste kiss against Roman’s cold forehead, before turning onto your side facing him and wishing him a goodnight. He wiggled down into his sleeping bag like a little worm as the electricity from your touch spread down like firebolts through his body. That man did not sleep one wink that night. Not one. Instead he rolled onto his left side, and chose to spend his time contemplating you: taking you in. The milky buzz of twilight flooded through the loose zip, the chirp of bouncing crickets on the darkened rocks outside match the intense thudding of his heart. Fumbling his fingers up so they rested underneath the side of his jaw, he made himself comfortable as he observed the way your chest rose and fall: the way your nose crinkled up in disgust when you were in the throes of a weird dream, the way your mouth mushed as you turned more into the stony ground. How much he loved you. How happy he could be if he could just summon the bravery to tell you. How fucked he was. How, if he did, his father would immediately utilise it, weaponize his love against him.

Roman wasn’t stupid, but he was. He didn’t know if he could find a way to escape this cage. Deep in his heart, he knew there was no key to this dog kennel, to this bird cage, to this leash. But he lay there, still, dreaming of freedom.

You get invited along on their family holidays a lot, mainly because Logan spends his whole time on phone calls and not mentally being present so he doesn’t really notice you’re there. If you and Roman aren’t spending the afternoons sitting together on a sun lounger, reading aloud softly to him by the pool side, it’s spent actually in the pool. A freshly seventeen year old Roman had seemed nervous, besides the usual annoyance at having to wear nothing but swimming shorts: shaken all day; when you touch his pinkie finger and grip onto it, silently asking him with your stern expression if you were okay, only the most miniscule of grins could cross his face in response. He still seemed unsettled in the water, besides the fact that Shiv’s foot nearly thwacked him up the face as she and Kendall wrestled each other under the water, both unrelenting in their accusation that the other had lost their splashing match. While you watched on in horrified curiosity, you nearly jumped when you felt Roman softly touch your elbow and lead you away from the affray. You think he’s trying to guide you towards the Jacuzzis as you bob across the water, or perhaps back to his room to escape the antics of his family. Instead, Roman leads you further into the deep end for a moment; after a sharp turn right, you’re surrounded by a small well, a shallow area just out of sight of the main swimming area. The imposing walls loom over your head as you take a perched seat on the brick bench that runs around the semi-circle, and Roman’s breath trembles as he follows suit, sitting maddingly close to you. You open your mouth to ask him what’s going on, but before you can get a squeak out he’s lunged at you, fervently enough to make you nearly bite your tongue. It’s not super romantic, and it’s incredibly clumsy as an inexperienced Roman Roy mashes his lips against your bottom one until he can feel his teeth clash against yours. You can taste a touch of pineapple from the inside of his mouth as he sloppily raises his cupid’s bow, and soon after the tang of chlorine as he falls too far forward and sends you both tumbling backwards into the water. But when you come back up for air, heaving him up by his underarms and staring dumbstruck at him as he pants heavily and tries to look anywhere else, you burst out giggling. Roman’s smile grows brightly enough to blight the sun as he looks incredulously at you, the laughter only stopping short on his lips when he catches the squinting look of his sister watching the two of you from the boundary edge.

It’s the first and last time Roman Roy kisses you for a while, terrified that one of his siblings will go squealing to daddy and he’ll take you away from him. And then, suddenly, the two of you have grown up. Roman’s still stuck to you like glue, but the repression festers away in his stomach until he feels as if some kind of scaly tooth monster is gnawing away at his insides. He feels the leather tighten around his neck whenever he’s standing like an affronted ostrich in that office with his father, his master, his demise, his ghost, him. 

So, Roman starts to try and avoid you whenever he’s at Waystar, worried that the grief that never seems to leave his mind will strangle you if he lets you in. Terrified that his father will die, but also that his father will never die. That this is just another cage. Eventually, after weeks of him turning on his heels with a manic jolt and running out of every board room he spots you in: after months of the child dressed up as a man putting his phone to his ear and having nonsensical phone calls every time he passes you in the corridors, you manage to nab him when he’s walking out of the break room. Even though a stuttering cousin Greg thinks you’re trying to kidnap him when you grab Roman by the collar and start dragging him to the elevator, you refuse to let go until Greg’s waving hand is firmly shut behind the metal sheets. You let go, and he fumbles backwards onto the hand-rail that runs around the small rectangle with a bemused ‘what the actual fuck’, but you just cross your arms and stare at him, refusing to talk first. 

Your austere façade quickly drops, and you’re quick to slam your first into the emergency button on the panel, gripping onto Roman’s sleeve as the elevator lurches to a stop between the twenty-second and twenty-third floors. A kind of acceptance has washed over Roman, some kind of known and familiar claustrophobia from having spent his whole life locked up, his whole life thrown about sets in. He picks at his fingernails as his eyes dart about, wild and brutal and crushing as he looks around for an escape route. It’s only when you put a hand on his shoulder and draw him in for a hug that he breaks down; he squats down so the two of you are resting a few inches off the floor, his face buried just atop of your heart as he shakes and he cries and he allows himself the security to just crumble. To melt down. To kick his feet and hope his father feels the wring of the shackles against his own ankles. He hopes for the first time in his life, as you stroke the back of his head and shush him comfortingly, that they hurt him. 

Something changes between the two of you that day. You’re kinder to each other, and slowly to yourselves. It’s not outspoken, or rushed, or ravenous, but it begins to grow and grow and grow until it’s not only confusion and anguish that lies at the pit of Roman’s rotting core.

It starts with him becoming more comfortable showing affection to you around his family. Like you sitting on Roman’s lap at Shiv’s wedding reception, not listening to the speeches but trying to hide your giggles in Roman’s palms as he’s busy trying to take roses out of the centre piece and pin them through your hair. Or his full weight against you during the professional photos out on the balcony, and not even Shiv flicking her brother or Tom waving his hand at Roman to try and get him to behave could stop him from leaning backwards and planting a kiss underneath your jawline once the man said he was taking the final photograph. The two of you go out into the gardens later that night, trying to escape the ear-hammering loud beats of the D.J., and to try and make an early escape from the growing fight that seemed to be coming between Tom and Shiv’s old work acquaintance. With two beers and slightly tipsy heads, you sit down and talk on the dew-ridden grass, shoulders swaying against the other’s in time with the falling pine leaves. You felt like children again, and against the smouldering clash of fireworks that brandished the sky in bursts of red and gold, you both felt undying as well. He kisses you then, his hand reaching up to brush against the side of your cheek, his bottom lip teasingly tugging at your bottom lip and making you swat him away with a laugh. As you take his hand in your own and press a promise filled kiss against his middle knuckle, he hopes that one day he’ll be able to kiss you at your own wedding.

When you know he’s having a rough day at work, you like to try and sneak into his office and wrap your arm around his stomach, peppering kisses up and down his spine. Although he tries to shake you off like a startled starling at first, when he realises that you also managed to close the blinds on your way in without him noticing, he quickly relinquishes himself onto your barrage of adoration. He becomes all whiny, and soft, and needy, and all the things he’ll never allow himself to be outside of the security blanket of this closed off room. Although he still isn’t comfortable with anything too sexual, you won’t find him complaining as he wrestles you to the sofa. Once you’ve had the wind knocked out of your lungs, and Roman’s satisfied with how fully you’re splayed out on your back before him, he’ll go scuttling over to the end of the sofa and kneel down beside it. With a mischievous glimmer in his eye, he’ll swish his hips from side to side and come crawling up the sides of his body like a wolf slinking towards its dinner. Then he attacks: his tongue heavy and slick as he draws a hickey out just under the pulse point on your neck, pressing him firmly against you if you try to squirm away, chiding you with a warning. When it becomes too much, he lets you grip him up by his tie and walk him backwards until his thighs hit his desk. He jumps up to perch on it, and you stand between his legs as they tighten around you. You’re slow and careful as you loosen the material between your fingers, opening the first button of his shirt, and only the first so he doesn’t become too uncomfortable, with a satisfying loud pop. He whimpers as you lean over to scrape your teeth against the exposed skin, working your way up until your lips are tantalisingly hovering over the stubble on his jaw. He can feel your breath, hot and unsteady as it pants against him, but he still can’t stop the shiver that racks through him as he takes your hand and guides them under his shirt. With your hands firmly planted against his abdomen, you look at him quizzically, worried, but he just keeps his fingers on top of your own and answers you by sweetly pressing his top lip over his own. Just once, he wanted to feel safe, to feel okay with the love of his life touching his body.

