#floating blue mesh fail

[pas-tandp-resent]

Shadows are dancing in broken rooms. Two ghosts twist in through a fissure in the tower at its bottom. The winds at this level of Vos howl as the air cools during the later hours- the thin artificial gravity of Cybertron pulls it down and funnels through empty streets. Causing debris to kick up and skitter.

Those shadows twist with them, winding up the lifts and mid-floors like the detritus themselves. The slimmer of the two is the one that hacks still-functioning security systems, the thicker wrenching open stuck machinery and doors with brute strength. It does not take them long as they work with ease of long association.

Until they reach the spire's pinnacle..

— and their target.

Vos is still broken. Repair to the city in the sky is going painfully slow, the Temples put up and places for the citizens to stay held together with carefully placed rocks and wires. The towers aren't much better, rocking and groaning under the winds. Withstanding them by a thread.

The towers were quiet, most the mechs recharging and the guards floating in and out of the rooms. None to notice the twisting shadows, and fewer to care.

Skyfall was pacing his office, wings swept wide and growling low. Soft mesh cloths draped across sky blue form, white and silver lined and dotted his frame, bright golden optics glaring at the desk.

No One hadn't returned when he was told, wasn't answering his pings. The thing had been taught to obey after failing their Sire and Carrier, and it had been obedient since.

So why now?

And empty flute was grabbed and thrown at the wall, a snarl coming from his engine. Things were falling apart before they even began.

[angels-gen]

-Discovering The Mesh-

A knock sounded sounded on the door, breaking my attention from a floating screen; I looked up and noticed Titanic walking up to me with her arms crossed.

"You know we're supposed to be asleep right?" She asked as I swiped away a screen as it floated up top. "I know, I'm just busy checking on everyone else is all. I'll be back to our room, I promise." I said as I looked over at another floating screen, she sighed as she leaned on my desk.

"Fine, but why do you need to check up on anyone anyway?" She said as she looked at a floating screen I had swiped away, watching another Titanic smiling through the screen. "It's not like something bad is gonna happen, you know?" I scoffed, "that's what you think; it's not always the case to be honest." She giggled as she looked over at another timeline and universe.

"What's this?" I looked over at Titanic, my face paled as I realised the universe she was looking at. "Don't touch that." She jumped, a bit taken back as she'd never seen me react this way. "Sorry… it's just… that universe… that timeline…" she knelt down, holding my hand. "Hey… I'm just curious that's all, but why the sudden reaction? You know you can tell me, we're twins." I looked into her ice blue eyes, the same colour as mine. "Olympic, please tell me…" I sighed, "I-i… I don't k-know… it's just like that… I'm not sure what even happened in that timeline…" I said, my eyes cast downwards. Usually I'd have an answer, but for this I don't know. Titanic stood up before pulling me into a tight hug, "well whatever it is, we definitely shouldn't be telling Britannic about this." I nodded as hugged back; she let go as she walked over to the door.

"I'm gonna go tell Britannic you'd be back soon. Don't stay up too late~" I chuckled as she left, before turning my attention to the floating screen Titanic was looking at. Unlike all the other screens, this one glowed red and at the bottom it read 'UNIVERSE 01'. I furrowed my brows; Universe 01? What does that mean? Usually it says the name of the universe not the number. I shook my head as walked over to the door, I don't think the Olympic in that timeline knows she's been infected; but by what exactly?

I sighed, walking out the door and locking it before I left. Whatever that thing is that's on my ship in that universe, in that timeline. Needs to be investigated. Immediately.

~

I woke up in a cold sweat, panting from a nightmare again. While Titanic's sinking has now been debunked, I'm now plagued with much newer ones. Ones that are more gruesome and terrifying. I feel powerless against these nightmares; usually Titanic helps me with them but these are too horrific for her too see.

I looked out the window, the moonlight shining through the curtains. I sighed and got up, about to walk to the door when I suddenly collapsed, my energy drained almost to the max. I looked over at Titanic to see her staring at me from her bed; I looked away as I tried to get up again. But failed miserably, my eyes getting a little heavier with each passing second. I felt myself be picked up off the floor before being violently shaken by my sister.

'Are you insane!?' My head rang with Titanic's voice in it. I glared at her sleepily 'why are you still up?' 'I heard you wake up from a nightmare.' I winced at the thought of the nightmare. 'I'm fine…' I thought looking away; Titanic grabbed my face and made me look her dead in the eyes 'no. You're not.' Her ice blue eyes more piercing than usual; I sighed as she let my face go. I looked over at Britannic, who's passed out, deep in slumber before sighing and motioning Titanic to follow me.

"Why are we going back to the room? Also what have you been dreaming about? Why aren't you telling me anything right now—" "shhh." I covered Titanic's mouth as I heard footsteps pass by; I let out a sigh of relief as I let go of my sister. "Why are you so on edge? You own that room and only you and I can access it, why are you acting like it's illegal to go there?" I grabbed Titanic's hand as we quickly went in the room, the blue glow and slight hum of the many screens floating above filled the sparsely decorated room.

I sat at my desk, going through each and every single universe and timeline to make sure everything was alright. Before turning my attention to the glowing red screen floating a little off the side, away from all the blue.

I looked through the timeline of the universe; nothing seems to be adding up. Titanic watched as the timeline played out, growing more and more confused with every passing memory being played out.

"W-why's this d…different…?" Titanic asked, her voice giving away how scared she was. "I don't know… but something's not right with this universe." She nodded in agreement, leaning against my chair as we watched Britannic exploding. She winced, watching our sister take mere seconds to go under. "T-this is way too different… normally all the timelines are the same as the original, but this… I'm alive and you're alive. But Britannic… oh, our sister…" I nodded as sighed in disbelief. "I need to investigate this further." A chuckle escaped Titanic, a sound so sickly sweet and melodious "so what? You're gonna go to that timeline alone or something?" I bit my lip, I thought of it; but in doing so it means that I'm leaving my sisters behind. Not to mention my own girlfriend would be worried as fuck. "In a universe like this it'd be best for just one person to go—" "you're insane if you think I'm letting you leave us behind!" I kept quiet, I know she knows I've been thinking about it. "Look, it's just that it looks too dangerous for all of us to go there." "And you think I don't know that? I've been following you throughout your whole life. Your whole career. Watching you, wishing we'd see eachother again. And we did, we finally did! But now you're just gonna throw all that away just because of some timeline that's fucked up!?" Tears streamed down Titanic's face as she sniffled, as much as I hate to admit. My sister was right. We'd been waiting for too long to see eachother; but this timeline is off. It feels dangerous.

"This timeline feels like it has a parasite, and I want to investigate what it does…" I said as I wiped my sister's tears away. "Like Host and Parasite?" I nodded "almost, but this feels different… it feels dangerous…" Titanic shivered, feeling a little bit frightened by what that could mean. "You mean this parasite is different from Parasite…?" I nodded, as we both stared at the screen, watching a flesh eating blob consume someone.

"Only thing we can do is just watch for now…"

-

Well this took a while—

[readingcauldron]

mic check!

I am feeling inspired so I’m going to talk about Ocean of Sound by David Toop. SO GOOD!!!! So good. I feel very moved by it. Toop is very good at articulating something that is so filled with feeling for me that I am unable to come up with the words that will do it justice. But Toop is able! (To be fair I haven’t read a lot about ambient music so I’m sure a bunch of other people can do it also) ok anyway it’s kept me thinking about what it is that I love about ambient music. I don’t know how to say this in a non-asshole way but I literally feel as if it’s made me a better person lol. It’s taught me so much—how to be like water, how to look around again, how to feel grounded, etc. etc. 

There’s also the collaging aspect of it, since so much of it features remixes and samples and interpolations. and we all know i love collages! I’ve also been delving in to what it is I like about collages so much — their sense of isolation, randomness, universality, connection, resourcefulness, removal of context, curiosity, messiness, empty spaces filled with meaning —anyway this book has helped me realize that “removal of context” is probably the biggest reason. 

“Feasibly, you could extrapolate a novel from the interweaving stories buried within John Cage’s Variations IV, but richer possibilities unfolded in the early 1908s when Jon Hassell began to capture, loop and laminate fragments of sampled sound… Hassell formalized that process by naming his 1994 band Bluescreen, after the cinematic technique of filming foreground action against a blue background, ‘adopting this metaphor in musical ways, creating magical textures in sound, making something familiar sound fresh and exotic by separating it from its background and combining it with something new and startling.'"

Omg. "...by separating it from its background..." imagine that. and as a human that's all we can do - imagine. i lust over the idea of being separated from my background and my context. i am its humble servant and i am failing - but i think that's how everyone feels. when your background and your context follow you around everywhere you go like it's one giant heavy shadow and all you want is to be separated from it! but I know that's impossible - so I turn to collage, not necessarily imagining my parts and my pasts coming apart and coming back together, but given a sense of place in the chaos, an understanding surface.

Even though my background and context feel like they have meshed themselves with my skin, I also kind of feel they are the only things holding me together - not in a bad way, but in a "i feel shapeless and haphazard and sea-like" and "I am not anything at all" way. collage pieces mean something different with every combination. so maybe i would go crazy or lose all sense of self if I didn't have my context to keep me from floating away. ugh i need to read more about this

anyway when a book about the rise of ambient music helps you articulate thoughts and feelings youve been struggling to identify your whole life i think that is awesome.

finally, bonus read if you have the energy:

-Lizzy

[wingsdreamt]

steeleidolon​:

Maybe they can make a difference. Pull that chain. Be the spark. Fan the flames. Deliver some jolt, some spike of Hope into the world. Not out of any sense of obligation, not because they have any inkling that they will see the results. Hell, this might be a suicide mission, except both of them have failed suicide missions in the past. They came back with eyes open, still breathing, hearts still beating, refusing to simply give up and die just because someone else wills it.

This thought, and the too-familiar smell of the labs, creeps down his spine like electrified ice-water, and he grits his teeth against the visceral urge to punch down.

Or to turn around and shimmy back. No, no. They’re here. They’re committed.

“Me too, man.”

The T-junction ahead roars with fans. To the right and directly in front of them, mesh and filter-shrouded blades whip and whir, a rattling drone loud enough to obfuscate any warping or popping their knees on the metal might impress. It’s loud enough to drown out any hope of conversation too. Damn it.

Kunsel threads his arm back behind himself, bends his elbow, and signal-gestures to the left before taking the turn as gracefully as one can in a four-by-four box. At least the standard construction is consistent, sharply squared off and supported underneath with struts strong enough to hold them, likely strong enough to hold whatever monsters might escape from their containment. It’s vital to have a working ventilation system, after all, if one intends to use it to pump suppression gasses into an enclosed space.

Cue a glance up directly above, where tanks - like recessed scuba cylinders - are banded, bolted, and linked together with pipes and wires for remote control. Kunsel ducks his head and slopes further forward, army-crawling on his forearms and spread thighs rather than hands and knees. He figures Zack will get the picture, and it affords him a little more room to gesture two fingers down, clenched fist. Stop where I’ve stopped.

Quicker, practiced, he skitters forward to the other side of a grated hatch and then rolls over, folds flexibly, and ends up facing Zack, peering down below. The shaft has passed either through or above one of the blocky prefab pods, and is somewhat misaligned, providing a split view.

There’s the peek of a toilet and sink on one side, and then the broader section of the ventilation panel reveals… amber light, interspersed with flicker-glows of blue, a computer server, a monitor with a weirdly fetal-looking screensaver. Maybe that’s just the angle on the desk. The main lights are off, and it appears to be unoccupied at present.

Lucky them.

He demonstrates the thumb screws on his side of the vent panel. Easy enough for both of them to undo and lift up, aside, and then drop down one after the other.

Floor level. A plush carpet cushions their feet.

It looks like the office of a tenured executive professor with decades upon decades of plaudits, richly appointed. Shelves in immaculate order border one wall, filled with dozens upon dozens of hard-bound volumes, a luxury in the digital era, contrasting the standard filing cabinets. Display cases in glass and wood hold items of curiosity - specimens floating in formalin, hermetically sealed jars of two-headed serpents and bizarre fish-creatures, a zolom egg, embryos identified only by arcane labeling systems…

And a preserved human arm. Left arm, by the looks of it, skin pale under display lights. The wing tattoo from wrist to tricep must have been exquisite in life, deep black with painstaking black-feathered details.

The specimen holding bay, visible through its reciprocal mirror, was recently occupied. The smears on hard-point restraints and the angled slant of an examination table are still shimmering red.

“…well, this fucking place never gets less creepy. You wanna get the hard copies? I’ve got his computer.”

Any variation of disgruntled noises he makes as blue light crosses into his purview is lost to the roar of the spinning fan blades. Once the grate is lifted, Zack touches down after Kunsel on three points. At a glance, the office might have looked astonishingly mundane– not so much once the menagerie of scientific collectibles comes into play. 

“Hate it, hate it, hate it,” Zack growls, hunching his shoulders and staring too long at what must ostensibly be a human arm while the hairs on his neck stand on end. A perfectly normal arm as far as he can see, save for the intricate inkwork beneath the skin. Why the self-purported man of science himself might feel the need to save this particular arm or even put it on display in the first place, Zack can only imagine. This one feels less like a curio and more like… a morbid trophy.

That isn’t even the worst part about this place. He is keenly aware of Kunsel’s presence next to him when he goes stock still and his breath catches in his throat. The sight on the other side of the thick wall of glass is intimately familiar to him, and Zack wrangles with the flash of panic that briefly keeps him rooted in place. Voice. Focus. Back to Kunsel.

Looking through the bookshelf and cabinet is perfect, because it keeps his back to the slab of steel looming behind the mirror like a bad memory.

“Right. Yeah. On it.”

With a roll of his shoulders, he takes an exaggerated step towards the nearest row of shelves filled with multi-colored tomes. He runs his finger along the top of the books on the way to the metal filing cabinet situated at the end of the shelf. Most of the books appear to be purely decorative. Textbooks covering various topics on the nature of microbiology, genesplicing, and phylogenetics. Zack stops, hovering two fingers over a row of first-edition copies about the Planet’s history. A few with a focus on the Ancients in particular. There is a small gap between the last book, Decline of the Cetra and History for the Modern Midgarian. 

Interesting.

He does another quick pass before deciding to move on. The real trouble would be figuring out which of these ethically questionable gems to take back with them. Anything worth keeping in an unlocked cabinet couldn’t be that Planet shattering. Zack cards through the file folders after he slides the drawer out on its track to skim through titles.

Some of the documents were purely archival; datasets or sequences that had been analyzed long ago littered with chicken scratch notes scrawled in the margins and a dash of angry, red marks. 

Now for the alphabetized sections. Finger over thumb, he looks through each header’s contents. Minutes tick by. Boring, gross, boring–

 ‘Regulation of apoptosis,’ ‘Petri net modeling of biological networks,’ Slowing the rate of senescence in non-human tissues,’ ‘Accelerating mako-osteoclast activation and development of new limbs.’ 

The standouts. At least, the papers he could understand enough to single out.

One last check. Zack flattens out a palm along the sides of the drawer, feeling for any unusual grooves or catches that might unlock a hidden panel. No luck. Plucking out stapled notes from several file folders of interest, he stacks them up then thumbs to the back of the drawer for an empty folder to stash them in. After the folder has been tucked under his arm, Zack rearranges the folders into some semblance of their previous orientation before sliding the drawer shut.

“Alright…think I’ve got as good as we’re gonna get out of those cabinets. I am so ready to get the hell out of here. Dig up any interesting dirt on his computer?”

[northern-angel]

Cooke Household round 1

Julien Cooke

Aspiration: Popularity/Knowledge

LTW: Become Celebrity Chef

Job: Fast Food Shift manager (Culinary Level 3)

OTH: Cuisine

ACR Preference: Bisexual

We start with Julien cooking himself some breakfast.

Then, presumably after he ate the food he cooked, he moves on the daily crossword puzzle in the paper.

And then does some skill-related reading.

After all that I was thoroughly bored so I sent him out to the Veronaville Market, hoping something interesting might happen. Apparently he doesn’t like the flowers I used to decorate around the beautiful pond I built. Screw you Julien!

Now if George McCarthy thinking “who is this dapper gentleman?” or is he thinking “Dude it’s the 21st century, not the 19th!”

Julien is very happy with his aesthetic though, so who cares what forever teen over there thinks.

Maybe someone will come play with him?

These two are immediate Double Bolters, even if Nina is a bit of a sore loser.

Is Edwin Sharpe doing the kitten startle reflex or is he mocking the Human Statue NPC’s artistry?

Nina heads off to grab a bite, and I notice Florence Delarosa is walking by. I had somewaht hoped these two might be a match, but alas zero chemistry (I had also thought Julien might make a good match for Kent Capp, but again no lightning bolts)

Still despite their lack of sexual sparkage, the two hit it off and Florence thinks about kissing.

Silly Dormie and Host NPC, I do not care enough about you for you to get to marrying into a Playable family. But I will flail if Julien’s only good matches are the Sims equivalent of Red Shirts.

Oh great, just what the lot needed.

Should I be worried about Julien? Or is if perfectly normal to discuss trains with an empty seat...

Nothing sinister happening behind you at all there Julien.

Nina comes over to discuss their respective meals, whilst Romeo wonders if anyone would notice him eating those leftovers. The answer is yes, Hermia will totally notice and judge you and tell her sister.

I feel that Nina might be making a bit of a low blow here, I mean hate the Unsavoury Charlatan because he’s a conman and thief, not because you find him repellant sexually.

That waitress is totally pissed off that they are conversing in the worst possible place.

Back at home Julien has a nap in his new recliner (I really wish Sims could nap on their beds like they can in Sims 3)

And then off to work.

Whilst at work this chance card comes up. I mean who chooses the first option? It’s a burger place, people will be pissed off if there are no burgers.

Fortunately this choice goes well for me, but I know I’ve had a bad outcome choosing that way before.

Not only did he get a skill point and a bonus, but also a promotion to Host.

I think he’s talking to Florence there, but it could be Nina or someone else. I don’t know ok.

Off to work in his snazzy new uniform the next day.

And this time it’s a hobby chance card.

It’s a good thing I’d already had this one whilst playing the Pleasants.

Julien invites Florence over after work.

He really likes her milkshake, he’s just concerned he might be lactose intolerant.

For a supposedly skilled chef, Julien doesn’t actually have that many cooking skill points.

They end the night deciding that they make great friends but nothing else.

This must be the next day after work, and I assume he’s chatting to someone on that doorstep of a laptop.

And then I sent him out to the makeover of the Old Silo Farm. The next few pictures are just me showing off how pretty this lot is. I apologise!

Oh look here’s Julien cooking some burgers. That’s the sort of thing you’re all actually reading for right?

Julien likes the look of Lola, so I send him over to meet her. I think Ana Patel recognises Julien from work.

Another scenery pic, but have you ever seen such pretty toilets in your life?

Julien and Lola hit it off very quickly, possibly because Lola is under the false impression that Julien has money.

Thinks start to take a more romantic turn, and this is the point that I remember that Lola is already dating Ajay Loner. Oops.

Everyone loves being tickled in the Sims world, what kind of freakish world is that?

And now some kickey bag in the pouring rain.

Lola subtly feels Julien out over the size of his bank balance, and a lightning bolt nicely lights the scene. I need to go put more lights on this lot.

Some cute flirting going on here.

And now Julien is crushing on this beautiful green-skinned goddess.

Dancing in the rain.

And Julien goes in for his first kiss.

I had never noticed how pointy Julien’s ears where before this, and now I have this whole headcanon about how he’s adopted and he came to live in Veronaville to ask the Fae Royal Couple to help him track down his Fae parent.

This first kiss is so much better than the one Lola and Ajay had.

Awwww!!!! Also is there no view on this lot that isn’t pretty?

Another kiss, this time overlooking the pond.

Even the rain puddles don’t ruin the romantic atmosphere. Mental note, must send more Veronaville folk on dates to this lot.

Is it her alien genes that make her so strong or does she just hit the gym a lot?

I am incredibly proud of this picture, I just wish it wasn’t quite so dark.

At least in the dark it’s a little harder to see that lovely bright blue accessory mesh fail that is orbiting Lola.

The date ends as a Dream Date. I believe Ajay only managed a Great Date. How do I decide which paramour she stays with? Just lock the first engagement want? Or could they work out as a Thruple? Maybe Ajay isn’t entirely straight...

I have no idea what is going on with their body language here, they almost look like they are about to do a celebratory chest bump or something.

Back at home Lola pops by to leave a bouquet. That is quite the round trip to Strangetown just to leave flowers.

And that’s it for Julien. Hope you’ve enjoyed my silliness.

