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childrenofthenightt · 3 years ago

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That’s The Way (Chapter 3)

Pairing: Jimmy Page x Reader

Word count: 3.7k

Warning(s): smut/nsfw, cheating, cursing, angst, Y/N being a badass :)

Author’s notes: We’ll be honest...this chapter is a lot to handle 😂 which is amazing since it’s only Chapter 3 of many! We suggest taking a break throughout, because you’re gonna need it 😂 So much happens that your mind may actually explode from the drama. By the way, Jimmy is introduced in the next chapter so yay! As usual, please enjoy, happy reading, and send us messages if you have theories, comments, music recommendations for the playlist, or if you want to be added to the tag list :)

Chapters: 1 | 2

————

Paul took Y/N out to dinner that week, and they had a wonderful time together. It seemed that every conversation they had together brought them closer and closer, and Y/N was in pure bliss. From that point forward, the two became inseparable.

Y/N’s parents, however, were not super pleased that Y/N was seeing Paul, especially because they had warned her about the romantically-unattached musician’s mannerisms and habits not that long ago. They just decided to act like they liked Paul, so he wouldn’t get suspicious or feel bad.

Two members of The Yardbirds in particular (and I’m sure, dear reader, that you know who they are by now) were hit with pangs of jealousy whenever they saw Y/N constantly attached to Paul’s arm. And, to make matters worse, it was under any circumstance imaginable: parties, interviews, photoshoots, meetings, airports, train stations, hotels...the list goes on. Yes, they did spend plenty of time apart, but attraction can make a man think irrationally. Even though they were specifically and strictly told to keep their mouths shut, it was very tempting to just say the truth and end their misery. A part of Chris and Jim felt happy to see her happy, but another, traitorous side of them felt exponentially bad for her. They knew that she was being used by Paul as arm-candy, and they knew that she, of all people, did not deserve that.

But that’s the name of the game, unfortunately.

~~~~~~~~

18 February 1966

The Yardbirds were scheduled to perform on an episode of Ready, Steady, Go! that night, and Y/N decided to go and be a part of the live audience. She felt an obligation to support Paul and the band, since they were all friends (and a boyfriend, of course) now.

Before the show, Jim, Jeff, and Keith were all sitting on the stage, discussing the logistics of the rehearsals that would start soon. Y/N stood in front of the already-prepared stage and chatted with them.

“So what are you guys going to do on our days off next week?” Jeff asked.

“Spend time with my family,” Keith replied, adjusting his sunglasses.

“Not sure yet, haven’t figured it out,” Jim added.

“How ‘bout you, Miss Y/N?” Jeff nodded towards her with a smile. She answered with a soft giggle.

“I’m probably going golfing with my brother and a couple mates.”

“You golf?” Jim asked. She seemed to be getting more and more perfect by the day.

“Mmhmm,” Y/N nodded enthusiastically, “I’m bloody awful at it, but it’s fun, and I can hang out with my brother, so it’s a win-win.”

“You never told us you had siblings,” Keith smirked, tilting to the side and crossing his arms.

“Oh yeah, I have three. There’s Tommy, my older brother; Charlie, my younger brother; and Lillian, my little sister,” Y/N said.

“Wow, full house,” Jeff remarked, “I have a sister, Annetta, who I think you’d get along with quite well. I’ll have to introduce you to her soon.”

“Oh, that’d be great! I’d love to meet another Beck,” Y/N replied playfully. Jeff just laughed and shook his head.

“It’s a shame that I can’t spend time with Paul this week. He said he was busy, but he didn’t explain why,” Y/N sighed, “whatever. It’s probably legitimate, so I don’t mind. We’ve been hanging out too much anyway.” She laughed at the last part.

“He’s probably just going home to his wife,” Jim replied, thoughtlessly.

At that instant, everyone’s eyes widened, eyebrows raised, and lips downturned into a shocked, panicked frown.

“He’s...what?” Y/N asked quietly, sounding like she was about to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.

Y/N noticed that Keith and Jeff were glaring at Jim, who was clearly embarrassed at what he had revealed. He hid his eyes with his hand.

When Jeff finally found it in him to turn away from Jim, he deeply exhaled. He then reached out his hands to touch Y/N’s shoulders in an attempt to comfort her.

“Look, Y/N, you weren’t supposed to find out this way, and I’m so sorry we didn’t tell you sooner,” Jeff began, “but he is indeed married. I honestly don’t know why he wanted to pursue you, and I warned him against it because of how much we care about you, but he did it anyway.”

Tears streamed down Y/N’s face and her bottom lip started to quiver. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered, “he made it seem like I was the only one…that he was really in love with me...”

Jeff hated seeing his friend cry because of something he could have prevented. But, Y/N was somehow still beautiful when she cried.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N,” Jeff consoled gently, getting off the stage to hug her, “here, let’s take you backstage to calm you down a little.”

Y/N refused Jeff’s kind offer with a shake of the head. Through her blurry, teary-eyed vision, she just plastered on a smile, and wiped the wetness from her eyes.

“Ew,” her voice cracked, “why am I crying? That’s so gross of me, I’m so sorry. I’m definitely making you guys uncomfortable.”

The three musicians’ eyes widened at Y/N’s sudden burst of emotional strength.

“Y/N, you just found out you were Sam’s side chick, and you don’t care?” Jeff inquired, genuinely confused as to what was going on with Y/N’s emotions.

“It’s okay to be sad, love. And utterly fuming with anger. I must admit, this situation wouldn’t be as dire if it were someone else, but it’s you,” Keith added. Jim just sat in silence. He didn’t know what to say. His message destroyed Y/N’s heart and her innocence.

“I am sad, but if this ‘thing’ went on any longer, I’d probably be even more devastated. You saved me from a lot more unnecessary heartbreak, so thank you, Jim,” Y/N said. Her tone sounded completely numb.

“How are you gonna tell Sam?” Keith asked Y/N.

She exhaled deeply. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be fair of me to lash out on him before being on national television.”

“How can you care about fairness? Don’t you realize what this man has done to you?” Jeff asked, anger interlaced in his voice.

“Yes, Jeff. I do,” Y/N replied stoically, “And I’ll be fine, really. Let’s just forget about it, okay? I’m just lucky to be here, watching you perform. What song are you playing again?” Y/N tried to change the subject, but on the inside she was in deep agony and pain. She poured all of this time and emotion and her body into this cute musician boy, just to realize she didn’t matter.

“‘Shapes of Thi—’” Keith began quietly.

Jeff cut him off. “Y/N, I seriously refuse to believe you’re okay. Please, just let me help y—” he started.

“Jeff! I’m fine! Seriously,” Y/N raised her voice a little, annoyed at the nagging.

“But you seem—” Jim began, barely perceptible.

“Oh my God, Jim, I’m fine!” Y/N shouted. “I don’t care. It’s done, it’s over.”

The three men sat in silence after Y/N’s sudden outburst of anger, which was very out of character for her. She quickly realized what she had done.

“I’m so sorry for lashing out on you guys. That was uncalled for, it’s not your fault. I’m gonna go to the loo, excuse me,” she said quickly, walking out of the scene before anyone could call after her.

~~~~~~~~

Y/N stayed in the bathroom for all of rehearsals, and she finally reemerged right before the broadcast was about to start, looking as fresh as she did when she got there. It was as if the news was never even brought to her attention.

She refused to make eye contact with Paul through the entire performance, even though it was apparent that he tried to get her attention with his eyes. Chris was just confused that she wouldn’t even dare to glance at Paul. Just a little trouble in paradise that he didn’t know about maybe?

After the show and when the band went offstage, Jeff went back into the crowd to check on Y/N and brought her backstage.

“You have to confront him,” Jeff pleaded.

“I don’t want to,” Y/N whined.

“You have to, or else he’ll bloody win! You don’t want that, and I sure as hell don’t want that for you either! He is the one at fault. You have every right to fuck him up for it.”

Jeff’s little speech gave her an impulsive boost of confidence.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Get everyone out of the room, though,” Y/N stated firmly, beginning to march down the hallway behind Jeff.

Momentarily, Jeff went into the room and rounded up Keith, Jim, and Chris, and filed them down the hallway into another room orderly.

As Y/N was about to enter the room, Jeff whispered in her ear, “Good luck, kid. Knock ‘em dead.” Y/N smiled at Jeff before entering the room and closing the door behind her.

~~~~~~~~

Paul warmly smiled at Y/N as she entered the room.

“Hello, love,” he said gently, “how did you enjoy the show?”

Y/N painted on the most genuine smile she could force. “It was...almost perfect.”

Paul’s eyebrow quirked as he smiled in a confused way. “Why almost?”

“I don’t think rehearsals went as well as I had planned,” Y/N replied smoothly.

“Why? Did something bad happen to you? You’re speaking in riddles, dear.”

“Oh, I apologize,” Y/N snickered, “it’s actually so funny that you bring up riddles, because that seemed to be the exact problem at hand.”

“What does that mean? Did someone tell you something you couldn’t figure out?” Paul chuckled, “You’re confusing me.”

“I figured out that you would be going home to your wife next week.”

All the colour from Paul’s face was drained in a millisecond, and his originally jovial expression was gone. It was as if someone punched him in the gut.

“Who...who told you?” he asked, panicked.

Y/N was taken aback. “I find out I’m your side-chick and you have the audacity to ask who told me? Not an ‘I’m so sorry that I lied to you and broke your heart, Y/N’?”

Paul huffed. “And you expect me to just keep my composure when someone of your gravity walks into the room for the first time? I really am sorry, Y/N, I truly, truly am, but—”

Y/N’s calm and quiet demeanor had left the building at that point. She was mad. Really mad.

“But what? You tell me how in love you are with me, and how I’m your one and only forever, just to realize that I didn’t matter? I’m going to be eighteen years old in March. Eighteen. What do I know about love? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And you chose to take full advantage of my emotional vulnerability.”

“But you did matter. You’re so special to me, Y/N. Don’t you understand that?”

“Don’t you understand that you have a wife? You never loved me. I was never special to you. I was just another fling. But you won’t admit it to yourself.”

“The life of a travelling musician is extremely difficult, Y/N, and you don’t get that,” Paul said severely.

“And that shouldn’t be used as an excuse. You know what? We’re done. Whatever this ‘thing’ is, is over. I wish you the best,” Y/N concluded as she walked out the door and sternly shut it.

The nightmare was over and Y/N was a free agent.

Before she could debrief about her experience with any of the other Yardbirds, Y/N left the venue, caught the first taxi home, ran up into her room, and cried herself to sleep.

~~~~~~~~

22 April 1966

Y/N found recovery time and solace in those two months without Paul. She didn’t go to any Yardbirds gigs, but she sporadically met up with Jeff, Keith, Jim, and Chris at a pub or restaurant to catch up over a meal and drinks. Chris had recently mentioned to her that they were playing in London on the 22nd, and if she felt comfortable, she could attend for free and get backstage to hang out.

Y/N said she’d have to think about it, but she’d definitely consider it.

She had realized over the course of two months that she was not truly in love with Paul. Yes, she fancied him, but she must’ve mistaken the feeling of being genuinely in love with the person for being in love with the situation. Y/N concluded that this relationship was the equivalent of living out one’s childhood dreams of a romance with their schoolgirl crush.

She decided that she was retired from dating for a long time, especially because of how this shitshow ended, but a miniscule piece of her wondered when and how she’d meet her other half.

In the afternoon on the day of the show, which was to be played at the Wimbledon Palais, Y/N made the reckless decision to take a trip down to the Yardbirds’ hotel, but not for the reason you might expect.

Y/N never got the chance to thank Jim McCarty for coming clean about Paul’s infidelity to his wife by “dating” her, and to formally apologize for ripping him at the Ready, Steady, Go! rehearsals. She felt bad for being so dismissive of him, because he was always so nice to her and apparently seemed to care more about her wellbeing than Paul ever did.

Y/N stood on the platform of the train station anxiously, meticulously scheming in her mind about what she would say to Jim to truly and genuinely express her gratitude. She thought about how the encounter would go all the way to London, and all the way on her walk to the hotel.

When she arrived at the hotel, she greeted the concierge, and took the elevator to what she believed to be the Yardbirds’ floor. She took an educated guess as to which room Jim’s would be, just by what she had seen in past times. Y/N took a deep breath before knocking on the door.

When the door opened, she realized that in her best interest, her guess was correct.

“Hi,” she greeted breathily, her fingers interlaced together in front of her timidly.

“Hi,” Jim smiled. After a short moment of awkward silence, he continued, “Um, what are you doing here? Not that it’s a bad thing, which it’s not, but…” he trailed off.

“I just wanted to tell you something that I think needed to be said in-person,” Y/N said quickly.

Jim raised his eyebrows in surprised delight. “Oh, okay.” He moved out of the way of the doorframe so Y/N could enter the room, then shut the door gently behind her. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he chuckled, “make yourself at home.”

Y/N smiled and thanked him graciously, but shyly, as she sat down at a small couch at the edge of the bed. Jim was quick to follow her actions.

Y/N took a deep breath before beginning, “I just wanted to thank you for informing me about Paul in February. I know, it’s been a really long time since then… but I’ve needed some time to myself to think and refocus and recuperate, y’know?”

Jim just laughed. “You came all the way here to thank me? That’s so nice of you. You didn’t need to do that.”

Y/N grinned. “I don’t know, I felt this obligation for some reason. And in addition, I wanted to apologize for lashing out at you as well. I was just shell-shocked, I guess, and I unfairly took it out on you and Jeff.”

“If I forgave you then, I’ll still forgive you now,” Jim smiled, “don’t sweat it. In all honesty, I was surprised at how well you took the news.”

“I just wanted to be as calm and composed as possible,” Y/N blushed, “but obviously I didn’t get very far, did I?” Jim laughed at Y/N’s little jab at herself.

“Well, you’re so quiet, at least you showed a piece of your inner self that night,” Jim teased. Y/N just beamed at him.

“You know, since I owe you, now… I guess I just need to live a little, y’know? I have this introverted shell I need to break out of someday, and I might as well start now,” Y/N offered with a chuckle. “So, with that being said, let me do something for you. Anything you want.”

“Oh no, that’s too much. You didn’t even cause me any grief,” Jim retaliated playfully, “thank you, Y/N, but I think you’re overthinking this whole situation.”

“Please,” she continued with a pleading voice, “I feel awful, and plus, if it makes you feel better, you’ll be helping me clear my conscience. Jim, I’ll do anything you want, no matter how crazy… I’ll take you jet-skiing, I’ll ride on a bike in a bikini when the temperature is below freezing, I’ll clean your kitchen… anything you want me to do, I will do.”

Jim grinned at the bizarre options Y/N gave him before contemplating her invocation for a moment. Anything, huh?

“Kiss me.”

“You said you'd do anything, no matter how crazy, yes?” Y/N didn't get a chance to finish, as Jim interrupted her with a hand at her wrist, and a flinty look in his eyes, that gazed right into hers.

“I did.”

“Well,” Jim continued, stepping ever-closer to the young woman in front of him. She looked just as beautiful as she always had, if not more. Jim was convinced she was perfect, and wanted to protect her. To treat her right, the way she deserved. “You could get on your knees, in front of me.”

Kneeling down on the carpeted floor, Y/N looked up at him through her eyelashes, and the glint in her eyes made his knees weak. She looked almost shy, and he couldn't help but send a comforting smile her way.

“Have you done this before, Y/N?”

She shook her head at this, and looked down, almost embarrassed. Jim, heart pounding in his chest in anticipation, reached out a hand to lift her head. Her eyes held trust, and a hint of nervousness, but her lips quirk up in a smile, her cheeks flushing.

“I’ll walk you through it, love.” The sound of a belt clinking to the floor reached Y/N’s ears, zipper following suit, and she couldn’t help the way she almost thrummed with anticipation. Her parents had warned her against exactly this type of thing. Musicians were, according to her parents, a fickle breed, who only wanted her for her looks and body. It hurt to think of it now, when Jim was being nothing but a gentleman to her. She wanted to break out of her shell, and maybe this was the way to do it.

Y/N looks to Jim and sees him exposed, fully hard now, and her cheeks erupt into shades of rosy pink. He was big, much bigger than she would have expected, and she smiled up at him.

“Okay, love. Open your mouth.” Y/N opened her mouth, sinking it over his tip, which elicits a strained moan, full of pleasure. His hand landed in Y/N’s hair, fingers clenching gently around the tresses. The light tug Y/N felt only spurred her on.

“That’s incredible, princess. Now, try and circle your tongue. You’re doing so well.”

Y/N did as she’s told, and it’s like a spell was put over the man. He craned his head back, neck bared, as soft whimpers fell past his lips. Growing more confident, knowing now what he liked, she let her teeth rake over him lightly, which worked more moans from him, almost breathless in his euphoria.

With a murmured “fuck,” he comes, Y/N’s name the only thing on his lips. She slowly released him from her mouth, wiping her lips with the back of her hand as she stood. Jim, leaning up against the wall, was in bliss, heaving breaths and ruffling Y/N’s hair as she approached.

“That was… you're perfect, princess. Absolutely perfect.”

Y/N laughs, smile nearly splitting her cheeks, and she pressed even closer, pressing her lips to his in a soft, content embrace. She could taste the sweat on his lips, and she couldn't help but think that she could definitely get used to this feeling.

Jim revelled in the feel of her soft lips against his, and he was struck by the thought that this is exactly where he’s supposed to be. He’s where he wants to be, beside Y/N.

————

Taglist: @blood-on-blood @reincarnated70sbaby

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orbitariums · 4 years ago

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𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐦 | 𝐠𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐩 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 | 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 (𝟏𝟔)

pt. 15

note: missed u baddies~~~!!! this chapter was so hard to write but i love how it turned out, hope y’all loved it tooooo ♡

playlist *new additions!*

word count: 7.6k

warnings: age gap, smut

Absentmindedly, you picked up your phone on the end table beside you. It was positively buzzing with notifications, and you were a bit thrown off by the sheer amount of them. You furrowed your eyebrows as you skimmed through the notifications from the bottom to the top— you had a bunch of missed calls from your parents, more Snapchat notifications on your regular snap than ever, and a plethora of texts.

You wondered if something had happened, chewing slightly on your bottom lip. Was everything okay at home? Did you post something meant for your cam site on your Instagram? A hundred various circumstances fled through your mind, but none of the situations you had made up could’ve prepared you for when you opened a text from Aaliyah with a picture attached. It read:

- Attachment: 1 image

- BITCH, THIS IS LITERALLY YOU!!!

You sat up immediately, your stomach twisting nauseatingly as you looked at the image on your phone screen. You blinked a few times, rubbing furiously at your eyes like this was all a bad dream and you’d wake up in a few seconds. Because this couldn’t be happening. There was no way that you were looking at a picture of you and Steve that neither of you had taken, walking out of a restaurant you couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of right now. A sense of urgency flooding your veins, you nudged Steve harshly. He shifted in his sleep and put his arms around your waist, unaware of what was going on.

“Steve!” you hissed, your face burning.

He woke up relatively quickly, hearing the seriousness in your tone, sitting up against the pillow and facing you, his brows knitted together, muscles flexing as he supported himself on his arms.

“What’s wrong, babe?” he asked, leaning forward to see what you were showing him on your phone.