The two of you have this game where you try to steal kisses from each other during the most inappropriate and annoying times possible. Oh, Shiv’s trying to talk to you in her kitchen about how her trip to England went? Roman barges in between the two of you, nearly making Shiv chop her thumb off, just so he can interrupt his sister by smirking against your mouth. Kendall wants to run through a presentation the two of them have to give the next morning? You’re grabbing onto Roman’s head as you run through the office, nearly giving him a heart attack as he scrambles backwards and allows you to drop his head back onto the cushion. With a full plant landing on his already pliant lips, Kendall’s left with a fed-up ‘hey’, yet unsurprised look of disappointment on his face as you run off back to your own desk.

When his father called Romie a moron in Prague, the look of desolation that crossed through his teary eyes was enough to make an angel weep. But it broke you even more when he pattered out of the dining area, walking shoulder to shoulder with you, but not saying anything. He was just staring down at his hands as if they were blotted: stained with specks of blood, and he would have to spend another sleepless night scrubbing them out of his skin. It wasn’t the first time he heard it, but it was the first time you were there to hear it too, and you weren’t going to let him get comfortable wallowing in that fearful acceptance. You grip onto his shoulder and steer him away from the milling crowd of sheep, stuffing him into a bathroom stall of the east wing of the hotel. Crowded together, Roman’s hamstring bumps against the porcelain as the two of you scoot about until you’re standing facing each other as best as you could. He looks at you, bleary eyed, and you look at him, bleary eyed. He breaks. Choking, gasping, breathless sobs, drowning in his misery. He grabs onto your shirt, clawing into the meat of your shoulders as if he’ll sink if he lets go. He keeps babbling through bubbles of spit about how he just wants to make his father proud, how he wants to be just like him, how he wants to prove that he can rule all this too. How he can never replace him. But he can. He wants it all to burn, but he wants to stand on the ruins and be the one to plant the foundations again. To make a better world, in honour of his father: in honour of the god of war that rages within his head. You press quick kisses on his sweaty forehead whenever you can, doing your best to dodge the quick turns of his head and wiping away the trails of tears with your thumb. All you can do in that moment, as you press your lips against the side of his ear and whisper it to the most intimate, lost parts of himself, is to let him know that you’re proud of him, no matter what happens next. You always have been, and even the ghost of Logan that possess Roman can’t stop that.

The sloppy kisses he gives you the next morning omg. When the two of you are sitting on your bedroom steps, and you’re biting your bottom lip in concentration as you try to do up the buttons of his dress shirt and make him look presentable in front of his family. Like a feral dog, he uses all of his leftover energy trying to nip and bite your fingertips, catching them on his tongue and pursing them against the roof of his mouth whenever he can.

You cannot convince me that Roman isn’t a jealous bitch. Like at Kendall’s fortieth birthday party, when he finally gives up trying to get up into his special little secret treehouse club, and Shiv has left him to go ham on the dance floor instead. You finally manage to convince him into relaxing for a fricking minute, making him join you at the bar. If someone tries to grab your waist, though, or butt into your conversation while the two of you are hyena giggling and seeing who can spurt more beer into the other’s face, Roman will full on goad them into fighting him. I mean, chest puffed out, crazed look in his face, hands up by his side until they send a weak shove in their general direction. It only ends when Roman either: near topples you to press a bracing kiss against your lips, or you dragging him off and having to hold him through the brackets of his arms. In the corner of the room, over by the sheets of warbling fire that seems to be coming from a central room, you stand behind his feet and wrap your arms up his chest. You can feel the fury roll off him, allowing him a moment to blow off the steam, until his head finally falls like putty and begins to synchronise his breathing to yours again after you hold your lips against the nape of his neck.

The kisses when he comes back after being held hostage (I am doing this so out of order apologies) omg??? He clambers sombrely to sit beside you on the deck of the boat, looking so out of place and serious as he leans back against the cushions. His siblings make fun of him, and tease him, and although he realises it’s harmless and he’ll see it as a key bonding moment a couple of years down the line, in the inside the typical Roy storm is brewing. He can’t say anything: just hides behind the jokes and snide comments so the words don’t choke him. You just feel his weight fall against yours little by little, until his hand reaches out and takes your own so tightly you know it’s going to bruise. The muscle in his jaw tightens and he squeezes his eye shut in an enduring pain at the sight of his father’s helicopter coming in to land. So, for that kind second before his life comes crashing back down around him again and he has to revert back, to hide behind the brick wall again, you take him over to the railings. It’s just the two of you, the warm sea salt stinging against your grimacing faces, and the ungodly sight of a near-naked Cousin Greg lying stretched out beside the slide below you. After a few goes, you manage to unlatch his claws from the white metal and replace them with your soothing palm, rubbing semi-circles against the back of his hand. You’re here. You’re here, with him. You’re not going to let him go it alone again, if he wants.

And he does. He could cry, he so desperately does. Some of the tension falls from his shoulders as he raises your joint hands to his lips and kisses them, gracing over every inch of skin his mouth can latch onto. 

You both know, in that moment, that it’s enough. It’s a promise. You’ll stick together, no matter what. You’ll love each other through everything, no matter what. You’ll stay around, no matter what or who he becomes.

Which brings me to... kissing him when you find out about the passing of his father. Standing on that boat, on the most joyous of occasions, feeling as if the whole world is shattering around you. Feeling miserable at the knowledge that deep down, some part of you is overjoyed by the news. Feeling even more downtrodden to realise, as the streaky eyes and thousand-stare faces of the Roy siblings flash back and forth in your line of sight as they pass the phone to each other, that Logan will never really be gone. They’re talking to his lifeless, empty shell through the speakers, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s here in this room. He’s staring through their eyes. Talking in their quivering, harsh voices. Pounding through their feet. Tearing them apart as they try to cling onto each other. In their accusations that burst through their mouths innately. In the ordered instructions hurled out to keep business running smoothly. Hidden between the cracks of their voices as they sharpen their words and seethe them out between clenched teeth when the slightest chance of Logan even being dead is raised. He’s here, right now, as you let go of the death grip Kendall and Shiv have on both of your hands and catch sight of Roman rocking backwards and forth on the floor.

Giving a final squeeze of apology to Connor’s arm, you take Roman out of the room before he combusts. The whole air seems to be chilled: still, like something’s lurking unspoken between the threads of air. Like you’re leading Roman through the cold remains of a morgue. He wanders around for a minute, not even hearing the click of the door as you close it behind you. Not even crying. Not even speaking. For the first time in his life, he looks so much like his father. Too much. It scares you. Until eventually he just closes his eyes and trods over to the wall, thumping his forehead down on the cool metal until it burns. He holds his hand out to you, cufflinks gleaming like the edge of a knife past the ceiling lights, as if he’s offering a contract out to you. Apprehensively, your tentative hand creeps out and places itself gingerly on top of his own. He takes it, his dry lips latching onto you until the bridge of his nose is resting now upon your hand. The deal is done.

When you get back to your apartment though, and Romie finds out that Matsson wants him to fly out and meet him in Norway... that’s when Roman gets weird. Devastated. Freaks out. Grieves. You come out from your shower, wearing one of his suit shirts as your pyjama top, and he doesn’t even give a whistle of appreciation. Instead he’s crumpled on the floor by the canopy of your bed, cradling his knees to his chest, swearing into his kneecaps furiously. But you - you, oh god, you’re the only thing that can stop him from being swallowed up by Logan’s fury. You tilt his chin up during a tangled rush of expletives I don’t dare to copy down here, a scowl setting itself into his face like stone. It begins to soften when he realises you’re touching him, when he can feel the scrape of your nail around his jugular. You do your best to warble an unconvincing smile as you turn his head to the side, so you can better wipe your bottom lip against the edge of his throbbing mouth. You mould yourself to him, working at his pace as he winces at first, before slowly falling more and more easily into your grip. His hands loosen from his arms and fall onto your triceps as he deliriously tries to come back to himself through searching through the velvety warmness of your mouth: by swiping against your tongue and choking back his grievances as you pant into his open, waiting mouth.

You wake him up the next day with a fond kiss against the tip of his nose, and for the first time in a long while he smiles before he wakes fully up. The morning light cradles his bleary face as he sleepily runs a few fingers over the edge of your cheek, before cradling himself into your side again. He feels safe, weary, anguished, loved enough to fall asleep again, after pressing a few gentle licks behind your earlobes to try and hear you laugh again. Even through it all, his main concern is you. 