[dasy002]

THE PIRATE MERMAID 2

Main masterlist | Marvel masterlist | Part 1

Natasha Romanoff x reader

You’ve been on board the Pointe Claire for quite a long time now supporting your love, Captain Romanoff, in the leadership of the crew. 

You’ve adapted to life among humans, more or less, but there are days when you can’t help but feel empty. You miss swimming, the rainbow scales of your tail, the feeling of the water caressing your skin as you speed through the darkest depths. And Natasha being an excellent observer could not fail to notice. 

“What’s on your mind babydoll?” she asks, wrapping her arms around your hips and placing a tender kiss on your neck. You sigh, keeping your gaze on the dark blue water that surrounds the ship for miles. The truth is that you don’t know how to explain this urge to her, she probably won’t even understand and what if she thinks you wanna leave her forever? No, there’s no way you’re gonna tell her. Again the captain has to recall your attention by whispering in your ear the only words that matter at the moment “You can go (y/n). I’m not keeping you captive on this rotten ship.”

You turn and look at her shocked “Nat I don’t wanna leave you… I just need, I mean I-” You ramble as panic starts growing,bringing you to think that maybe she doesn’t want you anymore. But a sense of calmness makes its way inside of you as Natasha cups your face with her big hands () and looks into your eyes with her green gentle ones “I know doll, you just need to swim.” she speaks in a comprehensive way “And as I said before, you can go whenever you want.” She doesn’t even have the time to finish her speech that you’re already squealing excitedly as you dive in the cold water. 

You’re now swimming around and gosh it feels so good to be finally able to move freely. You’re so drained but this amazing feeling that you don’t notice the shadow of a huge ship obscuring the light above you. And a second later you find yourself entangled in a sturdy net. 

You squirm, pull the meshes of the net trying to tear it, but nothing. Then you start calling for help, screaming, hoping that Natasha hears you. In the meantime as someone starts hoisting your rope prison, laughing and cheering, guilt grows in your heart. ‘I shouldn’t have left, nothing would have happened if I had kept my mouth shut’ that’s what you’re saying to yourself when, out of the blue, you hear a noise like something tearing and then someone grabbing you by the waist. 

You snap your head to the side, catching a glimpse of red floating air and something green. Natasha. ‘She really came to save me’ you think.

Well in the end you are and will always be the pirate mermaid.    

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Steele Resolve

Over 300 billion years into the future.

"Get out," Dallas told Darkwing.

He eyed her suspiciously, then she shoved him—captain of this ship—out of his very own cabin. Punching the control button by the door, the panel slid shut in between them in a flash, shutting out both him and the glaring light from the corridor.

She stifled a laugh as the hypersteel barrier muffled his yapping—something about being a living god, among other things, rattling on as he audibly turned and wandered away, babbling all the way to the Avian's cockpit.

Dallas waited till he was far enough away, then listened at the door even longer. Ensuring she heard no signs of the cat, the psychotic robot, that disgusting engineer, or—most importantly—the girl.

The ship's star-drive churned, causing all surfaces to subtly vibrate while it steadily propelled the combat vessel through space. It meshed with the rushing of blood in her ears. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light in the cabin, generated only by arrays of glowing buttons, some of them steady, others blinking.

Half a minute felt long enough.

She slid into the swiveling chair that was bolted down onto the floor in front of a quantum entanglement communicator terminal.

The assassin tilted her head back and forth and her neck cracked both times.

With the routine of a spy, she slung out her trusty old ballistic revolver, flicked a concealed switch with her thumb, and slapped the archaic weapon against an open palm.

Then—again. And a third time.

A scrambler chip clicked out of the gun's grip.

She slipped it out and quickly inserted it into one of the terminal's slots. Tapped the power buttons and fired up the device.

The soft blue glow of the screen in front of her illuminated the entire dark chamber she sat alone in. A sigh of impatience escaped her as she awaited the loading bars of the chip's overrides to reach completion on-screen and guarantee her the use of a secure channel.

Meanwhile, a window popped up, listing all recent encrypted text messages she had received from her contacts over the course of the past time units. One of the message subjects read, "DIE BITCH", sent by a certain "Dragon." Many others reflected the bridges she had recently burned and flattered her with other colorful threats and creative insults. Fueled by professional pride, and mixed with a newfound sense of liberty, she smiled to herself and dismissed the entire window with a languid swipe.

Clickety-clackety-clickety-clackety—

Her fingers hacked away at the keyboard with an uncanny speed and precision. Hit the key to transmit with excessive force, a sound of polymers and metal snapping together that cut through the quiet, stale air of the captain's cabin.

Her heart began to race as she awaited response. The ensuing seconds dragged on like molasses, even if they were only few.

A screen, cropped out within the screen, flicked open and displayed a sea of static. The silhouette of her handler turned visible, emerging from within the visual noise, but never fully surfacing in full definition. Masked behind a helmet that emitted an ominous cross-shaped red glow, cast in shadows by a hood.

An agent of the Holy Lahasan Empire.

"Steele? You now also owe me some explanations," said her handler on the other end of the connection, that shadowy silhouette speaking to her from far across the galaxy, distorted by the distance and dampened by the mask.

Dallas leaned back into the chair, unknowingly sinking into it like the many times that the captain had done before, sinking into a spell of deeper contemplation.

She clicked her tongue and finally replied, "Things did not go quite as planned. There were some—complications."

"According to my intel, Agent Reeve was disintegrated in a blast caused by archaic explosives."

Dallas' mien darkened, turning into a frown. "All due respect, but Rourke was an asshole, and—"

"With all due respect, your personal opinions need to leave, exiting through the nearest airlock right now. Not only are you living on borrowed time for your treason against the Empress, but you have a jarring track record of valuable agents dropping dead around you."

"That sounds like your problem, not mine."

The handler's voice dropped in volume, slowed down to a grim crawl. "You remember the cortex bomb I had implanted in your spine, right?"

She scowled at the screen, unable to find any eye contact, instead focusing on the red glow of the cross.

"Come on, I'm too valuable to you. You wanted the best tracker in the universe, which is why you pulled me out of cryo-prison."

"And I am constantly re-evaluating that decision."

Dallas held her tongue. Her chin jutted out and she fidgeted in her seat until her fingers encountered the calming cool of the stainless-steel surface of the old lighter, hidden in her pocket.

"Moving on. Report your progress on retrieving subject K70001-34966."

Dallas decided to play it cool.

She had to play her cards right.

"What a mouthful. We are talking about some girl. Don't you wanna abbreviate that name a bit?"

"No."

Hesitating to answer, she patted her jacket down until she retrieved a palm-sized silvered case from another pocket. She pressed a button on it, and it clicked—also analog and mechanical—triggering its finely-engraved lid to swing open.

Removing a thin cigar from the other three inside it, she lit it up, puffed a few times, and then blew a mouthful of smoke towards the QEC's monitor. The agent awaited her response, but she regained some confidence just in the thought that constantly tested his patience to the point of annoying him.

He had to put up with her.

Threats aside, she was, in fact, the best woman for the job.

"I've gotten pretty damn close. I think it's a matter of weeks, or even days now."

"Be more precise," growled the handler.

"Look, I found out how she's getting around, alright? By stowing away on other people's ships. I'm closely on her trail now. We almost had her too! Sadly, for Rourke, he got killed in that explosion by some idiot that had nothing to do with the job. There was a shootout at this place on—"

"Most of that was in the report. Share more pertinent details, or get to the point," he ordered.

"It's just a matter of time till I can bring her in."

Now he remained silent, processing her meager report. It must have been better than nothing.

"You had best not disappoint. You know we—"

"Yes, yes. Borrowed time."

He said nothing.

Dallas' nostrils flared, blowing smoke out of them.

She squinted and smirked, then asked, "I offed Youssell for you like you requested, right? That wasn't exactly on the books, was it?"

This time, the agent failed to respond.

"Right, and now you're having me track down and retrieve some kid that you lost in the first place."

Though the hood, and helmet, and eerie mask with its cross-shaped glow fully concealed his face, she could practically hear him gritting his teeth as he replied, "Because of your meddling, Steele."

"Well, you have to agree that it's a bit—uh, how to put this—a bit outside of my usual expertise to find people and get them back alive. So, you'll have to kindly stick a thumb up your ass while you wait and give me some time to improvise and succeed. I mean, you do want the kid alive, right?"

More silence followed. Dallas blew more smoke at the monitor, wishing she could be blowing it into his face.

"So, my word—you're getting her alive—or you'll find me as a corpse floating through open space. That is a promise. But if you want this to work out, you'll have to trust me." Saying that, her smirk widened as she feigned every ounce of confidence she could put on display.

With an abrupt flash, the screen within the screen winked out of existence, and the static noise from the scrambled transmission went dead. The handler had ended the communication without giving Dallas any further notice.

"Oh, my. Lovely. Fuck you too, Prince Charming."

She basked in the cold blue glow of the terminal's screen and puffed some more from her slender cigar. She tried to focus on thoughts about how to proceed—of where to go from here. But instead of finding clear ideas and reaching decisive plans of action—something she was usually adept at—pesky memories kept welling up instead.

Thoughts also regularly circled back to the cortex bomb implanted in her spine, but the older memories eventually overshadowed them.

   * * *

"I will not ask you again," said the inquisitor.

His hand crept towards a button on the wall outside the cell.

The girl trapped inside, identified on the monitor next to the white energy barrier as "Delinquent K70001-34966", drooled and writhed on the cold metal floor of that cell. She did not respond to the inquisitor's threat.

He pushed the button once more, causing the girl on the floor of the cell to convulse under waves upon waves of searing pain that washed over her, illuminated by bright yellow, crackling energy. Each surge of electrical discharges caused her to spasm until she threw up. Then she collapsed again, one cheek resting in the tiny pool of vomit. Covered in sweat, she lay there, curled up in a pathetic and helpless heap.

This was the umpteenth time that he had used the interrogation interface to torment the young woman trapped within.

The shock trooper standing guard by the inquisitor looked on in disbelief. Her gaze bounced back and forth in between the inquisitor standing outside the cell, coldly and callously operating this abominable torture device; and the helpless young woman who groaned pitifully as she twitched on the floor of her cell, not once having answered his questions, and not once having begged for mercy.

"I missed the memo on the M.O. of how you handle these things. But it's far from palatable," the guard said to the inquisitor.

The masked inquisitor turned to confront the assassin posing as a guard.

"Memo? Palatable? What the devil are you blathering on about?"

VLA-VLAM!

The barrel of the energy rifle in the hands of the false guard glowed.

She had shot the inquisitor twice in quick succession.

One to the chest to send him reeling, the other to the head to take him out.

To her chagrin, his masked helmet with the glowing red cross emblazoned on its front had absorbed some of the shock from the energy weapon, and he stumbled backwards, reeling—but still quite alive.

Damned energy weapons, Dallas Steele thought to herself, encased in the hijacked power armor of the guard. And this was why you can only count on ballistics, she thought next, even though time had slowed to a crawl.

He was too slow on the uptake though, too slow to raise his weapon and retaliate in time. She jacked up her weapon's cadence with a flick of her wrist, unloading a full salvo into his center mass.

VA-VA-VA-VA-VLAM!

The inquisitor collapsed into a lifeless body in the narrow corridor outside the holding cell, the metal of his armor clanked against the hard floor.

She approached him, poked him with the muzzle of her rifle, and confirmed on her helmet's HUD that his vital signs were bottoming out.

Next, she punched the cell barrier controls. The white force field between her and the girl flickered, then it dissipated entirely.

Hunching down over the young woman inside the cell and holding out an armored hand in offering to help her get back up on her feet, she simply commanded, "Get up."

K70001-34966 took her hand, trembling, feeble, and weakened. The false agent helped the young woman limp along through the narrow corridors, using the powered armor's strength enhancements to effortlessly brace the girl's entire weight as she stumbled alongside her.

A voice crackled, coming in over the false guard's armor-integrated headset, "Agent Heinlein, report in. We registered a weapons discharge in the holding area, and Inquisitor Valstrum is not responding. His vital signs are tanking. What the hell is going on back there?"

"Uh, it was some sort of, uhm, equipment malfunction," Not-Agent-Heinlein lied through her helm's intercom. "Investigating it right now."

"We registered seven discharges and you are moving from your post. What kind of—"

"Factory code zero-zero-zero," she quickly talked over the operator, cutting the communication off with a hard reset of her intercom, and shutting him out.

She dragged the girl along as she picked up the pace.

K70001-34966 was pretty out of it. Drooling, bare heels sliding with squeaks over sleek metal floors.

The dozen or more shocks must have rendered her groggy. No matter—she had nothing to do with the mission anyway. Dallas just had to take a moment to silence that pesky consciousness that was knocking on the mental door, begging to be let in from the prison inside the back of her head.

Once they had reached an emergency escape pod, Dallas shoved the girl inside, causing her to tumble forward and fall back down onto the floor, not unlike she had been in the holding cell. Leaving her no time to recover, the false guard shuttered the docking mechanism and ejected the pod. For a brief few seconds, she saw the girl looking back at her helmet-clad face, going wide-eyed with surprise. A jet of steam shot in between them, obscuring that glimpse.

The next moment, the angular pod jettisoned off at breakneck speed as its boosters activated and it shot off into space, hurtling towards a thriving terrestrial planet pockmarked with a brightly lit complex of clustered urban zones. And all around it, the Sea of Stars.

The intercom in the hallway crackled, whined, and then the operator shouted at her over it, "There will be a court martial—"

VA-VA-VA-VLAM!

Four shots had ripped through the corridor and caused the exposed intercom console to explode into a shower of sparks and fizzing.

The false guard ripped her helmet off in annoyance. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat.

This job was a bust. She would have to cover her tracks. She would have to kill every single person left on this ship.

As two scout troopers rounded the corner, Dalla popped out of cover to greet them with bursts of hyper-charged plasma shots, cleanly removing the head of one of them in the first burst, and ripping the other apart, cleaving his upper body from the rest of him.

One of them had reflexively shot back with a salvo of his own. The powered armor could only absorb so much impact and energy.

Her leg and ribs throbbed, she coughed and grinned and mostly gritted her teeth to ignore the waves of pain, surging from those uncomfortably hot spots, wondering for a moment if it was worse than what the girl had gone through.

Dallas limped away through the claustrophobic corridors. Her breathing had turned raspy. A maniacal laugh emerged from her throat, ending in a hacking cough.

She had never fucked up a job this badly. She was a killer, sure—but she had some rules. Some principles.

No kids.

That was her only condition.

Why did they have to be torturing a kid aboard of this damned transporter? She wanted to kill the guy who had fixed her up with this "milk run".

Her vision blurred. Next, she coughed, blood splattered on the panel by the door. She punched the controls, it slid shut in a flash. She limped away, towards the droning and deafening noises emitted by the engine core.

Tried to make sense of the engineering console and all its blinking lights and inane strings of letters and numbers that said rather little to a woman of her trade.

The outlines of the blast door glowed brightly as someone tried to force the doorway open, using a fusion cutter, from the other side. Trying desperately to get inside to stop their murderous stowaway from sabotaging their star-drive.

Dallas gave up in her failed effort at trying to override the engine's security protocols.

She aimed the plasma rifle at a set of power couplings, closed her eyes and turned her head away. Pulled the trigger.

VA-VA-VA-VA-VA-VA-VA-VA-VA-VLAM!

Sparks and metal pieces flew all over the place, causing her to flinch.

The weapon not only glowed, but steam also rose from its barrel now.

"Critical system failure," a monotonous computer voice announced over the ship's intercom speakers. It continued to repeat the warning, over and over again. The bright white lights went out, replaced by red lights rhythmically rotating and casting everything in an eerie state of emergency.

A revolving alarm sound began to bleat, piercing Dallas' already throbbing skull. The edges of her eyesight blurred, closing in quickly.

They got inside, but the next moments turned into a haze.

A rush of unfiltered instinct—killer instinct. A perfect storm of honed reflexes, augmentations, and pure skill. A ballet of carnage.

Three more bodies hit the floor, clanking, and clattering, and groaning. One of them even yelled for his mother before she snuffed him out with a sudden stomp from her armored boot.

She remembered leaving bloody handprints whenever she pushed herself off the walls of the corridor, methodically making her way back to the escape pods, locking each and every blast door behind her as she progressed, shutting out the sounds of pursuers, of troopers in powered armor chasing her through the transporter's winding hallways.

Just before she lost consciousness, she remembered seeing the ship shrink. Smaller and smaller, as the escape pod she had jettisoned herself with flew farther and farther away from the imperial transporter.

Only moments after the vessel transformed into bright explosions and space debris within the blink of an eye, her eyelids weighed a million tons and she blacked out.

The next thing she remembered, she was on some forsaken planet's surface with a breathable atmosphere, staring down the barrels of high-powered pulse rifles of MilSec soldiers, surrounded by Imperial attachés.

They already had her wrists wreathed in the purple glow of energy shackles, lifting her up and dragging her off, taking her into custody.

"Hello, boys," she said, groaning, then cackling until it was clipped off by her pained coughing.

Unbeknownst to her then, her future handler stood there, amid the attachés. The ominous red cross glowed from the front of his masked helmet as he watched the grunts do the heavy lifting, peeling her out of the damaged suit of armor and confirming that the emergency gel would prevent her from dying.

At this point in time, she did not know him yet, but he recognized her. Had seen her mugshot as a wanted criminal more than once.

Looking back, she knew. In that moment, he already formulated plans for her.

But first, she had to go into cryo. After that, installing the bomb in her spine would follow.

—Submitted by Wratts

[douvle-eh]

these are the days it never rains (but it pours)

these are the days it never rains (but it pours)

Summary: Jason stays at the manor after an injury and learns a few things about Dick and maybe offer some comfort. Just Jason trying to be a good brother. Gen.

An: I love a good dad Bruce as much as the next guy but sometimes I also like to indulge in bad dad Bruce so….here you go. If you don’t like abusive Bruce (mentioned only) please don’t read this. Also don’t expect this to make any sense. My writing process works like this - I have random dialogue that pop in my head and at times it’s hard to make sense of what I’m trying to get thru but I just build the sentences around those dialogues.

 -----

It’s raining.

Jason watches as the rain blurs the view from the huge window. A flash of lightning races by, thunder comes a few seconds later indicating that the storm is passing, though knowing Gotham the rain would be staying with them for another week before it clears up to its usual smog.

He lets out a sigh. It’s bad enough that he got hurt in a routine patrol; it was worst that the bat brats had run into him during his struggle to crawl to his safe house and had gone ahead and snitched to Nightwing. The blue bird had forced him to go back to the cave and together with Alfred, they were able to convince him to stay the night or until he healed (though they all knew he would sneak away before then).

Honestly, he would have chosen bleeding out in an alley way to this.

He turns back to the room. They’re in one of the smaller living rooms (Jason still rolls his eyes at the luxury of the manor, who needs multiple living rooms? He never did get use to it) the room is a warm neutral color and consists of two large couches, a love seat and two armchairs (one of which he’s currently sitting on) all positioned to face the large fireplace.

It amazes Jason that everyone is here, and when he says everyone, he means even Duke is here and Jason feels more like an outsider than ever.

He’s tried his hardest to stay away, making sure that he never accidentally run into them but surprise surprise here he is, talk about the worst family reunion. And though the tension between them isn’t as bad as it was before, it’s still awkward.

Duke and Cass give him curious glances, Steph smiles at him when he catches her eye but he hasn’t spoken to them in who knows how long. Tim glances at him warily as if waiting for him to start something, and Damian glares his way whenever they meet eyes. Don’t even get him started on Bruce. The man hasn’t even given him a passing glance. The only one who’s at least trying to pull him in a conversation is Dick and he doesn’t care for the look Dick is giving him, like a puppy who’s head butting you to get your attention because he knows you’re sad.

God, this was hell, sure he’s no longer activity trying to kill them, but they’re far from being a happy family. No matter how hard Dickie’s trying to keep the family together, it’s just too much hard feelings and not enough effort on all their parts.

Besides, the manor brings too many memories with it. Everything pretty much looks the same as it did when he was younger save for a few new pictures and knick knacks. The furniture is the same, the set up of the room, even the weather is the same.

He still remembers the time he spent curled up on the couch reading a book during rainy days as the fireplace warmed him from the Gotham freeze. Bruce would be by him reading his own book and kid him used to hope that this could go on forever, that maybe after all that life had given him that he finally found a place to belong. He remembers looking up at Bruce and getting a smile back, he remembers…he remembers… fire… pain… betrayal-

Suddenly, he feels like he’s floating, like his whole being is just his eyes, like he’s just watching everything happening as his body becomes numb. There is a crushing emptiness in his chest and he has the feeling of being closed in, the room is too crowded, too hot and the voices start to mesh together.