You watched his expression change from one of confusion to one of concern as he began to grasp what had happened. But, instead of talking it out with you as you expected, he cursed under his breath and ripped the bed sheets off of him, getting up out of bed. You leaned forward, your naked bottom half getting exposed to the air while he pulled on some clothes and made his way out the door.

“Where’re you going?” you called out after him, and he didn’t even bother to take a look back at you as he marched out of the apartment, muttering,

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

You tried to catch up to him, but it was too late. He was gone, and now you were alone in this apartment which felt eerily empty without him now, your phone pinging with a new notification every few seconds.

| | |

As expected, the headquarters were abuzz when Steve entered them. He had arrived in a haste, driving stoically on the busy New York streets, his mind racing just like the cars that zoomed past him. The first person to face him once he got inside was Bucky, who just gave Steve a sympathetic look and held the door open for him— Bucky already knew everything, he had figured it out a few weeks ago on his own. You and Steve had already dealt with that hiccup, and you had hoped (perhaps naively) that the situation with Bucky was just a fluke, and that nothing more like that would happen again. But you had been sorely mistaken.

Steve gave Bucky a nod, and they both made their way to the meeting room, where Steve already knew everyone would be waiting for him. Quite immaturely, he rolled his eyes at the fact that everyone was there. This matter was something personal, it had nothing to do with the rest of the Avengers, though technically it did, because Steve’s actions affected the rest of the team and he knew that. But to his own credit, he had just woken up and he was already being bombarded with messages from PR and the rest of the team about this mishap. He had to compose himself before walking in, taking a deep breath and relaxing his clenched jaw.

“Are you insane?” was the first thing Steve heard when he walked in, no doubt coming from Tony.

Steve sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets, glaring at Tony,

“Save the berating for later.”

“Were you not thinking? Is this what you were doing during your time off?” Tony continued, his hands up in the air in a questioning motion.

“Listen, Tony. I’m not here to hear what I did wrong. I’m here to solve this issue right now, whatever that means.”

“You’re gonna wanna see this,” Sam said reluctantly, sliding a magazine across the table for Steve to see.

It was one of those ridiculous celebrity gossip magazines, and multiple pictures of Steve and you were highlighted on the front page. Steve prepared for the worst as he read the headlines: “Captain America with Mystery Girl?” and “Who is Captain America’s New Boo?” He opened the magazine to more unsavory headlines, and to his extreme dismay, pictures of you from your personal Instagram highlighted.

He raised his eyebrows as he read: “More on Captain America’s New Girl.” They had found your name, your age, and worst of all, your profession. Steve was seeing red as he forced himself to keep reading the salacious article which made you out to be a deviant with ulterior motives, abusing inaccurate phrases like, “an unemployed college girl turned porn star” and, “the face of Captain America’s midlife crisis!”

Steve’s face burned white hot as he scanned the article, barely even registering the content and instead finding himself growing more and more angered by the inflammatory statements that were being made.

“That’s enough,” Nat finally spoke up, watching the expressions on Steve’s face grow more and more catastrophic.

She snatched the magazine away from Steve and shoved it across the table, folding her arms and glaring down the table at Tony.

“You okay?” Bucky asked, reaching a hand out to Steve’s shoulder. He could feel Tony’s angry glare focused on him, while everyone else gazed at him pitifully.

Steve sighed, jerking his shoulder away from Bucky’s touch. He couldn’t even pinpoint his emotions, all he was feeling right now was rage. He was angry at himself, feeling like he somehow let this happen, even though deep down he could hear your voice telling him that he was doing everything right and that it wasn’t his fault. He was angry that now, your privacy and safety were on the line, and people who didn’t know a thing about you were making absurd assumptions about you.

He felt like yelling, punching something, doing anything to let out this anger so he could at least have some sort of vessel for this fury he was feeling. But he stood painstakingly still, trying to hear your voice over all the noise, your voice telling him everything was okay even though right now all signs were saying that everything was not okay.

“You have to deny everything,” Tony sighed after moments of awkward silence. “She’s your assistant and you were undercover acting as boyfriend and girlfriend, something convincing but not as exposing as that. And you’re getting your legal team to sue all these publications for false claims and defamation.”

Steve furrowed his brows, staring at Tony,

“They aren’t false claims.”

Tony shrugged flippantly,

“If you want everyone to think Captain America is sleeping with a porn star, then so be it. But it’s going to cost you if you think for a second I’m gonna let that slide on our team-”

Steve cut him off, losing the calming hum of your voice in his mind in a new wave of anger,

“She’s not a porn star, she’s a college graduate and the owner of an online brand and a sex worker, and that’s more than a lot of people her age can say, so don’t get brave because of these god damn articles, Stark.”

“Listen, Cap,” Tony spat sarcastically. “I don’t give a shit who she is. The point is that in this case, your opinion on her doesn’t matter because everyone else is going to say whatever the fuck they want to say. And that’s bad for you, it’s bad for us, and it’s bad for her, if you care as much as you claim to.”

“Don’t act like I didn’t think about this,” Steve lurched forward, slamming his hands on the table. “She’s more than just some girl to me. Don’t act like every waking second I didn’t worry that something like this would happen. Like, like I didn’t take every precaution I could, look over my shoulder every five seconds. I’m not as stupid as you want me to be, Stark.”

Of course Steve cared about his team and how this would affect the Avengers, but the last straw was the media coming for you, putting your privacy and your safety at stake. Your job and the details of your job were extremely sensitive, and you were just beginning to make a name for yourself in the real world. Steve honestly felt like this was worse for you than it was for him. He knew he had to take care of this first, for logistical reasons, but when he was done, he’d get right to you as soon as possible.

Tony sighed, softening just a bit.

“Listen. You know what you have to do. After the Accords, this… this isn’t the kind of attention that we need. Regardless of that, we can’t have this. You’re making a statement today, and you know what you have to say. PR’s already contacting the publishers of these bullshit articles. As for your little girlfriend, if we’re not careful, she could be in huge danger. You know the kind of people we deal with, and how fast they would swing at a chance to grab her when they think she’s unprotected. That’s exactly why you need to deny everything, and we’ll do all the damage control possible. Not that there’s even much we can fix at this point.”

Steve glared all around the table, only to see faces of the rest of the members of the team looking up at him expectantly. He needed to explain himself. How’d he even get into this mess, what was he thinking, the usual. And Steve knew that that was his responsibility— as Captain America. As the leader. As a part of the team. Right now, he was just himself. Steve Rogers. And all that Steve Rogers was worried about was you. Regardless of what you said, the fact that you could be in danger scared the shit out of him, and also put him into this almost primitive, dominant mode. He needed to protect you. He didn’t care about reactions and rumors, he needed to make sure you were safe.

“Talk later,” was all Steve said, turning out of the room and ignoring Tony calling his name. When he got into the car he slammed the door shut and began the drive home.

His mind was swarming with thoughts, about what this meant for his team, for his job, all the things he’d left unaddressed in the meeting room. He knew this wasn’t his fault, he knew that’s what you would say, but Steve wasn’t going to let himself off this easily. He was livid about the fact that the magazines and web articles had found you out so quickly and had posted pictures of you, giving away personal information about you and jeopardizing you as if you deserved it at all. So he drove home in a silent, fuming rage.

By the time Steve came home, you, too were beside yourself with anger. You’d seen the posts your friends and family were sending you, and your social media was getting flooded with spam and comments from people who didn’t know the first thing about you. Some were downright cruel, others were oddly interested in this situation that was meant to be private all along. You hadn’t even called your parents yet or explained yourself to anyone, all you did was text them and tell them you’d get back to them later when you figured this all out. The only person you wanted to talk to at this point was Steve, and he wasn’t even there, nor was he answering his phone and you knew he had it on him.

The fact that he had seen the news and just left immediately, not giving you any sort of comfort or advice, not even beginning to work through this together, had you fuming. You knew that just like you, Steve had people to explain himself to and others to reach out to. But as far as you were concerned, you should’ve been the first person he talked to about this— he should’ve worked with you to at least talk about how to fix this before he just marched out the way he did.

You thought you had both worked past his eternal faithfulness to his job and the pressure to be dominant that he felt all the time, felt you had reached the core of the superhuman. But him leaving as promptly as he did only proved you wrong. You didn’t want to go through this alone, you wanted to go through this with him, as it was about the both of you in the first place.

He came in and you looked up from your phone, where you were scrolling worriedly through the trending Twitter hashtag about you and Steve. Everyone was giving their unwarranted opinions, and you honestly worried how this would impact you— tons of information about you had been revealed without your consent, and it did not at all make you look good to the typical eye.

“Where did you go?” you asked him quietly, glaring up at him.

He seemed to sense your anger and sighed, shrugging his shoulders in a resigned manner,

“Headquarters. Had to sort some things out.”

“Do you know how long I’ve been sitting here scrolling through pictures of me that are from my fucking cam site? Strangers exchanging information about me on the internet, seeing all this shit about us? And you just— just left? You didn’t even try to talk to me, Steve, honestly, what the fuck?” you snapped, your upper lip curling up angrily.

Steve glided over to you, sitting beside you on the side of the bed and trying to get close to you. He truly felt sorrowful for leaving you alone, he wished you had known how much he wanted to talk to you while he was being berated by Tony. He only wished you had known how little he cared about the logistics because you were on his mind the whole time.

But he knew you were right, he had left without even trying to sort things out with you, left you to handle things on your own without even giving you an inch of support or telling you where he was going and what he planned for when he got back.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Steve apologized, his tone genuine, trying to catch your eye. He finally did, and even though you still glared angrily at him, he grinned at the fact that you were at least looking at him. “I should’ve been here for you, and dealt with all the other logistics later. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, honestly, angel. I didn’t… I didn’t know-”

He didn’t know that your image was being plastered around everywhere, that you were being unpacked by attention-seeking publications. Your safety and your privacy came before the reputation of his team, before all the logistics. That was all he had wanted to protect this entire time. You. Looking into Steve’s eyes, you could see that they were almost glassy, and you shifted from anger to concern quickly.

“Baby,” you cradled your arms around his head, frowning. “No, no, I’m… I’m being stupid, of course you have to handle shit with your job first, I should know that. I just wish we could’ve processed this emotionally first. Instead of separating from each other first thing.”

“No,” Steve said firmly, pulling away from your touch and placing strong, grounding hands on your shoulders. “No, you are completely valid, and you’re right to be angry with me, doll. I should’ve taken a moment. That’s- that’s what we’ve been working on this entire time and you’ve been trying to teach me to step outside of my anxieties and all my duties. And I should’ve been here for you. I didn’t even take the time to comfort you. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” you smiled softly, and he pulled you in for a hug, nuzzling his face in your neck.

This was the warmest you’d ever felt with him, just sitting there with him calmly in the midst of all the chaos, finding peace and stillness in each other’s arms. Anywhere else but in each other’s arms felt dangerous and uncertain, and now that you were here together, you were starting to look up. Everything was still shitty, but maybe together, things would feel less shitty.

“Listen, you’ll be okay. I’m sorry for all of this, I know what you’re going to say, but I know that I’m partially responsible. I just wanted to keep you safe, and, fuck.”

You chuckled quietly to yourself, your faces only inches apart when you brought your hands up to cup and graze Steve’s cheeks lovingly,

“You still blame yourself for everything. You can’t control what these fucking publications do. You know that. And selfishly, the risk of getting caught is worth taking, if it means I get to be with you.”

Steve melted into your touch, but still there was that stiff part of him that wanted to blame himself for this mess,

“We’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this one, doll,” he laughed wistfully. “But, you didn’t teach me for naught. Instead of pitying ourselves, we’re gonna work on this, right?”

You nodded with a smile,

“Yes, yes, exactly.”

Steve sighed before continuing, frowning as he remembered the hostile air in the office.

“They told me to deny everything and get my legal team involved, but I…” Steve paused, feeling his anger and defiance resurge.

If they were going to expose you two, then so be it, it was true. If he didn’t tell the truth, if he denied all the “allegations,” he was just letting them win. He was letting them silence him, letting him think he was doing something wrong because he had found you, his happiness. And sure, your relationship was easy to publicize and critique because it was controversial for many obvious reasons— the age difference, the sensitive nature of your jobs.

But Steve didn’t care what they had to say. All he cared was that this didn’t push you apart. And if it meant telling the truth, he’d do that. The bombardment of rumors and questions would pass eventually. Nothing could soil the Avengers for long. If he handled this the way the public expected him to handle it— with some spineless apology or some weak minded statement, it wouldn’t be fair to you. Not when you and Steve were together.

He continued,

“I’m not going to. I’m not denying a thing. I’ll release a statement on my own… I’ll… I’ll tell the truth. I’ll get them to leave you alone and take down whatever they’ve posted about you. I don’t care what they have to say about us. Just… they can’t mess with you.”

Steve’s fists balled up inadvertently in frustration and anger, but he was also feeling a surge of pride, courage. He didn’t have to deal with this the way everyone wanted him to. This was a personal matter, and even though it affected his job and his team, Steve had been through too much in the past few weeks to let the public play him the way they wanted to. There would be drama, and talk, but it would all subside as it always did. He’d always be Captain, and as long as he had a good heart and good intentions, and did his job right, he didn’t give a shit about what strangers had to say about who he was in love with.

You blinked, shocked and puzzled by Steve’s words. This was like a full 180, you weren’t used to Steve rebelling like this. You figured maybe he was just worked up, and you didn’t want to be the reason he got in trouble. You knew he had his responsibilities, regardless of how you felt. You didn’t expect him to put you above everything, you knew he had to deal with matters like this in a specific way. You tried to calm him down,

“Steve, you’re sweet. But you should go through with what your team wants. I mean, it’s what’s best, isn’t it?”

Steve cocked his head at you,

“And keep doing this in secret? I mean, we can’t keep this up for long, doll, you know that. If I deny it now and the truth somehow comes out, that’d be even worse. I know my team is saying the opposite, but I think this is what’s best. The rumors, the gossip… it’ll come to a stop. What we have is stronger than that.”

You grinned, your eyes glossy,

“I know, but I don’t wanna be the reason you get in trouble.”

Steve inched closer to you and cupped your face firmly with his hands, looking into your eyes,

“You’re not. And you won’t be. Don’t blame yourself for a second. I’m taking care of this, alright? You’ve done so much for me and you don’t even know it. It would be a disservice to the both of us if I didn’t stand up for us. Don’t worry about me, don’t worry about my job. I was wrong to ever make you feel like that was your responsibility more than it was my own. We’ll be alright.”

Steve was true to his word. As the day progressed and word spread even more, soon enough there was a statement to match the rumors. It wasn’t what the publicists or his fellow Avengers wanted to hear, but it was what he thought was right. And there was no reversing it. Later that day you sat on your laptop, scrolling through the recently updated articles on your situation.

Superhero Captain America, known to those in his personal life as Steve Rogers, admits that he has been in a private relationship for the past few months. Rogers and his team ask that their privacy be maintained and respected despite the shocking, unexpected news. At the time, Rogers and his fellow Avengers will not be taking any further inquiries about the matter, and they are taking this violation of privacy and security very seriously.

You breathed out a sigh of relief as you read the statement, mulling it over a few times in your head. All Steve wanted was to keep you safe and get as much information that had been revealed about you taken down. You weren’t quite sure what you were going to do from here on out— your sensitive profession had been exposed and this was something that would quite likely impact you for the rest of your life.

How could you be expected to be taken seriously to get a career when you had been trashed and defamed on the internet for your job? It seemed that still, no one quite understood sex work and that it was just as legitimate a profession as anything else, and you knew from the start that sex workers were looked down upon. You had done everything right— you used an alias, you didn’t give away personal information. And now, your face was plastered on gossip websites, with links to the very cam site you used.

Needless to say, you were stressed. But, you weren’t panicking. You were processing everything and it was all so overwhelming. In the grand scheme of things, you weren’t being nitpicky about the specifics. You had faith that you would figure this all out, that everything would be back to normal soon. Whatever that meant for your future, you weren’t sure. But you refused to lose hope. Not yet. You’d pick yourself back up from the ground and dust yourself off, just like you’d done so many times before. The difference was that Steve would be there for you every step of the way.

Steve was out again handling important business. He’d talked to you before leaving and you understood that he’d have to be gone for a few hours trying to juggle this insane situation. In the meantime, you decided that since you had time, you’d call back everyone who had been bombarding you with messages and calls. Firstly, you’d call your parents. You dialed your dad’s number and he picked up almost immediately.

You could hear him calling your mother’s name so she could talk to you too, and you heard her scramble up to the phone to talk.

“YN, what the hell is going on?” your mother asked, but she sounded more concerned than upset.

“We’ve been calling all day, we’ve been worried sick. Everyone’s been asking about you and we had no clue what was going on,” your father continued.

You were surprised at their tone. Perhaps ever since your awkward dinner with them where you’d revealed what was likely your biggest secret, there had been a shift. You were surprised when they were so quick to accept you despite being so distant from you your whole life, being the root of your emotional issues. You sighed, rubbing your forehead,

“Look, I know it’s a lot.”

“Are you okay, sweetie? Be honest,” your mother pleaded, and you made a face,

“I’m fine, it’s been a stressful day, but-”

“No, I mean in general. We… we know we haven’t been talking much, but this… this whole thing, it’s-- we’re worried about you. You just go off to New York without saying a thing to anyone? You’re in some secret relationship with a man twice your age?”

You understood their concern, but at the same time, you knew you weren’t being irrational by doing these things. Instead, you were doing what made you happy. This wasn’t a spontaneous, crazy decision. You and Steve were both extremely logical people, and you weren’t unstable just because you did this without anyone knowing. You had your reasons.

“Look, I… this is something I did on my own. I’m an adult and I’m doing what's best for me. And, obviously, there was a reason I didn’t tell anyone. I mean, he’s- he’s not just some random guy. And what we have is… you might not understand it, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.”

“I just wish you felt like you could talk to us.”

“Yeah. Me too. Listen, I just wanted to call you to let you know that I’m fine. I don’t really know what’s next, but I’ll try to keep you updated, alright? Don’t worry about me, everything will be okay.”

“What about all those posts about you? The things people are saying, it’s- and your safety! This is serious.”

“Dad, I know. We are working it out, believe me. I’m just as worried as you are. I’m probably more worried. But you know what, I knew the risk in coming here, and I knew what I was doing. And I’m still glad I did it. Steve means so much to me, and I’m not gonna let this change that. But all that matters is that I’m okay. I just wanted to call you and tell you that.”

“Well, we’re glad to hear that you’re okay. There’s just so much about you that we’re just now finding out, we have every reason to be worried.”

“Yes, you do, and you’re right. If things were different… well. Anyways. I love you both, I’ll call you later,” you said, hanging up without waiting for them to reply.

At least that was off your plate.

| | |

The next morning, you woke up with Steve by your side, holding you in his arms. Needless to say, yesterday had been incredibly eventful, and by the time Steve got back home, there was nothing left to do except sleep the day off. It seemed as if your troubles were far in the past, considering how quickly everything had been handled. You had to hand it to Steve, he was the one who had to talk to so many people yesterday- legal teams, PR, his team members, just to clear the air. And of course, people were still talking about everything. But the initial shock and widespread reaction from yesterday was already beginning to calm down. It was still a bit dark in the bedroom, and Steve was still asleep, his arms wrapped around you.

You stretched to reach your phone on the side table and started scrolling. There were still articles up and pictures of you up, but Steve was working to wipe those out to protect your privacy. You chewed on your bottom lip worriedly. Even after this was all over, you’d have to figure out what the hell you were going to do. Would you have to stop camming? Would you have to throw away all hopes of any other career as well? This was all on your mind.