You trace his features while he restlessly dreams, although he squirms from time to time and alludes you to the fact that he’s secretly awake. A kiss here, between the junctions of wrinkles on his furrowed forehead. A kiss there, on the patchy stubble just underneath his left ear. A few there on the dark circles underneath his eyes, until you’re balancing over him and holding yourself up by the hands splayed over his pillow. He just needs to be reminded he’s beautiful from time to time. That he’s perfect. That he doesn’t need to try and be someone else. To encapsulate his father. 

But also like, Roman fucking hates Matsson. The way he looks at you during the whole field trip, like a hunter about to swallow its prey whole. Although the continuous comments about his family, and the two new Co-Ceo’s, and the legacy of his father make him burn down to the pit of his stomach with a white hot fury, he can deal with them if he would just leave you the fuck alone. He doesn’t take kindly to anyone but him looking at his soulmate with such adoration and lust in their eyes, so if that overgrown yeti gives you the up and down check out one more time he might actually just deck him in the middle of the retreat. He bites down on his tongue so harshly that his taste buds begin to bubble and prickle with blood, deciding it best to storm off and collect his thoughts before he lashes out and does something he can’t take back. You finally manage to track him down a little way off the beaten track, winding your way over some cobbled steps to find a branched alcove with nothing but a bench and a breath taking view of the gushing river down below. He’s hunched over with his fingers knotted over his knees, his lips so tightly drawn together that at first you don’t even spot the droplets of blood until he turns with a raised eye to look at you.

He knows it’s not your fault, so there’s no convincing or apologies when you join him. Just Roman finally getting all of that pent up sorrow and distress out. After an awkward moment of bouncing your foot up and down, you decide your best course of action is to just open your arm up to him again, like you used to do when you were children. At first he raises a confused eyebrow, before the realisation dawns over his face, and his features crumble. His lips purse, his throat bobbing as he heaves the tears back down, but he can’t stop his lips from trembling as he falls into your side. That kiss was the sweetest, as he leans his chin familiarly against your shoulder and bumps noses with your own. He frowns, sobbing at the knowledge that he can kiss you, finally, in the way he’s been yearning for all his life, and yet it all feels so wrong. So upside down. So far away from what he had dreaming. The freedom feels like a tether, and yet he juts his chin out and latches placidly onto your bottom lip anyway, the tears trickling down and falling between your mouths. 

It’s an act of defiance. A key sliding into the lock. He still can’t say it, but he won’t allow himself to smother the feeling anymore. The first sip of poison gliding down his throat, and Roman prays as he presses his forehead tearfully against your own, that it would kill the Logan part of him first.

[wisterialagoon]

Heey I saw a post you made a while ago asking us to send you requests for Joker from windbreaker and im so happy that there is sb to write about him so can you write how him and the reader meet and then fast forward to how their relationship goes (preferably sfw)

Thank youuu for the request! Sorry this took forever, I've been busy lately!

Dating Joker Headcanons

Warnings: None, just fluff, reader owns a cafe!

I think Joker probably wouldn't date someone that runs in the same circles as him, he doesn't need someone else like that in his life and especially around his brothers.

You probably meet somewhere like a cafe. Just picture it, you've worked so hard to open your own cafe, pouring your heart and soul into it.

You have this regular customer, Hajun, he's real quiet and scary looking, but whenever he comes in he's just soooo polite and soft-spoken, you become quickly smitten!

One day, just before closing he stumbles in all bloody and bruised. In a panic you rush over to him scrambling to sit him down. He just grumbles out that he's fine, he just needs a coffee.

Obviously you're not having any of that! shushing him as you run to get your first aid kit. You patch him up and send him off with his coffee and a free cookie.

He insists on helping clean the little droplets of blood he tracked in but you refuse and tell him he can pay you back if he buys you a drink sometime. After that you two hit it off and the rest is history.

"For the love of GOD, if you touch the cookie dough again I'm going to beat your ass into the ground, Hajun, I swear!" you yell, slapping your boyfriends hand away, once again.

"I'd love to see you try, plus, you made plenty," he chuckles, reaching for the cookie dough again.

You swifly grab the bowl and run to the opposite side of the kitchen island, glaring at him. "I made plenty to bake and sell! This is my livelihood, If you eat all the dough then I'll have nothing to sell. I'll have to close the cafe and live on the streets. I'll have to find a cardboard box to sleep in!" you ramble, pacing around the kitchen like a mad woman.

Hajun just watches you with a quirked brow, "If ya want I can grab a box on the way outta work tomorrow, think I saw some boxes in the storage cupboard in the club," he smirks.

Your mouth gapes open as you stare at your boyfriend. "How COULD you? You'd let the love of your life, adorable, sweet, lovely girlfriend, live in a cardboard box?!"

"Oh sure, I'll leave the box outside my place and I'll come to feed ya every now and again." Hajun gives you a mischievous grin.

You slam the bowl of cookie dough down on the counter dramatically, "oh I'm SO breaking up with you!" you exclaim, flopping the top half of your body over the counter.

"Mhm, sure, I bet you are," Hajun teases as he walks around to you, planting a soft kiss to your head and walking away.

When you stand back up pouting, you notice a significant chunk of the cookie dough missing.

"Oh I'm gonna kill him."

[sewerpalette]

Have seen a bunch of people do this again so I thought I’d join in: Human AL-AN redesign from my old version, this is just a base I’ll probably draw more full body shots another time.

I gave him a burn scar over his face as I like to imagine that whilst he wasn’t present during the sea dragon attack he did rush back in, guilt ridden trying to save the seven architects still stuck inside attempting to prevent the outbreak, this is how I believe he got the kharaa and (physically) died before being put in storage, ofcourse he doesn’t have the same body now that he did then, but I’d like to imagine mental scarring remembering of past lives and stuff sticks with them throughout every body they continue to inhabit moving on (unless said memory is scraped by a storage transfer). The burn isn’t from the leviathan directly however it is from the heat in the facility that the leviathan mother caused.

Obviously from a design standpoint this is to mimic his face plate (?? What would you call that?) but yk, I thought making up an in lore reason would be fun.

Lab coat more heavily inspired by those the alterrans wear as most stuff in this universe is funded by alterra anyways so even when working for a different or self owned company there’d still be some similarities.

Hair shaped to resembles his horns obv, was thinking of making it white initially but thought the dark greenish teal with white/grey streaks would allow for more referencing on the glowy bits on his head.

Also i gave him facial hair because I thought it would help with the shape language aswell as making it look more similar to his canon design, I actually always loved the idea of making his head look more like he’s wearing a helmet / full body suit, so in reference to mechs that also share that kinda design aesthetic I gave him kind of a goatee, mustache is curled up to aid the shape of his face.

I also thought about giving him a blackout tattoo on his neck as that is also the darkest part of his design in value on the normal alien version, so that might come up in more doodles another time.

Pin on the lab coat inspired by the head of the precursor statues from BZ.

I think he hides his face in his coat a lot, because one, as he doesn’t make a lot of expressions or speak with his mouth it’s not really that necessary to show it in the first place, might aswell have a bit more protection. And two, kinda to show he’s hiding himself, both on things he’s done in the past, aswell as on what exactly he is to people that aren’t Robin, aswell as a sort of shame that comes from not only being in a human body but also having done something that butterflied into something horrible, I think it made him alot more reserved and fearful if not paranoid of extreme consequences to minor actions.

Made another image of him and Robin but it won’t export so I’ll save it for another post.

Also off topic but I hc him as non-binary aro/ace using he/they/it and still referring to themselves in we form because I think that may be a little comforting and make him feel less lonely.

Also wanted to make an alternate version where the burn is so bad his eyelids and mouth are melted shut, since he doesn’t have facial features in his actual design, in that version he’d speak with a voice box obv, but I haven’t gotten around to drawing that so you’ll have to wait a bit.

If you have any questions just ask me in the comments since I have no idea how to enable the ask me anything thingy on my page.

[the-californicationist]

Hello hello! I got super happy once i saw your requests open again <3 i love your writing and i would love to see Price and a reader who is too recluse and uptight, cold and distanced. He somehow noticed she likes him and stuff and it turns into what you write best, something hot and more. Basically Price shaking some sense into her, breaking her down? I don’t know if this is too much detail and I don’t know if it gives any ideas. Feel free to ignore. Love you, have a best day 🧡

Thanks so much for the ask! This is really unique, and I like the concept. I'll do my best! <3 <3

TW: female reader, afab, cunnilingus

Price scanned the meeting room as his teams filed in. The 141's operations had grown, now that Shepherd was out of the way, and new recruits with a lot of promise had come in to aid in the operations. Gaz, Ghost, and Soap sat up front, reports prepped and ready to be handed out, the logistics team sat around Alex and Farah, and sometimes, when she wasn't out doing the dirty work, Laswell would hang around the back corner, arms crossed, watching the meeting unfold. But, he was waiting for you.