He needs to get out.

Jason takes in a sharp breath silencing the conversation between some of them and is ready to stand up (screw his broken leg). He pushes himself out of the chair and sees Dick standing up ready to help. He shakes his head at his older brother and starts to limp out but stops when he hears a clipped voice from someone entering the room.

“I do hope Master Jason that you’re not thinking about leaving.” Jason turns to the butler (grandfather & caregiver) before he pastes on a smile trying to ignore his siblings’ questioning gaze.

“Of course not Alfie, just gonna walk around a bit, I mean what do you take me for?”

“The fact that you’re not even supposed to be on that leg, much less be walking around; I would say an idiot sir.” Jason grimaces as the younger kids titter at that, he really should have just stayed in that alley and drowned in the rain.

He sits back down and carefully lifts his leg back up.

Dick pulls out a table which Alfred lays the tray of drinks on. He looks at him with a silent question of ‘Are you ok?’ and Jason just nods curtly at him; he really didn’t need the golden boy fussing over him acting like the perfect caring older brother. He knows that’s all bull anyways, just guilt and regret working behind those feelings.

He turns back to the eyes staring at him and narrows his own ready to let them know where they can shove it, but before he gets the chance, Dick interrupts. The eldest turns back to his younger siblings and smiles as he heads next to Damian on the couch. The younger ones gazes automatically follow Dick to where he sits. Jason snorts, Dick Grayson - Ever the center of attention.

“Did I ever tell you guys about the time Bruce and I convinced the whole league that I was a ghost?” Dick starts and Jason sees the family perk at this. Steph stands up and walks closer to Dick, a gleeful smile on her face.

“Oooo, tell me more.”

Dick leans back and throws a hand around Damian’s shoulder, collecting his thoughts before he continues.

“Well, when I was eight it was my first time at the Watchtower and I wasn’t really known as Robin yet, but I was able to talk Bruce –“

“Beg.” Bruce interrupts while Dick rolls his eyes.

“Begged Bruce to let me visit,” he amended before continuing “Anyway, so I went with Bruce to the Watchtower, I guess you can imagine how a lot of the heroes viewed Batman at that time. He was the dark knight all grime, vengeance and ‘I work alone’ hero and suddenly he shows up with a kid dressed up like a traffic light with scaly underwear…” Jason lets his brothers’ story become his anchor as the feeling in his chest lightens and the memories slowly unravel until they disappear for the night. He watches as Dick talks animatedly, he has the attention of everyone in the room as he makes them laugh about his shenanigans and pokes fun at Bruce when the man tries to add to the story or correct what he thought was a mistake.

Jason knows it’s immature of him but as he watches Dick he feels a sting of jealously for the easy way that Dick Grayson could make Bruce relax while he tells stories that to them sound like fairy tales. He’s sure that all of his siblings felt the same jealousy.

Dick Grayson was a charmer, charismatic in a way that’s different from Bruce, more genuine. Maybe it’s his background as a circus performer or maybe it’s because out of all of their siblings he was the only one really grew up with loving parents. But Dick Grayson could soften rock and mold it like clay.

Dick continues with another story from his childhood with Bruce. A Bruce none of them really know. The one who read bedtime stories with funny voices, who readily gave hugs and kisses and sweet nicknames and one who showed that he loved and cared. Of course Jason can’t fault him for it though, Dick was Bruce’s first kid, and Dick had just turned eight at that time, meaning Bruce had him when he was younger than all of them, when he hadn’t lost so many people yet and still had enough light and hope and control over his life.

Dick knew Bruce at a different time, he knew a Bruce that none of them ever had the chance of meeting and for that he was sure all of them listen to his stories with a sense of awe and jealousy.

Jason knows that Dick regrets it, had spoken to him enough to realize that the other man blamed himself for it. He had once confined to him before (under the influence) saying that he felt that his failings made Bruce the way he is, that he messed it up for his younger siblings, that maybe if he had been a better robin, son or partner that there would have been more of Bruce left for them.

Jason wished for that too, but it’s not like him to wonder too long about that. He can’t torture himself about what he should have gotten from Bruce as his son; he let his life be ruled by that long enough.

Dick turns to him and smiles, his eyes bright as he basks in his siblings’ laughter and their questions.

Yeah Dick was just the lucky one, the favorite, the golden child - it was nothing against them.

 ----

 Jason wakes up in his old room and he’s surprised that he fell asleep in the first place. He stares into the darkness before he starts to get restless, he sits up quickly hoping to escape the memories creeping at the edge of is vision. Carefully he brings his legs down and pushes himself to stand wobbling only for a second before he’s limping out of the door. Jason knows that Alfred wouldn’t be too happy with him walking around his leg, but he can’t stand to be in his room right now.

He thinks maybe he should head for the kitchen to get a drink and see if they have any sleeping pills he could take. He hates those things but it’s better than roaming around the manor like a sad ghost. God wouldn’t that just complete his night.

He’s in the hallway but stops when he hears voices from the study. The door is cracked open and the voices are soft enough that he can’t really understand the words. Quietly he peeks in and realizes that the owners of the voices aren’t exactly in the room. Even with a broken leg Jason is able to skillfully lighten his footsteps and quietly push the door open. The study is empty but he can hear the voices a little bit clearer now.

When he steps in, he realizes that the grandfather clock that hides the cave is open and as he gets closer he can finally hear the voices. It’s Dick and Bruce, he sticks close to the wall as he tries to make sense of their argument.

Really he’s not surprised, Dick and Bruce had always had arguments, seems like they never really grew out of it. He should probably leave, it’s not like he never heard it all before, it usually had Dick trying to talk some sense to Bruce and Bruce arguing that he was wrong. He tries to turn when he suddenly hears his name.

“You need to get over yourself Bruce, Jason is up there and you can’t even say a single word to him. He’s taken the steps, he’s slowly opening up to us, but you have to do your part. You’re his father.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me.” Bruce answers gruffly and Jason realizes that Bruce’s voice sound almost … distant. This wasn’t Bruce Wayne talking, this was Batman.

“How do you know? You’ve never spoken to him.”

“I’ve tried” Jason wants to snort at this; really he couldn’t have guessed with the way that Bruce has been acting all night, “it doesn’t end well.”

“Well, were you listening? And I mean really listening, not telling him what or how to feel or pushing your morals on to him.”

“He needs to understa-“

“He does, he’s trying!” Dick interrupts, his voice rising and Jason can just imagine him running a hand thru his hair in exasperation. “He hasn’t killed anyone in a while; he’s been using rubber bullets, he’s been curbing his anger even I can see it and I…I don’t know what you want from him Bruce.”

“He knows what I want.”

“No Bruce, he doesn’t and right now I don’t think even you know what you want. You’re just afraid.” There’s a silence between them and Jason slowly moves his leg to ease the weight, he thinks maybe they were done before Dick whispers out “You haven’t changed one bit from when I first met you.” Jason sucks in a breath as he hears the weight of disappointment and he’s confused. What did Dick mean that Bruce hasn’t changed?

Bruce is confused too and asks “What?”

“You’re still that same person from when I was eight. When I just lost my parents and you took me in. Don’t get me wrong you were great, you helped me and loved me and you were what I needed. You gave me a reason to go on but there were times when I felt like I was the one taking care of you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I tried my best.”

“I know you did but I quickly realized that I had to deal with your emotions that you never dealt with when your own parents died and…and maybe the reason why we got along so well when I was a kid was because to me it felt like we were just two kids in a big house who understood each other because of our shared tragedies. But the moment I started to move on and leave my hurts behind I realized that you never would.” Dick voice sounds exhausted as he continues, “I was growing up but I still felt like I had to be there to support you. I had to become the adult for you, and I’m still doing that Bruce. Anytime there’s a situation where you can’t handle emotionally you start pushing people away. You’re so afraid of losing them and I have to come here every time to fix your relationship for you and to tell you how to deal with it. I’m just so tired - mentally, emotionally I was spreading myself so thin just so you could feel better about yourself.”

“I never asked.”

“Oh of course not...you would never ask for help, you’re so afraid of loving those kids Bruce but they already love you. God they would do anything for you and so would I, but I’m not going to let you take advantage of them and raise them the way you raised me. It’s too late for me because I can’t refuse you anymore, but I can fight for them. I know what it’s like to be at the end of your disappointment Bruce, you’ve brainwashed me into a pathetic robot that needs your love and approval.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is, you don’t know how much I’ve given up or done just to get your approval Bruce. My job, my friends, my own team,” At this Dick’s voice gets a little desperate  as Jason leans more heavily on the wall next to the clock, “What more do you want, what more does Jason have to give up, he already gave you his life!”

“Get out.” The voice growls out and Jason steadies himself ready to leave just in case Dick come ups.

“No, this is what I mean Bruce, the minute I try to make you face your own emotions and-“

“I said get out!”

“-start acting like a father for once-“

“Leave!”

“No!”

“Get out before-“

“Before what?! You hit me again?!” Jason feels himself freeze at that, no, that’s…that not what Dick meant, sure Batman had beaten Jason before, but that was before he knew who he was and was pit-crazy. Jason is sure Dick didn’t mean that Bruce would hit one of his kids for no reason, he’s not like Willis. Bruce was always supposed to be safe. But Dick continues “…because you can’t control me or because you don’t want to hear what I have to say? Go ahead, blame me for everything! Hit me! You know I’m pathetic enough to come crawling back asking for forgiveness so just do it!”

Jason waits, his heartbeat pulsing in his ears as he prepares to intervene, he waits for a slap, a punch, anything. He knows that if Bruce did lay a hand on Dick that he would run down the cave and throw his own fists in even if he has to crawl down.

“That…was a mistake.” Bruce finally answers and he hears a short laugh, bitter filled and mocking.

“Of course it was, the first time.” Then in a tired voice he adds, “and I’ve forgiven you for all of them Bruce.”

Suddenly Jason feels so betrayed, not just by Bruce but by Dick too. Dick always tried to get them to talk, to open up, and to make sure that they didn’t end up keeping things inside so it didn’t eat them up or destroy them. He made sure that Bruce was treating them ok and told them to come to him should they feel the need too. Yet he hid in the dark his own troubles, and Dick for years had preached to them to heal and in shame he had wiped up his tears with a smile and hid ugly bruises and bloody lips in the dark shadows of their broken family.

Again he thought about what he had been jealous of Dick about. Yes, Dick knew a Bruce they didn’t, a Bruce who had less control of his anger, whose parents’ death still felt fresh especially after taking in Dick, and whose life for years had revolved around the mask and nothing else. Bruce had to learn to open up again and his mistakes left their mark on his oldest child.

The silence stretches and Jason wonders now if they’re done. He wonders who will leave first, Dick or Bruce? The answer doesn’t surprise him when Dick starts once again.

“Bruce…” the voice beseeches softly and Jason knows even after all that Dick is the one reaching out for forgiveness. Jason doesn’t think he can handle this anymore, he flees. Quickly he wobbles out of the study, he goes back to the hall way and finds his way to his room, the conversation still tearing thru his mind.

God he hates himself. He knows that Dick and Bruce never had a perfect relationship; he was there front and center for most of their fights when he was a kid. And just like how Dick knew a different Bruce Jason knew a different Dick, he wasn’t always the perfect brother; he remembers when he was an angry teen, one who had felt betrayed after his mantle had been taken from him. He remembers the glare that Dick had given him looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. And he remembers the Dick Grayson who didn’t want nor care for that title of older brother.

He gets to his room and steadies himself on the nightstand as he sits on the bed. He grabs at his head pulling the strands of his hair, damn it damn it damn it.

He shouldn’t have listened in, he was perfectly content to imagine that Dick and Bruce had a great relationship and that everything had worked out after he died, because if not…what does that mean for him and the rest of his siblings? That if the golden child of the family couldn’t get approval from Bruce, was all their efforts and sacrifices all for nothing? Was his death all for nothing?

“Jay?” Jason turns to the door where Dick is peering at him, the light from the hallway shadowing his face.

“Knock.” He grits out and the older man tilts his head and even though Jason can’t see his face he knows that he probably has that damned look of his again.

“I did. Can I come in?”

“’sa free country.” Dick takes a moment before he walks in and sits on the bed by him.

“Nightmares?” Dick asks and Jason wishes it was. Nightmares he could deal with.

“Yeah sure.” There’s an awkward silence between them, Jason doesn’t know if Dick knew he had heard his argument with Bruce, so he asks. “What are you doing up?”

“Just…checking on everyone, Tim has a bad habit of staying up way past when he should and Steph and Cass sometimes gets the idea of baking in the middle of the night with Babs on the phone.”

Jason turns to look at the man and tries to imagine the bruises on his face. Imagines his excuses and his smiles and his avoidance of any questions about them with practiced ease, and they as non metas are used to making excuses for unexplained bruises.

Jason wonders how Dick could handle it, being in the presence of his abuser. How can he smile and joke and trust the person who’s beaten him down and made him feel less…but in a way he can understand. Bruce wasn’t someone you could easily leave and forget. Bruce could bring people together, push them to do their best and light up their passion to fight for something. He left you feeling like you could own the world, but the minute you turn to him for approval he stares back at you like you haven’t done enough so you push on, dragging your broken body and splintered mind begging for another chance.

Dick wasn’t wrong, Bruce had a way to make you feel pathetic. Hell, he was only with Bruce for a few years and he’s still chasing after the guys love and approval, he couldn’t imagine being under him for almost two decades and living thru all his drama and trying to make sense of his messed up emotions. Let alone managing it and trying to piece out the puzzle of his psyche so it could be presented as normal for others so no one else had to deal with it.

“Jay?” Jason looks into concerned eyes and realizes that he hasn’t said anything, “did you…want to talk about it? It may help.” Jason holds himself back from laughing mockingly at this, Dick was the biggest hypocrite. Yeah, talk about it; it’ll help Jason and all the while Dick tightened the reins on his own problems.

He thinks about taking the things he’s heard from the cave and just throwing it back on Dicks face, start yelling at him for his idiocy until he’s hoarse and shake his shoulders to get him to spill everything.

He wants to punch him in the face (and sees the irony of that) and tell him everything wrong with what he’s doing and if it had been him a few months ago he would have. Just let him have it and damned the consequences.

He knows that people see him as nothing more than a muscled wall of anger who doesn’t think and who lets his fists and guns do all the talking but Jason wasn’t just a bomb waiting to happen (barring the first few years after his resurrection). Many seem to forget that he was reasonable too. He was level headed enough and could fix a problem without his guns. Otherwise he would never make it as a respected crime lord or a vigilante that could hold candle to Batman himself.

So he tries a different tactic, maybe bring up his past and lay down a picture for Dick to compare to, or at least see how deep this rabbit hole went.

“I never really knew my dad.” He starts, trying to sound nostalgic, “He was in and out of prison most of the time.” Dick scoots closer and Jason sees him getting ready to comfort, his eyes are open and sad and Jason wonders how many times Dick has lent a shoulder to someone that his actions right now is automatic, that in just a few seconds his face and his eyes soften to look caring and empathetic.

“But when he was around … well it wasn’t bad, I mean it wasn’t like some other kids in our neighborhood. Just a smack here and there for talking back or not doing what he asked. He broke my wrist once, but …” He glances at Dick and he sees him nod understandingly urging him to go on.

“I deserved it.”

“No Jay,” Dick shakes his head, anger in his eyes and Jason can see how strongly Dick feels about it, “no one deserves that. That’s abuse, he had no right to hit you.”

Jason nods slowly; at least he knows Dick knows abuse for what it is.

“Yeah? Did your dad ever hit you?”

“Never.” Dick answers with conviction so Jason chooses now to strike.

“Did Bruce?” At this Dick stiffens and realization dawns in his eyes, he knows that Jason had heard. Jason watches as suddenly Dick puts up a guard, something unnamed flashes in his eyes and suddenly he pulls back.

“That…that’s different.”

Jason is quick to answer now, “Yeah, you’re right. I mean it doesn’t matter if he’s smacked me a few times then right? Or Tim or Damian?” Dick’s face suddenly looses all color before his jaws tighten and his hands ball into fists.

“That’s not fair.”

Jason laughs bitterly.  “What’s not fair? That I’m calling you out for playing the martyr again?”

“I’m not-“

“Oh fess up, you don’t get to act like a self righteous prick and talk about how Bruce can’t face his problems when you’re doing the same thing.” They’re quiet again and Jason wonders if anyone else can hear them. He can see Dick’s hands shaking and he feels enough pity to give him a way out. “Fine, tell me this, the times that Bruce hit you, was it when you were in costume? Cuz, hey, I can understand that, it comes with the territory, but Bruce has no right to hit you outside of it.”

The silence is all that Jason needs to hear for an answer and he feels his blood boiling. He wants to ask, ask what led to Bruce hitting him outside of their costume, ask what he said and what he did that made him think he warranted Bruce’s fists, but as he stares at Dick he knows he won’t get an answer. Dick Grayson would rather die with his secrets than ruin any semblance of peace he has found between them. And Jason thinks maybe Dick is trying to do him a favor by not telling him.

“He didn’t mean it.” Dick whispers and they both know how that sounds.

‘They didn’t mean it’

‘They were just angry’

‘It’s my fault’

‘They promised it won’t happen again.’

It’s the loud slam of his fist on the nightstand that makes them both jump. Jason didn’t even realize how deeply he’s breathing, but he can’t help it, if he hears another excuse from Dick he’s gonna stand up and start screaming and wake the whole house. He’ll throw everything down and tear it all raw and all the anger and darkness in their family would be splayed on the floor. But he knows if he does that Dick would never be the same, no matter what anyone says Dick has been the main reason that their family is surviving, he’s filled the holes, hid the secrets, soothe the hurts. He’s given his blood, sweat and tears into making it somewhat functional. It wasn’t perfect, he failed many times (and Jason can’t help but be bitter about the fact that he’s one of those failings) but he also did a lot of things right. He never gave up on any of them and to tear it all down now would break him, because Dick was the heart of this family and the family was his heart.

And for all of Bruce’s flaws and secrets Jason knows he cares for them, either because they were useful to him or because they fit in his agenda of saving Gotham in a never ending mission. He can’t help but feel disgusted by the fact that he cares about Bruce too, that even with every secret that’s being ripped open showing Jason how messed up he is, Jason still cares.

But…he can’t let Dick keep doing this to himself, keeping those secrets. Hiding the emotional, mental and physical bruises. Someday Dick will break under that and the family will follow right after. He knows it isn’t much, (too little, too late) but he may keep the family from falling apart just a little longer.

“Promise me,” he looks Dick right in the eyes because he wants him to know that this isn’t arguable, “if Bruce lays a hand on you again that you come to me.” Jason finalizes what he has to say to make sure that Dick understands, “And if you don’t and I find out, I’m done. I’m out of this family.”

Dick tries to read his eyes while surprise, confusion and hesitance shine back in his own. The array of emotions doesn’t surprise Jason, he’s been slow to fixing his relationship with the eldest. And he’s been guilty of leaving everything to Dick when things go south, ignoring his pleas and outstretched hands when he needed help so much so that Dick learned to do things on his own while barely keeping himself a float. He figured out how to come up every once in a while to breathe before being pulled down again.

So Jason tries.  

“I know that…that I may not be the first person for you to talk to and it might not mean a lot now since I haven’t been around but…“he tries to find the words, settles on the truth and aims to hit Dick where it matters, his sense of duty to their family “we’re the older brothers right? We protect the family. Together. It’s my burden to share.”

He can see Dick’s eyes shine before a fight starts in them, sees as Dick looks at every angle of his offer. Jason can slowly start to see the acceptance in his eyes but he also knows that Dick will always carry the heavier load on his own back.

“I’m not asking you to tell me all of your secrets Dick. Just like I will never tell you all of mine, I just want to be there when you deal with Bruce’s bull headedness and misplaced anger. That’s all I ask.”

Jason doesn’t know how long he waits, but he counts it as a win when Dick doesn’t automatically leave or smile it off.

Lighting flashes and the thunder echoes before Dick scoots closer to him. Before long he feels a weight on his shoulder as Dick finally lets himself relax even if it’s just for a little while.

It’s this that Jason realizes for the first time (at three in the morning on a rainy night in his old room surrounded by everything he left behind) that he finally feels like he’s part of the family. That along with his older brother they would keep the secrets together so that their growing family could someday find peace.

He lays his cheek on his brothers head and feels something expanding in his chest trying to lodge the ball in his throat out. No, this isn’t the time, Dick needs him to be the strong one right now.

So he pushes the feeling down and listens as the rain outside continues to pour.

END

Why can't we give love that one more chance?