Suddenly, Steve’s hand was wrapped around your phone, pulling it out of your grasp. He sighed sleepily, his voice still groggy and deep,

“What’d I tell you about that?”

“I know…” you pouted, turning to face him. His eyes were closed, but you knew he was listening. “Shouldn’t keep looking for updates.”

“Mm,” Steve hummed. “You’ll be alright, YN. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Promise?” you asked.

“I promise.”

That was all the reassurance you needed for now.

Eventually, you both woke up and got ready for the day. You weren’t doing much of anything, since you’d have to stay low for a few days. But it meant you got to be in each other’s company all day, so you weren’t exactly complaining. You were laying in between Steve’s legs on the couch, your head resting on his chest.

Today was supposed to be your last day, but due to recent events, there had been a change in plans. You would probably stay here until this all settled, then go back to Cali and deal with business back home. Luckily for you, your friends were supportive all the way. They were astonished and shocked of course, but incredibly happy for you. They’d be there for you just as much as Steve would.

“You okay, doll?” Steve asked, and you glanced up at him.

“Good as I can be. Are you okay?” you asked.

“Better than yesterday,” Steve chuckled, his blue eyes glimmering. “My team is still working on taking down any private information about you, by the end of this week, we should be all good-”

“Steve,” you flopped over, straddling his legs now. Instinctively, he reached up to caress your arm and your thigh.

“Hmm?” he hummed, looking up at you.

“What happens after this? I mean, as far as I’m concerned, any hopes of getting a serious job are kind of fucked now.”

“That’s not true,” Steve furrowed his brows, frowning. He didn’t want you to feel like this incident would mess up your whole future.

“Steve, I majored in environmental policy. That’s like, government job type shit. I have to be someone who’s reputable. And I don’t know many people who are looking to hire a porn star sugar baby. I mean, that’s what everyone’s been calling me.”

“But you’re not that. And once we clear up all this, I promise you, no one will think that about you. you’ Besides, Stark Industries is always looking for people like that, you could work for-”

You put your finger to his lips, shaking your head with a small smile,

“Ah ah ah. You know I like to do things myself.”

You didn’t want to just beat around the bush and take the easy way out of all this. You liked knowing that you were accomplishing what you were accomplishing all on your own. If you worked for Steve or his team, it would just feel like giving up.

“I know, and I love that about you. But why make things so hard on yourself?”

You shrugged,

“I don’t see it like that. I see it like… like making my own way. You know? I’d probably be set for life if I worked for Tony Stark. But… I don’t know, it’s just a thing I have. I like to get it myself.”

Steve sighed slowly, shaking his head with a sly smile. His girl, such a go-getter. That aspect of you was honestly a turn-on for him. You didn’t want anyone to be able to say they did something major for you, and even though there were flaws within that ideology, he had to give you credit where credit was due. You were a hard worker. You liked to do things on your own and know that you were where you were because of your own discipline and hard work. Not because your boyfriend had recommended you.

“You are something else,” Steve shook his head.

“Mm hmm,” you grinned knowingly, stretching your hands along his chest.

“Listen, I can’t predict the future. But I will be there for you. And I know how much you like to hustle and do things on your own, but it’s good to accept help sometimes, doll. And I want to help you through this. Don’t think the worst of everything. You’ve always managed, even in the worst of times. This is no different. No job you apply for is going to try to judge you, I can guarantee you that. I’ll make sure of that, no matter how much you try to stop me.”

You scoffed, smirking,

“You’re such a guy.”

“I do it for you.”

Accepting help. Maybe Steve was right. Just because you accepted someone’s help didn’t mean you hadn’t done something on your own. And when it came to something like this, you needed all the help you could get, even if you didn’t want to admit that. It didn’t make you any less of an independent woman.

| | |

You woke up to thousands more follower requests the next day as you ate breakfast sitting at the kitchen counter. Steve was at the stove, finishing up his own plate, and you were chewing your eggs pensively as you scrolled through your Instagram. Ever since the day everything went down, you’d been getting a lot of attention. Most of it was honestly unwanted. Magazines you actually read were DMing you, asking to interview you, wanting the inside scoop on “the life of Captain America’s girlfriend.” You didn’t pay them any mind, because that was attention you didn’t want. You cringed to think of yourself being interviewed by a reporter about personal matters for fifteen minutes of fame.

But the attention wasn’t all bad, and now that you thought about it, maybe your future wouldn’t be so scary. Whether you liked it or not, you were almost like a celebrity now, and celebrities always had their scandals and their speculations, and they still got booked. Maybe this was meant to be, to steer your life in a different direction.

It didn’t seem ideal, and you didn’t even want fame. You certainly didn’t want to be known as “Steve Rogers’ girlfriend.” If you knew one thing, it was that you were going to make a name out of yourself before people tried to make one for you. Now that you were thinking about it, you could honestly seize this opportunity.

Even the sales for your clothing brand had hiked up since that day. People actually took an interest in what you had to offer, and you’d rather they take an interest in that than your personal life. You had no real interest in becoming some mystical figure or some it girl who was on Steve’s arm. You were just a regular, hardworking girl from California, and you wouldn’t lose sight of that. But if this was going to happen, you were going to take advantage of it.

“Steve,” you said his name, and he turned to face you, putting his plate together.

“Yeah?”

“Look at my Instagram,” you pointed your phone screen towards him and he squinted. “All these follower requests. And I keep getting orders, this is insane.”

Steve grinned, beaming. He was glad that something good was coming out of all this for you. He knew you didn’t want or like attention, but this went to show that all eyes on you wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He knew you knew how to flip it and turn it into something beneficial for you. You weren’t the kind of girl to bask in attention just because. You would make something out of this.

“I’m proud, YN, honestly. You know that’s all you, right?”

You chuckled, shaking your head,

“Kinda crazy to wrap my head around. I don’t wanna be this sensationalized person or this public figure, but, fuck. This isn’t at all how I imagined my life going. I could make something out of this. It’s such a turn around, but maybe it was supposed to happen.”

“I’m sorry about all this unwanted attention. But if I know you, you’ll make it work.”

It was interesting, this unwanted celebrity. You had to accept that people would start to know you. You could capitalize off this and highlight your brand, make people pay attention to that instead of your private life. You could even put your studies to work and create an environmental company. You wouldn’t just work for Stark Industries, you’d create an industry of your own. Of course, this was all in theory, and you had to gather yourself before you did those things. But the fact that this was possible just because of some unwanted attention reminded you that you could always flip a bad situation into something ten times better.

| | |

“Fuck, Steve, I can’t,” you were panting heavily, sweat dripping down your forehead as you grasped onto his biceps.

Safe to say, since you were laying low and there wasn’t much to do, this was a very reliable option, every time. Now that the stress of the past few days was winding down, you were finally able to focus on what you had both been neglecting, which was each other’s bodies. Every time Steve was inside you, it was as good as the first time, if not better. You’d been going at it for hours now, partially because Steve didn’t have anything else to do and his endurance was ridiculous. You almost wanted to slap his pretty face for being able to go so long like this, drawing out your pain and your pleasure so effortlessly, only to kiss his cheek afterwards.

“Yes you can, doll, I know you can,” Steve said, not nearly as breathless as you were— it was safe to say sex with Steve was a workout. “Come for me just one more time.”

“Mm,” you whined, lifting yourself up with the help of Steve’s hands clasped beneath your shaking thighs, feeling him shift inside you. You cursed, biting down on your lip and glancing down at where you two met with your brows wrung together.

You were a mess. Both you and Steve had already came multiple times, but Steve wasn’t in a rush. He was honestly handcrafted by the devil. And since you were together, Steve had grown so much more confident. You switched in bed, sometimes you took the lead and sometimes Steve did, and sometimes it wasn’t about who was in the lead. But right now, Steve had you about to beg for mercy.

“Fuck, that looks so good, just watching me stretch you out like that,” Steve groaned, his eyes lowering to watch you slowly drop up and down on his cock, which was coated in your slick arousal. “You like this? Riding me for hours, coming over and over again on my cock?”

You shuddered with an almost humiliating moan, nodding your head because you weren’t able to speak. But Steve wasn’t letting you off that easy. He gripped your jaw with his hand, prying your mouth open.

“Use your words,” he said, nodding slowly and mouthing ‘yes.’

“Yes,” you stuttered out, feeling as Steve pulsed inside of you. You sounded ridiculous, pathetic, and you knew you looked absolutely filthy in the best way possible. You began to ramble. “Yes, yes, I love when you take me like this and— fuck— force me to come for you.”

“Mmm,” Steve hummed like he was taking your words into consideration, mulling it over in his mind. “Yeah. You love this. You look so pretty like this.”

Pretty wasn’t the word you’d use to describe it. It was messy. You were practically drooling, and your body felt as exposed as it had ever been. Steve’s own cum from the previous times he came was pouring out of you each time you slid down onto him, and you were incredibly wet still. The sound your bodies made meeting was almost criminal. You were hot and sticky and sweaty and still somehow ridiculously gorgeous to Steve, and you looked even better when he was torturing you with pleasure.

You gasped raggedly when Steve had the audacity to bring his fingers down to your clit, those thick, unforgettable fingers that he used to stretch you out every time before you took his cock, rubbing harsh circles against your sensitive clit. Your whole body seemed to shudder, and Steve chuckled lowly, not even trying to hide the smirk that appeared on his face. Oh, you would so be getting him back for this.

“That feel good, doll?”

“Fuck,” you whined, your hand flinging to his wrist to keep his fingers there doing the same motion.

Your body seemed to tighten and coil up, your eyes squeezing shut before you let go, and before you knew it, you were cumming on his cock. Or more like squirting, the way it seemed never ending and made your whole body convulse. Steve groaned as you soaked his torso and his legs, stilling yourself on his length and riding your orgasm out. He must have come inside you a few times while you were squirting. Wet tears, the good, hot kind, were forming down your cheeks as you come for what feels like the hundredth time in the span of a few slow, tantalizing hours.

“There you go, darling, I knew you could do it,” Steve finally pulled out of you, still hard against his stomach. He reached up and wiped the tears off your face. “Now do that again on my face.”

Fuck. You’d get him back another day.

| | |

“Oh fuck, right there,” you sighed in ecstasy.

Steve’s hands were kneading into your back with expertise. He seemed to know just what he was doing, relieving all the tension from your spine and shoulders, and god knows you needed it. It had been about a week since the news came out, and everything seemed much less urgent now.

Reports about you two were dwindling, especially because you had stayed lowkey and didn’t flaunt your relationship about town. But it was almost freeing that you had the liberty to do so now, even if your relationship had been unfairly exposed. At least now, you could go out together without wondering if you’d get caught.

Steve chuckled and finished up, rolling off of you and facing you on the bed, his eyes glittering as he smiled at you.

“You know,” you started, reaching your hand out to stroke his cheek. “I’m kinda glad this all happened. Is that selfish?”

“No,” Steve grinned, shaking his head and reveling in the touch of your hand on his cheek. He grasped your wrist, gazing into your eyes.

These past few months had been such a whirlwind for the both of you. The both of you were doing things that surprised you, that made you endlessly happy. Steve had never felt more grateful for anything or anyone in his life. You helped him grow, and he did the same for you. He couldn’t see his future without you, and he didn’t even want to imagine it. He knew you were irreplaceable, he knew this was meant to be. Your odd circumstances and the unconventional way you met seemed to emphasize that truth. There was a reason why he had been so blue without you, and there was a reason why he had come back. Deep down, he knew all along that it was worth it, that you were worth it. Nothing else had ever been so clear to him, especially in that moment, gazing into your deep, warm eyes.

His heart blossomed with that irrevocable feeling, and before he could stop himself, the words were bubbling out of his mouth,

“I love you.”

You didn’t have to think, didn’t have to second guess yourself before you replied. You knew it all along, it was just a matter of time before one of you actually said it. And now, after you’d been through so much together, after you’d taught each other so much, and healed from so much as a collective, there was no reluctance. You weren’t scared to admit that it was true.

“I love you,” you said, with a soft grin and a dreamy look in your eyes.

You didn’t know how long you stayed there together, looking at each other and kissing and holding each other, but it was enough time to make you forget the world.

ayeeee!!! as a bonus, i’m including this lil thing i made, it’s supposed to be what i imagine moonrose’s IG to look like! the pictures are not her faceclaims, they’re just black women that i imagine moonrose to look like LMAO but she’s free to look like whatever u want her to ♡ this is her aesthetic!!

ENJOY! new chapter soon hopefully!!!!

tags added later ♡

#the l bomb #steve rogers #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers smut #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x yn #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel fic #smut #captain america #captain america fic #captain america smut #captain america x reader

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pluckyredhead · 4 years ago

Note

What's the top 10 worst things about HiC

Oh god, it took me FOREVER to narrow this down. There are so many bad things about it!!!

Literally I’m not even going to address all the little talking heads therapy sessions and how thoroughly riddled with continuity errors and godawful characterization they are, because there’s so much else wrong with the book. Just trust that they’re a mess, even if King is trying to be Intellectual (TM) by putting them in a nine-panel grid. WE GET IT. YOU’VE READ WATCHMEN.

I’m also not putting “they killed Roy” on the list because it’s comics, characters die. The fact that this book was a slaughterhouse is a problem (see below, #2), but the fact that one of those deaths happened to be one of my favorite characters is a bummer but not necessarily evidence that the book is bad. (The book is so bad.)

But okay, so the rest of it, from least-worst to worst-worst:

10. That Poison Ivy cover: Clay Mann draws beautiful people but for some reason he decided that the cover to #7 should be a dead Poison Ivy on her stomach, cleavage pressed against the floor, her spine arched EVEN THOUGH SHE IS DEAD in order to lift her ass in the air so that the reader can see both T and A at once. This was leaked and then ultimately pulled before it hit stands and Tom King tweeted that he'd never liked it, but it’s very telling to me that either literally no one noticed how gross this cover fetishizing a dead woman was before the internet protested, or DC actively planned to use a sexy dead woman to sell comics. In their book that was supposed to be about trauma and mental health and recovery.

10b. Babs, a theoretical protagonist of this book, sexily peeling her pants down to show her bullet scars, which shouldn’t even look like that due to all the surgery she’s had: We get it, you’re only interested in women’s trauma if it’s sexy. She doesn’t even get to talk on this page.

10c. The full splash page of Lois in her underwear, saying “What do you want me to do?” like she’s inviting the reader to bone her in the middle of this story about death and trauma: Stop!!! Just stop!!!

9. The laziness of everything having to do with Booster: Okay yeah, I’m gonna be fannishly self-involved about another one of my faves here, but Booster is legitimately one of the main characters of the series, along with the Trinity, Harley, Babs, and Wally. And yet the “trauma” that places him at Sanctuary was part of a hastily shoehorned-in Batman arc directly before HiC that writes him deeply out of character (he carelessly changes the timeline when despite the fact that he’s spent 15 years protecting the timeline, including the Superman arc he starred in literally directly prior to the Batman one), instead of anything endemic to the character (because spoiler, Tom King doesn’t actually know anything about the character). The series then entirely fails to address it, hanging Booster’s emotional arc instead on his friendship with Ted...a friendship that explicitly does not exist in the Rebirth timeline. The Ted/Booster friendship/marriage is literally my favorite relationship in the entirety of the DCU, but you don’t get to rest a protagonist’s entire arc on a relationship that was retconned out of existence seven years prior and then retconned away again. Do the work. Don’t copy Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis’s papers from 31 years ago.

8. Interpretive hand jiving through the pain: You know how some people have to leave the room when characters do something very embarrassing on television? I’ve never been like that, just Jesus Christ I had to read this page between my fingers. Y i k e s :

7. Harley beating the Trinity in a fight: Come on. Harley couldn’t take a single one of them on her own, let alone all three. Don’t warp the characters to make your MC look more badass and keep the plot moving. (King also wrote Catwoman beating THREE SPEEDSTERS in his Batman run, which again: no. Absolutely not. Stop it.)

6. That Watchman reference: See above re: being so embarrassed for someone you have to read through your fingers. If you haven’t read Watchmen, the line “I did it 35 minutes ago” is extremely famous and absolutely a mic drop moment. It’s not a mic drop moment here. The characters are completely different and talking about completely different things. The only thing Heroes in Crisis has in common with Watchmen (besides copying the use of the nine-panel grid, like I said before) is that it’s about how heroes are fucked up, I guess? Which is hardly a bold statement in 2018; it’s actively cliche now, in fact. The only purpose referencing Watchmen serves here is to let the reader know that Tom King has read Watchmen, which is both pretentious because it is Art and ridiculous because it’s one of the bestselling comics of all time and millions of people have read it.

5. The abysmal “journalistic ethics” on display: There are so many characters literally and figuratively assassinated in this book that it’s easy to miss that Lois is one of them. But here’s a tip: when someone’s medical information is leaked to you, it is not in fact your obligation to share that with the world, no matter who they are. That is not information meant for public consumption, which we might assume Lois knows, since she doesn’t usually share the private business of her husband or her son or their cousin or any of their friends that she is also friends with. But suddenly she’s forgotten that because it’s on a zip drive? Not only does that show horrifying journalistic ethics from both Lois and Clark, who seems to think she had no other choice, it’s also ableist as hell - what, if someone has mental health problems or experienced trauma on the job they’re automatically a danger to the public? And despite the attempt to make this feel like a big twist, there’s actually zero point to it, because a) we never see civilians reacting to this information and b) there are literally zero consequences to publishing it in this or any subsequent comic. It’s never even mentioned again. If a tree publishes all of a superhero’s medical information and deep dark secrets in a forest and no one reacts to it in any way, shape, or form, does it make a sound?

4. The actual premise: I do sort of believe that Bruce would think “go to the middle of nowhere surrounded by robots wearing creepy robes and masks and tell your secrets to cameras which are then wiped and interact with no one” = therapy, although if that’s the case I don’t know why he keeps bothering to put people in Arkham, which at least allows them to talk to other humans. But under no circumstances do I think either Clark or Diana would go along with this horrible, horrible idea, that offers no genuine help to anyone. Not only does the fact that it’s implausible undercut literally everything that happens within the framework of Sanctuary’s existence, it’s just one of many examples of how almost everyone acts completely out of character all the time in order to keep the plot chugging along.

3. Bruce’s terrible detective skills: The World’s Greatest Detective spends like six issues seriously thinking that either Booster Gold or Harley Quinn is the killer. Booster or Harley! Booster has neither the temperament nor the ability to kill on that level and Harley would never hurt Ivy, plus neither of them are a match for Wally (who is believed to be dead at this point), and Bruce should know that. Again, weak characterization all around, but it’s especially egregious given that King wrote Batman for A HUNDRED ISSUES.

2. Wally’s character assassination: This is a three-parter:

2a. Logistical: It makes no fucking sense. Wally got his own corpse to the crime scene by traveling five days into the future and killing his future self. Everyone sees the corpse. Then Booster, Ted, Harley, and Babs talk him out of killing himself. But...he already did that and everyone saw the corpse, so now we have a paradox that’s never addressed.