You were the newest addition. Your specialty with data analysis and reporting had meant a stream of fresh, sparkling intel that was immediately actionable and nearly allowed him to predict the enemy's movements. You were a magician, and you never talked over anyone's head. Very professional, but kind. Beautiful, even though you were not a fresh-faced youth.

You also had a body that would not let him rest. He'd taken more cold showers in the past two weeks than he ever took as a teenager, and his cock was in his hand, hard and drooling, hungry to bury itself between your thick thighs.

He tried not to stare, really, he did. But, you would wear those cargo pants, belted to your waist, and he could see where your generous ass stretched the tight canvas. The way your hips swayed when you walked across the base with your data-tablet made him want to fight someone for you, even though, as far as he could tell, there was no competition in sight.

That was part of the problem. You kept everyone at arm's reach. Well, that was about to change.

Price started the meeting and tried not to keep glancing back to you in your seat. You were listening diligently, doing your job, and he felt downright lecherous at what he was about to do...

"...and so we'll be pairing off for a full facility inventory."

Groans resonated throughout the team. Complaints flooded in.

"Check the board for your partner and meet in Hanger 3. We'll start in the back storage."

"Back storage! Cap'n, unless you're lookin' for flip phones and manuals from 2007, there's nothin' we need in there," Soap protested.

"Well, Sergeant," Price grinned, "We're about to find out. Spring cleaning!"

He felt someone's presence behind him, and when he turned, he was delighted to find you there, shifting from foot to foot, waiting to be heard.

"Yes, Corporal? Do you need something? Going to whinge about the inventory as well?" He joked with you.

"N-no. No, sir. I just... I checked the board, and you are my partner, sir."

Your eyes were wide and bright. You were staring up at him and clutching that data-tablet to your chest like a shield.

He threw an arm around your shoulder and walked with you side-by-side,

"I'm just pullin' your leg, Corporal. Let's get to it."

As you worked together, the ever-observant John Price noticed a few things. First, you would stare at him when you thought he wasn't looking. Second, you would move to the opposite side of the room to work if he decided to relocate. And third, you had a bad habit of chewing on your bottom lip when you got nervous.

"You'd be no good at poker, Corporal," he commented, stacking a set of boxes near you.

"What, sir?" You looked up at him, biting that poor, innocent lip again.

"That bottom lip gives you away," you fixed it as soon as he said it, but he forced you to sit with him and asked you, "Hey, what's going on? You're doing a great job here, but I can't help but feel like you're not keen on being a part of this team."

You shook your head, sighing,

"No, sir. It's not that. I love this team... I just..."

"Just what, Corporal? We're not leaving this storage crate until you tell me. You have a crush on one of my soldiers, or what?"

Fear, now. He could see it all over your face. He reached out tentatively and put a hand on your knee,

"Hey," he dropped his voice to a dark whisper, "It's alright. I won't tell anyone."

Your voice was so small when you answered him, but gods you were brave for answering him,

"Sir... it's you who I shouldn't tell."

Price's breath caught in his chest. All this nervous energy, all this seriousness... for him? You were nervous to be around him?

"Corporal..." He was stunned.

You stood up, quick as a flash,

"I'm sorry, sir. Please forget I said anything."

You were backing away towards the door, looking like you were ready to bolt, but he reached out and grabbed your wrist, stopping you.

"Me?" He stood above you, his body looming, covering you in the small storage room. It felt like it was getting smaller by the second.

You swallowed, nodding,

"Yes, sir..."

Price reached behind you and popped the metal lock into place, sealing you in,

"Mmm... Corporal, if you only knew how long I've been prayin' you'd say that to me."

"Wh-what? Really? Captain, I didn't --"

He put his thumb on your chin, pulling the skin so that your bottom lip would be freed from your teeth, and he bent to suck it into his mouth. He wasn't kissing you so much as he was working your full, lower lip, slowly and gently, taking it between his own lips and tongue, making you catch your breath.

"In here... I'm not your captain," he smiled, kissing you fully now, "And when I'm not your captain... you give the orders. We can stop, if you want to stop."

He let the news register, showing you how true it was, backing away a bit, giving you room to say no. Price watched your face as the information sank in. It was understood, analyzed, and filed appropriately in that beautiful brain of yours, and then, the results.

You set your tablet down on the boxes and took off your shirt. He still hadn't touched you, happy to let you drive. You pulled his face to yours, placing your hands on his furry cheeks, petting his hair and knocking off his hat until it hung around his neck on its string, almost letting him kiss you, but just before he could, you whispered into his open, gaping mouth,

"I don't wanna stop."

He kissed you, then. So softly it was almost chaste. He matched your energy. If you explored him with your tongue, he explored you just as far. If you spent time kissing his jaw and neck, so did he. After a few minutes of such restrained torture, though, he was breathing heavy, and his body was begging for more.

His hands rubbed across the tight muscles of your neck and down your arms before finally discovering your heavy breasts. He let them fill his warm palms, plucking softly at your nipples and making them harden beneath his fingers.

Price spoke to you as he kissed you, as he fondled you into pliant submission,

"Do you wanna stop, love?"

You shook your head, whispering back,

"I don't want to stop..."

He bent himself like the bough of a great tree, leaning to suck your sensitive nipple into his mouth. Price warmed it with his tongue, and put it between his teeth just enough to make you writhe. Then, he slid a huge hand between your legs and felt the heat you were hiding from him there. He sighed raggedly when he found it, like he had just dropped the weight of the world from his arms.

John pressed the canvas of your pants up into the spot where your folds would part, rubbing the seam against your center, making it shove your clit back and forth along its line, making it swell and tingle. You writhed beneath his teasing, moaning from it.

"Mmm. Do'ya wanna stop, love?"

"No, fuck, no. Don't stop."

He forced open your buckle with a swift pull, snapping the metal tines and popping open your button fly. Tucking his fist into the elastic of your panties, his fingers found their soft, wet prize.

The captain sighed again, that same ragged relief, and just before he opened his mouth to speak to you again, you clasped your hand over it furiously, and warned him,

"Don't you dare fucking stop."

He chuckled, but he said nothing as he sank to his knees, looping one of your legs over his shoulder as he began to eat from your body, hungry and thirsty and needy and ready to be full of you, smearing you all over his beard, smiling all the time.

If you liked this story, please consider buying a coffee for your favorite feral cat <3 Comments, reblogs, and kudos are also appreciated!

AO3 Link

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By (Chapter 17) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Chapter 17

When you get to the supply cache, Giran is waiting for you, leaning back against the door of the storage unit and smoking a cigarette. It’s not his first one, either – the ground around his feet is scattered with the remains of five or six more. He notices you looking and smirks. “Seems like I’ve been littering, Saintess. Are you going to absolve me?”

“Only if you want me to,” you say. “Do you have what we ordered?”

“Cash first.”

“We paid in advance,” you remind him. Giran holds out both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Was any of it hard to get?”

“Only what you asked for,” Giran says. “For the others, I’ve got replacement parts for Compress’s arm and Toga’s gear, more of those gloves for Shigaraki, gauntlets for Spinner and Twice – you sure you don’t want a set? They were buy two, get one free.”

You’re not sure if he’s joking or not. “That’s everything for the others. How about for me?”

“Of course.” Giran sets the crate with the rest of the supplies aside and pulls out a smaller box. “I have to say, I was surprised when you asked for this. I didn’t think the League’s resident angel would have any interest in a gun.”

“I’m interested in defending myself,” you say. “Open it.”

Giran opens the box, revealing a gun that looks like any other gun you’ve seen, not that you’ve seen many guns up close. “You don’t know enough to specify, so I chose something beginner-friendly,” he says. “This is a .22 caliber handgun. It’s designed for minimum recoil, so as to avoid knocking you back on your ass when you try to fire it. It’s also designed to be quiet, but I’ve thrown in a silencer free of charge.”

“Thanks,” you say. “What about ammunition?”