'Cause love's such an old fashioned word And love dares you to care for The people on the edge of the night

And love dares you to change our way of Caring about ourselves

 This is ourselves under pressure…

 -       Under pressure by Queen/David Bowie

[salenakingston]

Mystery March Day 5 - Dream

(I wanted to try a bit of a different style when writing this one. I hope it turned out alright.)

Night covered the sky, dots of white accompanying the glow of the moon. Arthur’s gaze peered out the window, the soft sound of music echoing through his room. He was hunched over his desk, just as always. When he wasn’t running around to chase the “supernatural” or helping his uncle at Kingsmen Mechanics, he busied himself with his projects. Between the blueprints, side notes, tools, and metal pieces littering the surface of wood, it was a wonder there was still brown peeking through.

His attention was pulled back down to the mess, somehow ‘organized’ in a way that only he knew. They briefly trailed over to the clock set upon a nightstand. Whoops. Guess he had been up longer than anticipated… again.

How could he not lose track of time when it came to something he was so passionate about? None of his other friends could understand it, nor could his uncle too much for that matter. Then again, it didn’t really matter if they did or didn’t. So long as he could share his fascination in the subject with those he cared about, then it was enough.

The blond pulled himself from his work, throwing back the covers of his bed. Settling down, he pulled the covers back over his form, eye drooping as the melody of music began to lull him sleep. Guess he forgot to shut it off. Oh well, he was already in bed. Surely no one would mind if it was left playing. Uncle Lance was probably asleep already anyways.

The soft humming swirled around him, beating in tune with his heart.

When it's just you

And it's just me

Got the window down 'cause it's my fantasy

You feel so good

Right next to me

You're exactly what I'm looking for

The van hummed down the road, Lewis sitting at the wheel. He always seemed to be the one driving while the blond always fixed it when something went wrong. Should he not be the one driving it then? It never bothered him, and knew his friend was as careful as possible. None of them could foresee every event playing out before they arrived on the scene. Viv would find the haunts, be it through rumors, news articles, or some lead online. She could always find one without fail.

And then they were on the road without so much as a second thought.

Shouldn’t he be concerned with their safety? Of course he was, but he had their back. Shouldn’t he try and stop them, or mostly the bluenette, from chasing after danger? Of course, but he didn’t. Wasn’t he scared just about every time they went on one of these outings? Of course he was, but that didn’t stop him from coming. Truth be told, it never mattered what they were doing. They could be staring death in the face, and while he was sure he would cower in fright, he could never imagine abandoning his friends.

They meant everything to him, just as much as his uncle.

They might not have known it, but they gave him so much, and sometimes it felt like he could never give anything in return.

He could hear Vivi’s laughter from the front seat snap him away from his wandering thoughts. Mystery was up front with her, leaving him in the back. Anyone else might have been annoyed, but it never bothered him. All that mattered was that he was acknowledged. Anything else was far too petty to get upset over.

The van soon came to a halt, Arthur peeking over the back seats. The scene outside the window was about as much as he expected. Another creepy, old house, his friends outside… waiting for him. A smile formed on his face, hurrying out the back door to join them.

Yes, it truly didn’t matter how many times he got dragged along on their interest trips, or how many times he got scared, so long as they were there with him. They always protected him.

Arthur woke up in bed, a large smile covering his face.

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love is like a dream to me

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love is like a dream

The van hummed down the road again, the same one as before. Like always, his three friends sat in the front while he was relegated to the back. Everything seemed to be the same, but he could tell immediately that something was off. What was this strange feeling? Literally nothing had changed.

Except it had.

Lewis had taken his eyes off the road for just a moment, enough to lean over and kiss Vivi. Right… They were together now. What was once just three friends and their dog traveling across the country in hunts of the strange became a loving couple with their third wheel. Mystery didn’t really factor in that much between the scenarios, only now that he was the only one in the back, he truly did feel alone.

Why couldn’t the dog sit with him instead?

What difference did it make? It didn’t bother him before.

The bluenette turned her head over the seat. Vivi was a kind soul, even if over enthusiastic about her interests. She had so much affection to give to those she cared most for. She never did anything to make him feel like he was being pushed away. Where was that now? Everything that once made her bright began to dissolve. Their colors began to fade, leaving him the only bright being in the van. She turned back, a switch flipped. Why was he not important anymore?

Why couldn’t they seem to take notice of him anymore?

He reached out for her, for her… for them. The van stretched, the distance between them growing. When he tried to speak, no words came. His mouth opened and closed normally, but his voice was overtaken by silence. His desire to call out to them, to have them notice him like they always did, grew infinitely.

But he didn’t have that right didn’t he?

Who was he to come between them?

Arthur woke up in bed, his smile faltering.

And I never knew

All the things you do

And I guess it's cool to know the way you feel is true

And I wonder why

If there's no time

It feels like everything is lining up just right

Cold and damp.

Darkness seemed to surround him, the only light around him being the shimmer of green bouncing off stones. The low screech of bats rang out around him, fog encasing his body. It began to suffocate him, as if he were trapped in a small space, the fog stealing his breath.

Then a small flicker of hope.

In the center of the darkness was a wisp of orange flame. It floated in front of him, just out of reach. It contrasted the green around him, drawing the blond. Like a moth to the flame as the saying went. He wanted that flame. It would help him get out of this mess. He wasn’t entirely sure why he thought that, but it was one thing he knew for sure. If only he could get his hands to that flame. Fog gripped at him like chains, making him fight harder.

So close.

Not yet.

Tips nearly brushed the flame, hope blazing through his being.

Very well then.

The bonds loosened, his arm moving forward towards the light.

Orange fell at his feet, illuminating the cliff he now stood on. A cliff? When did he get here? How did he get here? Panic began to settle in. That sensitivity he could feel crackling from the flares was gone now. What changed?

A scream.

Head shot up in an instant. The scream was growing further and further away from where he was standing. It echoed off the walls of the cave he was in, green surrounding him once again. The cries soon came to a sudden stop, and only then did his body begin to move. Feet were placed over the edge, gaze looking over a sea of points. In between the gray that covered his vision was purple… and red.

Once again, his voice seemed to fail him, but one thing rang out in his head.

LEWIS!

Arthur woke with a start in his hospital bed, body shaking as pain snaked down his missing limb.

When it's just you

And it's just me

Got the windows down 'cause it's my fantasy

You feel so good

Right next to me

You're exactly what I'm looking for

Green… there was nothing but green whenever he was awake. When there wasn’t green, there was black. Neither color brought him any kind of comfort, dread clinging to the very fibers of his being. Once again he found himself on that cliff, overlooking the mesh of the same three colors: gray, purple, and red. Green came into view again, only when his arms were stretched out.

Even there, it was always green.

But he knew how this would end. He had grown to anticipate it.

He would be met with pain.

Any moment now.

Any moment now…

Nothing.

This was strange. Why was there no pain? No monster to make him pay for whatever he had done? He could feel a strain on his mouth, one that someone might feel if they were smiling for too long. Iron hung in the air, his body finally turning away from the chasm. This was new. The smell just grew stronger as he followed the path down from the cliff. He could see more colors from the corner of his eyes. White, black, and red. Mystery?

That can’t be right. No wait, those were the same colors that matched the monster. What happened to it? And why was the iron the strongest around those colors?

They passed, a crossroads offered to him. He began one that led further down into the cave. Why go there?

He could hear crying. Wait…

Vivi?

Of course, she went down the other path. No.. wait, she went down that path! And he was heading down the same one. Both colors he passed were red, deep and pooling over the other colors. Blue began to mix with red in his vision before he could see the entrance to the lower level. He couldn’t handle it. He didn’t want to see the red and blue together. He didn’t like all the red.

No! Please! Don’t!

Arthur woke up with a start in bed, hand clinging to his throbbing shoulder.

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love is like a dream to me

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love is like a dream

Tempo? What was he doing here?

Arthur was vaguely aware he had fallen asleep before appearing here. Where there was usually green was replaced with a clear sky hanging over their hometown. This was.. Very strange. Why was there no green anymore? Why was he here? And why was he standing outside Tomb Tome? This was Vivi’s workplace… but of all places, why here?

Amber eyes snapped forward, the woman of the hour stepping through the door. Almost immediately, she linked her arm with his own, the two now walking down the street together. Ok, still nothing too out of the ordinary. They were friends, and it was common for her to drag him all over the place. Arthur seemed to find his smile, listening to whatever it was she was rambling on about.

The road started to look familiar, recognizing it as the one that led to Vivi’s home. Ok, so maybe he was just walking her home from work. Friends did that. He took her up to the door, their arms finally breaking their link. They smiled at one another, Vivi getting closer to him.

Ok, that is strange.

The bluenette leaned up, planting a kiss on his lips. Nervousness wracked his body. Was it nervousness? Or was it excitement? What was wrong with him? He raised his hand, brushing his fingers along her cheek as he returned her kiss. There. Now he could see what was wrong.

His arm was green. He must not have noticed before since she linked with his metal arm.

This was wrong, all of it was. He wasn’t supposed to want her. He wasn’t supposed to share this kind of love with her. She loved another, even if she didn’t remember him. He wasn’t Lewis. He wasn’t her flame.

This was wrong!

Arthur woke up in the back of the van, Vivi resting at his side. He carefully slipped away from her, fleeing out the back doors.

You're my girl

But not my world

Don't get it twisted

You got me scared

I'm not prepared

And I really didn't mean to fall in love again

Arthur immediately found himself dropped in the mansion, the very same one the trio just escaped from. As if being chased through the halls by a flaming skeleton wasn’t bad enough to suffer through. That ghost wouldn’t give up on him, not until Vivi got in the way.

There was no Vivi this time.

The blond took off running, heat tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. He didn’t dare look behind him, focusing on keeping his life. One quick glance down at his arm confirmed the green that always clung to his being. Ever since he started appearing in the cave, there was nothing but green over him. He couldn’t understand it. Why was it always green? Why him? What did he do to have this happen?

The hall never seemed to have an end. He would keep running, turning, running, then another turn, maybe an up, then down, but it never came to an end. He always ran. He was growing tired, his lungs burning from being unable to stop.

A voice echoed behind him.

“How dare you!”

Running.

“How could you take her away from me?”

Running.

“Monster!”

Running.

“Traitor!”

CRASH.

The blond looked upon the wall he crashed into. The hall finally came to an end. End of the line. His head finally turned over his shoulder, the ghost towering over him, far larger than he remembered. Everything was consumed by purple flames, his voice crying out for a mercy he would not receive.

Arthur woke up with a start in the van, hands clamped over his mouth to keep Vivi from waking up again. Best to get some work done on the van since he wasn’t going back to sleep.

When it's just you

And it's just me

Got the windows down 'cause it's my fantasy

You feel so good

Right next to me

You're exactly what I'm looking for

Arthur killed Lewis.

He killed Lewis.

He killed his best friend.

How could he forgive himself for that? Suddenly so many things made sense. The reason why his skin was always green, even now. He looked like a monster because he was a monster. He’d killed someone. Should it matter that it wasn’t something he personally did, but rather under possession of another entity? No.. it was still his arm that did the deed.

He could hear Vivi crying. Was that because of her returned memories, or the realization that one of her best friends was a murderer? Regardless, he should comfort her. Strange that Lewis was not around. Oh right… he wouldn’t be because she didn’t fully trust him, not after trying to get revenge on Arthur. Another mess that was his fault.

He came over to her, wrapping his arms around her. This could only end in tears.

His skin was still green.

His hands moved up, hands closing around her throat. There were no spires to take the life away from her. He would have to do it himself. Tears raced down his face, feeling the fight leave her. He had killed once before, wait was another time? He hated this. He hated himself. He could never forgive himself.

Arthur woke up with a start in the hotel bed. They were out on a case, and he was in bed… alone.

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love feels like a dream to me

Put your hands together girl

'Cause your love feels like a dream

Two ghosts stared down at him as he burned. Purple and blue flames danced around him, his cries the song that kept them playing. He didn’t kill her, but he might as well have. The two people he cared about the most, and the two people he wronged. He deserved this. No. He deserved worse than this.

His life for theirs. He’d give it gladly. And he wouldn’t dare to come back.

They would be rid of the monster from their life.

Then, the flames suddenly came to a halt. The looming ghosts vanished, leaving his two best friends, in the flesh. What was going on? How did this happen? What were they going to do now? Was this a torture to remind him of the life he took from them? They approached him, but their arms wrapped around him. Their warmth swirled around him.

What?

He was hesitant to embrace them back, arms shaking as they moved up. He noticed something else that changed. His skin was no longer green. How long had his dreams been plagued with the image of the monster that took one life, and dreamed of taking another? How could he be forgiven? Tears came back to his face.

They saved him once. Did they do it again?

Arthur woke up in the hotel bed, Lewis and Vivi on either side of him. Their arms were wrapped around him, there to chase the demons in his head away.

[deliontower]

1912 | part 2

Title:by the sea

Summary:  y/n and Dean start marriage life on their honeymoon, getting ready to start their new lives and y/n settles in her new home.  

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word count: 4K

Warnings: slow burn, a little fluff, some swear maybe, if you get all fuzzy from period dramas then there’s some of that going on and not much else

A/N: sorry this took so long to write, I like taking my time with this because I want it to be good and have a good story while the one shots I’ve been posting are fun to write and don’t need much work. Thank you everyone was has been waiting for this. <3 poof read but might of missed something 

Please remember to leave feedback as if keeps me writing x

 series masterlist |  MAIN MASTERLIST | REQUEST OPEN  

First Dean drove to the train station where he reluctantly left his car where it would wait for you to return. Over the drive you had tried to make conversation, but everything fell flat like the other times you had tried to talk.

While you waited for everyone to get off the train you stood against wall watching everyone passed by, families, couples and people on their own.  You looked over to your left and saw Dean helping with the bags, looking away you lent back and closed your eyes. All the noises and chatter around you faded away, all you focused on was you breathing and the feeling of the brick wall on your back.      

Your eyes shot open when Dean appeared at your side and put his hand on your arm. "already bored of me?" he laughed. You exhaled shaking your head, letting him take your arm and lead the way to the train carriage. 

"just taking a minute to think" you chuckled,  you walked side by side to the 1st class carriages. In Dean's free hand he held your bag containing some things you might need over the trip. You couldn't help but think about how well you worked together, his movements worked with yours. 

Once you reached the steps, he held your hand through your gloves you could still feel his coarse hand under yours. You swore you saw him looking at your joint hands when you looked away, something about the way his eyes moved, like they were hiding something.        

You sat opposite each other, the space in between felt too small and too big at the same time. As soon as he sat down, he started to bounce his left leg. When the train whistle blew, he stopped and looked out the window that looked it on the train hallway. 

you stopped watching him, reaching in your bag to pull out your book. As you read you clewed on your nails, mouthing a word now and then. Someone tapped on the cover of your book, making you look up. 

"Tea? Or something to eat?" Dean asked, gesturing to the carriage door where the trolley lady stood waiting.      

"oh" you smiled towards her putting your book down next to you. "Yes, tea and a sandwich would be lovely". You reached for your bag to get money but was met with Dean's hand over yours. With one hand still over yours as he  handed some money over to the lady in exchange for two teas and a sandwich.

After saying thank you were left alone again, resting the tea next to your book you ripped open the brown paper the sandwich was wrapped in.  Only then did you realized how hungry you were, skip breakfast was finally getting to you.

When you looked up you saw Dean watching your curiously, you laughed trying to hide the heat spreading on your cheeks. "I didn't have my breakfast thing morning. Just two cups of tea", you took a few bites before finishing, "I am regretting that though".

He drank his own tea watching you over the dim.  When he put the cup down, he chuckled. "what are you reading?", he nodded to the book next to you.

Looking down to the book you smiled, "Wuthering  Heights. It's one of my favourite". The copy was well worn, the cover was faded, the pages had gone from white to a light yellow and some of the quotes had been underlined.  "do you read?", you  looked up to Dean. 

He laughed again, shaking his head. "Reading is more Sammy's thing, I don’t have much time with the family business and the cars", he waved his hand in the air as he explained. You could ignore the sliver of disappointment in your veins, in a perfect world he would share the same hobbies as you and you would talk about them for hours on end, in a perfect world you would marriage someone you knew.       

After a few more minutes of talking, you went back to reading but Dean continued to watch you. He could see you were finding the day as hard as he was. Everything he or you brought up didn't catch and fell flat. He found it easier to sit in quiet and watch you.  He knew you were beautiful; your E/C eyes match your H/C perfectly. And when you smiled, he felt something grow in him. He couldn’t call it love; he didn't know this vison of you. You were still the girl from his childhood who he spoke of to his friends. 

His favourite story was for the last day he saw you, he was 12 and you were 13. He always hated how you were older than him, even if it was only by a year. You had climb up an apple tree in his back garden and had spent 5 minutes throwing apples at him before he spotted you. With a book held in one hand and the other holding another apple ready to throw, you smiled when you made eye contacted with him. 

He always remembered how your mother reacted when she saw the state of your dress after you fell from the tree, on to a small patch of  flowers. He was worried you were hurt but instead you leaped up and laughed. As you walked by you handed him one of the flowers, a wild rose. 

The memory was the reason why he picked wild roses for the wedding, something he hoped you remembered. Unsure why but when he was younger, he would always remember the image of you reading in a tree smiling down at him. 

And here you were again reading, he could help but smile a little at how you would mouth the words or reacted when something happened, like you were one of the characters living and breathing the story. The loud train whistle made you both looked from your spots and look to the window where your spot was coming into view.

  Standing out on the balcony that look out on the sea, you sighed breathing in the salty air. The cry of seagulls rang out louder than anything else. You hung your head back and looked up to the sky, the sky was nearly cloudless. 

You breathed deep one more time before turning around and going back into the room. The hotel  was classic, the room you were staying in was painted a deep royal blue, the jointed one bathroom was a lighter shade of blue but still felt too deep. Over in one corner of the room there was a folding screen, hanging off a hook beside it was your dress for tonight. 

When packing you had only chosen dresses that would be easy to get in and out on your own, this one was one of the nicer ones. It was dark green with a black mesh overlay; beautiful detailed leaf needle work was on the sleeves and the body of the dress.

Dean had said he was going to book a table, but you hadn't failed to see him seek a pack of cigarettes into his coat pocket.  You stood behind the screen and started to strip down to your underwear. You loosen your corset a little, ready for the dinner you were about to have. 

Lifting the dress above your head, you bushed  down any bumps or wrinkles. You walked out to sit by the vanity mirror, laying before you was the little pieces of jewellery you had brought. Matching the dress, you chose a long black beaded necklace with matching earrings. 

Pulling your hair out of the bun that rested on the top of your head and let in run lose down your neck. You worked with a brush and some pins until you were happy without come. Staring at yourself in the mirror. You studied every detail you look the same as you always did, you always thought there would be a change once you were married. like a new you would take over and know what to do next but you that had always been was the one staring back at you through the mirror. Maybe Dean had thought he was marrying someone different and that's why he was distant with physical affections. 

when dean did return to the room, he lingered by the door, you could see him watching from the mirror. you turned and smiled at him, "Can you help with the back button? I can't reach it" you asked walking over to him and turning you back once again. At the back of your neck you felt the ghost of his fingers, you could feel the hesitate in them, feel how he was holding himself back. He cleared his throat saying he was done. When you looked that him, you saw how his green eyes were wider than they had been, and the tips of his ears were redder than they normally were. you reached out to get your coat, but he beat you to it. 

you stood still, lips slightly parted as he hung the coat off your shoulders, he was also still as he watch you put an arm in each sleeve. "Ready?" his voice was horse, green eyes less wide than they had been but still not the normal size. You felt your heart flutter as you smiled and nodded. Again, he held out his arm for you and again your heart fluttered. Maybe you did doubt everything about this match when you were alone with your thought but when he did small things like this, when you saw the things he couldn't hide, you couldn't help but hope. His warm body was so close to yours; you could still smell the smoke on his clothes it wasn't overpowering like so many other, it suited the bourbon and metal that clung to him too.

  The restaurant was by the sea, tall windows made up a full wall so that the view could be seen from anyway in the building.  The smell from the coast was even stronger, you felt even more relaxed than you did back in the room.  

Dean pulled out a chair once you reached the table, the table match the theme of the sea. In the middle was a single candle floating in a small bowl of water with seashells at the bottom. Dean circled the table and sat down facing you. Smiling over to him, you both reached for a menu at the same time, you felt heat rush up to your cheeks and along the back of your neck. You tried to laugh what happened off, hiding behind your menu before you could even face Dean and see his own reaction.  