2b. Moral: The comics have tried desperately to walk Wally’s actions back in the past two years, emphasizing that he didn’t mean to kill TWELVE PEOPLE, including one of his best friends. It was an accident! But he still framed Booster and Harley for literally no reason except to create a whodunnit, set them on each other which could have easily ended fatally for Booster, and then sent everyone’s private information to the media (which again, the comic frames as somehow noble and necessary, but which is actually deeply unethical). So you made this beloved 60-year-old hero into a villain...why, exactly? Just so it would be surprising? Cool, great work, Captain Edgelord.

2c. Metatextual: This comic spins out of Rebirth Special #1. The New 52 erased Wally from continuity and then brought him back as the younger, biracial Wally (and this isn’t the place to get into fandom’s response to that and DC’s response to fandom’s response so let’s just say they are both YIKES MCGIKES and leave it at that). Rebirth Special #1 brought him back, and the return of the “real” (white) Wally (again: yikes) heralded a new universe that was lighter and happier and contained way more fan favorites. It was literally branded as a gift to fans, embodied in Wally West.

In Heroes in Crisis, Wally is crushed by the weight of everyone being so happy he’s there and loving him so much while he’s struggling with grief and depression, and that’s why he snaps. It’s the metatextual equivalent of having Wally look at the reader and say “You’re happy I’m back and comics can be lighter now? Well, FUCK YOU, YOU RUINED EVERYTHING.” It essentially blames the reader for having Wally go evil, because the reader loves Wally too much.

King, what the fuck?

1. The overall message: Heroes in Crisis was sold as a thoughtful exploration of mental health and trauma, instead of just another bloodbath. Instead, it killed a dozen characters in its first issue and dicked around for another seven with an uninspired whodunnit before throwing a beloved hero in the garbage. But in the meantime, it manages to say:

Trauma is unavoidable.

But therapy doesn’t help.

Trying it does more harm than good.

If you’re struggling, you are a danger to others and don’t deserve privacy.

Good luck with that.

Therapy literally saved my life. This comic enrages me. This comic is harmful. Superhero comics as a whole have a lot to answer for when it comes to discussions of mental illness, but at least some random issue of Batman where Bruce thoughtlessly throws another “looney” into Arkham isn’t billed as a sympathetic take on PTSD. Our culture already discourages asking for help, and we don’t need a pretentious funnybook miniseries helping with that.

(If you made it all the way to the end of this post and you are struggling with trauma, depression, PTSD, whatever...please do look into therapy. I promise you it’s nothing like this comic.)

In conclusion, Heroes in Crisis is bad and it should feel bad.

THE END.

#heroes in crisis #comics #wally west #flash #NO TALK ME IM ANGY #kiseiakhun

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greekgeek21 · 4 years ago

Text

Percy Jackson & The Avengers: Convergence - percy meets a real life pirate

Hi! I'm just gonna let you guys know now that I don't really have an updating schedule thus far. The only thing I'm doing it making sure that I get a chapter out at least every 2 days.

I hope you guys are enjoying this so far, and please don't hesitate to correct me if I make any technical mistakes. Sometimes my beta and I will both miss something.

This would not have been possible without my amazing beta reader, nightskywithrainbows, so tysm you are a lifesaver. You keep this story from being absolute shit.

As a reminder, this story is also on FF, Ao3, Inkitt, Webnovel, and Wattpad. If you prefer those places, just go check out the story on there. Now, on with the good stuff! Stay safe and happy reading!

- your author

Ω ♆ Ω

The first thing Percy felt was aching and stinging pain coming from his side. He groaned and tried to sit up, but found that he was tied down to a gurney with leather straps. So they think I'm a psycho. Nice to know, Percy's ADHD brain thought.

The bright lights caused his vision to swim for a second before they could focus and perform a quick surveillance of the room that revealed to Percy that he was in some sort of metal box. The walls had hexagons on them and there was a metal table with two metal chairs in the middle of the room. Basically, everything was metal.

In the corner, there was a camera with a blinking red light, so Percy knew that he was being watched. That meant he couldn't try an Iris Message unless he wanted some interesting questions from his captors that he didn't have answers to. He wasn't an idiot.

Speaking of his captors, nobody had come in yet, but they clearly knew he was awake. That meant that they were trying to scare him. Little did they know, it would take a lot more than isolation to scare him. Specifically, something less mortal.

Deciding that it would be best to try to calm himself, Percy willed his muscles to relax and closed his eyes. On the outside, it seemed like he was sleeping, but on the inside, his mind was flitting from topic to topic faster than light. It went from freaking out, to figuring out how to escape, to Annabeth, to his mom, to sleep, and back to freaking out. It was an endless cycle.

"You aren't that good of an actor, you know," a voice shocked him out of his thoughts, causing him to attempt to jump up again.

The attempt resulted in his wrists undoubtedly getting bruised, and his side to feel like he just got kicked in the ribs. Remembering that, apparently, Hill shot him, he started to freak out again. When he looked down, he could barely see the blue liquid dried on his side. So they had poisoned him then?

"You poisoned me?!" he exclaimed, finally meeting the eyes of the voice.

It was a middle-aged man with a starting of a receding hairline, with smile lines around his eyes. He was wearing a simple suit with an outline of a gun sticking out on the side, so he was another agent, but he kind of reminded Percy of Paul with how he presented himself.

The man gave him a small smile, "Agent Hill only used a tranquilizer. My name is Agent Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcements and Logistics Division, or SHIELD."

Percy raised his eyebrows, "That's quite the name, and I thought you were the FBI. Also, would you mind telling me why I'm strapped down? I haven't done anything."

Percy thought that the best course of action was to stick with the innocent story, considering that it was partially true anyway.

"Well, I don't think that's completely true, Mr. Jackson. You assaulted our agent. We have every right to prepare for any other outbursts from you," Coulson said.

"She wanted to arrest me for no reason. I don't know what you guys want from me, but I can't help you. I'm a completely normal guy," Percy insisted, hand slowly sliding down until it rested against his pocket. He let out an involuntary sigh when he felt Riptide.

Coulson kept a cool face as he responded smoothly, "A completely normal guy wouldn't say he was completely normal."

Schist, Percy swore in his head. If Annabeth was there, they would've been free already. But with his luck, he would end up in some world-ending crisis again.

But then he heard a voice in his head. Not the kind of voice crazy people hear, but it was his father's voice, speaking to him like it used to during times of trouble. If this was serious enough to gain Poseidon's attention, then it was an issue Percy should be worrying about more. A demigod's life is never at peace...

"Stay silent, Percy. These are the ones working with the Avengers and the Norse god, Thor. They have not proven their trustworthiness yet. You were sent here to learn more about them. I'm sorry, Percy," his father said, voice somber and apologetic.

Percy gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to call the Fates a lot of colorful names. But that would just provoke them, so he stayed silent. He moved his gaze from Agent Coulson to the ceiling, trying to ignore the world around him. Unfortunately, that's impossible for someone whose mind is constantly alert to his surroundings.

Coulson sighed and tapped something on a tablet that Percy hadn't noticed, "Would you mind explaining this video?"

Percy tried to not look, but it was so tempting! So, he glanced over and saw himself, in his swim trunks, holding his hands out while thousands of gallons of water rose up out of the East River. Percy's eyes widened unconsciously in panic. He hadn't known there were cameras there, let alone that the Mist hadn't covered it up. Wait! The Mist.

"What do you see?" He asked, letting his head face Coulson again in question.

Coulon made a face that said he had just had a question answered for him. What that question was, worried Percy.

"I see a man, who looks a lot like you by the way, with extraordinary powers saving a lot of people. I just want to know if that man was you, and why we at SHIELD didn't know about your abilities," Coulson answered, staring Percy down.

The stare was like one you'd get from a teacher who had just asked you why you never turned in an assignment. It made Percy feel like he couldn't look away, but it almost hurt to keep looking.

But his father's voice rang in his head, reminding him to not reveal anything important, so he stayed silent.

Coulson sighed and stood up, "Very well, then. Let us know when you want to talk."

And then he left through a door in the wall that disappeared as soon as he was gone. Percy was seriously considering just using Riptide to slice his way out of there, but then he felt an unwanted feeling in his chest: Fear. They were in the air. How he had not realized earlier, Percy didn't know, but that wasn't his first priority in that moment. He was focused on getting OUT of the air and ON the ground, where he had no chance of getting electrocuted by his diva uncle.

The sky rumbled in the distance, but Percy ignored it. He had grown used to that happening whenever he thought ill of the gods, and it had stopped having an effect on him long ago.

He sent a silent prayer to his dad asking what to do. Annabeth's plans had never covered what to do when taken by a secret spy organization! He was clueless in this situation, as per usual.

All the answer he got was a gentle sea breeze blowing through the room. That's it. It was comforting, but not exactly clear on what the answer was. But that's how the gods do everything, anyway.

"Tell them you were born with the powers. You don't know where they came from, and you only wanted to help. You don't know anyone else who has them. Earn their trust, and figure it out from there. I trust you, son. Be careful," His father's voice flew through his mind.

Well, guess that answers that, Percy thought.

With yet another sigh, Percy called out to nobody, assuming they would hear him through some hidden microphone, "I'm ready to talk!"

Not a minute later, there was a click as the hidden door opened once again, letting in an asian woman in a skintight suit. She looked like the stereotypical spy, that's for sure.

She came over to him without a word and released his hands first, cuffing them with the same glowing handcuffs, before letting his legs free, too. She was clearly waiting for him to bolt, so Percy tried his best to make his body relax. If they were to trust him, he needed to cooperate fully.

The woman kept a permanent scowl on her face the entire time they were together. She was a little violent, too. She was practically shoving him the entire short walk. When they reached their destination, they were in a room with a huge screen table and three tvs on the wall. It was a whole lot of technology, and it made Percy on edge. Demigods and tech within two feet of each other are a big no-no.

The woman took his hesitation as a sign of escape and jabbed him in the small of his back, making his chest push forward immediately. Even though he had lost the Curse of Achilles, that one point on his body was still really sensitive. He turned his head around and shot a glare at the small lady on instinct. He tried to hold it back, but she had just poked his weakest point, what else could he have done?

"Move it," she growled out, meeting his glare with one of her own.

It didn't faze him, though. Lupa's was much scarier.

He sighed (he seriously needed to get a handle on the sighing), and sluggishly moved forward into the room. He just kept telling himself that the faster he got through this, the faster he got to see Annabeth again.

When he looked around the small glass room, he saw Agent Coulson, along with four others. Another, younger asian-looking woman (but she was in normal clothes), a tall brooding man in the corner dressed like an agent, a ginger-haired woman, and a nervous, curly-haired man. His eyes immediately drew to all the possible escape routes and any of the weapons, or things that could be used as weapons, in the room. The brooding man seemed to notice because he stood up tall and took a threatening step forward.

Percy ignored him, though, and looked straight at Coulson when he asked, "Why are they here? Tell them to leave."

"You don't give the orders here," Brooding man said before Coulson could speak.

Percy finally turned to the other Agent with a smirk, "And you don't either. And I don't remember asking you."

It's not like he TRIED to get in trouble with authority! It's more like authority seeks out trouble from him. This moment was an example (not that Percy would call the brooding man authority).

The brooding man took a couple more steps towards Percy, until he was right in front of him. He looked like he was used to towering over others, but Percy wasn't short or weak. He could confidently say that he could beat the man in front of him, so he kept his troublemaker smirk and stared the agent down.

"Watch it, Jackson. I'm not the one in handcuffs here," brooding man said before going back to his corner after a pointed look from Coulson.

"Are you sure about that?" Percy rebutted, holding his very uncuffed hands up in the air.

He couldn't help it, truly. It just slipped out! He had been unconsciously working on getting his cuffs off the entire time, and he had just broken free when the perfect opportunity came up.

Everyone in the room immediately either jumped forward to push him down or pulled out some sort of weapon. Except Coulson, that is.

"Stand down, guys. He's not gonna do anything. Isn't that right, Mr. Jackson?" he said.

Percy rolled his eyes, "Yeah. Of course not. If I wanted to get out of here, I would've a long time ago."

Turns out that wasn't the right answer because the first asian woman shoved him into the screen table, making him almost fall over. He held onto it for support, apparently touching something because a file with his face on it popped up. Percy immediately jumped back on instinct, fearing a monster would pop up out of the shadows. Except, the picture was from his junior yearbook photo...

"Why'd you guys have to use that picture? I look constipated!" he whined, scrunching up his nose in uncomfort.

The younger asian woman snorted, but tried to cover it up after her team glared at her. Clearly, she was the only one on the aircraft capable of feeling, Percy decided.

"We aren't here to discuss embarrassing yearbook photos, Perseus. We are here to talk about your abilities," The first asian woman stated.

"It's Percy," he corrected on instinct, and the woman glared at him even harder.

Before the situation could escalate any further, Coulson cut in again, "Could you please tell us what you wanted to tell us from before?"

"Yes. What do you want to know?" Percy said, putting his hands into his pockets and playing around with Riptide.

"Where do your abilities come from? How long have you had them?" The ginger asked.

Good, Percy thought with a smile, I know how to answer these ones.

"I was born with them, so I don't know where they come from." he stated simply, shrugging.

The ginger looked a little bit disappointed by that answer, but it didn't stop her from interrogating him more, "What are your limits? How have you kept your powers hidden for so long? Can I have a urine sample?"

Percy had decided that she was a scientist. With the way that everyone else was letting her ask all the questions, they probably thought she was the most capable. And plus, she was getting WAY too excited about pee.

"I don't know, I haven't really been hiding, and NO!!" he answered, giving the woman a look of disgust.

Now that he thought about it, it probably wouldn't be good if they got ANY DNA from him. He had never been told what it looks like with half of him made from the gods.

The ginger looked like she was going to ask more questions, but the curly-haired man rested a hand on her shoulder, seemingly calming her. Percy noted that the two were close.

"Any other questions?" he asked calmly, looking around.

Just as the brooding man looked like he was going to speak, the younger asian woman broke in, "Your powers are awesome! How much practice have you had with them? I would really love to see what else you could do with them!"

Ok, so the girl was probably a hero groupie. She didn't look like an agent, so that left the question of why she was on the plane with the rest of them.

Speaking of the plane, "Why are we flying? Can we finish this up on the ground PLEASE?"

Percy was already pushing his luck by being there for that long, let alone staying on here willingly.

The brooding man spoke, "How do you know we were flying? And unless you want to jump, no."

The brooding man was getting way too much joy out of Percy's fear. Like, phobias are real people!

"Ward, if you don't stop talking, I'm going to let Mr. Jackson have a go at you," Coulson said calmly, "Now, I have a proposition for you, Mr. Jackson, if you're willing to listen."

Percy figured that it couldn't hurt, so he gave the man a small nod. He was really trying to think before acting because he had a bad feeling that the conversation would change the course of his life for the better, or for the worse.

The other people in the room didn't seem to have prior knowledge of what Coulson was talking about, and that just made Percy more worried. What could possibly be important enough that Coulson hid it from his team (or that's what Percy thinks they are). His ADHD brain started to wonder where Hill went, but he quickly pushed that thought away. He needed to focus on the present!

"The Director would like you to join SHIELD. Officially, you would be a consultant. But unofficially, you would help us when we need your gifts." Coulson said, shocking literally everyone in the room.

Two beats of silence went before the team started into chaos:

"What?!"

"What are you talking about?!"

"Why weren't we told about this?"

"Am I even considered a consultant?"

"I'm sorry?"

Before it could get too out of hand, Percy spoke up, which seemed to silence everyone else, "Are you out of your mind? I thought I was a criminal!"

He wasn't admitting to being a criminal, but that's how they had been treating him. He might as well address their behavior.

"We need the full story from you before we can move forward, but the Director was clear in his orders," Coulson said.

Percy considered what the best option was. There really wasn't one, but what else was he gonna do?

"I want to speak to the Director in person before I give my answer," Percy came to his conclusion.

If anyone was going to learn whatever story he came up with, it would be the top dog in SHIELD. Nobody else, even if he's not allowed to reveal the gods.

Coulson thought about it for a second before answering, "Ok. He's in the interrogation room right now."

Before he could hold it in, Percy full-out laughed. Of course a spy organization would anticipate what he would want. Why not?

The rest of the team didn't seem to know about their guest either, though. Wow, Percy thought, Somebody needs to work on keeping everyone in the loop.

Then, Percy just walked out. Nobody tried to stop him, which meant that everyone was waiting until he was gone to truly let it show their lack of trust in the team. It took awhile to get there, but when he reached his cell again, he noticed that the door was very obvious from the outside and that it really wasn't that big of a room. He was surprised that they would put the boss inside a place they kept criminals.

Before he had even finished closing the door, Percy heard a deep voice speak, "Welcome, Mr. Jackson. I thought you would want to speak with me directly. I'm Director Nick Fury of SHIELD."

Turning around, Percy came face to face with a spy pirate. No seriously, the guy was wearing a long, black coat with an eyepatch over his left eye. The guy also had dark skin with a bald head. It took all of Percy's willpower to not burst out laughing at the sight. Plus, the guy was called Fury!

"Yeah. I'm only willing to tell you some things," Percy said.

"Understandable. What is it you would like to tell me? And does this mean you are agreeing to my proposition?" Fury asked.

Just as Percy was about to deny everything, his father spoke to him again (that was happening a lot that day), "It's okay, Percy. You can trust him. He doesn't know it, but he is a legacy of Nike. Zeus agreed to it."

Percy gave the Director a once-over before deciding it was safe, "Yeah, I'm in. And I need you to swear on the Styx that what is said in this conversation doesn't leave this room. Ever."

He may have had permission, but Percy wasn't just going to expose his entire family without some security first! He wasn't a total Seaweed Brain, despite what some people thought.

"Yeah, sure whatever. I swear on the Styx that this conversation won't leave this room," the Director sighed, clearly not liking Percy's stalling.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Taking a deep breath and pushing past any natural instincts he had, Percy spoke something he never likes to say to a mortal, "I'm a demigod."

Ω ♆ Ω

My boyfriend is out of his mind! Annabeth screamed in her head.

She was currently walking up to the Big House after gathering all of the cabin counselors, praetors through IM, and the rest of the Seven. After Percy was taken, she had immediately left for camp. She had understood what Percy was trying to tell her before, and she was happy that he had actually thought a little about his actions before doing them. Given, they were stupid actions, but it was improvement.

Annabeth hadn't told anyone what was happening, just said that it was an emergency and that it involved Percy. That was all they needed to know it was important. Honestly, everyone had been anticipating Percy to mess up sooner than he had. They had made it an entire year before something big happened! Once again, improvement for the son of Poseidon.

As she walked into the rec room, she watched as everyone's eyes turned to her. At first, it was a little unsettling, but she steeled herself over before any signs of weakness shown through. She had to keep a strong front for her friends, especially since Percy was mis- no, taken, again. She refused to say Percy was missing. He promised he wouldn't leave her again, and she was holding him to that.

After she had taken a seat, Chiron spoke, "What happened, child?"

"Yeah! What's Prissy gotten himself into this time?" Clarisse grunted.

Annabeth ran a hand through her hair once, a habit she had picked up from Percy, before answering, "He's been taken by the FBI, or someone impersonating them. They seemed too skilled to be the FBI. He told me to get you guys for help."

"Of course he has," Nico muttered from his spot next to Will Solace, "Cuz why not?"

Annabeth gave him a small smile, "I have a plan. We're going to break him out from wherever he is. We'll figure out where he is by IMing him, and then we'll storm the place. I want our heaviest hitters making a distraction while Nico and I break him out. Got it everyone?"