“Also included, but I’m charging for that. Thanks to the Americans and their mass shootings, it’s hard to buy ammunition in large quantities anywhere else,” Giran says. “Call it a convenience fee. Additionally, the trigger on this model is known to be fairly sensitive, so trigger discipline is going to be key. You know what that means?”

“I know.” You’ve been researching. “Safety on and fingers off unless I’m planning to shoot someone.”

“The instruction manual’s included,” Giran says. You scowl. “Ask Twice for help if you’re confused. He knows how to shoot.”

“Twice with a gun. That sounds safe.”

“Safer than you,” Giran says. “Running around with villains is one thing. Murder’s something else. I don’t think you have it in you.”

“Then I’ll hand the gun off to somebody who does.” You pick the crate up, grimacing at the weight, and Giran shuts the box with the gun and sets it down on top. “Thanks for getting it for me. Stay safe.”

Giran laughs at that. “Try ‘get lost’ next time. It’ll make you sound more intimidating.”

Your costume is a veil and a crown of thorns, and as of right now your weapon is a backpack. Intimidating is a lost cause. “Thanks for the tip. We’ll be in touch.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.” Giran lights up another cigarette as he walks away.

You unlock the storage unit and step inside. This is a supply cache you haven’t visited before, and you can tell Mitsuko’s the one who set it up, because there’s a box of condoms prominently perched atop six or seven cases of bottled water. You and the others have a water source right now, and while your medical supplies are dwindling, you don’t need a refill just yet. What you’re short on is food. You set down the crate, followed by your backpack, and open them up. Then you start filling both of them with prepackaged food.

Energy bars are the most efficient, space-wise, and they at least make a gesture at containing any kind of nutrients. Unfortunately, the League of Villains is full of adults with children’s tastes in food, and they wouldn’t know a nutrient if it walked up and introduced itself. It’s taken almost a month into the effort to batter Gigantomachia into submission for them to admit that eating nothing but calorie-rich, nutrient-poor food makes them feel gross. If you could get them real food on a regular basis, you would. But it’s almost never feasible, not with the tiny amount of downtime Tenko and the others are working with. It’s packaged food or nothing. They need to eat.

You pick out a variety of items and stuff them into the crate and your own backpack, text thank-you to Mitsuko while pretending you don’t see her message asking if the condoms were the right size, and head out. There are a few more things to buy before you can head back to the others.

As the medic, you’re responsible for the team’s health, and you’re worried about Tenko in particular. He’s exerting himself more than anyone and resting barely at all, and when he does get to rest, it’s all you can do to convince him to eat a few bites of anything before he passes out. The caloric input to output imbalance has stripped him of any remaining body fat, and when you touch him now, all you can feel are hard ropes of muscle and prominent bones straining beneath his skin.

The caloric imbalance is bad enough, but you’ve seen everything he’s eating, so you know he’s massively vitamin-deficient as well. If he won’t eat enough to get the amount he needs, you’ve got another way to do it. The clerk at the drugstore looks askance at the number of pill bottles you’re carrying. “These aren’t cheap, you know.”

“I know,” you say. “I’ll need a bag.”

The bag plus the crate and your backpack are stupidly heavy. You’re struggling as you head for the train station, gritting your teeth against the pain in your arms. You’ve been more active in the last month and a half than you’ve ever been in your life, and there’s not a day when some part of you isn’t sore. You pause at the bottom of the stairs to the platform and stare dismally upward. This one is going to hurt.

“Do you need help with that?”

You almost jump out of your skin, and almost drop what you’re carrying in the bargain. There’s a girl standing next to you, and you recognize her. In fact, you know her hero name, her real name, her quirk, and her blood type, courtesy of Toga. “Ochako?”

Uraraka Ochako, hero name: Uravity, looks shocked. “You know my name?”

“I remember you from the Sports Festival,” you say. It’s not so much that you remember watching the Sports Festival and more that Toga watches clips of it on YouTube to fall asleep. “You were really good. I liked your plan a lot.”

“Oh, thank you! I just wish it had worked,” Uraraka says ruefully. She gestures at the boxes you’re carrying. “Do you need help with those? I can make them lighter for you.”

You were going to say no, but if all she has to do is touch them – “Thank you so much. That would be really great.”

It’s much easier to get up the stairs when the stuff you’re carrying is lighter than air. Uraraka follows you up. “Do you live nearby? I can help you get them home.”

You shake your head. “I have a really long way to go.”

“I’ll stay until your train gets here,” she decides. You protest that your train’s running late, and she probably has somewhere to be. “My internship is right around here, and I’m off for the day. I don’t mind.”

You sort of mind. You’re on your way to hook back up with the League of Villains and you’re carrying what feels like a literal kiloton of contraband. You have a hard time believing that the word VILLAIN isn’t stamped on your forehead. But you can’t be rude, the crate really is heavy, and Toga will kill you if she finds out that you had the chance to talk to Uraraka and didn’t take it. You struggle for a topic to raise, and your brain suggests the Shie Hassaikai raid. “I saw in the paper that you helped rescue that little girl.”

“That wasn’t me. It was Deku,” Uraraka says. “I helped with other things, but he was the one who saved her.”

“Do you know how she’s doing?” you ask. “Is she okay?”

“She is! She stays with Aizawa-sensei and the other teachers and we all love her so much.” Uraraka is beaming now. “She’s okay even though the League of Villains kidnapped her. I can’t believe they just gave her back.”

Not ‘dumped her’, not ‘threw her away’. Gave her back. Your heart lifts enough that it’s a struggle to come up with the appropriate civilian response. “She must have been so scared. Did they hurt her?”

“That’s the weird part. She says she wasn’t scared,” Uraraka says. She frowns slightly. “She said they were nice to her. They gave her this blanket and this dog plushie. Aizawa-sensei keeps trying to swap it out for a cat plushie, but she won’t let it go.”

“Weird,” you agree. “Are you sure it was the League that got her?”

“She described them all. Shigaraki, Toga, Dabi – everybody.” Uraraka’s frown deepens. “And one we hadn’t heard of before. One nobody had heard of before. Saintess.”

You were hoping Eri wouldn’t remember, but it sounds like she does – and she knows what you look like. Did she describe you, too? Is that why Uraraka won’t leave? You struggle to stay calm. Physically, you don’t stand out. There are probably thousands of people who match your physical description, and Uraraka isn’t acting like a hero who’s just cornered a suspect. Heroes don’t play it cool. She thinks you’re just a random civilian with a bunch of boxes to carry, and she’s helping out. Which is – nice. Heroes aren’t usually nice like that.

“Saintess,” you repeat. “That’s a weird name for a villain.”

“Right?” Uraraka’s frown shifts into confusion. “The whole thing is weird. They’re villains. It’s easier when they just act like it.”

Huh. You don’t spend a lot of time around full-fledged heroes, but when you were Kazuo’s girlfriend, you spent a lot of time around heroes in training, and you don’t remember any of them ever saying something like that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean –” Uraraka pauses to think for a second. “Shigaraki tried to kill us at USJ. The League of Villains attacked us and kidnapped one of my classmates. It’s weird that they’d draw the line at hurting a little kid.”

“Villains have lines?” You fake confusion. “I thought they didn’t care who they hurt.”

“Some of them don’t. The one Deku fought to save Eri definitely didn’t. I guess the League does.” Uraraka looks uneasy. “That doesn’t change anything.”

It does, though. You can see it in her face. The fact that the League let Eri go, that they took care of her while they had her, is challenging her worldview to a degree she’s not comfortable with. You need to ease off, switch the topic before she doubles down – and before you can slip up defending the others. “I’m glad she wasn’t hurt, and that she’s doing better. It sounds like you all care about her a lot, and everybody deserves people who love them.”

“They do.” Uraraka’s smile returns at last, and you breathe a sigh of relief. You got her to agree to that statement in the middle of a conversation about the League. That feels less like a narrow escape and more like a win.

Your train arrives late, and you bid Uraraka goodbye and thank her for her help. Then you climb onto the train with your crate full of supplies and check the time on your phone. If you’re lucky, you’ll get back just as the fighting’s dying down.

At first you thought Gigantomachia could keep fighting forever, but it turns out that his strength and stamina aren’t infinite – just more than sufficient to outlast any normal human. He can fight for three days at a stretch, hibernate for less than three hours, and pick up right where he left off. There’s no hiding from. Wherever he is, he’ll seek Tenko out, and while Twice’s copies of Tenko can keep him occupied for a short time, three and a half hours is the longest break you’ve ever seen Tenko get.