Halfway through the meal, the setting sun gave casted a soft pink light across the restaurant. Dean looked up from his plate and grazed towards you. You had your eyes towards the massive windows, watching the waves come and go from the sea. Your lips were parted and turned up at the corner.  In the soft pink light from the setting sun, he couldn't help but acknowledge the way your soft E/C eyes shone. the skin was glowing in the light, it looked like you belonged there like you were craved from sea glass.

Your chest up and down with a sigh moving your eyes from the sea, you smiled clearly shocked to find Dean looking right at you. “you look lovely tonight” the words left his mouth before he knew it. Your eyes widen and cheeks flush a bright red. Trying to hide your face you blushed some hair from your face that wasn’t there. While you were trying to find the right thing to say, he reached for your free hand that was on the table and took your hand in his. you swallowed a lump in your throat looking at your joint hands. His large rough hand around your small gloved hand, again you could feel the heat of him, and it was enough alone to make your shiver. You couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if he touched your naked skin. “I hope we can grow closer over this break”.#

You could still feel a lump in your throat and with his hand still on yours, it was hard to speak. You licked your lips and nodded. “I hope we do too”. You sounded and felt breathless. Before you knew it, the meal was over, and Dean was helping you with your coat.

With the weather still being good, you chose to walk back to the hotel. You both hung your arms by your sides, your hands would brush pass each other gathering all your nervous into one move you took his hand in yours. Not having the guts to face him to tell his reaction you keep your gaze  forward, but you were glad when he squeezed your hand.

You were more tired then your thought when you got back. The day had just been traveling and eating but the call from your bed was deafening. Kicking your shoes off by the door you walked over to your vanity table, where you started to take off jewellery and hair pins. You reached to the back of your dress to undo it, you jumped when you felt someone else’s hands on your back. You looked in the mirror and felt a bit calmer when you saw it was just Dean, he was silently asking for permission to help, you nodded not breaking eye contact with him.

You kept your eyes on him as your dress loosen on your frame, you stood up and turned around as the dress fell to the floor. You breathe stilled as you looked at him, you could feel the goose bumps popping up on your skin from being dressing in nothing but a corset and thin grown. “can you manage it on your own?” his voice was sticky; his green eyes were following down your neck to your collar you could tell he was struggling not to look down future where your breast where slowly lifting and falling with each breath.  

You nodded your head and pulled the lace holding your corset together. You had yet to take your eyes off him and he hadn’t moved his eyes from your chest yet. When nothing was left to take off you didn’t dare to move. Your lips parted, eyes looking down to his lips. You stayed still as he took his hand from his side and touched your waist. The hard beating in your chest was all you could hear, you thought it might be the only thing he could hear.

This was the closest you had gotten to him, the closest he had gotten to touching you. His thumb drew a line over your hip bone, his eyes were taking you in something you hadn’t witnessed him do before. This was different from how he looked at you, your whole wedding day even the wedding night was different.

You took a sharp in breath when he tugged you closer to his chest. Your hand stuck out and went flat against his chest. You could feel him breathing on your neck, feel his steady heartbeat. Trembling a little you raised up your face to read his. you looked up through your lashes at him, searching his green eyes for the answer the questions running laps in your mind.

He moved slowly, his lips getting closer and closer to your own. Your eyes fluttered shut when you could feel his breath on your lips.  When they finally met you were taken by the feeling that over came you. His grip got tighter; your hands went to pull at the material of his white shirt.  He reached with his free hand and ran it through your free hand. Still kissing and wrapped in each other touch, he started to walk backwards until you were stood by the bed.  You only pulled away when  you felt like you couldn’t breath anymore, his eyes were fixed on your raising and falling chest. You took his hand from your waist and held it as you sat down on the bed and pulled him closer.  

You couldn’t say what was giving you the courage to be so forward and open. You fell back on the mattress with a pop, finding his lips again. Opening your legs so he could slide closer to you. The kiss grew hungry. The feeling of him in between your legs made your hands sweaty, and something was growing inside you.

you were shocked by the cold when Dean suddenly pulled away. Still lay across the bed you stared up at Dean who was studying you in his own way. “it’s getting late”. Your frowned at his words but quietly nodded.

He left you to change in the bathroom, you sat there for a few seconds trying to spot the reason of his sudden change of heart. You slowly climbed under the covers, still puzzled you watch the clock of the wall tick away. You felt the same as you did the night before, you thought things were doing well. He kissed you first after all, was it because you tried to take it further. Maybe he just didn’t feel things for you, and it was too hard to fake.

You shook away the questions and tried to sleep. When he finally returns you keep still hoping he’ll believe you’re asleep. Still not looking at him, you felt the bed dip and heard him sigh.

That night felt longer that any others.

The next day you were half awake when you heard movement, you groggily opened your eyes to find what was happening. “you’re up just in time, breakfast has just been brought up”. Mind still fuzzy from sleep, you use your arms to push yourself up in bed.

You blink at Dean as he places the tray on the bed next to you, “You’re up early”.

He sat down by you, you looked from your plate to his face. He was showing no signs of what happened last night. “thought we could spend the day at the beach”. You took a slip of tea and smiled. “it’s a shame we can only do a weekend away”.

You hummed, keeping your eyes on your breakfast. “Winchester guns won’t run by itself”. Aware he’s still watching you; you stop what you’re doing and tilted you head and smiled at him. “everything alright?”.

“’course. Just didn’t think you would want to talk about business” he looked away to the clock.

Silence filled the room, “I’m a Winchester now. I should care about the business” you said. Pausing after because it was the first time you had said that. He had turned now, watching you with curiosity, it was the first time he had heard you say it as well.    

“I leave you to get dressed” he said standing up quickly and leaving the room before you could comment.

You stayed and watched the door , thinking he would come back but he didn’t.

You took your time getting dressed, picking a plain green dress with puffy sleeves that cover half your arms. Keeping this simple you chose a small pearl necklace and matching bracelets. Brushing your hair until it was knot free you put in up in a low bun, you didn’t need to do anything fancy when you would be wearing a hat anyway.  

Dean was waiting by the doors outside stomped on a roll-up on the floor.  You chuckled looking at his sheepish expression. “You can hide that but not the smell”, you tapped your nose. He bites his lip outstretching his arm. Smiling you turned your head and took his arm.

“I hired a care for the day” his steps quicken. “I’ve missed driving”.

Just as you thought the beach wasn’t quiet. On a warm day in late March, you didn’t think it would be any different. After renting a pair of beach chairs you laid back. Children’s laugher draws your attention, a little boy and girl were building sandcastles together with their adoring parents watching close by.  Having children felt like a lifetime away, especially if all you did was share a few hungry kisses.  Smiling over at the picture-perfect family one last time before looking back to the sea.

When your legs started to go numb you kicked off you shoes and stood up. “I might go for a paddle” you mention still looking forward, you took your hat off and looked at Dean. “want to join or will you watch my things?”.

“you enjoy yourself, ill wait here”, he nodded to the cool waters. Smiling you walk forward.

From his seat, Dean watches as you lift your dress so it wouldn’t get wet. The soft breeze your baby hairs across your face. He doesn’t know what to think seeing you there. When he closed his eyes, he could feel your silky lips against his, he shook the feeling away. He knew you knew something was off, that there was something holding him back and he knew you deserved to know the reason but tell the truth would hurt more than one person. 

He watched as you knelt and handed a boy a shell they had dropped. You face lit up in laugher when they said something.  You turned to him and pointed for the boy to look over, when the boy did his own smile dropped.

 Waving goodbye, you walked back to Dean, “made a friend?” he raised an eyebrow when you sat back down. 

You smirk raising an eyebrow back. “what, you jealous of a 5-year-old?”, you laughed.

“no” he laughed.

You licked your licks shaking your head. “he said, ‘my papa said pretty girls shouldn’t be out alone’ and I told him ‘I’m not alone, my husband is over there’ and then I came back here”. You patted his hand without thinking “are you enjoying yourself? For some reason I feel like the beach isn’t really your ideal place”.

“I haven’t been myself since we were children. Just feel out of place” he shrugged, it made you feel sympathy for him. You hadn’t thought about what it felt like to be sent away to a school where you knew no one, coming back for the rare holiday, knowing people but feeling apart from it all. 

“well then, we’ll have too do more things like this” you grinned stretching out. “I’ll even let you drive; sure, you’ll like that”. 

You both lay in silent for the next hour before deciding to find a spot of lunch. The air around felt lighter, you had moved past event of the night before. Trying to accept the unknown reason why he didn’t want to take things far. You found yourself liking this version of him more, this version who would laugh and smile at you, he reminded you of the child you knew. You were willing to face the years ahead of you, willing to wait for the day he was ready to tell you what was holding you back. And in realty you were grateful because you weren’t even sure you were ready to share everything with someone.

 part 3 

tag list 

@clearhorseturtlecreator  

[tackyink]

Here’s what would amount to chapter 1 of the fic I started the other day if I ever decide to work on it seriously. It’s the same two scenes as last plus a new one, so it’s very short, but I’ve laughed a lot writing it.

I also realized this thing has a lot of potential to merge with Inked on Skin by Wano and I can’t believe I’m here, free at last after five years busting my ass, and suddenly thinking it would be cool to make a whole fic verse with my One Piece OCs.

=======================

It was the sunniest it had been in weeks. Clear skies, twenty-seven degrees, calm clouds and weak northwestern winds blowing from Skypiea.

Veleta had left a note on the dining table telling potential travelers to feel free to use her home to rest while she was away, and to please not touch the meteorological station next to the vegetable garden. The connection to her dad’s team had been lost for six months already, so there wasn’t much for her to do and she was dying of boredom, but he might come back for it one of these days. Who knew? Not her!

She adjusted one last time the straps of her swimming vest and backpack. Her grin gleamed under the sun almost as much as the pair of riding goggles she was wearing.  

“Ready, set…” She gripped the handles of her waver firmly. “Go!”

She hit the gas and rode in a straight line towards the horizon. The White-White Sea cloud formations had some variation from day to day, but she had already determined that that was the shorter point between her home and absolute nothingness.

Other people might have called her suicidal and wondered what drove her to do this, but if Veleta had to be compared to one of the characters of the tabletop game her dad liked to play when they had visitors, she would have rolled 20 Intelligence and 2 Wisdom.

It took her a good half an hour to reach the place she was shooting for, and when she got there, with the absolute confidence of a fool with too much pride in her ideas, she drove off the white clouds into the endless blue, and a few seconds after she started dropping at breakneck speed, she hit the special button she had built into the waver and a parachute shot out of it, slowing her descent until it was safe to kick back and enjoy the view.

There was only sky, distant clouds and water as far as the eye could see, with a few dots sailing through it that must have been ships, and the promise of an island, a real island made of Vearth, far, far way. Veleta made it a mental goal to sail there.

She was elated. Her heart pounded inside her chest with excitement, and her face hurt from smiling so much. Her world was about to get so big!

And then one of the ropes securing the parachute to the waver snapped, and she was freefalling again.

With a screech that was probably heard in at least two seas above and another couple below, Veleta finished her leisurely descent by crashing into the ocean with an upturned waver and getting her backpack’s mesh caught on the breath dial exhaust. On one hand, it was a good thing that she was floating thanks to the swimming vest. On the other, she had fallen face down, and the extra buoyancy wasn’t doing her much good, considering she couldn’t turn around.

Devil Fruits weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

—

Eustass Kid was watching time pass on the prow of the Victoria Punk when he saw a projectile falling from the sky and into the sea with a spectacular splash.

He squinted at the shape of a small boat ahead and asked Killer, “The fuck is that?”

—

As it turned out, ‘that’ happened to be a pink haired girl and her failing vehicle, though a girl who didn’t know she was being appraised when she was caught in a fishing net and dragged onto a dry surface. In fact, she was having a pretty hard time staying conscious at all, and the only energy she could divert from that task was being wasted on feeling grateful that she’d been found.

When she was pulled out of the water, still tangled in the net but able to move, Veleta spent the next three minutes or so coughing out water and doing her best to hurl out the contents of her stomach into the ocean and not on these kind strangers’ ship. Said strangers gathered near her and their conversation turned increasingly confused, but they all stared at her from a distance. Perhaps the vomit had something to do with it.

She gasped for air when water stopped coming out and turned around to face her saviors and thank them, but what came out of her mouth was another screech when she saw that she was inside of a fish’s maw.

“OHGODWE’REGETTINGEATEN!” She reached for her backpack to pull out something to defend herself, but she managed to get even more tangled in the net, and she stopped struggling when she noticed no one else shared her urgency. “Huh?”

“We’re in a figurehead,” a man hiding behind a striped mask explained.

“This is a ship?!” She gaped, looking around her again. She could’ve never told that she wasn’t in a real fish. “Oh, excuse my rudeness!” She bowed, still on her knees, or tried to. Not a lot of freedom of movement inside a fishing net. “I’m Lockheed Veleta.” She flashed them a smile. “Thank you so much for saving me!”

Nobody replied right away, as if she had said something awkward. Did she make a faux-pas already? She had known people from the Blue Sea, but maybe they had a different culture. She sure as heck had never met anybody who dressed like them. Or… had a stitched mouth… but she didn’t stare, because that would surely have been rude. Maybe he had been in an accident. Maybe it was a fashion? She wanted to learn about those too. There wasn’t a lot of variety in her little island.

“How did you do that?” The redhead asked. He had a pair of goggles, too, and Veleta recognized in him a fellow stickler for safety measures. The rest of the men had been eyeing him when they weren’t staring at Veleta, so she assumed he was their leader.

“Do what?”

“Drop in the middle of the ocean!”

“Oh, of course! My parachute failed,” she said, lifting a little the tarp. It was a bit cramped inside the net, between it, the waver, her bag and herself, but she was chipper nonetheless. “I thought I was done for!”

“What are you on about?” He replied, sounding increasingly irritated. “We’re at open sea, you have to have fallen from somewhere!”

“Oooh, right! Sorry, I didn’t explain myself very well, did I?” She laughed at her own silliness. “I come from an island in the White-White Sea!”

There was another awkward silence as their confusion grew. Veleta’s smile didn’t waver.

“The White-White Sea?” The man in the mask repeated.

“Yeah! You know, where the sky islands are?” There were no signs of recognition in their faces. “People in the Blue Sea know there are islands above… right?”

A gloomy looking man wearing a hood with cute ears, conceding her point, telling the others, “She has wings.”

“I thought they were an accessory,” said the one with the stitched mouth.

“What? No! I can move them, see?” She did so as she pointed at her back.

The redhead didn’t look convinced. “Then why didn’t you fly down instead of freefalling?”

“I didn’t mean to! The parachute was supposed to work!” She was very surprised that these people were being so skeptical. “And I can’t fly! Nobody can, that’s scientifically impossible.”

The captain looked at her with a mix of disdain and disbelief and told the men, “I can’t be assed with this. Kick her off, skin her alive, do whatever you want.”

He began to walk towards the throat of the gaping fish mouth, and Veleta eyed warily the two men that approached her, but she relaxed when they only let her out of the net.

“Oh, thank you so, so much!” She said again, this time bowing properly. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay your kindness!”

Veleta didn’t know why that was, but they looked mighty uncomfortable every time she thanked them. It had to be a cultural thing. Something to investigate. Maybe she needed to be more subtle? Some people were easily embarrassed by open gratitude.

Well, no matter, they seemed friendly people, even if their captain was a little grouchy. And he had a right to be, Veleta was intruding in their ship, after all. She pulled her waver upright and tested the wood to make sure it wasn’t broken. The sooner she could stop bothering them, the better.

She was gathering the tarp and ropes and shoving them at the back of the waver when the masked man said, “I’ve never seen that type of vehicle.”

Veleta was very glad to break the silence and even more to explain how her vehicle worked. “It’s a waver! We use them to sail in the sea clouds.” She twisted the handle a little so they could see the wind blowing out of the exhaust. The waver escaped her grasp for a second, but she caught it before it could launch itself towards one of her saviors. “They’re very practical, but it takes a lot of time to learn to ride one.”

Apparently, the captain hadn’t gone very far yet, because that caught his attention and he walked a few steps towards the group just to say, “Doesn’t look like you’re any good at it.”

Veleta laughed. “That’s a good one!” She had made an impressive entrance from their point of view, she realized. And she could see the gleam of curiosity in his eyes, even if he wasn’t saying anything. “But they aren’t made to fly!”

He didn’t look very happy with her response. “How’s it work? I don’t see an engine.”

“Aha!” Her eyes lit up. This was her favorite part each time she met explorers from the Blue Sea. “Here’s the trick!” She crouched behind the waver and fiddled with something inside the exhaust pipe until a piece came loose. She took out the dial that powered it and showed it to the crew. “It’s a breath dial!” She pushed the top, and it expelled a gust of wind strong enough in the captain’s face to make him take a step back. She offered it up for examination. “It’s really easy to use.”

He took the dial as his men watched him test it a few times with interest. “Not bad,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” mumbled the man with the stitched mouth.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Veleta said with a grin, and she extended her hands towards the redhead to take the dial back.

The man looked at the dial, then at Veleta with a grin that could have mirrored her own if she looked like she was about to snap someone’s neck every time she smiled, which she did not. “I’ll take this as repayment.”

“Eh?” She uttered in confusion, which gave way to panic when she realized he wasn’t giving it back and he was walking away again. “EEEH?!”

“Toss her out!” He barked without looking back, motioning at the sea with a hand.

The rest of the crew didn’t waste a moment to drop the waver back in the water, grab Veleta from under her arms and launch her onto her little vessel.

“Wait!” She yelled. “I need that dial to sail! You can’t leave me here!”

But the men had stopped paying attention to her the moment they flung her away. The strange ship that had rescued her unceremoniously sailed past her, dangerously rocking her waver and abandoning her to her luck in the middle of an unknown sea.

[chickensarentcheap]

I Found (Chapter 12)

Warnings: there is smut in this. Pure filth. Because that’s what the muse wanted.

tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y @alievans007 @hemmyworthy

Four hours later Esme finds herself in the kitchen. Barefoot in denim shorts and simple white t-shirt, up to her elbows in soap and water as she scrubs the dinner dishes. Tyler works alongside of her; unusually quiet (even for him) as he dries the items waiting in the drainboard. It is these moments of normalcy that they have learned not to take for granted. That easy, smooth way that they work side by side even during the most mundane of tasks. They have never had to resort to mindless chit chat; their silences had always been comfortable, never awkward. Meshing right off the hop. Easily able to read each other's cues, recognize one another’s body language, allow their eyes and their facial expressions to do the communicating if need be. In the five days they'd worked side by side, they'd become very much in tune with one another.  Their very different skill sets playing off each other well.

And there had been the other aspect as well. Giving in to that sexual tension and suffocating need for physical contact. To feel alive again. To be reminded that they were worthy. That they were broken, but still good.

A year ago they were in entirely different places; he in that rundown shack of a house in the outback as she floated from motel to motel, working her way through North America. Spending an extended amount of time in New York City,  subletting a quaint little studio apartment in lower Manhattan.

A week before they'd met she'd started packing up her things and putting them into storage. Nik had tracked her down through G and offered her a job. She'd have her choice on where she wanted to settle down. The Big Apple wasn't on that list. Her plan had been to repeat the nomad lifestyle of living out of suitcases and ending up wherever life and the job took her. She'd been doing it since leaving the corps and it had become second nature to her. As if it were normal and everyone did it.

I have a job for you, she can hear Nik's voice as clear as day. I need some intel work done. An inside person. A drug dealer in Dhaka has kidnapped another dealer's kid. Information is slow coming. I need you to go there and get your pulse on things. Make friends with the locals. Get them to trust you. Word has it he's being held in or around the market area. But there's a catch. And I need you to trust me when I say I know it sounds crazy but I know it's going to work.

The next day she was on a helicopter heading for Australia. Out into the middle of nowhere to meet 'the catch'.

Only Nik hadn't told her 'the catch' was as insanely attractive as he was. Or as haunted and broken. He was an immensely private person; tortured by the bad decisions and the demons of his past. And she'd been intrigued by him. By the mystery that surrounded him. By the walls that he'd built up around himself. He was an enigma. A challenge. And she had found herself captivated by those brilliant blue eyes, that sad smile, and that voice. Low and steady, his accent dripping off every syllable. Physically he was a tall, cool drink of water on a hot summer day. Pleasing. Refreshing. But it was the way in which he carried himself that had drawn her in. Confident. Not cocky.  A man that lived on the edge and showed no fear.

A death wish, Nik had told her on the way home.  It's why he takes the jobs he does. It's not really the money. It's the hope that one day, the job is going to take him out. That it will make it all end.