She had said that all in one breath. She really didn't have time to go over it again, and her face must have betrayed that, so everyone just nodded along.

"We'll IM him and then see who we need to bring," she said, already pulling out a drachma and a rainbow maker, courtesy of Iris.

Making the rainbow, she said, "O Fleecy, do me a solid. Show me Percy Jackson, location unknown."

The mist shimmered before showing Percy in a metal box, talking to a dark-skinned man with an eyepatch. From the sound of it, they hadn't noticed her yet, so she cleared her throat. She didn't care if the eyepatch man saw her, she needed to see if Percy was okay.

Both men looked over at her and her relieved smile grew into a scowl when she saw that Percy looked completely at ease, "Perseus Jackson! Where are you, and why haven't you contacted me?!"

She distantly heard Leo mutter 'whipped' before Percy stammered over a response, "A-Annabeth! I-I'm fine! I was just going to call you, too!"

Her face was probably a tomato of fury, "Like Hades you were!"

"Can we please stop using my father's name as a curse?" Nico asked, but nobody paid any attention.

"I swear I was! I just finished making a deal!" Percy exclaimed.

"He was, whoever you are. I assume you are his girlfriend?" the eyepatch man said.

She rounded on him, but before she could start her yelling, Percy spoke up, "Wise Girl! I. AM. FINE. I just made a deal that will let me go. I will tell you about it when I see you again, but I can't do that if you're yelling at Fury!"

Percy's eyes widened at his ambitiousness, and he seemed to be about to take it all back, but Annabeth spoke first, "If you aren't at camp in an hour, I'm coming to find you."

And then she swiped a hand through the message before Percy could try to apologize. Gods, that boy is in a world trouble, Annabeth thought before storming out of the room and towards the Poseidon cabin without another word.

Ω ♆ Ω

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aquinoa · 4 years ago

Text

My Muse | ft. Tsukishima Kei

-`,dedicated to @hinaaspanda for her belated birthday! ⹁՛-

muse

/myo͞oz/; noun

(in Greek and Roman mythology) each of nine goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who preside over the arts and sciences.

a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

something Tsukishima thought he’d never find, until you came along.

pairing: Art Student!Tsukishima x Art Student!Reader (female)

genre: Art School!AU, fluff, angst if you squint

word count: 6345

warning: swearing, drinking, like one instance of hinting at the devil’s tango

A shaky breath escaped your lips as you braced yourself for your class' relentless nitpicking of your latest painting. Group critiques were the one thing you dreaded the most about art school.

"Could you explain your reasoning for that type of brushstroke?"

"The message is intriguing, but I'm not so sure about the techniques you used for the foreground portray what you intended."

"The colour scheme seems random." It's been over a month into the semester, but you could never get used to being in the hot seat and facing the criticisms of your peers.

"It looks like a lame Cy Twombly imitation to me. Did you do this in, what— five minutes?" This comment from a certain classmate particularly bothered you. You turned to glare at the culprit.

"Kei Tsukishima! Constructive criticism only, please." The art professor gasped. "How about you go next for your critique?" Tsukishima sighed and shifted his easel, revealing to the class his assignment.

As always, his canvas contained a masterpiece. His technical skills were insanely advanced and the whole class knew it; they could not keep quiet it about it during his crit. His own explanation for it, however, was lacklustre. Most of his responses to comments were the likes of "I don't know," or "I just felt like it." To you, that might've been what aggravated you about Tsukishima the most—he was so gifted, but he treated his pieces as if they were mere doodles. If only you had even a percentage of his technical skills.

You ruminated in your thoughts, as other students continued with their critiques until class ended. In the midst of the class packing up and leaving the studio, your eyes glanced over to Tsukishima a couple of seats down. His eyes eventually meet yours as he passed by, noticing how irritated you still were.

"Can I help you?" He asked.

"I'll have you know that painting took a long time to make." You began. "What you said during my crit stung a bit."

"It's called a critique, pipsqueak. What else do you want?" He rolled his eyes, turning his back to you and headed toward the exit.

"I'm not a pipsqueak!" You shrilled, jolting up from your seat. You took a deep breath. "At least be more considerate in my critique. Like—give me a specific thing to improve on?" The boy paused just before the doorway, his back still to you.

"Y/N, was it?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"Work on your hatching or something. Gives it more depth." He muttered before walking out. You glanced back at your piece for a second before tucking it away in your case and exiting the studio.

—&

Your body shivered from the evening breeze as you walked back to your apartment. As you rummaged for your keys in front of your door, a cheery voice greeted you from the next door down.

"Oi, Y/N!"

"Yamaguchi!" You beamed. Yamaguchi, your neighbour, was always a ray of sunshine. "How's your essay coming along?"

"Actually, I just submitted it earlier today! So, fingers crossed for that coveted C+!" The boy chuckled before he glanced at your discouraged look and raised a brow. "What happened to you? Rough day?" You nodded, letting out a sigh.

"We had group crits today in studio class. I was able to respond to the comments, but it was obvious what they thought about my work: my technique isn't good enough. God, there was this one particular guy in my class who was just so— so insensitive about it!"

"H-hey, don't mind the haters!" Yamaguchi butted in to calm you down. "He's probably just jealous of you." You raised a brow.

"Jealous of what? It just felt like he was punching down." You looked down, letting out a sigh. "I put a lot of thought into this piece and I thought it would show."

"You're talking about that piece you worked on last week right?" You nodded, Yamaguchi's mouth gaping open. "Wait— that one is so good! I've seen art galleries where they feature a white canvas with a singular black line painted! If those can end up in galleries, you're absolutely fine!" You chuckled, before he continued. "The message behind the art piece is just as important as the piece itself, if not more. And Y/N, you put a lot of thought to the message behind each of your pieces, which is awesome! Don't be too hard on yourself."

"Thanks, Yamaguchi." You grinned. "I honestly am beyond lucky to have ended up with you as a neighbour."

"Hey, I feel like I'm the lucky one having such a talented artist as a neighbour!" The boy grinned back before bidding you goodbye. You waved back and stepped inside your apartment.

—&

"Alright, folks. Now that we're a couple of months into the semester, it's about time to talk about your final term project." The studio professor began explaining the logistics and requirements of the final project. It was essentially another painting but with higher stakes. "Keep in mind: while the technique is absolutely important, your projects also need depth and meaning. Otherwise, you are going to have quite a rough critique. Let me tell you, the other professors can be ruthless!" The professor chuckled. "Now, on with the class." You groaned. The only thing worse than being criticized on the spot by your class was getting criticized on the spot by a group of professors—actual artists. If you were gonna ace the final project, you were gonna have to grind hard.

In the middle of the period, you placed your brush on your easel to take a quick break. You took a deep breath and rolled back your shoulders before letting your eyes wandered around the class—from the wide window pane wall on your left as it welcomed the sunlight throughout the studio, to your classmates on your right as they either quietly worked on their next pieces or chatted amongst each other. Your eyes eventually fall on Tsukishima, a couple of seats from you, as he's quietly slouched over his canvas with a Filbert brush in hand.

"He's probably just jealous of you." These particular words from Yamaguchi left you baffled even after a few days since that interaction. Why would Tsukishima—that gifted asshole—be jealous of you? What could you have for him to be jealous of? Compared to his skills? If anything, you should feel jealous of h—

That was not a thought you wanted to finish. You must've stared at Tsukishima for too long, since his attention has suddenly shifted to you, with a puzzled look.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"I—" You stammered, trying to come up with an excuse. "I...was just wondering if you could...share more brush technique tips...?" You grinned feigningly. The boy glanced over at your canvas then back at you.

"Figures. Looks like you really need it." He snickered, causing you to scoff.

"God, you are hard to talk to."

"Oi, I didn't say no." He rebutted. "I can't be bothered by explaining it to you, though. Since you're already slacking off anyway, just watch me." He adjusted his glasses before focusing back on his own canvas. You rolled your eyes at the ego of this guy, but was puzzled at his odd offer. You kept your eyes on his brush and took mental notes as he continued painting. You were fascinated by the advanced brush techniques he applied as if it was child's play. After watching his brush for a while, your eyes eventually wandered over to his hand. Then to his broad shoulders. Then to the pale nape of his neck. Then to his short, ruffled, blonde hair. Then to the golden-brown eyes behind his glasses, a little sorry that they a lack a glint to them.

"Tsukishima! Do you mind if I talk to you for a second?" The professor asked as she walked up to his easel. It was more than enough to snap you out of your gaze. You darted your head back to your own easel and continued to work away at your canvas, with your flustered confusion blocking out Tsukishima's conversation with the professor. Why did he leave you in such a daze just now?

When the clock signaled the end of class, the class began to pack up. As you put your paint away, you glanced over at Tsukishima once more as he quickly packed up his supplies. This time, he looked more annoyed than usual.

"Oi, Tsukishima." You called to him. "What did the professor talk to you about?"

"None of your business." He retorted without batting an eye as he grabbed his bag and walked out of the studio without another word. Quite rude, but he seemed in a bad mood, so you disregarded it. You grabbed your things and left the studio to continue with the rest of your day.

—&

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

You jolted awake from the knock on your door. You reached for your phone to check the time—it was noon. It was only mere hours ago when you finished pulling an all-nighter to work on an assignment because your inspiration apparently likes to strike at 3am. The knocking continued. You groaned as you sat up and grudgingly made your way over to the front door. You opened the door and peeked out to find a tall, familiar figure standing off to your left.

"Tsukishima?!" For the last few classes, your interactions with Tsukishima have been scarce. He'd somehow manage to insert an insult whenever you'd ask him a question. There were also moments in class where you swore you felt a glance coming from his direction, but when you turned your head to him, he was occupied with his canvas. Seeing him now at your doorstep was a surreal experience.

"Y/N?" He looked at you quizzically. "You live here? Whatever. What do you want?"

"What do you mean "What do you want?"," You mocked sluggishly. "You knocked on my door— what do you want?"

"Wait, you thought I knocked on your door? Dumbass." He snickered. You rolled your eyes and hit his arm.

"I'm too tired for this, Kei." You retorted, leaning against the door frame. "Who are you here to see, then?"

"I'm here to see a friend." He pointed over to Yamaguchi's door and—as if on cue—his door opened and a frantic Yamaguchi stepped out.

"S-sorry, Tsukki!" Yamaguchi shrilled. "My readings took longer than I expected!" He caught sight of you and waved. "Oh! Hi Y/N! I see you've met Tsukki…shima." He chuckled softly.

"Hey Yamaguchi!" You waved back. "Wait, you call him Tsu—that's so cute! I wanna call him that too!" Tsukishima furiously shook his head.

"No way I'm letting anyone else call me Tsukki. I only make an exception for Yamaguchi." He sighed, turning to Yamaguchi. "She's in my studio art class."

"Unfortunately." You muttered under your breath.

"Oi, I heard that." Tsukishima glared.

"Hey Yamaguchi, how do you know Tsukki?" You asked, teasingly emphasizing the latter name. Yamaguchi chuckled.

"Oh, I've been friends with Tsukki since we were young!"

"That's insane. You're way too nice to be hanging around Tsukki."

"Y/N, I will tell Yamaguchi you thought I was knocking on your door, if you don't stop calling me Tsukki." Tsukishima threatened.

"You just did though." You furrowed your brows.

"Wait Y/N, did you just wake up?" Yamaguchi asked.

"Yeah, Tsukki woke me up." You pouted.

"Serves you right, pipsqueak." Tsukishima scoffed.

"Oi, I'm no pipsqueak! It's not my fault you tower over everyone, you bean pole."

"I'd rather be a bean pole—if it means not being caught in public with those on." He pointed down at your panda slippers. You gasped theatrically.

"How dare you insult my precious pandas?"

"Alright, you two!" Yamaguchi finally chimed in. "I get it. You two fight like a married couple. Horribly, I might add." He chuckled, causing both you and Tsukishima to scoff. "Anyways Tsukki, let's get going and let Y/N get some rest." Yamaguchi bid you goodbye, while Tsukishima gave you one last glance before he turned around and followed the other. "Seriously, Tsukki. Just use the doorbell next time!" You chuckled, hearing your neighbour lecture the bean pole as they walked away.

When you stepped back into your apartment, you rubbed the nape of your neck. You've almost forgotten why you've antagonized Tsukishima so much. Aside from the rocky start and the constant teasing, he's never been inherently bad to you. It's almost as if he's nice to you in his own, subtle way.

Nah. It must've been the sleep deprivation talking. You let out another yawn and went back to get some more shut-eye.

—&

The deadline for the studio class' term project was approaching. For the past couple of weeks, you've often found yourself spending late evenings painting away alone in the studio after class. The warm, quiet atmosphere of the studio with golden rays shining through the window pane as the sun set was where you've lately felt the most motivated. One particular evening in the studio, you were stuck on how to execute a certain portion of your painting's foreground. If you were going to impress the professors during your term project critique, you had to go above and beyond with your technique, considering your track record of your mediocre group critiques. You leaned your head back along with a sigh. You tapped the handle of your paintbrush on your temple, wishing for an idea.

"Y/N?" Startled, you turned to the familiar, baritone voice stood by the studio doorway.

"Tsukishima? H-how long have you been there?"

"Relax, I'm just here to pick up some paint that I forgot." You sighed and turned back to your canvas. He walked over to the supply shelves behind you to grab a few tubes of paint, placing them in his bag, before turning to you. After a while, you couldn't help but feel irked by the boy looking over your shoulder from behind.

"So—" You decided to break the silence. "It's still a work in progress, but what do you think of it?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" He snickered, causing you to groan. At this point, you've grown desensitized of his teasing.

"I'm serious. I want to do well for the term project. I'm just stuck on how to paint this part of the foreground." You motioned to the portion of the canvas before the boy stepped closer to take another look at your painting.

"Give me your brush." You reached out your brush to him without batting an eye, expecting him to take it. To your surprise, you instead felt his hand firmly gripping onto yours.

"Ts-Tsukishima?" You froze, bewitched by his sudden touch. His hand guided you and the brush throughout the canvas, using colour combinations and brush strokes foreign to you, but seemingly simple to him. Your eyes couldn't help but focus on his hand that was clung onto yours. You held your breath. At that moment, it felt like time stood still. When he finished, he gently released your hand. The warmth of his touch lingered on your hand—and on your mind—for a bit longer. He briefly explained the techniques he applied, when he noticed your still flustered reaction.

"Huh— oi, don't get the wrong idea. It was the only way I could've done it without you getting in trouble for cheating or something." He rebutted, seemingly unfazed by his actions. "Besides, you probably wouldn't have been able to do it if I just explained it to you."

"Whatever." You rolled your eyes, any flustered feelings you felt faded away. You looked back at the portion of your canvas just painted. As usual, Tsukishima's methods were impressive and helpful. "Thanks." You uttered under your breath, before continuing to work. He nodded before looking out the window.

"It's getting late. Shouldn't you head home?" He asked as he picked up his bag, about to leave.

"It’s fine," You shook your head, keeping your eyes on your canvas. "I've gone home later than this in the past. I have to work on this." The boy sighed and paused before reaching for your portfolio case.

"I didn't know you were this stubborn too." He dangled your portfolio case and made his way out the studio. "It's time to call it a day if you want this back." You turned to him as he slung your portfolio case over his shoulder with a sly smirk before stepping out the studio. You groaned.

"Oi! Come back here!" You shoved your supplies into your bag, slipped off your apron and grabbed your canvas before rushing out the studio to catch up to him as he kept his leisurely pace. Panting, you caught up to him and snatched your portfolio case back. "What the hell, Tsukishima?" He snickered.

"I'm heading over to Yamaguchi's place anyway, so I wasn't actually going to run away with it."

"You better not have. Wait— why are you headed to Yamaguchi's so late?"

"I'm staying over. My brother's bringing his girlfriend over to our house tonight, so you already know what's bound to happen." He shuddered. "Frankly, I don't want to hear any of that shit." You chuckled.

—&

A serene silence fell upon the two. Before you knew it, you found yourself walking back to the apartment complex together. As you walked, you leaned your head back and took a breath of the evening breeze. You turned your head to Tsukishima, who's engrossed himself in his music, a bit of which you could almost hear from his headphones. You felt your cheeks warm up. Walking beside him right now made you reminisce of the countless romantic scenes you've read where the boy walks the girl home. You shook your head. No, this wasn't one of those tales.

"Why are you looking at me this time?" Tsukishima raised a brow at you, slinging his headphones around his neck. "You've been doing that a lot lately."

"Oh—" You scratched your head. "I swear it's just a coincidence. Maybe you're just looking at me all the time." He rolled his eyes before another silence fell upon the two. A thought suddenly crossed your mind. "I was just wondering, remember when you stormed off after the professor talked to you?"

"Hm."

"What happened? Did she say something bad?" The boy suddenly grimaced. Your curiosity grew, but regretted asking him. He let out a sigh.

"She's concerned about how I'll do in the final term project. That my track record of 'shallow responses' during my crits indicate the kind of work I'll bring to the final critique. And that I didn't feel 'inspired' enough." He shrugged. "As long as I paint something impressive to my audience, I should do fine."

It dawned on you that he has the exact opposite dilemma as you. While you lacked the technique, yet strived in the depth of your pieces, he had insanely advanced skills, but struggled to find drive.

"Don't you want to do more than 'fine', though?" You began. "I mean—isn't that the point of art? To express that of which your muse—let's say—has inspired you?"

"My muse?" Tsukishima raised a brow.

"Yeah, your muse! Something—or someone—that is a source of inspiration for you." He paused, gazing at you before he tsked.

"Odd."

"What do you mean 'odd'?" You furrowed you brows, mocking his tone. "You must have a muse. Something you like that makes you go 'I want to paint something based on that'?" He shook his head. "I don't buy it. Tell me, Kei. You like music, right? Doesn't it make you feel things and envision things when you listen to it?"

"I guess, but it doesn't make me want to paint it."

"Scratch that, then. How about, I'll give you an example of a muse of mine:" You pointed upward. "that."

"Huh—" He looked up as well. "The sky?" You nodded.

"I love the sky. It gives you something different everyday. From the glint of the stars out tonight, the funny shapes you make out from clouds, to the gorgeous colours that sunsets reveal—which is a personal favourite." You sighed in glee.

"Anyone can paint a sunset, though." He rebutted. "I just don't see how the sky would impress the professors. Wouldn't it make you a more worthwhile artist to show off the most challenging techniques you can pull off to succeed?" You gritted your teeth.

"It's not about what you paint—it's why you're painting it!" Your plead echoed around both of you. This took Tsukishima aback. You lowered your head, your heart sinking. It was as if every small, condescending remark he's said has piled up and overwhelmed you. "Not everyone is as gifted as you, Tsukishima." You whimpered softly. "I've always admired your talent." Silence fell once more.

"Y/N, I—"

"You know I have been practicing the things you've taught me. I know I'm not the best at them, but at least I'm improving. At least I'm trying." There was a shakiness growing in your voice. "I don't know if I'm upset at you or at myself, but—" As you two approached the apartment complex, you turned to the boy one last time with a pained look in your eyes. "but can't you be even the tiniest bit considerate of me?" You turned your back to him and marched back into your apartment, slamming the door shut behind you.

Tsukishima lowered his head, gritted his teeth, and cursed under his breath as Yamaguchi let him inside as well.