It’s not enough. Not even close. The fight against the giant is destroying Tenko, and there’s nothing you can do except try to make sure he eats something before he falls asleep – and try to make sure that whatever sleep he does get is as restful as humanly possible.

The train gods are kind to you. You get back on time, meet Compress just outside the small town nearest to where Tenko and the others are fighting so he can contain the supplies and make them easier to carry, then head towards the base camp that’s been set up for the hibernation period. Compress’s phone rings as the two of you hurry along. It’s Twice, and you can hear him shouting even though he’s not on speaker. “Do you have her? He’s going to want to see her.”

“I’m here,” you say. No matter what, you make sure you’re there when the fighting pauses. It’s the only time you get to see Tenko these days. “How is he?”

“This was a rough one,” Twice says, but he says that every time. “Better hurry.”

You pick up the pace until you’re practically jogging. It’s been three days since you saw Tenko, and you’ve missed him a lot more than you want to let on to the others. You know they don’t question your commitment to the League or your devotion to him. You just don’t want them to know how far it really goes.

You reach the base camp a few seconds before Tomura and Twice do, and it’s just enough time for Compress to release the supplies and for you to set them down before Tomura collides with you. You realize instantly that Twice wasn’t kidding – instead of his usual limp exhaustion, Tomura’s shaky, and when he hugs you, you can feel his heart beating through his ribs. The level of adrenaline in his system must be absurd. He’s not getting to sleep like this, and if you wait for him to crash, he’ll be exhausted by the time the fighting picks back up again.

You piece together a plan on the fly, a plan that will hopefully net you some time to make sure he eats and get him at least an hour of uninterrupted sleep. Tomura’s trying to put on his gloves without letting go of you. You step back out of his embrace and take hold of his wrist. “Come with me.”

You don’t tell Twice and Compress where you’re going or what you’re doing, but you have a feeling they can guess. As much as that makes you cringe, it’s not enough to stop you. This is important. You have to calm Tomura down if you want him to sleep at all, and even though it’s selfish, you want a chance to be close to him again. Tomura puts on his gloves clumsily as you walk, his hands shaking too badly to fasten the Velcro around his wrists. You stop walking, turn, and do it for him. Then you take both his hands in yours and pull him forward into a kiss.

Tenko kisses you back with enthusiasm, in spite of the fact that his lips split and bleed instantly, that his hands are shaking so badly that he can barely hold onto yours. You nudge him a few steps backwards, and a few more, until he’s leaning against a tree. You’re not pinning him, exactly, but it’s close. “Hey,” Tenko mumbles against your mouth. You don’t want to interrupt him, so you switch to kissing his neck, conscious of just how little time you have. “Where did you go? Twice said you left.”

“Supply run.” You pull his jacket down from his shoulders, then tug the neckline of his shirt aside to kiss him there. “I made sure I’d be back in time. I wouldn’t have risked not seeing you.”

“I know.” The affection in Tenko’s voice is direct and obvious enough to make you blush. “We’re making progress. I’m wearing him down.”

“You’re a wreck.” You ignore the insulted noise he makes, a noise that turns sharp when your teeth scrape along his collarbone. “Something happened today. What was it?”

“Twice doubles you, sometimes. In case I get hurt and the others aren’t close enough to help.” Tenko’s grip on you is bruising. “He didn’t tell me he’d done it. That thing got to you. It threw you –”

And he wouldn’t have seen the copy dissolve, the way all of Twice’s copies do when they take too much damage. He’d have thought Gigantomachia killed you, and he probably wouldn’t have believed Twice when Twice told him it was just a clone. “I’m okay,” you tell him. You bite his shoulder lightly to underscore the point, making him shiver. “I was a long way away from this.”

“I don’t want you a long way away. I need you – here –”

You slide your hand under his shirt and run your fingers along his flank, swallowing alarm at just how prominent his ribs are. Then you trace downward, finding the waist of his pants. Tenko goes tense. “What are you doing?”

“I need you to relax, or you won’t be able to fall asleep in time,” you explain in between kisses to his neck. “This is the best way.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No,” you say. “I miss you.”

“Me, too. No, you, too. I mean – fuck, I miss you too.” Tenko fumbles the sentence, but that doesn’t surprise you. Underneath the adrenaline rush, he’s exhausted, and you did just stick your hand down his pants. “Fuck, that feels good –”

“Good.” You tug his pants and underwear down to free his cock. “Relax.”

Tenko slumps, half against the tree, half against you. “What about you?” he mumbles.

“Don’t think about that.” You kiss his cheek, the corner of his jaw, and begin to stroke his cock in earnest. “Let me take care of you.”

It kills you that this is the best you can do – one quick hookup in the forest, before you feed him whatever he’s willing to eat along with a bunch of vitamins to make up for the nutrients he’s not getting and try to get him to fall asleep. But you’re never anything but pleased to have a chance to be close to him, and it amazes you how completely Tenko gives up control. His legs shift apart to make more room for your hand, tilts his head to one side so you can go back to kissing his neck, moans when your lips move over his scars. One hand is scrabbling for purchase on the trunk of the tree you’re leaning against. The other is glued to you, struggling to work its way under your jacket and shirt to make contact with your skin.

You told him not to worry about you, but you’re going to have a hard time walking back to the others like this. Your face is hot and you’re way too wet for the fact that you barely kissed him. This is Tenko’s fault. It’s his fault for going from too embarrassed to let you see his face when he comes to letting go of any sense of shame, and it’s your fault for finding it really hot. Are you really this addicted to being wanted, needed? When it comes to Tenko, absolutely.

The two of you have been together long enough now that you know when he’s close, just by the way his breath catches and his hips jerk. You pull away, ignoring Tenko’s protests, and sink to your knees in front of him. When you glance up, you find him staring at you, jaw dropped and face flushed. “It’s not as messy,” you say by way of explanation. You steady yourself with one hand on his hip and lean in to take his cock in your mouth.

Blowjobs aren’t your favorite thing in the world, but you’re a big fan of the effect they have on Tenko. You’ve gotten better at handling your gag reflex, and you never have to handle it for very long. Tenko lasts maybe thirty seconds before he gasps out a warning and his hips jerk sharply forward. You don’t let up, even when the taste of his cum fills your mouth. You don’t just need him calm, you need him relaxed to the point where he can barely keep his eyes open, and drawing back by degrees, lavishing attention on his tip as your hand closes around his length, is the only way you can think of to make it stick.

Tenko squirms but doesn’t tell you to stop, and a few small spurts of cum paint your tongue. You stop, draw back, and swallow a few times. Then you look up to see the results for yourself.

You’re sort of worried you might have killed him. He looks semiconscious, his chest rising and falling rapidly, lips split and mouth open to pant for breath. You pick yourself up off the ground, bringing his coat with you, and he pushes it away in favor of struggling to pull up his pants. His free hand slides almost absentmindedly between your legs, rubbing you through your jeans, and you’re so turned on that the sensation makes you gasp.

You struggle to stay focused. “We don’t have time.”

“It won’t take long.” Tenko’s eyes are barely open, but his mouth tilts into a crooked grin.

Once he’s got his pants up, he goes after yours, one hand down the front of them just like you did to him. His fingers brush your clit, then dip lower, and when you try to pull away, his other hand seizes your hip and pulls you against him, too tight to pull away. “Tenko,” you protest again. “There’s not enough time –”

“Not with that attitude.”

Your attitude isn’t going to matter all that much. Just like you’ve gotten to know his body, he knows yours – which means he probably knows how badly you want his fingers inside you and how frustrated you are that he won’t stop teasing your clit. But your attitude doesn’t matter, and you need him enough to take what you can get. It’s been a month since you were together like this. You miss him too much to say no.

His touch sends sparks through you, and you bite back a gasp. It’s hard to spread your legs wider when you’re standing, but you give it your best shot, and Tenko slides two fingers inside you. He mimics the shallow thrusts that drive you insane when you have sex, only this time, he’s been teasing you too long for you to hold out. You bury your face in his shoulder as his languid, barely-enough touches tip you over the edge.

When he speaks, he sounds triumphant – or maybe smug. “Told you it wouldn’t take long.”

You don’t know how much time Tenko just burned through. Too much. “Come on. We need to go back.”

“Say I’m right first.”

“Fine. You’re right.”

“I know.” Tenko yawns. “Love you.”

You kiss him instead of responding in kind, your mouth coming away bloody. “Let’s go.”