A month later she was out of the job. Just as abruptly as she had gotten into it. Back in Australia and in charge of handing over possession of that shack in outback to one of Tyler's friends while he himself teetered between life and death in that hospital.  She'd found herself wandering down a new and often terrifying path. Starting an entirely new existence with the help of Nik and the surviving members of the tea.  A new life in a new country in a small two bedroom bedroom apartment. Spending the majority of her waking hours -a lot of her sleeping ones- at his bedside.

Four weeks after that she started feeling sick. Rundown. Taking the nausea, the headaches, the fatigue, and even her missed cycles, as signs of stress.

Until two little pink lies had told her otherwise.

She had bought the test on a sheer whim. A lineup in the hospital pharmacy bringing her directly into the aisle where they were store. She'd grabbed one, and hadn't even given it a second thought until later that evening and she'd gone into shopping back for something she'd needed.  And she can vividly remember sitting there on that cold porcelain toilet in the washroom connected to his private room. Barely thinking about that test that now lay on the sink ledge. There were too many other things to think about it. She couldn't remember when she had her last meal. Her last shower. Her family was leaving her strings of endless text messages and emails demanding to know where she was. Who she was with. Was she okay? It was too much. All too much. There was already an overwhelming heap of sadness and worry on her plate. Why would whatever higher power (if there was one) just add something else.

And then there it was. Her new reality staring her in the face. Things were already serious enough, and now there was a whole other layer being added. There was a life growing inside of her. During all that craziness in Dhaka....within those four dirty motel walls...she had had a hand in creating another human being.

She can even remember his face when she'd told him. The lucid moments were more frequent by then.  The amount of pain medication being pumped into him had let up and he was conscious more often than not. Still struggling with remembering all of the details of what happened. Things were hazy; he wasn't sure if he was recalling things that actually happened or if it was what he had wanted to happen so his brain was manifesting them as actual memories.  He  could vividly recall everything up to the moment that he'd been shot in the neck. He could even remember the sensation of choking on his own blood and feel it seep between his fingers. He was fairly certain he'd made it to the sidewalk along the bridge.  But after that...nothing. Nothing concrete and clear anyway.  

He still hadn't had a lot of strength. He grew tired and weak easily. But he would smile. Even laugh. He'd even bitch at her when she'd attempt to trim his beard and keep it under control.  And he'd wrap her in his arms and pull her down onto the bed with him and he'd hold her. They wouldn't talk.  She'd just lie there in his embrace as he played with her hair. Her head on his chest, listening to his heart.

Some days, they'd go for walks. He'd refuse to use a wheelchair, even on the days where he felt the most pain and the most weakness following his knee surgery. He hated feeling helpless. Weak. And she'd always try to ensure him that he wasn't any of those things. What he was, was alive. Recovering. And that's what mattered the most.  

It had been on one of those walks that she'd told him about the baby. Sitting on a bench when he needed a break and a chance to rest the knee.  And the sun had been high in the sky and the breeze had been crisp and fresh and the sounds and sights of live continued around them as she dropped probably the second biggest bombshell of his life on him.  It was the first time a silence between them had been agonizing. And she'd been screaming internally at him. To say something. Anything. To tell her that this wasn't the worst thing that could happen.  That this wasn't the end of the world. That this was just another thing that they'd get through together.

He had just stared at her. Shell shocked. Things had happened quick between them. They hadn't had time to catch their breath. And they hadn't wanted to fight it.  

“You're sure?” he'd finally asked, and it wasn't until he spoke that she became aware that she was crying. She usually kept tears to herself. She didn't like him seeing her in that kind of state. She had to be the stoic and solid one now, after all.

She told him about how she'd been feeling. The nausea. The migraines. The inability to sleep. The missed periods. She should have started just after the events in Dhaka. But it had never arrived and she'd just assumed that her body was in shock over everything that had went down.

Then he'd said the single most hurtful thing she'd ever had anyone say to her in her entire life. She'd tried to remind herself that this was all happening so fast. Too much, too soon. What did they really know about each other outside of the walls of that crappy motel? They'd jumped head first into...something. It couldn't really be called a relationship, yet casual sex didn't seem serious enough.  They were falling in love with one another. But they weren't in love. Not yet.

“Is it mine?”

She had wanted to slap him. She'd wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and strangle him. But she didn't blame him for asking. She understood his trepidation. If she'd fall into bed with him that easily, what's to say it wasn't a reoccurring behaviour for her?

When they'd been holed up in the motel she'd told him about her failed marriage. About her ex husband and his issues and the torment and torture he'd brought into her life. And on that bench she told him that she hadn't been with anyone besides him in over a year.  That sex had never been an overwhelming need.

Until she met him.

“You don't have to stick around,” she'd told him. “I don't expect that from you. If this isn't what you want...if I'm not what you want...you just have to say it, Tyler. I won't hate you. I'll walk away and I'll never bother you again. You don't have to be a part of this.”

Those normally brilliant blue eyes had immediately clouded over. His mouth setting into a grim line.

“Is that really what you think of me? You think that little of me? That I'd do something like that? That I'd just let you walk away?”

“You already have a lot on your plate. You're healing. It's going to take a long time. And you don't need me being in your way. You don't need me hindering you.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?” his eyes had narrowed, his voice low. Almost menacing. “Is that really what you think? You think I don't want you here? You think I look at you like some kind of obstacle in my way? The only reason I'm doing this...the only reason I held on and I keep hanging on...is because of you. For you.”

That had made her cry even harder. And her face had dropped into his chest; his fingers burying in her hair as he held her to him.

“I love you,” he'd said. It was the first time he had let those words come out. He'd later confess that he'd been feeling them since the beginning. Maybe not love itself. But the realization that he was falling in love.  “I love you and everything is going to be okay. We're going to be okay.”

She'd cried into his chest. Telling him that she loved him. That she hadn't meant to fall in love with him. Maybe it shouldn't have happened. Dhaka hadn't been the ideal place to meet the love of your life.  But it had. And she didn't regret that.

For a long time, neither of them had spoke. They'd just sat on that bench as she clung to him and he consoled her. And then he'd gently yanked on her hair in an effort to get her to look up at him.  Those blue eyes had been sparkling again. There was a smile...a genuine smile...curving his lips.

“We're having a baby,” he'd said. “I'm going to be a dad.”

They have never taken things slow. It simply wasn't in their nature. After that first night in Dhaka, they never looked back.  They'd given into lust. The promise of something new. Empowered by the realization that someone wanted them. Needed them. That maybe...just maybe...their two broken halves could make a slightly dented whole.

****

“How'd it go today?” he asks now, as he stands behind her and reaches over her to place dishes on the higher shelf. “Your little girls day.”

“Good. It was fine. It was nice to forget about everything else for a while.”

When she'd gotten home, she'd run that photograph of Farhad through the paper shredder. Covering her tracks. Something she'd become good at thanks to the job. But the rule of thumb was that no matter how smart and cunning you thought you were, there was always someone smarter and far more cunning.

And that person is Tyler Rake.

She watches the way his hands move as he does something so simple as drying cutlery. They're big. Powerful. Calloused palms, long, thick fingers, scarred and swollen knuckles, and wide wrists that lead into muscular forearms.  And she notices...obviously not the first time...just how attractive he actually is. Those eyes. That mouth. The way his hair falls over his right eye. The scars and the tattoos. All mixing together to create on hell of a man.

“You're staring at me,” he says, snapping out of her reverie. A grin playing on his  lips.  “That's creepy. Stop being a creeper.”

“Dick head,” she retorts, and flicks soap and water at him.

He's mocking her. Playfully, of course. Using the exact words she'd tossed at him during their first massive blow up in Dhaka at year ago. When she'd disappeared from his sight in the market after he'd distinctly told her not to leave his side.

“I told you to stay right next to me,” he'd roared. “I told you not to wander off on your own. That I wanted to be able to see you. At all times. That I wanted to be able to feel you beside me. To even smell your hair if it comes down to it.”

“Is that what you've been doing while I'll sleep?” she'd shot back. “Smelling my hair? That's creepy. Don't be a fucking creeper, Rake.”

She'd meant it as a joke. To break the tension. But it had only made things worse. And the floodgates opened and all the pent up rage just came exploding out of them. His hand wrapping around her neck and his fingers digging into her throat, his eyes menacing as he backed her up against a wall.

“Do you think this a fucking game? Does it look like I'm fucking joking?”

The fight had been intense. His anger raw. And he'd been powerless to contain it.  Or what happened when it had transformed into something so much more.  Greedy hands pulling at each other's clothes. Hungry, needy kisses. His hands biting and bruising as he took her right there and then up against that wall.

****

She clears her throat noisily and fights the urge to splash cold water on her face. Her hormones have been out of control. Especially within the last week. He's always had a powerful effect on her. It took for very little effort on his behalf to rile her up. But this level of intensity...this level of need...was something she'd never experienced before.

“Admiring,” she corrects. “Not staring. I was admiring. In case you haven't noticed, you're pretty easy to look at.”

“Yeah?” he steps behind her once again, an arm circling her waist. Palm against her stomach, drawing her tight against him. He drops his head, his hair and the tip of his nose brushing against the nape of her neck. And he feels her shiver against him when he presses his groin against her ass.

He can't help but smirk.

So easy. It's always been so easy.

“You're not too hard to look at yourself,” he says, his breath hot against the back of her neck.  He's feeling it too. It's always been intense between them. The sex incredible. But since the decision to return to Dhaka, the desire and the longing and the desperate need had only increased. He couldn't get enough. Didn't want to ever get used to getting enough. Afraid that at this time next week, one of them may not even exist anymore.

He swallows heavily and closes his eyes. Desperately trying to rid himself of those thoughts. They'd come this far.  They'd gotten through some serious shit. There was nothing that could possibly come between them now.  He nuzzles his face in her hair; inhaling the sweet of the sweet, fruit scented shampoo she favours. Committing that smell to memory.

Just in case.

His mouth is  soft and warm against the back of her neck. Feathery kisses that make her shiver and her pulse quicken.  And his hand slides from her stomach to her stomach; both palms gliding over the cheeks of her ass before bringing one of his hands down in a ringing, stinging slap. A smirk on his face as she bucks against him, his fingers roughly grabbing at the spot he'd hit.

“You're a fucking dick!” she exclaims, wincing, struggling to turn around to face him. “That hurt. Fuck you, Tyler.”

He uses his body weight to pin her in place, sliding a hand between her legs. Feeling the heat and the moisture that pools there, even through the fabric of her shorts and the panties she wears underneath.

“That's exactly what I want to do,” his voice rumbles deep within his chest. “Fuck.”

****

They make it as far as the living room. Clothes hastily discarded, forming a trail behind them. With the baby asleep, and Nik and the rookie back at their hotel for a remote final strategies meeting with the team, they once more have the run of their own place His hands are rough and needy as they explore her body. He knows every inch by heart; every secret little spot that, when manipulated, drove her insane. He can remember the early days; that fascination and wonder that comes with getting to know someone elses body. With learning what they liked, and showing them things that they'd never experienced before. It had been that way for him. After his first marriage had broken up and he sworn off ever going down that road again, he'd had his fair share of hook ups; randoms he met in bars, friends of friends, women in different countries that -if he was in town- he could call up for no strings attached sex. Esme had been the opposite. Two men before him. Including her ex husband. So Tyler had taken it upon himself to show her exactly what she'd been missing.

Her body is softer now. Her hips wider. She's had a baby. His baby. And while it's familiar, it's still exquisite. A beautiful wonderland that only he gets to visit. And he still worships it...and her...as much as he did when they first met.  And as often as he can.

He stands above her as she lays sprawled on the couch, ready and waiting. Chest heavy, his eyes hooded as they take in every inch of her. Those dark eyes filled with desire, the flushed cheeks, those full supple breasts with their rock hard nipples. Stroking his own cock as he watches her playing with her clit. Exactly like he told her to. Growing even harder when her eyes close low and her head falls back, a long, tortured moan escaping her lips.

“No,” he says, when he senses she's close, and he yanks her hand from between her legs.  “I get to do that.”

She reaches for him but he shoves her hand away.

“Sit up,” he orders. “Back against the couch.”

She does as she is told. The perfect little submissive that she is. He gets off on it. Knowing just what he can get away with.  The kind of punishment that he can not only inflict on her, but that she can actually take. No woman had ever given him that kind of freedom with their body.  None had ever had that pure, blind trust in him.

He tenderly cups her cheek his hand, turning her face up towards him as he kisses her. Soft. Sweet. His other hand still tending to his direction, and he backs away when her fingers come in contact with him.

“Not yet,” he tells her, and then drops to his knees between her thighs. Sliding his hands between her and the couch in order to grab her by the ass, yanking her forward to give him access to what he really wants.

She gives a small cry the second the tip of his tongue makes contact with her clit. Bathing it with long, agonizingly slow licks that has her toes curling and her back arching. His fingers biting into the soft flesh of her ass when when he uses his tongue to penetrate her; jerking himself off as he tongue fucks her. Using it in the same way he could his cock. Spurred on by the obscene noises that are escaping are mouth and the fingers that are scraping across his shoulders.  

“Tyler...” she whimpers, and her hands are in his hair and her hips are rising from the couch to match every move of his tongue. “...shit...fuck...Tyler...”

And when he knows she's close...when he knows she's teetering right on that edge...he abruptly stops. Leaving her a near sobbing, panting mess as his hand drops away from his cock and he stands.

“Get up,” he demands. “I want you to get up.”  

Her legs are trembling. Weak. And he gently grabs a hold her arms and helps her to feet, pulling her into him a for a long kiss. The tip of his tongue briefly touching hers before gliding along the roof of her mouth.

“I want you to ride me,” he says. As if she has a choice in the matter. This is his game. He's in charge. And she never resists when he is. “I want you, to fuck me.”

She nods in understanding, and he runs a hand through her hair and grabs a hold of the tresses. A firm hold. But not hard enough to hurt. Just enough pressure to pull her head back so she looks at him.

He smiles. It's soft. Reassuring. They've been playing these games for almost a full year now.  She knows he'd never hurt her. That with the simplest word or the hint of discomfort, he would stop.  She trusts him. Maybe too much at times. An almost blind faith that both flatters and frightens him.

It's his turn to sit on the couch. Thighs splayed, his hand finding his own cock again. The other reaching out for her, resting on the small of her back and giving her that extra sense of security as she straddles him. Those small hands resting first on his shoulders and then sliding down onto his chest. He guides her with that hand on her back and the other around his erection, lining it with that warm, moist, welcoming entrance.

“Fuck...” It's his turn to groan, eyes closing and head falling back as she sinks down onto him.  And she pushes her hips forward, a movement that has him bottoming out inside of her.  And he releases more profanities and a low hiss when her nails dig in; scraping down his chest and over his nipples.

She pushes her torso forehead, and laying a hand on the back of his head, pulls him forward. His face buried between the valley of her breasts as begins to ride him. Slow, smooth movements that is torturous for them both. His hands slid up her thighs and over her hips. Up her back to her shoulders. And he takes one of those hard nipples into his mouth. Rolling it along his tongue before stepping up his game; fingers pressing into the soft skin of her shoulders as he aggressively sucks. And she moans at the sensation, her fingernails digging into his scalp as she moves faster.

His hands drop to her hips, removing his face from her chest and allowing his head to fall back onto the couch cushion. Sweat beads on his brow and at his temples. His chest heaves from the work it takes just to hold back. Allowing her to have this moment. Where she is the one in control. Temporarily giving her that power.

She smiles down at him and kisses him; her teeth painfully digging into his bottom lip when she pulls away.  

“You like this, yeah?” he asks, as he fights to keep his hips still “You like being in charge, don't you.”

She nods, and drops her head into the space between his neck and his shoulder. Where she kisses, licks, and nibbles at the side of his throat and bulging trap muscle.

“Jesus...fuck...” he winces when her teeth dig in. Hard enough to break the skin. And that signals the end of their little game. It's time to take that control back. He wasn't a submissive man. He never could be. Never will be. And curling an around around her waist, yanks her off of him and tosses her onto the couch.

“Kneel...” he orders, and she's watching him over her shoulder and running the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip as she does so.  He smirks, loving that innocent look she gives him. Those huge eyes and her hair wild and tumbling over her shoulders and swaying against the sides of her face. “...fucking do as I say,” he snarls, when she hesitates. “...I'm in charge here. Got it? I said fucking kneel.”

He snatches her by the hips, positing her exactly where he wants her, using his own knee to push her legs apart.

“Down...” he lays a hand on the back of her head, pushing her face into the back cushion of the couch.  “...just do as I fucking say, alright?”

She nods.

“What? I didn't hear you.”

“Yes. I'll do what you say.”

“Yes, you'll do what I say, who?”

“Tyler. Yes I'll do what you say, Tyler.”

“Wasn't so hard was it? Huh? What did I just ask you? I asked you if that was so hard. Was that hard to do?”

“No.”

“But you want it be, don't you.  You want something hard. Inside of you. Say it. Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”

“I want it,” her body shudders as she talks, and she shoves her ass out towards him. “I want you.  I want you inside of me.”

“That's a good girl. Such a good girl,” he kisses his way down her spine, runs the tip of his tongue over the small of her back. Over that tattoo that she'd gotten when she was eighteen and regretted ever since. He'd laughed when he'd first seen it. Not because it was horrible. Far from it. But because she'd actually wanted to leave her shirt on so he wouldn't see it. Mortified at her teenage decision.

She shivers at the sensation of the cool air on her skin, and her eyes close and her head drops forehead as he pushes into her. Not the brutally hard thrust that she had expected. But slow and deliberate. Letting her feel each and every inch until his balls are settled against her ass.

“I love you,” he whispers against her back, a deviation from the stone cold and demanding persona he'd been just minutes before.  “I love you so much. And I can't lose you. I can't.”

She opens her mouth to tell him that she loves him. More than he could ever possibly comprehend. But all words are lost as he pulls out and then pushes back  in, listening to that low growl that he emits, feeling those fingers digging into her hips.

He says nothing more. Neither the calm and quiet Tyler or the rough and demanding one. The hand on her shoulder that holds her in place is gentle, barely touching her. And those fingers on her hip release their painful grip and his hand slides around to her stomach. He moves inside of her. Long, smooth strokes that she swears can feel the way into the pit of her stomach.

He grunts when she pushes her ass against him, and he reaches around to pull her hand away when she attempts to reach between her legs for that extra pleasure. Replacing her hand with his own, fingers easily finding her clit and rubbing deftly at it. Until her body begins to quake and her back stiffens. His name leaving her mouth in a sob that's muffled by the cushion underneath her.  

He continues to rub that painfully sensitive nub until he's coming as well.  His head falling forward, eyes closing, profanities spilling from his lips.

****

“You realize we're probably never coming back here, yeah?”

They lay in the middle of the living room floor. Naked bodies wrapped in the flannel throw that's kept on the back of the love seat. A cushion from the couch serving as a pillow.  Moonlight streaming through the patio door.

She raises her head from his chest to look at him. One of his arms wrapped around her, the other behind his head. Brow furrowed as he stares at the ceiling. She hates that look on his face. Dark. Intense. His adrenaline is starting to kick it up a notch, driven by the nerves and the bizarre sense of excitement that you feel before every job.  The softness in his features his gone.

This is the old Tyler. She recognizes him well.

And although she'd encouraged it, his emergence scares her. Just a bit. More for him than for herself. Even the old Tyler was trustworthy when it came to her. Protective. Almost too much so. He would never hurt her. But when it came to his own well being, he was reckless. And she was worried if he crossed that line, that she may never get him back.

She moves onto her side, propping herself up in her elbow. Side of her head resting in her palm as she watches and waits. Her free hand on his chest, fingertips softly gliding against his soft skin and over the scars that use his body as a canvas.

“You do realize that, right?” he finally looks at her. His eyes are hard. Lips set in a grim line.

“You mean come back here as in here here or as in...” she lets her voice drift away as he gives an annoyed scoff and looks away.

“I don't mean it that way. I don't mean death. I mean here as in Australia. As in this apartment. This room.”

This is definitely the old Tyler. The one that was easily aggravated if she said something he viewed as stupid. Or if she dared challenged his power and control over situations.

She lets it go. She feels the stress and the nerves and the fear herself. The old Tyler always struggled to express those kind of emotions. He was stoic and solid. He hid his true thoughts and his true feelings. Locking them deep down inside and throwing away the key. The new Tyler had worked hard to give over that. Struggling to learn how not to close himself off and push her away.

Their return to Dhaka is less than twelve hours away. A place that holds a lot of memories. Some good. Most bad.

Most horribly, horribly bad.

“There's no way we can come back here,” he continues, and as if doing battle with his former self, he closes his eyes and then opens them again. His arm relaxing around her, knuckles brushing against her shoulder.