—&

For the next couple of weeks, you and Tsukishima ceased talking to each other, not even looking at each other's way. It perplexed you why you've been as affected by him as you were that night. Maybe it was your confusion from how he constantly teetered between belittling you and helping you. Maybe it was your disappointment that you've invested yourself to him but he never reciprocated in the end, but never again. You've convinced yourself that he was nothing more but a mere classmate from studio class—always has been and always will be.

The end of the term was nearly approaching and the stress continued to pile up. You've been dedicating much more time into perfecting your art pieces for the final project. One particular weekend, cooped up in your apartment while trying to finish up your painting, you hit upon some good ol' artist block. You scratched your head as you tried to find inspiration. You peeked out your window. Nothing but gray clouds today. You turned back to your canvas, frustrated at how you feel you're so close to finishing, yet so far. Eyeing the details, you noticed the particular spot that Tsukishima added that evening in the studio. Your flustered feelings began to creep back into your mind.

Nope.

You ruffled your hair furiously before wailing out a long, exasperated scream for what felt like forever. Once you calmed down, you leaned back onto your seat. Oddly enough, screaming helped you clear your thoughts and frustrations. You took a deep breath and closed your eyes.

The silence was broken by a sudden, frantic knocking on your door. You walked over and opened the door to find a concerned Yamaguchi.

"Y/N! I heard screaming. A-are you okay?" He asked frantically.

"Yamaguchi! I'm fine, sorry about that." You laughed nervously as you rubbed the nape of your neck. "I was just blowing off steam from the stress of school, I guess." Your neighbour sighed in relief.

"Man, Y/N. You scared me!" He complained. "It's getting that tense, huh?" You nodded. He took notice of your messy hair and your weary demeanor. "You sure look like you need a break. " He chuckled.

"Gee thanks, Yamaguchi."

"Oh!" His eyes suddenly brightened up before placing a hand on your shoulder. "Come over and have a drink or two! It's the weekend, you should let loose!" A drink was probably what you needed right now, anyway.

"Yeah, that sounds pretty nice." You conceded. Yamaguchi beamed in response. You closed your door and followed your neighbour into his unit.

"Make yourself at home." Yamaguchi made his way to the fridge. "I'll grab drinks. Any preferences?"

"The hardest ones you've got." You both laughed.

"Gotcha." You sat down on the couch and leaned back. You glanced around. You spot a familiar set of brushes and paints—the ones from the studio. You looked around once more until you spotted him sat by the balcony.

"Tsukishima?" You caught the blonde boy in the middle of ogling at you, seemingly somewhat buzzed already. His eyes widened the moment your eyes met, and quickly looked away. He placed his headphones back on and took another swig from his bottle.

"Sorry, Y/N." Yamaguchi chimed in as he headed towards you with two red cups. "I figured if I mentioned Tsukki was staying over tonight, you'd refuse to come over." You shook your head, smiling reassuringly.

"Don't worry, Yamaguchi. He didn't hurt me or anything." You sighed. "I overreacted a bit too." He handed you a cup and sat down beside you.

"Tsukki told me what happened. He regretted being so brash with you."

"He did?" Yamaguchi nodded, glancing over at Tsukishima.

"You want to know how he's gotten so good at painting?"

"Sure."

"The thing his professor told him—that he lacks inspiration in his work—it's not unfounded. It's something he's struggled with long before he started art school. He figured that if he explored more techniques—that if he got better—he'll eventually find something to inspire him. He's gotten so talented, but he rarely feels fulfilled from his work. It's made him feel like an inadequate artist, which is why he's resorted to teasing and such."

"Oh." You frowned. "I never thought of it like that."

"Don't worry! I believe he's recently found that source of inspiration. You should see the painting he's done for your term project!" Yamaguchi leaned back on the couch. "Tsukki's never been the best at being positive or open, so you'll have to forgive him. The teasing get annoying, surely, but he means well. He's teased me since we were kids, but I've come to realize that that's how he shows he's invested in someone."

"No way—I don't buy it."

"I know it's hard to believe, but it's true! You'll see." He grinned. "I'm not sure if you'll see Super Drunk Tsukishima tonight, but he can be quite sentimental." He chuckled.

"Now that would be a sight to see." You snickered. "What kind of drunk are you, Yamaguchi?"

"There's only one way to find out, right?" He snickered as you both clinked your cups and guzzled down your drinks.

A few drinks later, it didn't take long to find yourself drunk and beside a passed-out, mumbling Yamaguchi on the couch. Zoned out, you let out a couple of hiccups. You suddenly caught a moving figure from the corner of your eye. You sluggishly turned your head to find Tsukishima stumbling to grab another bottle from the fridge. You sneered loudly.

"Tsssukki—can I call you Tsukki? I'm gonna call you Tsukki—someone should cut you off."

"Cut me off? I paced myself—" The boy rebutted, flimsily pointing at you. He hiccuped. "unlike you. Take a look at yourself, Y/N. And look what you did to Yamagusshi!"

"Pffft. He did that to himself." You cackled. He groaned before opening his bottle and shuffling back, sitting down on the balcony floor. After a second, you decided to follow him out and plop down beside him. "Tsukki, I'm sorryyy—" You turned to him and pouted. "I yelled at'cha that one time. I didn't know y'were sad tooo." Taken aback, the boy furrowed his brows, pointing the neck of his beer bottle towards you.

"Why are you sorry? I'm the one who upset you." He pointed the neck of the bottle to himself, his cheeks flushed from the alcohol. "I'm the asshole here." Your drunk ass couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"Asshole! You said 'asshole'!" You continued to cackle, leaning back too much as you began to lose balance. Before you knew it, Tsukishima reached out, catching you with one hand grasped onto your wrist and his other hand wrapped around your waist.

"Oi, be careful." He gently pulled you back upward as you continued to giggle to yourself, still seemingly unaware of his actions. You finally realized what just occurred the moment you felt his hand pull away from your waist. Flustered, you looked away for a moment and grumbled.

"You sure are an asshhole, Kei." You muttered, trying hard not to slur your words. "Y'know—you i-insult me all the ti—"

"I know, and I'm sorr—"

"But y-you also do these things that make m-my heart skip a beat—"

"Y/N—" He stammered.

"A-and I get all confused about you, and I never know what to feel—"

"Y/N."

"I mean—w-why me? Why aren't you like this to other people?"

"Because I don't care about other people." Tsukishima's words finally cut you off. You gazed at him as the moonlight lit up his flustered face. You felt his grip on your wrist slide down as he gently held your hand. He locked his eyes onto yours. You hoped your flushed cheeks from the alcohol were enough to hide your blushing as he slowly leaned his face closer.

THUD!

You both turned your head back into the main room to find Yamaguchi on the foot of the couch.

"Tsukki..." He groaned. "Bathroom...puke...n-now..." Tsukishima sighed. He looked at you once more before he stammered.

"I should go help him..." You nodded, still flustered. He released your hand as he rose to his feet and clumsily headed over to Yamaguchi to help him. You gently hit your cheeks with the palms of your hands. You figured those two would be occupied for a while, so you decided to trudge back to your apartment without bidding them goodbye. You felt as if your emotions were at their limit, anyway. It was going to be one hell of a hangover the next day.

—&

You couldn't remember a lot from that night at Yamaguchi's place, but the feeling of Tsukishima's hand grasped onto yours still lingered on your mind. You weren't sure if you were imagining it or not—or if you just wanted it to happen. None of that mattered right now; there wasn't much time left before the end of the semester. For the remainder of the time, you focused solely on schoolwork, determined on creating the best final product for your studio class' final term project to your ability. You knew you still had ways to go, but you've surely improved your technique. You were grateful to Tsukishima, but you didn't have the time to entertain anymore confusion from your emotions.

"How could I have forgotten the varnish?" You grumbled as you paced your way to the studio one day, picking up some supplies. Right before entering, you took notice of the figures already in the studio: Tsukishima in front of a small panel of art professors. You gasped and hid behind the door. His critique for the term project must've been today. You peeked your head out the door to take a closer look inside.

Your eyes couldn't help but focus on Tsukishima, surprised by how much more devotedly he seems answering the professors' comments; a huge contrast compared to his previous demeanor during previous crits in class. You smiled. It was admirable seeing him like that. You glanced over to the painting he presented. It was a beautiful depiction of the sky at dusk: a gorgeous mix of colours at sunset with an ethereal sky of stars above. Even from a distance, it wasn't hard to appreciate his mastery of technique. Another detail of the painting caught your eye: the female figure in the middle whose presence was subtle, yet significant. As you pieced together her features, you slowly realized that the figure in his painting strongly resembled you.

"Hold on—" The sound of applause and chairs scraping on the floor interrupted your train of thought. You gasped as you hid around the corner, waiting for the studio to clear. You heard the voices fading off as they walked out of the studio and waited a few moments before deciding the coast was clear. You snuck into the studio, only to find one more person across the room.

"I saw you peeking, you know." Tsukishima remarked, packing up his artwork. "You're not stealthy at all."

"I figured." You sighed. "I'm just here to pick up some varnish for my project. How did your crit go?"

"I think it went well." He rubbed the nape of his neck. "I never talked this much during crits, but it was easier since I had some inspiration to drive me."

"Hey, that's awesome! I knew you had it in you!" You grinned. "It was a beautiful painting, by the way. It's funny—for a second, I thought the person in your painting sort of looked like me." You laughed awkwardly. The boy raised a brow.

"I painted Urania, one of the Nine Muses in Greek mythology. The Muse of astronomy. So yeah—don't flatter yourself."

"I guess you took my advice literally, huh." You replied, grimacing. You went over to the supply cabinet to pick up the varnish. The boy took notice of your change in tone and scratched his head.

"Sorry. That was unnecessary."

"it's fine." Silence fell upon the studio. Tsukishima finally cleared his throat.

"I mean—that's at least what I told the professors who she was. There's a hidden layer to the painting that I didn't mention."

"What do you mean?"

"What you said earlier—that you thought Urania resembled you. It's because I painted her to resemble you, and the way you admired the sky. Did you think it was a coincidence she looked like you in a painting where I also painted what you said was your muse?"

"W-why paint me, then?" You stammered. He sighed. You sensed a change in his demeanor.

"It baffled me how each crit in class, you're always so adamant on the message of your paintings. It was something I admire about you— and something I wanted to be able to do. Through you, I learned to find inspiration from even the most mundane things." He slowly made his way across the room to you. You grew flustered.

"Tsukishima..." You took a step back, getting backed up by the wall. He stopped right in front of you, towering over you. You felt your cheeks warm up. He took the jar of varnish from your hand and tucked it in his back pocket.

"I meant what I said back at Yamaguchi's place—that I didn't care about anyone else but you. So hearing what you said that night..." A deep, golden shade of sunlight shone through the window pane and onto you as the sun began to set. You reached for Tsukishima’s shirt and gently tugged on it. He reached for your other hand and held it. He cupped his other hand on your cheek and tilted your head upward towards him. "You said you didn't believe I didn't have a muse, but I swore on it. Now—now it's different, because I've found you, Y/N." He leaned his face closer, your eyes fixed onto each other's. "You're my muse." He closed his eyes and gently pressed his lips against yours. You closed your eyes and kissed back. As your kisses grew deeper, you tugged on his shirt a bit stronger to pull his body closer to yours. He intertwined your fingers together, holding each other's hand tighter. This all felt right. Eventually, you lightly pulled away from each other, panting softly. You fixed your gaze on his golden-brown eyes once more. There was now a strong glint to them, unlike before. It made you happy.

"I'm honoured to be your muse, Kei." You softly replied, grinning widely. Hearing your reply, Tsukishima let out a soft laugh—it was the happiest you've seen him look. You liked seeing him this happy. He sighed.

"Here." He let go of your hand to reach for his back pocket and return the jar of varnish. "I’ll walk you home. I'm staying over at Yamaguchi's tonight." You took the jar and tucked it away in your bag. He followed you out of the studio and you began walking back to the apartment complex together.

"Your brother brought his girlfriend over again?" He nodded. "That's been happening more frequently. Doesn't it get annoying?"

"A bit. It's fine, though—" He leaned closer and whispered in your ear. "Soon enough, I might have to kick him out this time." He smirked. Growing flustered again, you gasped.

"Tsukishima, you pervert!" He sneered before speeding up his pace and leaving you behind. You scoffed, chasing after him. "Oi, get back here!"

—&

You gently slapped your cheeks with the palms of your hands—psyching yourself up. Your critique for your final term project is mere minutes away. You muttered to yourself as you paced back and forth in front of the studio.

"I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this."

"You can do this." Tsukishima repeated, having your painting in hand. "You have nothing to worry about."

"What if it's not good enough?" You fretted.

"You've worked so hard this whole term. I mean, look at this." He took another look at the canvas. "It's both meticulous and insightful. They'll love it."

"Are you su—" He promptly handed you back the canvas, interrupting you.

"They'll love it." He repeated once more. He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on your forehead. "There. Only because you can't reach me from down there." He snickered, while you rolled your eyes. You heard a voice from the studio call your name. "Go knock 'em dead." You smiled at him once more before stepping into the studio. A shaky breath escaped your lips as you braced yourself for the professors' relentless nitpicking of your latest painting. Group critiques were the one thing you dreaded the most about art school. However, now with better faith in your skills and in your muse, you figured you'll be alright.

#haikyū!!#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #hq tsukishima #haikyuu tsukishima #tsukishima scenarios #tsukishima kei #kei tsukishima #tsukishima x reader #tsukishima x y/n #art school au

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soldierswar · 4 years ago

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Feel Something - Chapter 2

Bucky x Reader

Fluff, Angst

Plot: You and Bucky grow more familiar with each other while elements of your past come back to haunt you.

Part 1

Masterlist

................................................................................................................................

“Yeah. You will.”

It was the last thing that he said to you before you left. And despite all of the stuff that you had talked about to each other, those three words were what stuck with you the most. It played in your head over and over again up until sunrise. And although you thought that it was unlikely to happen, you eventually drifted off into a deep sleep. And the first and last face you saw before you woke up was his…

That night at the party was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. For the next couple of months, you both enjoyed and preferred to work with each other. You even spent time with each other outside of that setting when you wanted to. But unless you were talking about official business, you never talked about the past. At least not the Hydra part of it. And you most definitely never spoke about the fact that you had met before. You didn’t even know if he even knew. And if he didn’t, it made sense. You were hardly a significant role in his life then. You were just one of many faces within that 70-year nightmare.

As you were on your way out to get some food, you looked down at your buzzing phone with urgent messages from both Bucky and Natasha.

As you walked over to the room looking down at your phone, you found yourself running into the glass door, and lightly banging your head. Nothing much was hurt except for your ego as everybody in the room turned around to your direction to see what the noise was about.

“I didn’t take you for the clumsy type,” said Bucky who seemingly out of nowhere was behind you, opening the door.

“I get it, you have jokes,” you groaned.

You made your way over to where everyone else was where they were observing a holographic screen with multiple files accompanied by photos of eerily familiar faces on display.

“Is there a reason you guys called me here?” I asked, trying to process what and who I was seeing on screen.

Bucky’s face grew serious, making you wonder what the fuss was about.

Near the back of the room were Steve, Natasha, and two other agents that you didn’t quite know yet, but also carried the same serious expression.

“What is it?”

…

You spent the next 8 hours working closely with everyone trying to figure out the logistics of what was going on with this new base that had been discovered the day before by one of the guys with you. Names and faces were identified. Some new, some old, and some that were definitely familiar to you. Seeing a lot of those faces brought flashbacks to things that had happened to you during that time.

“Y/N…Y/N, are you okay?”

Bucky’s soft voice began to break through to you, and you looked up to his concerned face.

“Why? What’s up?”

You hadn’t realized that you had been staring off into space for the past 5 minutes while tracing your fingers along an old scar on the side of your abdomen. The ball in your throat would not let you answer, and you were trying everything in your power not to cry in front of everyone. You looked around to see if you were making a spectacle out of yourself. But luckily nobody was paying attention except for him.

You weren’t sure if Bucky being the one paying attention made that better or worse. All while trying to make it look like you weren’t doing those things, you just had to focus on breathing and trying not to cry. By the look on his face, you were failing.

He didn’t say a word, but his eyes said, “It’s gonna be okay.” And after a few seconds, the heaviness in your chest, and the lump in your throat began to subside. Just those few seconds allowed your head to clear. Your thoughts were less foggy, your ability to put two and two together sharpened, and you were finally able to say what you were afraid to even suspect of being the truth.

“I think it’s Sin. They’re working for Sin,” you announced.

The two other ex-hydra agents’ faces turned white when you said what you said.

Natasha’s brow furrowed.

“You mean—”

“Red Skull’s granddaughter? Yeah,” you replied.

“If she’s in charge…We need to stop this now.”

…

“You didn’t have to take me home, Bucky,” you sighed.

“I just wanted to make sure you made it home okay,” he replied.

“Today must have been a lot for you.”

You defeatedly shrugged and opened your apartment door silently motioning an invitation.

You dropped your stuff in the middle of the floor, quickly making your way over to the kitchen.

“You want water?” you offered, barely registering just how out of breath you sounded.

“Y/N,” he replied with a concerned tone.

“No really.”

You could barely register the panic that was starting to bubble up in your voice.

“I mean I have juice, or booze, or—”

“Y/N…”

“I mean it’s really no bother,” you babbled on.

“I mean I know I protested you coming along with me but—”

Suddenly, he was standing in front of you placing his right hand on your shoulder to get you to stop.

“Y/N, it’s okay to admit that you’re not okay.”

You found yourself pausing. Your mind shifted, in fact, froze at the feeling of his warm hand on you. Just that one touch made everything go quiet for one brief moment, just like his stare made you feel earlier.

You took in a deep breath through your nose.

“You know how some things just come back? Like, for a while it’s just a memory…It’s over. In fact, sometimes it may not even feel real. But now…”

He nodded, and his jaw clenched when your voice trailed off.

“But now…I mean I signed up for this, but I just…Some things come up and—”

“You knew her,” he interrupted.

“Sin.”

You didn’t even give him a yes or no answer, you just lifted your shirt and showed him the scar on the right side of your abdomen.

“You know she tried to kill me?”

He furrowed his brow and tilted his head. His eyes expressing something between shock and sadness.

“Listen, I know that I did bad things. And I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I was never a psychopath,” I stated, before once again pointing at the scar again.

“She’s jealous and vindictive. I defied her idea once while we were working in the same unit, and within two seconds of me doing that she shoved a knife in and out of my side, and put me in the hospital for two weeks.”

You began to breathe even heavier at the memory.

“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg with her. Whenever she tried to come up with plans, even our higher-ups thought that she was too extreme.” That moment of calm subsided and although you tried to mask it, you felt like you were choking on air.

Within a second, Bucky wrapped his arms around you, and you buried your face in his chest as you began to sob. And he didn’t say a word. All he did was hold you as though he was the only thing able to hold you up. And honestly, he was.

You didn’t really know what came over you, and what compelled you to do what you were about to do. You had told yourself time and time again that you wouldn’t bring it up. And yet, something within you at that moment felt the need to know.

“You remember me, don’t you?” you whispered as you finally began to calm down again.

And after an apprehensive pause, and the feeling of him nodding, you had your answer.

Your heart fluttered as you lifted your head to look up at him.

Another nagging question escaped your lips.

“Are you punishing yourself?”

He frowned in confusion, bringing his hands up to wipe the tears away from your face.

“Is seeing me a punishment for you?”