If Twice and Compress know what you were up to, they have the sense not to comment on it. If Dabi was here instead of off cultivating an ally, you’d never hear the end of it. You sit Tomura down next to the fire Twice must have built and dive into the supply box, coming up with food and water and the collection of vitamins you sorted out on the train. Tomura shakes his head. “I’m tired.”

“You need to eat.” Your plan might have worked a little too well. You hold two energy bars out to him and he grimaces. “Okay, fine. If you won’t eat, at least take these.”

Tomura makes an even worse face at the sight of the pills. “What are those?”

“Vitamins,” Compress says from across the fire. “Saintess has decided that we’ll get our essential nutrients one way or the other.”

“That’s right. I don’t want to have to treat any of you for scurvy,” you say. Twice snickers. You return your attention to Tomura and pull out your only remaining weapon, other than a whiny-girlfriend guilt-trip. “If you won’t eat and take your medicine, you can’t use me as a pillow.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You already did,” you say as quietly as possible. Tomura tries to glare at you, but the effect’s spoiled both by his mouth twitching as he tries to hold in laughter and the enormous yawn that swallows up whatever retort he was going to come up with. “Just eat a little bit. Please.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Tomura mutters, and you know you’ve won. You pass over the water bottle, followed by the pills. “Otherwise this would be annoying as hell.”

“I’d be a bad sidekick if I didn’t take care of you,” you say. “And I’d be a bad medic if I let any of you pass out from vitamin deficiency.”

“Or get scurvy,” Twice hoots.

“Scurvy?” Spinner and Toga are back, Spinner to relieve Compress and Toga to continue her mission to collect some of Gigantomachia’s blood. It hasn’t worked yet, but it keeps her busy. “Who has scurvy?”

“All of us, according to Saintess,” Twice says, cackling. “She’s gonna make us take our vitamins.”

“That’s right,” you say, as Tomura downs a handful of pills and chases them with half the water bottle. You’re worried you’ll have to fight him over the energy bar, but he peels back the wrapper and takes a bite without prompting. “Twice, get over here. You’re next.”

“So the supply pickup went okay,” Spinner says, coming closer as you hand Twice his vitamins. “You didn’t run into any trouble with Giran?”

“He gave me a hard time for not being a real villain, but that’s it,” you say. “He found the gauntlets you and Twice asked for. And the spare parts for your gear, Toga.”

“I can fix it while we’re waiting,” Toga says brightly. She peers into the supply box, then emerges immediately with a gasp. “This is a cute little gun! Who’s it for?”

“Me,” Spinner says at once. “I need a ranged weapon until I get better at throwing knives.”

You wonder if Spinner knows he’s covering for you. You can ask him later, once Tomura’s asleep. Toga doesn’t look convinced. “You need something bigger,” she says. “You have muscles. It’ll look silly if you’re holding such a small gun.”

“I’ll tell Saintess to send it back, then,” Spinner says. “Quit messing with it. It might be loaded.”

You’re pretty sure it’s not loaded, but your internet gun safety research made sure to point out that even if the gun looks empty, there could still be a round in the chamber – and Toga’s having a little too much fun pointing it around and striking poses. You need to put a pin in that, and you’ve got just the thing. “If you don’t quit messing around with that, I’m not going to tell you who I met today.”

“You just met Giran,” Toga says. You allow a smirk to cross your face. “Wait, who else? You have to tell me!”

“Put the gun away. Then I’ll think about it.”

“Saintess –”

The sound of a wrapper crumpling up yanks you clear of Toga’s whining, and you glance over to see that Tomura’s eaten both energy bars and finished the bottle of water. He looks even sleepier than before. “Okay,” you say. “How do you want to do this?”

Over the last month, Tomura’s tried out a variety of positions for using you as a pillow, and his favorite involves him sprawled out on top of you with his head on your chest. Your favorite is when he’s got his head in your lap and you can mess with his hair, but you’re not the one running a potentially-deadly sleep deficit. You find a rock to lean back against, and Tomura flops down on you. Usually he rustles around a bit, trying to get comfortable, but this time he’s out like a light as soon as his head hits your chest. It’s a deeper sleep than usual, which is good. He needs every second.

It’s not until you hear snickering that you realize where one of Tomura’s hands has landed. “I knew the boss was a boob guy,” Twice crows as you move Tomura’s hand off your breast, cringing the whole way. “There’s no way to go wrong. No, bullshit! The ass is where it’s at!”

Spinner shushes him, looking about as uncomfortable as you feel. Toga, meanwhile, drops down next to you. “I put the gun away. Tell me who you met. Was it Izuku?”

You’ve met Izuku. As of today, you’re two for three on Toga’s hero crushes. “I met Uraraka.”

“Ochako?” Toga squeals. Thankfully, Tomura’s too deeply asleep to stir. “That’s even better! How did she look? Was she wearing her school uniform or her costume? Say it was her costume – no, her uniform! We’d look so cute if we matched, don’t you think?”

You think Uraraka wouldn’t have been nearly as nice to you if she’d known you were going to report back about her to Toga. “It wasn’t her costume or her uniform. Civilian clothes. She had this pink coat –”

“Like mine?”

“No, puffy,” you say. Toga nods, beaming. She gestures for you to go on. “Um, and she had a hat that matched. With a white pompom on it.”

Toga looks like she’s going to faint. “Did you talk to her?” she asks. You nod. “Did she mention me?”

You don’t want Toga to have a heart attack, but you also don’t want to lie. “She mentioned Tomura and Dabi and you,” you say. Toga blushes. “I asked her about Eri – I figured even civilians would know about that, since her picture was all over everything – and she said Eri mentioned you specifically.”

“Wait, she remembers us?” Spinner looks alarmed. “How much?”

“More than I thought she would,” you admit. “But apparently it’s good. She remembers that we took care of her.”

“Ochako told you that?”

You nod. “It seemed like it was messing with her. The idea that we’d treat a kid we kidnapped well.”

“It shouldn’t mess with her,” Twice says. “We kidnapped the explosion kid and we were nice to him, too. And he wasn’t even cute.”

“I don’t like him. He’s mean,” Toga complains. “We should have stolen Izuku instead. He looks so cute covered in blood – I know you’d like him, Saintess –”

“I met him.”

Toga’s eyes look like they’re going to pop out of her head. She swats you on the shoulder. “When?”

It takes her fifteen minutes to forgive you for not mentioning that you handed Eri off directly to Midoriya himself, and another fifteen minutes for her to interrogate you for every detail of that interaction, too. “You’d tell me if you met Tsu, right?” she demands, looking like she’s this close to drawing a knife on you. “You wouldn’t hide that from me. You wouldn’t dare.”

“I haven’t met her,” you say. “If I do, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

“Which one is Tsu?” Spinner probably wishes he’d left this conversation half an hour ago, but for some reason he’s still hanging on. “The pink one?”

“No, look!” Toga’s downloaded every UA Sports Festival video to her phone. She pulls one up and shows Spinner. “I love her big eyes and her hair – and she’s so mean! She says we’re not friends, but I know we are –”

“You have a crush on a heteromorph?”

Toga gives Spinner a weird look. “You can’t have her, she’s mine. But you’d have a crush on her, too.”

“That wouldn’t be weird. I’m a heteromorph. But you –” Spinner stops, shakes his head. “Forget it.”

“It’s okay.” Toga pats his shoulder. “Love is just weird like that. It doesn’t care about the stuff we care about. Like Tomura-kun and Saintess. Tomura loves her and he says it all the time. She loves him too but she never says it back. I would hate it if someone did that to me! But they don’t mind, so it’s fine.”

She gives Spinner a meaningful look. “I don’t mind, so it’s fine. Besides, I’m a heteromorph, too.”

She is, technically speaking – her amber eyes and almost-fangs are far enough from the human standard to count – but it’s a tone-deaf thing to say to someone like Spinner, who can’t hide who he is. You can tell it bothers him, but he stays put, and Toga eventually gets up to repair her support items. And Spinner stays. It occurs to you that he might want to talk to you. Alone.

He doesn’t speak up until there are twenty-eight minutes left on the clock, when it’s just him leaning against one side of the rock and you with Tomura fast asleep in your arms on the other. “How come you don’t say it?”

“What?”

“Toga’s right. He says it all the time, but you never do.” Spinner is cringing, like he can’t believe he’s saying this. You can’t believe he’s saying it, either. “What’s the deal? Do you – not?”

“Why are you asking me that?” You don’t mean to sound as defensive as it comes out, but you’re honestly confused. Then it occurs to you why Spinner, the person in the League who’s least likely to comment on anybody else’s life, is bringing it up. “Did he say something?”