 “This will never be finished,” he says. “Well and truly finished. For every one Asif we kill, ten more will pop up. And each one will learn about what happened. What we did. How Asif himself failed. They won't let that shame go. They'll avenge him. Six months from now, six years from now. It doesn't matter. There will always be someone that wants revenge.”

She remains silent. Fingers skimming along his chest and over his collarbone. Nails scrapping along the underside of his chin, palm coming to rest his cheek. And he turns his face into it, beard scraping against his skin, lips finding her palm.

“If they know our names and know where we are, we can't stay here,” he reasons. “It would never be safe. We'd always be looking over our shoulders. We'd always be jumping the second we hear something moving in the shadows. And I don't want that for you. Or our daughter.”

She finally speaks “What about for you?”

“That doesn't matter. It's my job to protect you. It's my responsibility to make sure you're safe. That she's safe. And I know neither of you ever will be if we stay here. What's happen if I'm not here? I can't be here twenty four seven. And that's when they'd make their move. When they know I'm not here. And I can't take that chance.”

She rubs the back of her hand along his jaw. The top knuckle of her index finger skimming over the scar underneath his right eye.

“You deserve better than that,” he says, as he struggles to contain the emotion that chokes at him. “So does the baby. You deserve better than this life. Better than me.”

She pushes his face towards her and silences him with a kiss. “Stop that,” she gently orders. “You're perfect for us. We're safe with you. I never doubt that. I never will.”

He manages a smile and lifts his head kisses her softly. One on the lips,  then the tip of her nose, followed by her forehead.

“Where will we go?” she asks, when he settles his head back onto the cushion. Her fingers now move to the chain around his neck, the pad of her index digit running along it.  

“Colorado.”

“You actually want to throw yourself into that? You really want to subject yourself to my family?”

“I would be nice to have a family. Outside of the three of us.”

“We have Nik. And the rest of the team.”

“That's a fucked of vision you have of a family.”

“Like I've said. You've never met my brothers. You might meet them and wonder what the fuck you were ever thinking. What kind of fresh hell you ever got yourself into.”

“They can't be that bad. And you need to go home. Your mom misses you. And I know you miss her. And your step dad.”

“I don't miss them enough to force you to be somewhere you don't want to be.”

“I'd follow you to the ends of the earth. You know that. It's what you practically did for me.”

“This isn't a competition, Tyler. You don't have to do something because you feel you have something to make up for. I didn't come here and stay here because you forced me to. I came here because you needed me. And I stayed because I love you.”

He smirks “Not to mention I knocked you up.”

“A surprising little turn of events, but yes. That too.”

“A good surprise,” the smile is softer now. “A very good surprise.”

“We could always go to New York City,” she muses, sighing wistfully at her memories of the Big Apple.

“Isn't that where Crocodile Dundee ended up? Isn't one Aussie enough?”

“Hmmm...yeah...you might be too much for even them to handle,” she teases. “There's always Boston. Boston was nice. Chicago wasn't bad. Or Texas. I enjoyed Houston, actually.”

“We could also move to Canada,” he suggests.

“Won't work. You hate hockey.”

“It's not that I hate it. I think it's stupid.”

“Bite your goddamn tongue, Tyler Rake. How dare you.”

“I also hate that shit that you tried to feed me once. With the french fries and the gravy and the pretend cheese.”

“That wasn't pretend cheese. It was cheese curds. Very much real cheese. And poutine is a delicacy, I will have you know. Just because you can be an uncultured swine...”

He chuckles, then wrapping an arm around her waist, hoists her up on top of him. His hands on her thighs as she straddles his hips.

“There's always the west coast,” she says, as runs his hands along over her knees and up her legs. “I didn't mind Seattle. They have great coffee. California would probably be the best fit for you. There's lots of beautiful beaches. You do love to surf.”

“Colorado,” he insists, his hands settling on her hips.

“There's mountains. And snow. You need beaches. The ocean. Surfing.”

“I don't need those things. I can live without those.”

“San Francisco is supposed to be nice. I've never been there but I hear it's decent. And they apparently have a good football team.”

“Let's not start that argument again, love. That is not fucking football. And I already said it. Colorado.”

“Los Angeles.”

He shakes his head. “Colorado.”

“San Diego.”

“Nope. Colorado,” he slowly stresses the word.

She sighs. “Why do you always have to be such a stubborn little shit?”

“Because I can. Because you let me get away with it. Because you love me enough not to strangle for me it.”

“Not yet anyway,” she leans down to kiss him, her hair falling over both of them,  brushing against his chest when she sits back up. “I know you think this is what I want. Going back there. But you don't have to do this.”

“I don't think it's what you want. I know it's what you need.”

“Since when did you become an expert on what I need?”

“You seemed to think I was an expert at knowing what you needed half an hour ago,” he teases, and then winces and laughs when she grabs the part of his beard under his chin and yanks. “Actually, I think I proved I'm an expert. At least at those things.”

“You're like a fourteen year old boy. Mind always in the gutter.”

“You blame me? You're sitting on me. Naked.”

“You put me here. And then you complain? That's fucking rude.”

Curling an arm around her, he unceremoniously drops her onto her back. “That better?” he asks, a hand on the floor beside her head as he bends down to kiss her.

“Much better,” she says against his lips, and then sighs into the kiss.

He pulls back to look at her. Giving her a wink. “Colorado.”

“You are an insufferable bastard, Tyler Rake.”

“I am,” he agrees. “But you love me.”

She smiles up at him. “Only on days that end in Y.”

“That's good enough,” he declares, and kisses her once more. Longer this time. More passionate. Pulling away with a wide grin. “Colorado.”

“You can be a real annoying little bastard,” she teases, as she pushes his hair out of his eyes “You always have to have the last word?”

“Always,” he says, giving her a wink and then kissing his way down her entire body.

No more words are needed.

[erinelizabethh]

We Should Have Known | Billy Hargrove x Reader

Yeah I got nothing

Summary: “Oh, how you should have known.” 

In hindsight, it was a sentence that provided little comfort to your grief, wounds that would fail to heal for as long as you remained in Hawkins’ a reminder of everything you’ve lost. You hid from the world that managed to move forward, eyeing the changing of seasons as you were left behind under the blanket of Billy Hargrove’s leather jacket. How pathetic of you to assume you could have known, your eyes found the clouds above you as you apologized to a man who may or may not have been listening, arms wrapped around the trembling form of a dear sister experiencing loss far too young. You cradled her head, fingers pushing ginger strands from her face, wiping tears threatening to fall lest she found you as vulnerable as her. All you could do during these moments was pretend you were strong, pretend you were able enough to be the shoulder she could cry on if need be. How cathartic it was that she was his last known face, the sister he learned how to care for and love.            

Your toes sink into the shining sands as you sprint along the beach, your sheer cardigan falling behind you as you catch a glimpse of your reflection off of seashells and dazzling rocks. With a squeak, you run with reckless abandon, attempting to widen the distance between you and your pursuer; however, your chest begins to burn in a gasp for air and your legs ache with your overexertion, causing your knees to buckle beneath you. As your hands break your fall, you shake your head, fishing into the pocket of your jean shorts to pull out your inhaler. That first intake of air is welcoming, enticing you towards repose after your exuberance. As the sun falls behind the waters, the sky hues of orange and pink, you witness as the clouds overhead float and mesh together to create shapes you think must be a sign. The waves brush against the crystals sticking to your wiggling toes, and it is then that you decide that there could be no greater sight to witness.           

“Jesus, babe.” Your love trails his tongue across his lips once he finds you, faltering once he glances at the inhaler in your palm. “Fuck, baby– Baby, you can’t run like that.”

He drops down beside you to share your appreciation for the California sun, his elbow resting on his knee as he shrugs and flicks his lit cigarette into the ocean. His thumb then circles at your thigh, the warmth of his body edging closer to a form entranced with the beauty of it all. When he sneaks a glance at you, your hair is pushed back by the faint breeze, and your skin is painted with the glow of a looming twilight; the sight before him he can argue is the winner, the imperfections trail across your jaw and along your forehead, yet nothing beats you. Just you. You avert your gaze from the sun descending over the horizon, aligning with his own, and you search all over for answers before your giggle grants it for you in the form of a glint in his baby blues.            

“Nothing, beautiful.” He grins, his arm wrapping around your waist as he pulls you against him. “Nothing at all.”            

No one disclosed to you how they found his body, or how your beloved even passed; your mother wrapped you in an embrace upon the news without knowing anything. All Max could tell you was that he was thinking of you before he died, like that was meant to console you. After all the shit transpiring in Hawkins, somehow Billy had gotten caught up in it all, losing his life among some conspiracy the news proved more significant than him–all bullshit. The lives of many were left unaffected but you, you were stunted by the outcome and no one came close to understanding why he deserved to be missed. Why couldn’t society grant him one last act of mercy before he died, one act of kindness that otherwise was never granted to him by the ones he needed it from the most?            

Why did it feel as if you and Max were the only ones grieving?            

His name escaped past your lips, his fingers tapping at his wheel. You recalled of the many times where the teenager dreamed of home, lingered on the memories that made life worth living. “You and me, together. We can just fucking run.” Tempting the thought was, a life with Billy Hargrove was undoubtedly with its ups and downs, yet you chewed at your lip at the what ifs, at everything that could possibly go wrong. However, he witnessed the love you had for your hometown fleeting, the man jumping at the chance to live a life he was positive you would love. Summer was approaching, with residents of town running out of reasons to stay, which is why there was nothing he wanted more than to escape. Even though you delayed his decision to pack his bags and return to California, there was only so much a man could take of his past life catching up to him.  

“Billy, I–“ You shook your head, frowning. “Billy, I don’t know.”            

He mimicked your actions. “I’m done waiting. I gotta go, babe, and you gotta be there. ‘S not gonna feel right.”            

“Aren’t you glad you said yes?” He raises an eyebrow, his arm thrown over your shoulder as he turns to you once again. Your knees are pressed against your chest as your brow furrows, images of what you left behind in Hawkins threatening to ruin your stay; people like Max and the weirdos that play Dungeons & Dragons, people that saw you in passing and pretended to heed your disappearance… what has become of them? Your family, did they even miss you, or were they shaking in disapproval as you professed your love for Hawkins’ bad boy by running away with him with nothing but a duffle bag and the ambition for tomorrow to be better? All of that vies to be enough for your hesitation, yet you find his gaze once again and you decide there is no turning back… there never was.            

Your eyes downcast, they follow the movement of your fingertips as your pick at the sand crystals. “I love you, y’know.”             

His hand grasps your chin, his lips pressing against yours. “Yeah, course I know. Love you too, dumbass.”            

July 5th, you promised him, using the excuse that you couldn’t leave your family without celebrating America’s most celebrated day. That left you time to pack, time to contemplate your decision, time to meet your reflection in the mirror and tell her life was made for changes. That morning, you were meant to hop inside that blue Camaro of his, your gaze lingering on the window of your bedroom no longer yours before being dragged towards the man sitting in the driver’s seat smiling at you. Just you. The dew would only just recede from the center of his windshield, the sun filtering through tree branches before eventually shining down on your decision and the consequences no one was free of. Your heart would be racing, perhaps at a speed his car could not match, yet you would be happy. Hopeful. As would he.

Oh, how you should have known.

[caffeinated-mendes]

Failed Mission - Peter Parker & OC - Chapter 1

masterlist

previous work

synopsis:  Eliza Brooks, an eighteen-year-old Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and friend to Tony Stark is given a mission after Tony's death: Attend Midtown Tech and keep an eye on Peter Parker. With the use of her mysterious powers, Eliza had never slipped up on her assignment. That is until Peter's life is in danger, and she has to save him. The cost of her exposing her identity could very nearly mean the end of her mission, and the ending of her chance to become an Avenger.

word count: 2.5 k

a/n: Hi everyone :) Here's a new fic for you all with an OC of mine that I've created with the help of my friend @fallinallincurls <3 I loved Peter so much that I had to make a multi-chap fic for him! Anyway, I see this as Post Endgame, but a few months before FFH. Hope you all enjoy <3 comments likes, and reblogs are always appreciated!

warnings: none

*if you prefer, you can read this on my ao3 instead of here

“Can anyone tell me the answer to number twenty-seven?” Mrs. Codds asked, to which the class silently responded. “Anyone?” Eliza didn’t raise her hand, even though she knew the solution to the problem. Her eyes were trained on the figure in front of her. His leg was bouncing nervously in his desk, watching the clock that taunted them at the front of the room.

Eliza fiddled with her pen, waiting for someone to be called on without their asking. “Ms. Brooks?” Her eyes shot up to the board, examining the problem.

“Uh, thirty-two.” 

“That’s incorrect. Anyone else?” Mrs. Codds’ narrowed eyes found her next target, Michelle Jones.

Eliza raised her hand, but spoke without being called on, “Mrs. Codds? Isn’t it thirty-two, though? X equals fifteen, and the square root of sixteen plus y, which is thirteen, equals thirty-two.” With a bit of fright, she pushed her long hair behind her ear.

Mrs. Codds examined the board once again, “I suppose you’re right, Eliza. My mistake. Thank you.” Heads turned to her, including MJ, who mouthed ‘thanks.’ She nodded, moving her gaze back to the board.

“Everybody was so surprised that Mrs. Codds didn’t scream at you or something. She usually rages if anyone speaks out.” MJ said, clutching her book to her chest as Eliza took her bag from her locker. 

She chuckled, “I know, I was surprised too. By the way, I can’t hang out today. I’ve got work.” Eliza turned to look around, “But you could invite someone to partner with you in AcDec.”

MJ’s ears turned red, “Eli, no. It’s not gonna happen.”

“He’s cute, though! I know you like him.” Eliza grinned, pulling her navy blue backpack onto her shoulders. MJ pulled on the strings of her hoodie, shaking her head and looking at the ground. “Alright, I won’t terrorize you anymore. See you tomorrow. Oh, and don’t forget, we’re studying on Sunday.”

MJ nodded, “I won’t. See you!”

Eliza hurried her way down the halls of Midtown Tech, her black vans making squeaking sounds on the tile. Turning to look into the window of the library, she saw Peter Parker, MJ, and the rest of the team reading their textbooks. She took out her phone, and called the latest number, walking out the doors of her school. The day was a bitter, cold February day. Eliza had to pull up her hood to not shiver on the spot. “Hello?” A man’s voice answered the phone.

“Hey, Happy. Just the daily report. Peter’s fine. He’s at practice right now, so I’ll be going out later today. You know, the usual.”

“Alright. Thanks for letting me know, Eliza.” He sounded relieved, like Peter would never catch a break.

“Of course. Have a good day.”

“You too. You still coming over to Pepper’s tomorrow for dinner?”

Eliza pounded on the steps to the railway, responding, “Yep. See you.”

“Bye, Eli.”

She hung up, pushing her way into the crowded train. Eliza didn’t know how much longer she could keep the whole thing up. The whole routine of high school didn’t suit her. She longed for the days of training with her mentor. Somehow, she thought that training to be a spy was easier than being a high school student.

Perched up on the roof of a building, Eliza watched as a blue and red figure swung through the borough of Queens: the beloved Spider-Man. She had to hop rooftop to rooftop just to keep up with him. Luckily, her suit helped her jump farther, but landing always hurt. The flexible black and navy blue material let her move swiftly in the shadows, though it didn’t matter. Just one thought, and she could become invisible. She watched as Spider-Man made his way into a bank that was screaming with alarms.

Willing herself to turn invisible, she jumped down onto the steps of the bank. The best part of not being seen was people not noticing you. The worst part was having to maneuver your way through, as nobody could move out of the way for you.

Checking her surroundings, she quietly opened the door a sliver and slipped through. This was the worst part of the job. Watching Peter defeat the bad guys, and not being able to help. A woman at the counter trembled at gunpoint, a masked man clamping his hand over her mouth. Two other goons raided the available containers behind them. As if right on cue, Peter screamed, “Hey! Don’t you have other people to rob? I mean not like you should rob them-” He cut himself off, shooting a spider web to grab the gun in his hand. The action made the man angrier, but before he could do anything, Peter ran, jumping onto the counter and swinging his legs into the man’s side. He doubled over in pain, but as Peter stood over him, he didn’t see that the man’s big, beefy buddies were right behind him.

Eliza wanted to scream, tell Peter to watch out, but she knew better. She watched in horror as one of them hit Peter in the head with a bat, knocking him to the ground. Peter didn’t get up. She couldn’t stand there anymore, so she ran for the two of them, pulling a gun from her belt. Thankfully, whatever she held became invisible too, so she didn’t have to worry about people seeing a floating gun. Making two shots, she hit them both in their legs, not wanting to kill. 

Her fingers trembled. She hadn’t done anything like that for real, and hadn’t shot her gun in months. The woman at the counter shrieked. Seeing two men get shot from nowhere was justifiably scary. Eliza jumped over the counter, seeing that Peter was breathing, and conscious. It seemed like he had just woken up. Eliza didn’t think of the consequences as she hoisted Peter up, still invisible. “Whoa! Who’s pulling me?” He grabbed for her, and Eliza was too late to move, as he’d gripped her wrist. “Show yourself! He looked not in her eyes, as he couldn’t see her, but at her neck. Eliza had a couple inches on him.

Eliza knew she’d failed. She lost her grip on her invisibility, and soon she was fully visible. Peter still wouldn’t know it was her. She had a mask on, not unlike Peter’s, but it was black with three stripes of blue on each side. The eyeholes were shaped like upturned rectangles, an almost clear mesh. His spidey-eyes widened. “Eliza?”

Eliza’s breath hitched. Peter didn’t know her. She never spoke to him. Calmly, she replied, “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Let’s get out of here. The police are on their way.” She shook her hand from Peter’s grip, and started running out of the bank, Peter on her tail. They made their way into a dark alley, lit only by a flickering streetlight. 

“Are you sure you’re not Eliza? Because you sound like her too. Wait, why am I asking you that? You know who you are.” Peter caught up to her. Eliza tried to turn away, walk in the other direction, but then, Peter pulled on her mask, taking it off. Her long, blonde hair cascaded around her face. “It is you.” He didn’t say anything else. 

“How’d you know it was me, Peter?” Eliza’s heart sunk. She failed her mission. At least it meant she got to go home.

Peter almost choked, “How’d you know- I mean, I’m not Peter-” Eliza pulled Peter’s mask off to reveal his terrified face. “Uh- your eyes. They’re blue. Just not a normal blue, it’s like a weird blue. I don’t know why. When you showed up a few months ago to school, and the teacher introduced you to the class, your eyes glowed. I don’t know if everyone else saw it, but I did when you looked at me. Then they went back to normal. They glowed so bright when I grabbed your arm that it went through your mask.”

Eliza looked down. “Peter, I’m not allowed to tell you this, but I failed my mission anyway. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you went back to school, after, well, you know-”

“Since the blip ended?”

“Yeah. Tony found me, kinda like he found you. I was fifteen, it was right after, um, Sokovia. I blipped too, so I’m only eighteen now. But it was eight years ago. When I blipped back, Fury gave me a mission. He told me that Tony intended it for me when he was gone. I’ve been reporting back to Happy, giving him updates. I follow you when you go out into the city.” Eliza looked down at her feet. 

Peter’s face looked disappointed. “Oh.”

“What?” Eliza looked back up at him. Peter played with her mask in his hands. The scene must’ve looked weird. The two of them, holding each other’s masks.

“Well, it’s just that, I thought Mr. Stark thought that I could take care of myself now.” Peter looked up at Eliza, shrugging. His brown eyes looked sad.

Eliza hung her hands, “I’m sure he did. I think he just wanted to have me make sure you were safe. In a way, I was supposed to be the big sister you never had. At least, that’s how Pepper put it.”

Peter nodded, holding out her mask. She took it, and gave him his. “I think this means my mission’s over.”

He looked away, then back at her, “Maybe we can convince Happy to let you stay. He doesn’t have to tell Fury. You could join me, the media wouldn’t know, because you can turn invisible!”

“That might work.” Eliza started to think that she wanted to stay in New York a little bit longer, “Also, I’m not just invisible. I can turn into other animals, too.”

Peter’s eyes widened, “No way! Turn into… a monkey!” He grinned expectantly.

“How about I do something a little more convenient?” Eliza laughed.

“Yeah, okay.”

Eliza felt the familiar sensation encapsulate her body. It was like your entire body was falling asleep, but intensified, as the pins-and-needles feeling grew stronger, her vision changed, and suddenly, Peter got much taller. Her suit, designed to only appear in her human form, was gone. Peter spun around.