He shook his head and paused. He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t seem to be able to put the words together.

That was until he slowly, and softly pressed his lips to yours.

For a while, you had constantly asked yourself the question as to what would happen if you asked him those questions. Out of the possibly hundreds of scenarios, some were good, others were bad. But that was definitely not what you were expecting. But despite that fact, you didn’t freeze. You melted into his kiss. And without taking a moment to think further, you pulled yourself even closer to him by wrapping your arms around him and kissing him deeper.

It didn’t feel like a whirlwind. It didn’t feel scary, and it definitely didn’t feel unnatural. It felt safe, warm, gentle. He felt like home.

He eventually pulled his lips away from yours, but rested his face on the top of your head before ever so softly whispering,

“Does that answer your question?”

#bucky x reader #bucky x reader fluff #bucky x reader angst #bucky x reader smut #bucky x reader series #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky x reader fanfiction #avengers #avengers x reader fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #223: of Robin Hoods and Roustabouts

September, 1982

Apparently a “roustabout” is an unskilled or casual labor.

And lets admit the obvious that if Hawkeye is either of the two things, he’s a robin hood. And its not inaccurate but be nicer to Scott Lang.

Even if he manages to be even more hapless in this issue then in modern takes that leans into him being a fuck-up.

As for the cover? Pretty striking cover. I’ve been waiting for Hawkeye to shoot Ant-Man at someone. Its apparently an Iconic Avengers moment and to think it first happens in a filler.

Because I’m pretty sure this is a filler. Its written by David Michelinie alone instead of Jim Shooter getting a plotter or co-writer credit. It doesn’t really have anything from the dangling plot threads of Hank Pym or the Masters of Evil.

Between this and and the filler with the immortal child who badly wanted to die and all of the plotter or co-writer credits, you just really get a sense that Jim Shooter did not have time to devote to Avengers anymore.

So what kind of filler will this be? Weird? Impactless? Good Actually? Let’s see!

Well, apparently Hawkeye is going to the carnival so at this point, it could go either way.

I like that Hawkeye has a H belt buckle because that’s the kind of thing that he would do and that I can make fun of him for.

I know that it’s been a while since he’s mentioned kewpie dolls but Hawkeye came from the circus. He and his brother ran away to one when they were little and the Swordsman taught Hawkeye archery. The point being, “he’s come home.”

As in, this is specifically the carnival he used to work before he became very briefly a superhero, and then for slightly longer a supervillain, and then for much much longer a superhero for real.

Point is, he’s been away for a while. But he received a flyer in the mail and decided he just had to come.

Because someone wrote HELP! on the back.

Hawkeye figures that the previous owner’s daughter and current owner Marcy Carson sent it as a goof but heck if she’s going to go to that trouble, he’ll be happy to visit.

So he breezes past the workers outside the owner’s trailer and-

Actually they beat the shit out of him for trying to breeze past them. Goes to show.

When Hawkeye threatens to beat them up for this rude treatment, they get ruder and call him a rube. Can you believe! Him, a former employee himself being called a rube! Also they pull a fancy sci-fi gun on him.

So Hawkeye does buzz off. So he can change into his hawking eye duds and buzz right back on.

Roustabouts carrying laser pistols is very suspicious. And I guess Ant-Man isn’t the roustabout of the title. He’s moving up in the world.

MEANWHILE, Perfectly Ordinary electronics technician, ex-con, and Ant-Man Scott Lang is having a night out with his daughter Cassie. And they’re having a bit of a disagreement.

See, Cassie, future superhero, wants to ride the really cool roller coaster the Spin-’n-Heave. Scott Lang, dad with dumb views on gender apparently, insists that a roller coaster just isn’t ladylike enough and she should ride something more refined like the pony ride or ring toss.

Also, Scott is carrying the Ant-Man suit with him, loose in his pocket. And the helmet just drops out of his pocket and the damn fool would have lost it if Cassie hadn’t spotted it and mistaken it for a marble.

Geez, Scott! I stood up for you!

Scott’s attempts to dad by restricting what his daughter can and can’t do based on his own views on what is ladylike get dropped when he spots Hawkeye hauling ass across the carnival and decides that This Cannot Stand!

Scott Lang Ant-Man may not be an Avenger but dangit he can’t leave a fellow hero in the lurch! He must offer unsolicited aid!

So he caves on the Spin-’n-Heave issue because its a way to keep Cassie occupied for the length of exactly this issue.

Scott gives the operator a bunch of money and tells the operator to let Cassie ride until it runs out and then takes off.

Cassie is thrilled.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye has returned to the owner’s trailer but Marcy is gone and so are the two goons that were guarding the door. But he spots them marching Marcy through the crowd.

The goons are complimenting Marcy on being so cooperative but also say that if she’s not cooperative, her star acts are gonna get fed to the lions. And that might happen anyway once everything is said and done because their boss be like that.

Anyway, that’s when the two get hit by a KRAK THUBB arrow. Punch arrow? It looks nerf-y.

Hawkeye grabs Marcy and runs off with her into a tent so she can explain it all.

But first: he has to notice that she is beautiful. He has been gone a while so, y’know. People grow up or whatever.

Hawkeye: “There, that’s better! Now maybe I can get to the bottom of -- hey! You’re beautiful!”

Marcy: “I’ve waited a long time for you to notice that, ol’ buddy.”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, well, it’s hard noticin’ anything when you’re bein’ tripped into a pile of elephant dirt -- which, as I recall, used to be your favorite pastime!”

Marcy: “People change, Clint.”

Young Marcy sounds like a really interesting person. She certainly gave Hawkeye the business.

Anyway, she explains that it was pure luck that she was able to sneak that message out to him. And that the carnival has been taken over by some freak with powers.

Marcy: “Why, if he even suspected I was in touch with you he’d kill me deader than a Monday night in Des Moines!”

Off-screen Villain: “Nicely put, dumplin’! Should make you a dandy little epitaph!”

SCENE CHANGE TO PRESERVE SUSPENSE

Scott Lang has ducked behind some circus carts to change into Ant-Man.

Except he still has the whole shrunken costume piecemeal in his pockets so the process is one of slapstick. Scott goes digging in his pockets for the suit and accidentally drops it all in the straw.

Then he has to go digging around for the incredibly teeny pieces of gear while realizing that this was a stupid plan.

Maybe he should keep the suit in a tin. Like a mint tin or something.

But he finally gets all the pieces together and uses a safety pin to trigger the enlarging gas to full-size the outfit so he can put it on.

Huh! Enlarging gas! Early days in Avengers, they were all about the logistics of the shrinking and growing for Ant-Giant and the Wasp but it hasn’t been talked about in a long while. Wasp just changes size without the how being discussed.

But if it is Pym Particles, then I guess Scott isn’t at the point yet where his body naturally produces them so he has to use the gas canisters on the belt.

Scott does get dressed in his ant duds and uses the helmet to command some ants to find Hawkeye. And this is a carnival with a lot of dropped funnel cake and cotton candy so you know that there’s plenty of ants available.

SCENE CHANGE because we can only preserve suspense so far.

The mysterious off-screen villain hits the lights in the tent that Hawkeye and Marcy were talking in. Which reveals a bunch of gym and training equipment. It’d be nice if carnivals could provide such robust gym benefits to their workers but I feel that this is actually suspicious, finding this here.

Especially the combat flight simulator.

Hawkeye: “This place looks like a training ground for World War III!”

Off-screen villain, about to be onscreen: “And what better setting for the world’s greatest trainer? Namely... the TASKMASTER!”

Heyyy its the Taskmaster!

I forgot that he was a loose thread. He got away after the THREE-PARTER that introduced him. Then again, I guess since he’s the explanation for where villains get their armies of mooks, he didn’t really need to be tied up because that would defeat the purpose.

Anyway, Hawkeye wasn’t on the team for that three-parter but thankfully, the Avengers take thorough records.

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I remember readin’ about you in the Avengers’ files! You’re some sorta goon peddler!”

Taskmaster: “Watch yer mouth, bow-bender! What I am is a teacher!”

And then he recaps his goon, mook, henchman training business for the audience. He even clarifies that his series of secret academies are going great, thanks, but he’s trying to branch out with a mobile recruiting center.

Aka, this circus. And heck, according to Taskmaster, carnies already come off unscrupulous so having a bunch of goons hanging around won’t stand out.

THE PERFECT CRIME.

Actually. I don’t know if this is a crime? It’s not illegal to do combat training or learn how to fly a plane, probably. Then again, when 100% of your alumni wind up arrested for helping steal the Statue of Liberty, a legal goon school would get a lot of unwanted scrutiny. So best keep it secret.

And of course, extorting the owner and workers of a circus is definitely a crime. Pretty sure.

Anyway, the mobile recruiting center scheme is helped by Marcy telling anyone who asks that the new people hanging around are a new act that isn’t ready to open yet.

Hawkeye is sick of Taskmaster’s smarmy smarm and tries to shoot a grabber arrow? at Taskmaster.

Who just blocks it with his shield.

And takes the opportunity to brag about his photographic reflexes, where he only needs to see a sweet move once and he can do it perfectly.

He shows off by doing some Cap moves and then doing a Spider-Man move. Which he seems to do just to do.

And by Spider-Man move I mean hanging upside down from a line. Which, yes, Spider-Man does do that but it doesn’t really seem that necessary or helpful here and you’re totally doing it just to show off but really you look a little ridiculous.

Taskmaster even shows off some Tigra moves by kicking Hawkeye in the face. Its fun to me that he shows off Tigra specifically. Its for some acrobatics like flippy kick but there’s gotta be other acrobatic heroes. Like Spider-Man.

But Tigra was on the Avengers recently and briefly and dammit, he’s gonna show off what he learned!

Anyway, Taskmaster beats up Hawkeye until he gets bored of it and then just takes Marcy hostage to get Hawkeye to surrender.

He just really wanted to show off some of his sweet moves. And as soon as he ran through five different hero movesets (Cap, Spider-Man, Tigra, Daredevil, and Iron Fist) he’s just like ‘k I’m done’.

Meanwhile, back to Ant-Man ant-again.

He’s lurking around a corner trying to be inconspicuous while children are pointing and asking if he’s a clown. Perhaps realizing that he didn’t need to put on the full costume to use the helmet and that he’s just made himself look foolish.

But some of his ants report in that they’ve found Hawkeye so Ant-Man shrinks down to ride an ant into action.

Wait. Yeah. You could have just shrunken down and perched somewhere to wait for ant reports. You’ve made yourself look a fool and you fully had the power to avoid that in so many ways.

Meanwhile back to Hawkeye yet again, Taskmaster knows that killing an Avenger would attract notice so he’s going to make it look like an accident.

So he’s locked Hawkeye in an electrified cage with a lion, a normal situation that can accidentally happen to anyone. So now when Hawkeye gets mauled to death by the lion, nobody will suspect it was anything but an accident.

Taskmaster walks away because its villain tradition that you don’t watch the heroes you lock in the death traps. That’d just be gauche.

The lion sizes up Hawkeye and decides that he’s food and leaps for the kill!

And Ant-Man grows out from under the lion and throws it into the electrified bars, knocking him out.

Pretty good timing Scott! And that poor attempted man-eater lion! That poor five hundred pound lion! WOW SCOTT, do you work out?

I also feel that Republic Serial has aged poorly for more than just lion tossing.

Ant-Man and Hawkeye get each other on the same page. As it happens, Ant-Man actually has more experience with Taskmaster since he was actually in that three-parter. That’ll give them a tiny, tiny, tiny edge.

They’re still stuck in a locked cage and Hawkeye is like ‘gee whiz shrinking hero guy how can we possibly get out?’

Would you be surprised that Ant-Man just shrinks Hawkeye? Scott does muse that he could probably have picked the lock if he had the tools for it but shrinking just saves time.

Hawkeye does not care for it though.

I don’t know what he’s complaining about. Big sleepy cat even bigger now. You could live in the mane at that size.

You could be a tiny man living in a lion’s mane. Imagine.

Anyway.

Over in Taskmaster’s private tent, he’s telling Marcy she done fucked up calling for Hawkeye and she’s going to wish she was getting mauled to death by a lion in an electrified cage like Hawkeye was.

And Hawkeye does the equivalent of clearing his throat and saying ‘hey dingus, not dead’

Taskmaster reaches for a magnesium flare like he used against the Avengers but Ant-Man’s expert knowledge of meeting Taskmaster one time lets him warn Hawkeye who shoots it out of Taskmaster’s hand.

Taskmaster just questions why they didn’t go for a killshot when they had him surprised and then calls a goon squad on the heroes.

Of course, goon squads being called on heroes is just a setup to make heroes look really cool showing their stuff on some expendable targets.

“While the Taskmaster’s troops have been well-trained for normal combat, they fare woefully poor against these super-normal foes!”

And show their stuff they do. Like Hawkeye leaping around firing net and bola arrows!

And Ant-Man... shrinking down really small to punch a guy’s earlobe.

Look. He’s trying.

Also, Marcy is braining people with a juggling pin like some manner of alien clown because she is exceptionally irate at Taskmaster and his goons.

While the three beat up this crowd of goons, Taskmaster runs off to set up his “escape insurance.”

Ant-Man and Hawkeye chase him into the big top where there’s already a crowd watching the show. And waiting for the human cannonball act.

BUT! Taskmaster is apparently a cartoon villain because he’s replaced the human cannonball with a dummy full of explosives and he’s going to shoot it and blow up the grandstand, killing a couple hundred innocent lives.

Taskmaster tells them they can capture him or they can stop his ridiculous scheme.

Taskmaster: “Have fun decidin’, chumps!”

And then presumably he runs off giggling.

Hawkeye wants to go after Taskmaster and have Ant-Man take care of the nothuman cannonball bomb.

Ant-Man: “No, Hawkeye! There are too many lives at stake! And it may take both of us to stop that cannon!”

Hawkeye: “But we can’t just let that psycho walk! We can’t -- .”

Ant-Man: “Hawkeye! Think about it! Think! Please... !”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I guess you’re right... blast it.”

Scott Lang has his heart in the right place to be a hero even if he is a bit of a goofus about it. I like you, Scott Lang.

Hawkeye runs back into the tent and shoots the goon manning the cannon with a bola arrow. he gets the goon but the goon falls on the button.

Fortunately, its the elevation control, not the fire button.

Unfortunately, there is no firing button, so the firing cycle is automatic.

Fortunately, hitting the elevation control accidentally made the cannon point up instead of at the grandstand. So the bomb is still going to fall and blow everything up but they have time and Ant-Man has an idea.

He has Hawkeye nock his fastest arrow and jumps on it.

Hawkeye shoots the arrow and hits the explosive filled mannequin in the neck right as it reached the top of its trajectory and hung very briefly in the air.

As the bomb starts to plummet, Ant-Man crawls up the arrow onto the bomb-man and to the detonator.

All too soon the bomb hits the ring

but doesn’t detonate.

Ant-Man managed to defuse the bomb!

And he also managed to survive the fall because of course! He’s not destined to die for a long while and only then in a really dumb way.

Thanks to Scott’s experience of watching Raiders of the Lost Ark twenty-seven times he’s a real expert on jumping from one speeding object to another.

Aka, from the falling bomb to a flying ant. Sure.

The heroes see that Taskmaster has escaped while all this was going on but Hawkeye decides he’ll get him next time.

Also? The audience has thought that this was part of the show the whole time so they’ve loved every second of this.

Soon the other Avengers arrive, too late to take part in the plot but in time to help clean up the goon operation.

Also, She-Hulk is in her tattered white dress outfit again. I really think there was some miscommunication here. Like with having her dressed like that on the previous cover and having her dressed like that here in this filler issue.

She doesn’t wear that anymore but its the Iconic outfit for her so if an artist needs a ref to draw her, they’re probably looking at a picture from her Savage She-Hulk series.

And Scott Lang gets the last page because whoops, he left his daughter on a roller coaster the whole time and forgot her in the heat of the adventure. DAD OF THE YEAR!

Scott runs to find her sitting outside the Spin-’n-Heave looking down, head in hands. Scott is worried that something is wrong with her but

Cassie Lang: “I’m a little tired right now, daddy *yawn* but can we come back an’ ride the ‘Spin-’n-Heave’ again t’morrow?”

Scott Lang: “Tomorrow? Again? *sigh* Kids.”

Hah, she tuckered herself out riding the roller coast over and over again but is game to keep doing it again tomorrow. That’s the Cassie Lang that will grow up to join the Young Avengers!

So, Avengers filler but it wasn’t weird or inconsequential. It doesn’t do anything with the ongoing plots but it feels like it does since Scott Lang has come back into the books recently because of the Hank Pym plot. And it follows up on Taskmaster who has gone unaddressed since his introductory stories.

Its just a nice story and by focusing on a guest star and one of the Avengers doing an impromptu team-up it has some fun energy.

Good times.

Hey. Follow @essential-avengers maybe? Its better than the Spin-’n-Heave! ... I can’t actually prove that. But also like and reblog this post because I’m a cool person. ... I can’t actually prove that either...

#Avengers #Taskmaster #Hawkeye #Ant Man #Scott Lang #some roustabouts #some robin hoods #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #some avengers in a one panel cameo in their own book #ant man and hawkeye make a good team weirdly #i'm weirdly fascinated by the Spin 'n Heave #it has a waterfall

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sierraraeck · 4 years ago

Text

Prison (Pt.2)

BAU x OC Aundreya

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Summary: Prison arc reimagined. Aundreya goes to visit Spencer and gives him some advice on how to survive in there. Story thirteen.

Category: Angst.

Warnings: Cussing. Mentions of drugs and homicide. Someone gets stabbed.

Word Count: 3.4k

A/N: Just a reminder that this is all fiction and I don’t actually know anything about prisons.

Garcia visited him first.

Sure, she made the chart, but Derek, Aaron and Aundreya all agreed it was a good idea to have her visit first because there would be a lower likelihood that Reid would look disheveled or beaten up. They all knew she wouldn’t be able to handle that well, and for him, it would only make him feel worse to upset her.

Next was Hotch. He could help talk logical next steps. Then Derek because, well, Derek. They’d been super close since the beginning of time it seemed like, and he could try to get Reid to talk to him while helping him stay strong.

The prison buzzer went off and the line of prisoners were brought into the visiting room. Spencer immediately spotted Derek and relief filled his body. As he approached the booth, Derek stood up and surveyed him.

He had cuts below his eye, on his brow, and one even on his neck. He had bruises littering pretty much the rest of his face, the place between his temple and cheekbone swelling with a deep purple color. The marks on his throat were self-explanatory.

Spencer had never been much of the hugging type, but right now, all both men wanted to do was hug. All they needed to do was hug. But of course, now was the only time they couldn’t.

They both sat down and just looked at each other for a while before Derek started, “Kid-”

“I’m okay,” Spencer cut him off, but his voice was already shaky.

“We are making progress in our investigations. We all really miss having you around. Who’s supposed to give us all of the stats we need now?” Morgan said, attempting to lighten the mood.

Reid gave a soft smile at that, which was the best Morgan could hope for. “I guess you will just have to rely on Garcia to get you all that information.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“How is she, anyway?” Reid asked.

“She’s okay, actually. We are all having a bit of a tough time but we are all still keeping it together,” Derek answered.

“Good, good. What about everyone else?”

“Yeah, they’re managing. We all just really want you out, that’s all,” Derek attempted.

Reid gave him an incredulous look, “How are they really?”