“When? In between trying not to get flattened by Machia and sleeping for two hours at a stretch?” Spinner can’t make eye contact with you. He keeps looking away. “He said something one time while we were hiding. Asked if it was normal that you wouldn’t say it, like I know anything about girls.”

You think Spinner would probably do okay with girls once they got to know him. “If anything goes wrong with you two, it’ll snap his focus and he’ll get us all killed,” Spinner continues. “I want to see his vision come true and I don’t want to die. So I’m asking. That’s why.”

“I do,” you say. Spinner looks relieved, but he doesn’t look surprised. “I don’t know why I don’t say it. It feels like – a lot. Like something will happen. I don’t know what.”

Spinner gives you a curious look. “Something bad?”

“Just something.” This is making you feel stupid. “I do, though. I thought it was obvious.”

“I mean, it is.” Spinner gestures awkwardly at the two of you. Tomura’s still dead to the world, and maybe drooling a little bit. You must be really far gone, because you think it’s sort of cute. “Like I said. I don’t know anything about girls, but I don’t think someone who didn’t love somebody else would put it on the line like this. It was just a question. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” You want to stop talking about this, and you’ve got a question for him. “Why’d you cover for me earlier? You must have known the gun was mine.”

“It would have freaked him out.” Spinner doesn’t have to say who he’s talking about. “He thinks it’s his job to protect you, since you’re his sidekick. And his girlfriend. And if you’re using a gun, you can commit actual crimes. The kind people get put away for. I don’t think he wants that.”

You’re pretty sure you’re already going away if you get caught. You haven’t directly participated except in the attack on the CRC, but that was probably enough to put you within Kazuo’s search parameters, and if your interaction with Uraraka told you anything, it’s that the villain named Saintess is officially on the heroic radar. But Spinner’s got a point. Right now you can only be charged as an accomplice to the League’s crimes. That charge carries a significantly lighter sentence than whatever you’d do with a gun.

Still – “Tomura can’t be everywhere,” you say. He stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake. “I can’t have him getting distracted trying to look after me, so I have to be able to look out for myself.”

Spinner doesn’t answer, but you know he knows you’re right. “Don’t tell anybody I have it,” you say.

“I’m not going to lie to him.”

“Don’t lie to him. If he says “hey, Spinner, does my girlfriend have a gun”, tell him the truth.” As far as you’re concerned, it never needs to get that far. “Just don’t tattle on me.”

“Don’t say tattle. Say snitch,” Spinner corrects. ‘It sounds more – villain.”

That’s the second person today who’s knocked you for not being villainous enough. “Fine. Don’t snitch on me.”

“Deal,” Spinner says. It’s quiet for a moment. “Do you ever think about what happens when we win?”

“You and me come up with a new world that doesn’t suck?”

“Besides that,” Spinner says. “Like what has to happen for it to count as a win. We don’t all have the same answer. Toga thinks it’s a win as long as the stuff she likes makes it through. Twice probably thinks it’s a win if Toga makes it, and Compress probably just wants to do the same stuff he’s always done and not get arrested. Who even knows about Dabi.”

“He’s got a mission,” you say, and Spinner snorts. You’re starting to see where he’s headed with this. “What about you and me?”

“We win if we build the new world,” Spinner says. He glances down at Tomura, whose hand has migrated back to your breast in his sleep. You move it off again. “And we lose if he’s not in it.”

You blink, taken aback. “I don’t have another best friend,” Spinner continues. “I can’t replace the one I have. And you can’t replace him.”

“I know,” you say. And then, without thinking: “I tried.”

Spinner stares at you, opens his mouth, but before he can say a word – and before you can backtrack straight to Yokohama – your phone starts buzzing in your pocket. So does everybody else’s, plus Spinner’s watch and your stupid laptop, which is shut and supposed to be off in your backpack. The clamor sends a jolt of pure fear down your spine, just like it does every time you hear it. It’s your timer, synced to everyone else’s. Gigantomachia’s awake.

Tomura lurches awake, in command from the second his eyes open. “Twice, send out a double to buy us time. Make it run.”

“It can only run as fast as you can –”

“I’ve gotten faster. Send it to the hills. He’ll have a harder time with the terrain.” Tomura gets to his feet, and you scramble after him. He turns to you. “Get clear. We’ll drop a pin once we have a new campsite. Will you –”

There’s not time for that question, and he should know the answer. You silence him with a kiss. “I’ll be there.”

He’s already peeling off his gloves, fastening on his family’s hands, scanning the horizon. “I love you.”

You remember what Spinner said. The question Tomura apparently asked him. How just showing it might not be enough. That you shouldn’t expect it to be enough – but you can’t get the words out. You need to try something else. You grab his hand, careful to avoid his fingers, and raise it to your lips, kissing the heel of his hand, the center of his palm, the ridges of his knuckles. His hands have so many scars now. He’s being hurt, and you can’t help him. There’s nothing you can do.

Tomura’s grip on your hand tightens, index fingers raised. The ground rattles slightly beneath your feet, and he lets go. “Run.”

Compress has already contained the supplies; Twice has stomped out the fire. He and Spinner have their gauntlets, and Toga’s support item is fixed. They’re ready to go, and so should you be. You spare one more glance for Tomura, then turn to flee, bolting into the woods alongside Compress as Gigantomachia’s silhouette appears over the horizon.

The two of you shed your disguises at the outskirts of the same town, uncompressing the supplies to reorganize them. “Spinner forgot his gun,” Compress remarks. “Shall I hold onto it?”

“I will,” you say. “We’ll see him at the same time, and nobody’s going to search me.”

Compress nods. “I’ll be getting some sleep. I’m three days behind. What about you?”

Your phone pings with a fresh text, and your heart sinks when you see the number. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of. Keep me updated.”

Compress nods again, and the two of you split. He heads down the street, probably aiming for the capsule hotel you scoped out on your way into town, and you go in the opposite direction, towards the train station. You don’t check your messages until you’re waiting on the platform.

You texted Kazuo a few days ago, asking him a question, ordering him not to look unless his health allows it. You’ve been anxiously awaiting his reply, if it comes at all, and now you’ve gotten six texts from him in a row. Your heart races as you open them.

Kazuo: Yoshimi is in remission. Mitsuko and Ryuhei are supporting her in your absence. All three appear to be doing well.

Kazuo: Their involvement with your friend has not been noticed.

That’s good news. You’ve been thinking about her. And about them. For a moment, you’re almost suffocated by a wish that you could celebrate with them. You gave up your old life, your old friends. And you miss them even more than you thought you would. You swallow hard and keep reading.

Kazuo: Your codename has appeared on the official roster for the League of Villains. They are attempting to track you by quirk and criminal history, and therefore coming up empty.

Kazuo: I’ll keep you clear as long as I can, but if they sufficiently alter their questions, I won’t be able to.

Kazuo: I was able to look into the question you gave me. It was specific enough to instantly rule out all other answers, so I thank you for that.

Kazuo: The answer is yes. Congratulations.

Your eyes go blurry, and a second later, your throat closes off. Your train arrives, but you don’t get on it – instead you sit down on a bench, staring down at the floor between your feet, trying not to cry and furious with yourself for wanting to cry at all. You asked Kazuo to use his quirk and see if you – you, identified by your birthdate, blood type, height, career, and city you were born in, for all the specifics he could ever need – have a latent quirk. You trust his word over the doctor’s. His quirk isn’t wrong, ever. You told yourself that you’d accept his answer as the truth. You were hoping he’d say no.

Instead he says yes. You do have a latent quirk, something that’s been hidden your whole life because the conditions necessary to awaken it have never been met. They’ll probably never be met, and your quirk is probably worse than useless, but the fact that it’s latent means you’ve spent your whole life being treated like you’re quirkless when you aren’t. You should feel cheated. Instead you feel betrayed.

It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. If you don’t know what it is, it’s like you don’t have it at all. Nothing needs to change. You don’t need to tell anyone. You tell yourself that, but it doesn’t make much of a different. The doctor knows, and so does Kazuo. So does All For One.

The next train arrives long before you’ve calmed down, but you get up and shamble aboard anyway. Nobody looks at you – not for long, anyway. Most people go out of their way to avoid seeing others’ pain. When your eyes have cleared a little bit, you take your phone out and start looking up firing ranges. You might not be able to be useful to Tenko and the others with your stupid, latent quirk. But you can definitely be useful to them with a gun.