“Where’d you go? Eliza?” Eliza scuttled up Peter’s leg, all the way to his hand. She saw him look down. “Ugh. Of course you’re a spider. Deja vu. Can you turn back now?” Eliza hopped off his hand and landed back on the ground. She envisioned herself as herself, a human, and was enclosed in the prickly feeling again. She flexed her fingers, looking back at Peter.

Eliza grinned, “Uh, weird question, but out of all the situations I might’ve had to save you from, how’d you let it be a bank heist?”It seemed too easy for him. Peter didn’t fail like that. Eliza knew that he’d been in much higher-stake situations. 

As if reading her mind, Peter replied with a red tint to his face, “I have a fifth sense, it’s kinda like I can feel what's going on around me. Stupid to say after I didn’t realize two guys were behind me with a bat, but you were distracting me, I think. I didn’t know it was you at the time, of course, but I felt this weird power. It pounded through the room, and it distracted me.”

“I guess you can sense me, too. Have you felt it this whole time?” Eliza lifted her hair into a makeshift ponytail, and put her mask over her head. Peter put his on, too.

Peter shrugged, “Well, sort of. Just not that strong. I had a feeling like someone had their eyes on me everywhere I went in the city.” Eliza nodded. 

“Well, if I get sent back home, I’d like to make this a night to remember. Wanna fight crime as a team?” Eliza laughed.

Peter shook his head, “We’ll ask Happy to let you stay. I know it’ll work. But sure, let’s do it!” Eliza took this as a cue to change, morphing her body into a creature that could jump easily from building to building.

Looking down at her now, Peter’s spidey-eyes widened, “A monkey! Sweet!”

“Hey, Penis Parker! Did your face always look that stupid?” Flash taunted from behind Peter and Eliza. Peter pushed his face further into his locker, biting his lip.

Eliza, on the other hand, was not the quiet type. “Flash, why don’t you quit taunting Peter so you don’t have to keep hiding your insecurities? I think it’d be a better look on you.” Kids laughed and turned to face her from their lockers, watching as Flash choked on his words. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Eliza slammed Peter’s locker for dramatic effect, making him jump.  “Let’s go, Peter. The trash in here stinks.” This was responded by a chorus of laughter from their classmates. Peter pushed his way through to catch up to Eliza, hiding a smile. Flash was left sputtering behind them.

“That was amazing, but you didn’t need to do that. You know I’m not supposed to draw attention.” Peter shouldered his bag as they climbed up the staircase. Last night, the two of them bonded pretty well, beating up thieves and returning stolen items. It felt like Eliza had already known Peter forever. It was a shame she couldn’t stay with him much longer. She was going to tell Happy tonight, at dinner with Pepper and Morgan. 

Eliza shrugged, “It’s not like anyone is gonna suspect me of anything.” Eliza’s phone buzzed. It was MJ, asking if she was coming to class. Eliza responded, Yep, I just finished telling Flash off to the entire hallway. She pushed her phone in her back pocket, “Sorry, that was MJ.”

“MJ? I didn’t know you were friends with her, she’s really cool.” Peter said this in a high pitched voice, looking at Eliza and then in front of him.

“Isn’t the AcDec team going on a Europe trip this summer?”

Peter cleared his throat, his voice a little deeper this time, “Yeah, I’m hoping I’ll be able to actually relax on that trip.”

“That’s understandable. I mean,” Eliza lowered her voice, “I’m not really an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I still kinda get it.”

Peter smiled, his voice hushed too, “I have a feeling you’re gonna be more than an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe an Avenger. I mean, we’re kinda down on members.” He looked towards their history class with glassy eyes.

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“Remember, I’m not letting you leave yet.” With that, Peter walked into their class and found his seat, turning his attention to the girl in front of him. Eliza smirked. It was only obvious that Peter liked her. Ah, to be oblivious to shared love!

Eliza found her seat on the opposite side of the classroom. She looked up at the board, and her heart sank. In big messy handwriting at the top of the chalkboard was written The Sokovia Accords. Eliza put her head down on her desk, and closed her eyes. A voice went through her head, a familiar ghost of her past. It’s okay. Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out. Breathe in. Hold it. 

Breathe out.

[jedimasteramell]

haunted (greyscale heart)

Flystep // Marshal Harbinger AU // Very Not SFW

For @smuteczekbiczo and @technologicalnoiz because Im in way too deep with Jed/Danny. Uhh Idk, it was an excuse for angst and smut, 2.5K words.

---------

The embers hissed at the waters contact. White-grey smoke overtaking the cloying black as the flames sputtered for their last raging grasp at life, turned to thick, ashy sludge, the firefighters finally subduing the charred remains of what used to be an apartment building. So many lives upturned, so many possessions lost and lives of the unfortunates just the same, both now nothing but smoke rising into the Los Diablos sky. Yet as the rest of the team escorted a broken and defeated Pyre away from his wreckage, Marshal Harbinger’s mind was years away, back to the memories of a younger man and softer person, staring at the ashes of another ruined building.

Funny how fires were as renewing as they were destructive.

The incessant click of cameras and drone of voices indicated the arrival of reporters on the scene. The Public Privacy Law may have prevented photos of the victorious heroes and humiliated villain, but they still lapped up the images of destruction, eager to twist the loss of lives to garner whichever opinion they wanted. Jackals and ungratefuls the lot of them.  

“Marshal Harbinger, Marshal!” The voice is from one or all of them, a swell at the LDPD lines trying to break through for the newest scoop. With difficulty he tore his gaze from the slurry of smoke and charred slag to the unruly group of journalists and TV correspondents. Camera flashes blocked the faces of the crowd, not that he cared to recognize them beyond being human. His face fixed itself into less of a scowl to something more appropriate for television. After all these years, they still loved their golden flyer, conveniently forgetting that angels had always been more Harbingers than Heralds. 

He held up two fingers to silence the crowd, and almost like mind control, the clamoring stilled. “The situation has been contained, the culprit in custody.”

Despite his move to turn away, that opened up the floodgates for questions.

“Is it true Pyre is behind the recent arsons?”

 “How do you rate the work of your new team?”

“Are the Ranger’s working on preventing this from happening again?”

Harbinger started. “That’ll be all-”

“A lot of lives were lost today, would you have handled it any better back when you were Herald?” 

The question gives him pause, a jerk to his navel from the ring of his old name. Harbinger scanned the crowd, hard gaze landing on a man with warm brown hair, green eyes, and a cocky smile that was awful and familiar all at once at once; recognition like a punch to the gut. Jed. He mouthed the name he hadn’t dared say aloud on years. It couldn't possibly be an yet-  

He blinked and the ghost disappeared, leaving an eager but confused reporter in its place, recorder outstretched waiting for the answer. The man looked nothing like the longed-for haunt of his imagination. This was why he never looked at a crowd to long, he’d always see him there even after all this time. He could almost see Jed shake his head and narrow his eyes that way he did when his better moods caught Herald off guard, turning and tossing up his hand in goodbye. Funny thing about fires… The smoke must be getting to him. 

“Marshal…? Sir?” They still hung on the silence, waiting for an answer. “Would you have acted any different?”

Stern and stony as the blacked concrete behind him, Harbinger fixed the assembled with a long, impenetrable gaze. “No.” 

****

The stench of smoke followed him home, clinging to his uniform, his hair, his heart, greasy and dark; a slow and progressing cancer through his veins and the worn pieces of memories, rank and debilitating. 

Even after he stripped himself of his suit, leaving the midnight navy mesh a shedded second skin on the floor, the scent clung to him, trailing him to the shower, cold tile underfoot. When was the last time he floated? The thought crossed his mind, impassive and without true concern. Flying was in his blood, the fight to be free an inescapable part of his nature now, yet for the longest time he’d been grounded. Years now, since the first fire that still smoked from the cracks in the man he’d been. 

Daniel surveyed the person who wore his face the mirror. Harbinger had a harshness to him, lines angled like the charcoal faces in his old sketchbooks. Anger, disappointment, loss... heartbreak, scored and scarred him older than he was. He used to be scared of who he was becoming, but perhaps Harbinger had simply been in him the whole time.

A darker side, another facet, what you turn into to survive…

He has to tear his eyes away before the reflection shows the hard blue slipping into furious green. His heart twinged with an old pain, an understanding too little too late. 

Everything they had long since up in smoke. 

His hands left ashey prints on the pristine sink, he still smelled the fire on him, still ached from the scars, earned and given. Fingertips trailed to the brand of teeth on his thigh, sending a shiver down his spine. Daniel dug his nails against the scars, the pain a relieving rush to the against the deadened experience of his new normal. He felt himself twitch, and he swore under his breath, voice raw and unfamiliar from inhaling the smoke. He didn’t dare face the scowling shame in the mirror. Fuck, he needed a shower. 

Scalding water and scented soap stripped away the grime and the stench of the smoke that clung to his skin and his hair. He pressed his hands to gleaming walls, spray running rivulets down his neck and chest. It wasn't much for his mind to wander. A toothy grin, the way he'd laughed at the crown of suds, fiery eyes pulled back from those distant futures they stared to. A kiss, then another, teeth at his throat, a knee shifted between his thighs, the gasp at the cold tile at his back- 

Daniel's eyes shot open, the kiss of cold real having backed himself up against the shower wall. The flush on his skin had little to do with the hot spray and entirely with his growing hard on.

Allowing himself the gift of a few heavy-handed palms, he focused on the uncomfortable coolness of the tile to keep from slipping back in the memory, and in the shower itself. He dragged at his hardness, biting his lip to stifle the sounds despite not having anyone else in the apartment. An intrusive thought broke through, husky and amused. *Heh, floating really made this a whole lot safer.*

He cursed his memory, even as he jumped in his hand. Now he was just wasting water, giving in to the inevitable. A moan stirred from his lips, wet with steam and flushed from biting them, his hand moved in practices pulls, rough, harder than he needed to be, just to get it done and get on with his night- *Not here.* A little voice interrupted, trickling in from shadowed corners of the ceiling and the dark recesses of his mind. *You know the beds a better bet.*

“Shut it.” Harbinger growled at the ghost, though he stilled his hand regardless at the suggestion, a blunt nail across his slit that made him hiss and bite into his lower lip. He should ignore the suggestion, finish himself before the hot water ran out, not give into the cloying memories that clung to him no matter how hard he scrubbed. 

The bed it was.

While the mattress had changed, the size had not, yet the bed felt bigger sleeping in it alone. Dan laid back, tried to relax against the pillows, shut his eyes and think about anyone, anything, but Jed. His damn hair stuck uncomfortably to the back of his neck a distraction that persisted through the several uneventful minutes of heavy-handed pumps and his body’s refusal to climax. With a frustrated huff, he stared up at the ceiling. 

Empty. He was empty. Hollow, used up, unfulfilled. At least the physical need he could satisfy tonight.  

In the din his fingers fumbled for the bed stand drawer, finding the small bottle and then his toy, one used more oft than the other. He wrapped his mouth around the now-tasteless silicone needing both hands to unscrew the cap on the lube. His tongue traced the familiar nubs on the head of his toy, the semi-soft purple cock lacking all the fun textures and tastes that he'd come to enjoy with a real dick. But it didn't have to be human, it just had to get him off, and he groaned around it all the same as the first of his lube-slicked fingers teased into himself. 

He sighed around the toy, closing his eyes to enjoy the sensation. One finger wasn't nearly enough, and Dan was forced to shift to his side, spreading his legs further for the second to join. He tried and failed not to recall how this felt with a partner, the anticipation, the want for them to tease deep enough to stroke his spot and relieve him of everything but the moment they were sharing. He thought of freckles and scars, of jokes about tying him down to not float away. A third finger flexed him wide in time to his hand once more on his erection. 'Just fill me.' He whined in his mind, though no one could hear, and the embarrassment of his need flushed his cheeks as much as his cock. He removed his fingers with a further keen, loathing the return of the emptiness even as he relished what was to come, spit dripping from his lips around his toy. This'd be easier on his knees. 

It was a slow shift, reaching underneath himself to work the toy. He ground the sheets between his teeth, face framed in fallen hair, another layer to hide the subtle shame. His hand slipped, slick from the lube, forcing the tip against his prostate and just for a moment he could remember the calloused hands in perfect imprint, warm breath and that huff that always hid the laugh tingling the hair on the back of his neck.

*I like you like this Dan.*

It’s only after he groaned that Daniel realized he had mimed the words himself, not stirred them from memory. He flushed with a kind of shame. Was this where he’d fallen to? The man he’d become, empty, waiting, wanting? The toy pressed against his prostate again and chased away that line of thought. He went back to biting his sheets, reacclimating himself to the fullness, moaning unrestrained when he finally felt it slide fully into place. 

*That’s it, that’s good, fuck you're still gorgeous.* The voice in his mind crooned, urging him on. 

He wrapped his free hand back around his erection striking up an unsteady rhythm working the toy in counter to his motions. Daniel had to shift again for better access, to keep himself from sliding. His shoulders strained and hurt from the angle he made them work, groaning into the mattress as he fought for a much needed release. It wasn’t enough, and he had to work himself faster, knowing all too well he’d hurt tomorrow, but he didn’t care, in that moment the hand on his cock wasn't his own, the piece stretching him wasn’t a toy, and he was still young enough to float thanks to the heady excitement that pooled below his stomach, back when all these sensations were new. 

His breathing came in heavier gasps, muffled by the mattress as he spat out the sheets. He tilted his head, looking along his long-since scarred chest to his leaking cock and the hand pumping it. Daniel flicked a nail against his head and he then bucked his hips into his fist, surrendering himself fully to his memories. Hot hands, hotter mouths, the taste of sweat and skin and orgasm, freckles, scars, new positions, new hopes, new love. 

“I’m gunna-” He rasped, proclamation interrupted by a fresh moan. He wouldn’t last, he never did like this, burying his flushed features back in the sheets.

*Don’t hide your face, sunshine. I want to see you.*

“Jed.” He whined, loudly, and that was enough, coming across his hand and onto his sheets in the final release of a body wound far too tense. He bit his lip, holding his breath to savor every final shiver, the warm rush of post orgasm, and had he focused more he might have sworn he imagined a soft laughter slipping away as his body unwound.

As Daniel lay there spent for several long minutes, listening to the settling of his heart and evening of his breath, sweat cooling and his skin clammy, he finally realized he no longer heard the voice from his memories, the whispers of sweet nothing had faded into the silent corners in the shadowed bedroom. He grunted removing the toy, thighs trembling at the sudden emptiness and limp cock responding with a half-hearted twitch. Tired fingers fumbled for the towel to wipe himself down and with an effort he heaved his tired body through the greys of his room in search of fresh laundry.

Maybe tomorrow it’d be easier, back to the hum-drum of playing Marshal for Los Diablos, back to staring at the featureless faces that would leave or vanish or warp until they were as jaded as his was. Maybe tomorrow he’d stop being haunted by a long list of regrets and metaphorical basket full of too-little-to-late’s. 

Harbinger crawled back into his bed, shoving aside the soiled sheet, and staring up into darkness. For a moment he yearned for the rough voice, the ghostly kisses, and could almost remember what it was like to feel his heart floating when those lovely, lost, eyes settled on him and not the what-ifs over his shoulder. 

But like ash in the wind, the memory blew away, sending Daniel into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep. 

------

A shade of a man walked through an endless forest. The black trunks around him immovable as soldiers standing at attention, heads turned towards the near-starless sky. He didn’t glance up at the inky twilight, held no lamp for light, footsteps making no sounds against the soft debris of leaves and needles that carpeted the wood.

He didn’t need a map, spoke no words, legs taking him on a familiar trail visible to no one, weaving deeper and deeper into a clearing in the center of the muted, elegiac weald. The grasses rippled with an unheard wind and the empty cage at the far edge had long since given way to nature’s reclaim.It was only here that he finally looked up, the two paired stars overhead the only bit of light casting the world into greyscale instead of pitch. His smoke-made expression was inscrutable, the line that would have served for his mouth unmoving. 

At last something seemed to confirm with him, some unknown message from the stars and the figure shook his head. He turned and paused at the edge of the clearing, for a heartbeat, or maybe an eternity, but with no sign or sound to keep him, he stepped out of the pale glow, and was swallowed up once more by the darkness.

[ryubliss-central]

Return..? (Climax of the Sun Event Part Three)

“Nym…?” The door to Nym’s apartment creaked open Faust’s voice echoing through the area as she trotted inside, her eyes dim and filled with guilt. “I’m so sorry about Cherry’s behavior. I know how you feel about being called a Nightmare.”

The Guardian Ryubliss looked around, her ears folding downward as she scanned the area for any sign of her friend. The lights were all turned off, save for an old oil lamp still clinging to a spark, hanging from a hook on the wall in the kitchen. It took a moment for Faust’s eyes to adjust; she was a strictly diurnal creature, after all, and although she lived in a cavern, it was well lit with enchanted candles and crystals. Nym’s upscale Shift City apartment, however, was not.

Faust called out again, “Nym? You there?” She paused as she passed the kitchen, watching that odd lamp flicker intermittently. 

Its light faltered and flared, casting dancing, eerie shadows upon the warm tan walls, like spirits looking to whisk an unwitting Ryubliss away. The notion made Faust’s fur bristle with worry, and she shook her head, dismissing the thought. She ran a nublike paw along the posh, quartz breakfast bar, feeling granules of fine dust coating the surface… as if it hadn’t been touched in days. She frowned, glancing around again.

“Nym, this isn’t funny…” 

No answer… only the faint buzz of a broken, old television flickering in the living room. The once posh flat held an aura of abandonment… or perhaps neglect. Rumors had spread from island to island, until word of Nym’s supposed disappearance had reached Lychee, who’d told Faust, who’d immediately taken action, taking the first Forget-Me-Nought ship to Shift Island; she refused to believe that her friend had just… up and vanished. Not for this long. It wasn’t like Nym to do so.

The air in the apartment smelled stale, dry, even. Some appliances were still plugged in, yet inactive, likely burnt out after being in use for so long without pause. A half eaten salad was sitting, rotting on the table, smelling faintly of mold. Faust wrinkled her nose and snorted in disgust, shaking her head. She picked up the rancid plate, glancing around in search of a trash can. A half-filled wastebasket, likely meant for paper and not food-related items, was placed conveniently by the closet door. Wanting nothing more than to rid her sight of the salad, Faust unceremoniously dumped the bowl’s contents into the mesh basket, before dusting off her paws and placing the dirty dishes in the sink. The water ran in spurts, punctuated by a periodic rush of air and a splash of gritty, dark blue-green fluid  from the spout. It smelled faintly of Abyssalite blood; Faust made a mental note to check the pipes for eggs once she found Nym.

Moving on from the kitchen, the Guardian trekked up rickety stairs to the loft overlooking the living room. Nym’s nest-bed was unmade, looking more like a bird’s nest than anything, with pinkish-peach tear stains dotting the knotted covers. Faust dimly recalled Cherry telling her of how restless Nym was; the other Guardian was prone to night terrors and fits in her sleep, tearing and tangling the blankets that didn’t get kicked out of bed altogether. Faust lowered her head, sniffing the area. She caught the scent of magic, probably Nightmarish in origin, backing away with a high pitched bark.

She squeaked and, in a fit of anger, shoved all the blankets aside, half expecting to see Nym coiled up inside with that prankster grin on her face. “Nym, I’m giving you one last chance!” Much to her chagrin, there was still no sign of her fellow Ryubliss. Faust’s features contorted into a scowl, and she yelled, hackles rising. “Nym, blighted Lich, you are testing my patience!”

Faust wasn’t sure when the tears began rolling down her face, or when her anger shifted into worry, into anxiety. Her eyes, once flashing with furious glow, dimmed and flickered, until she felt her energy leave her. She sat down, her irritation melting away as she pawed at the sheets once more.

“Nevermind that…” She sighed. “I’m not mad. I promise. I just… I just wish I knew where you were…”

She didn’t even notice the faint flash of pink and orange light behind her, didn’t sense the cool autumn breeze rushing in. She didn’t hear the quiet giggle, or the soft clink of chains. Her core failed to resonate with the other Guardian’s magic as none other than Nym entered the room.

Faust failed to notice the other Ryubliss’s presence… until that frustratingly smug voice rang out, lilting through the air in an almost mocking, yet undeniably fond sing-song.

“Oh Faust~”

Faust’s eyes went wide, and she turned quickly to see Nym floating there, suspended in an aura of blazing orange and warm pink… as if nothing was wrong. Frozen by shock, she couldn’t even blink as Nym rested a paw on the dusty counter, her very touch sending arches of glowing plasma flickering and jumping over the counter’s cool surface. Nym flashed a fanged smile, her eyes twinkling with a rather Nightmarish energy.

“Miss me?”