Derek sighed. “JJ is worried, as we all knew she would be, Prentiss is deep breathing, but trying to keep herself all in the logistics of it. Rossi is helping everyone else, including Hotch who is just being Hotch. Level headed, linear thinking, determined Hotch,” Derek listed off. He would have mentioned Aundreya, except for the fact that she wasn’t exactly falling into the ‘somewhat-healthy-coping’ portion of the group, and he wanted to keep Spencer feeling positive without lying to him. But he knew the question was coming.

“And Chambers?” Reid asked, hesitant.

“She’s okay. Working hard but she’s doing fine,” Derek said, which was true if you were only looking at her from afar. She was composed, calm, and very determined to fix this. But no one was quite sure if she was sleeping or not. She seemed to be slowly withering away into a delirious state.

Of course, Spencer could read all of the context on Derek’s face and questioned, “Is that code for ‘she’s not doing well at all but is pretending like she is?’”

“Yeah,” Derek admitted. He couldn’t lie to Spencer, even if he wanted to, “How did Hotch put it that one time?”

“Struggling in silence,” Spencer answered. “Is she sleeping at all?”

The rest of them knew when to stop. They knew that at some point, after 24 hours awake had come and gone, they were so tired that continuing to work wouldn’t even be beneficial anymore.

Aundreya knew no such boundary. She worked until she passed out from exhaustion, and even then, set alarms to keep her awake. Everyone had tried everything in the book, but she wouldn’t have it. They all knew it was because she knew more than she was letting on, but they allowed her to chalk it up to ‘the message was left for me’ and no one argued. They say that love and fear are the two strongest emotions, both of which the entire team was using to fuel them, but she was running on an extra emotion. One that for her, was probably one of the most powerful. She was running on self-blame. Self-loathing. And once she went down that path, there was nothing and no one that could pull her back until the problem was solved and she could move past it herself.

“Not really,” Morgan tried to keep his answers as short and simple as possible.

“Tell her to take a moment and take care of herself. I’ll be fine for the few hours she sleeps,” Reid said.

“We’ve tried, but honestly, I don’t blame her. None of us are getting much sleep and for good reason. You’re not fine,” Derek said, and Spencer looked down, “And if I had the ability to go that long without sleep, just constantly trying to put things together to help you, I would.”

“I appreciate that,” he said shyly.

“So is there anyone in here you have made connections with? Anyone who can help you?” Derek asked. It was his main concern at the moment.

“Sort of, there’s this one gu-”

The buzzer went off again, signaling the end of their meeting. “Time’s up!”

“-we’re trying to look out for each other,” Spencer quickly finished.

“Okay, well just keep your head down. You are your first priority,” Morgan reminded him. He sounded like Aundreya, and it made Reid smile just a bit.

Spencer nodded and was shoved back in line and escorted out of the visitor room.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

When Morgan returned to us from the visit, I could literally feel the worry radiating off of him. He headed straight for Hotch’s office, and I tagged along solely based on the intense eye contact he gave me as he walked by.

I shut the door behind us.

“It’s bad, Hotch,” Morgan stated, “It’s really bad.”

“What happened?” Hotch asked.

“He’s taken a hard one recently. Maybe two,” Derek said. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was about to choke up. “You should have seen him. I’ve never seen him look so … broken.”

“Let me talk to him,” I said. Hotch was resistant to the idea because I was well known among prisons and prisoners.

“I still don’t know, Chambers,” he said.

“I’m telling you, I can help,” I pleaded.

“We aren’t going to do anything outside of the law,” Hotch said sternly, lowering his voice. As much as I wanted to convince him that wasn’t where I wanted to go with this, I couldn’t, because he knew me better than that.

“You’re right. We are not going to do anything of the sort,” I emphasized.

He gave me a knowing look.

“Come on, Aaron. Right now, all I want to do is talk to him. He needs someone with inside knowledge helping him out.”

“Hotch, she’s right. He desperately needs that sort of help right now, and this is our best avenue,” Derek spoke up.

“Fine. Go. Keep us updated. Derek, grab the rest of the team and have them meet us in the briefing room, we have a new case,” Hotch said, nodding at both of us, “But I don’t want either of you sharing this new information about Reid to anyone else. We need them in their best state of mind if we are going to continue to get work done.”

We both nodded and raced out of the room. I quickly grabbed my stuff, barely turning to wave to the rest of the team before scampering into the elevator.

The drive over to the prison was agonizing, by far the longest 25 minutes of my life. Luckily, I had already prepared myself for when I would get to see him, so I had everything ready.

When I walked into the visitors room, he was waiting for me.

I almost allowed my focus to be completely consumed by him, but there were multiple other jobs I had to complete. I scanned the room and identified all of the guards. Some I recognized, others I didn’t. Then I examined the prisoners and came up with the same result, but it was good to pin-point possible allies and possible threats.

I walked over to my side of the table and he stood up to greet me. I leaned over and gave him a hug.

“No physical contact!” one of the guards hollard. Spencer’s figure was stiff but I gave him a squeeze before I freed him, not even bothering to look in the guard’s direction, let alone apologize like I’d seen so many others do. I knew the rules. But I also knew my rules.

We sat down and the first thing I thought was that Morgan was right.

He had taken a hard one recently, and based off of his slight grimace at my embrace, the evidence wasn’t only subjected to his face. I think the worst thing about it was seeing his eyes; they were dull, a gray sort of brown. Not anywhere near the usual shiny hazel or chocolate I admired on the daily.

“So who was it?” I asked after I finished my survey of him. I refused to ask how he was doing. We were both tired of that question, especially since we both already knew the answer.

“What?” It wasn’t the opening he was accustomed to.

“Who or whom was it that marked up that pretty face of yours?” I rephrased.

“Darrell and his group,” Reid answered.

“Ah, Darrell. Fairchild, right?”

“Yeah. Ironic last name,” Spencer commented.

“No kidding. Derek tells me that there aren’t a ton of friends in here?”

“No, not really. There’s one,” he informed.

“We’re gonna change that, eh?” I posed it as a question but if things went my way, it was soon to be a statement.

“How?”

“First thing’s first, I need you to drop the innocent act,” I said matter-of-factly.

“No. I can’t do that,” he defended. It was the reaction I’d expected.

“I know you don’t want to, and I know that it’s one of the only things keeping you sane in here, but if you are going to survive for as long as it takes us to clear your name, I need you to do it.”

He leaned in. “What are you suggesting?”

I met him halfway, his gaze on me intent, “Own it. Your charge right now is murder. That immediately puts you on a higher playing field than a lot of the rest of them. Own it. You don’t ever have to admit to killing anyone, maybe you shouldn’t, but you need to act like you did. Yes, try to stay under the radar, but when you walk, walk confidently. Shoulders back, chin up, as if someone just reminded you that your title is Doctor Genius Spencer Reid.”

He smiled slightly at that and I pointed it out. “Exactly. You get a bit cockier whenever you hear it, so keep that in mind. Other thing, you need-”

“Time’s up!” the same guard from before yelled.

Spencer looked regretful as he went to stand up. I reached over the divider and grabbed his forearm. “Sit down.”

His eyes got wide. “What?”

“No physical contact!”

I didn’t release my grip on him and just stared him down with an arched eyebrow.

His eyes rapidly flicked between me and the guard. At this point, the straggling prisoners were just loitering, preparing for a show.

“You need to get in line right now!” a different guard yelled as he approached us.

Spencer turned to go but I held his arm down firmer and snarled, “Sit. Down.”

To my surprise, it was enough to get him to slowly lower himself back into the chair.

“I swear to god Reid!” the guard ramped up. It’s never good when the guard already knows your name within the first few weeks. “Lady, I need you to remove your hand from him.”

I didn’t respond. All I did was cock my head to the side as if I was cracking my neck, exposing my beloved tattoos there. I then lifted my other hand up and set it down on the table, the weight of the bracelets and rings making for a satisfying ‘plop’.

I smiled up at the guard whose fiery feet were now frozen in their path. “We’d like a few more minutes.”

He gulped. “Uh, ma’am we can’t-”

“You know what my name is so use it. Also, you can, and you will. Thanks,” I hissed, flashing another toothy smile and narrowing my eyes. The prisoners in the back looked astonished and I winked at one of the ones I recognized.

“Sure thing, Aundreya,” the guard said with a nod, carefully retrating.

I turned back to Spencer, and it looked like somebody’d hit him on the side of the head with a pan. The level of confusion radiating off of him was almost amusing.

“What just-”

“Not now. We have more important things to discuss.”

“You have got to teach me that.”

“Teach you what?”

“How to act crazy and disturbed while also being in charge.”

I laughed. “Oh, Spencer, you already are crazy and disturbed. We all are. You just have to hone yours in, that’s all. And after the confidence boost you are about to receive from inmates and guards alike, you just have to feed off of it and walk around like you own the damn joint.”

He was looking at me with the most focus I’d seen in a while. “What else?”

“Take these,” I said, handing over half of my bracelets and both of my rings. The guards were eyeballing them like their life depended on it.

He observed them, then looked up at me.

“Put them on,” I instructed. He did as I said and I wanted to smile at how fitting they actually looked on him. “Anyone tries to touch you, show them these. They will either back off, or ask you a variety of questions. All you need to tell them is that you know me and you know me well. A handful of the prisoners already saw us talking and a lot more will know by the time we are done.”

“What else?” he repeated.

“I wanted you to get a tattoo of my ring, but I figured that wouldn’t exactly be the avenue you’d like to take so make sure that the bracelets are always in sight. Never take them off and don’t let anyone touch them. Other thing: they’re gonna draw a lot of attention, so you have to start acting confident and you have to do it now. If you are timid with them on, people will talk and wonder if they are fake or if you are ‘unworthy,’ so be smart about it.”

“What do I tell people if they ask how I know you?”

“You have two options. Tell them the truth…” I started.

“Or?” He was always fast at picking up on how things worked. And here, everything had to be a lie.

“Or you tell them that I was the one who caught you. That you were causing problems for me and were able to track down a lot of my connections and I didn’t like that, so I decided to hunt you down. It took me a while and a lot of my effort to get you. During that time we got infatuated with each other because we were so evenly matched and actually enjoyed the challenge the other offered, that’s why I still visit you. Tell them I want to break you out and initiate you into my ring. Tell them I have eyes on you at all times and will personally pay anyone who hurts you a visit.”

“What? I don’t think-”

“Do you trust me?” I interrupted.

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.

“Good. Then tell them that and they will leave you alone. I will be visiting you at least once a week, and will make sure to make a show of it every now and then. But if we are going to make this work, you have to utilize all of the information I just gave you. And please, for the love of Lucifer, own your crazy,” I leaned even closer to him and looked right through his eyes, enunciating each word carefully, “That is the only way this works.”

I pushed back out of my chair and he mirrored me. I placed my hands on his shoulders and pushed them back slightly. With my index finger I tilted his chin up. I hooked a hand behind his neck and brought him to me, whispering in his ear, “You’re going to get through this, Doctor.”

I released him and turned to walk toward the visitor exit. I peered over my shoulder at his gaze following me out. I gave him one strong nod before turning back around and leaving him with what I considered to be the best I could manage at the moment.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Seven weeks and two days.

That’s how long Spencer had been in prison for.

Five weeks and six days.

That’s how long Aundreya’s bracelets protected him.

He did exactly as she said. He started to own his crazy. He started acting like he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed and he did his best to act confident while also keeping his head down. And she was right. Anyone that approached him quickly identified the chains he was now sporting and left him alone. They did draw a lot of attention though, and when he gave the false backstory of them hunting each other, becoming infatuated, her eventually winning but wanting to break him out to join her ring, it was like he immediately gained respect. He never thought he’d be so thankful for jewelry and lying.

But it only worked for so long.

Some of the guys thought that because Aundreya would be so caught up working cases, and because she’d ‘gone soft’ helping the FBI out, they could get back at her by hurting him. Surely she would no longer have the guts or the freedom to come after them. Plus, if she really enjoyed this new life, this fresh start, she couldn’t be caught ‘paying them a visit’ knowing how that ended, now could she?

Four cell doors didn’t get locked that night.

Must’ve been a security malfunction or something. At least, that was the explanation given the next morning.

But knowing Spencer’s luck, he was one of the four cell doors that remained open. The other three? None other than Darrell Fairchild and his two bloodhounds.

The small blade could have been smuggled in. One of them could have been crafty enough to make it. However it got there didn’t really matter. What mattered, was that it hurt like a bitch.

Twice.

The blade easily penetrated through his flesh, was brought out just far enough so that Spencer could see his own blood dripping from the blade onto his shoes, then plunged right back in. The second time came with a twist and a forceful yank upwards.

The rough concrete floor stung his knee caps and sent a wave of pins and needles up his legs. He put his hands over his stomach and had a wave of deja vu wash over him.

He’d done this before. Unfortunately, this time there wasn’t someone ready and willing to help him.

He looked toward his still open cell door, realizing that any evidence of Darrell and his possy being there was already gone.

Reid croaked out for anyone to help him, but no one came. He yelled a little bit louder, hearing a faint echo off of the concrete down the hall, but still, no one was around. Half crawling, half dragging himself toward the hallway, he continued calling out for help. His eyes drooped shut, collapsing only halfway out of his cell before he was able to identify the footsteps coming his way. His last thought was one of pleading, hoping that it was someone, anyone, who would help him. He wasn’t ready to die.

Taglist (open)

@justanothetfangirl

@kris-stuff

@blameitonthenight21

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johannstutt413 · 4 years ago

Text

(requested by calligomiles)

“Hmm hmm hmm-mm-hmm hmm-mm-hmm-mm hmm~” Gummy was looking through her stores before breakfast when she realized something concerning. “Hey, Matt? We’re running low on eggs and bacon. I’m gonna go see if Logistics can get us some more before tomorrow, but...”

“We’ll cover the early birds and put up a notice until you get back.” The Forte already had the sign in hand.

She gave a quick, “Thanks!” before slipping out the back and making her way to the Logistics office, sidestepping the occasional uncaffeinated Operator as she moved at her highest speed setting - which, considering she was a Defender and not a Guard, was surprisingly high. Eventually, she found herself at the office and stepped across the threshold. “Good mor- oh, Rosa, hi! You’re working the early shift today?”

“Good morning, Gummy; it’s always nice to see you, especially at the start of my day.” She yawned. “How can I help you?”

“We need more eggs and bacon in the kitchen as soon as we can get it. Could you put in an order for us?”

Rosa nodded. “Of course. Although...yes, I see we actually have some more eggs and bacon in cold storage, delivered not that long ago. I’m guessing you didn’t have space for them last week?”

“No, we didn’t, but...I don’t remember getting a notice from anyone, either.” The chef shrugged. “Oh well! Is there someone that can help me take them back to the kitchen?”

“It’s rather early, so I’m the only one here at the moment, but I can certainly help. I’ll take you down there now.”

Gummy waited for her to get up before dashing to give her a hug. “Thank you!”

“Ah, um, well I’m simply doing my job.” She was just tall enough to set her chin on the chef’s head, which somehow made the moment sweeter. But, as much as she might’ve wanted to let it last a little longer, they had work to do…“We should get going so you have supplies for breakfast.”

“Right, right. Lead the way!” She let go, happy that Rosa had hugged her back (unlike, say, the last time she’d asked Istina for one), and followed closely behind her as they went to the loading docks where the cold storage was.

Once they were down there, the harpoon-hauler checked a terminal before continuing on. “We need to be careful while we’re down there. Your phone is on, yes?”

“Mmhmm!” She frowned. “Wait, why do we need to be careful?”

As they approached the door, she tapped on it twice. It rang like a bell. “This door is difficult to open from the outside, so only one of us should be inside at a given moment. I’ll get us some carts, and then I’ll load them up while you stay out here to make sure I don’t get locked in.”

“I think we’ll only need one cart in the kitchen for now.”

“Ah, but then I won’t be able to make as large of an order.” Rosa smiled at the chef’s face as that clicked with her. “So I’ll get a cart for each of us.”

Gummy nodded. “Okay! I don’t need a code or anything to open the door, do I?”

“No, just hit the button when you hear me knock. I’ll get the carts and then come right back, okay?”

“Yes ma-” She kicked herself mentally. “Sure, Rosa! I’ll be here!”

The smile on her face cracked a little as she walked off to where the carts were kept. ‘She caught herself, at least, but...am I really that distant from the others now that she’d think to call me ma’am? Not Nat, or even Natalya...ma’am...hmm. Well, maybe there’s something I can do about that after work today. For now, let’s not dwell on it over-much and help Rada get ready for breakfast.’

“That was quick!” As always, the chef was quick with a word of encouragement as her friend returned with the carts.

“Thank you.” Rosa parked one just outside the door and took the other by both hands. “Would you get the door for me?”

Gummy hit the button and pulled it open. “There you go! Do I need to close it after you?”

“Yeah, otherwise it’ll get too warm. I’ll knock when I’m good, o-*yawn* okay?”

“Okay!” The chef made sure she was inside and on her way before closing the door behind her. Then, she took a seat on the other cart, and she waited.

About ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door; she opened it, and out stepped Rosa with a full load of bacon. “There we are! I’ll grab the eggs, and then we can take them up to the kitchen.”

“Sure thing!” Gummy took control of the bacon-cart. “Wow! I forget sometimes how strong you are!”

“Carrying my cannon around certainly has helped...Alright, I’ll be right back, okay?”

She nodded. “I’ll be here!” And she was...for several minutes...until she realized something wasn’t right. The chef opened the door, jammed it open with the cart, and called in, “Natalya! Everything alright?”

“...Rada? Oh! Sorry!” Rosa came running down an aisle with the cart in front of her loaded. “I uh...I kinda fell asleep.”

“In the giant fridge?! Are you having trouble sleeping, Natalya?”

She shook her head. “No, I...No, I suppose I am still. I had hoped it would get easier as time went on, but it hasn’t improved as quickly as I would like.”

“Hmm...Let’s get out of here, and let’s get this food to the kitchen, and then...” Gummy nodded to herself. “Then we’ll get you some breakfast and have a talk.”

“A talk?”

The chef nodded, pushing the door behind her open. “We haven’t talked in a while, and I miss you! Come on, faster we get these up there, the faster we can get to catching up!”

“Al...Alright!” Rosa followed out as Gummy held open the door. “They’ll be okay with that in the kitchen?”

“Matt told me I should take a morning off soon; this is as good a day as any! Oh, but I’ll message Bagpipe so she knows ahead of time...”

After a quick call to Bagpipe (as the chef remembered that she wasn’t exactly the best with technology and might break her phone trying to use the messaging function), they made their way back to the kitchen, where along with Matterhorn they stowed away the recovered food. Gummy set to work on making Rosa (and herself, while she was at it) a proper breakfast before surrendering the grill to Bagpipe. Food cooked, stores refilled, coffee poured...all seemed right.

Except for one thing. “So...You have nightmares, too?” The chef asked her comrade once they’d sat down to eat.

“Hmm...yes, quite frequently.” Rosa munched on some bacon, finding it rather difficult to think negative thoughts with Gummy’s cooking in front of her. “I usually get enough sleep for it not to be an issue, but every so often...You seem to have an answer to it, at least.”

“Kind of? Anna and Sonya are pretty close by, so when things get really bad, I can ask them to stay the night. Maybe it would help if you had someone with you?”

She had to set her fork down to process that properly. “That sounds rather scandalous.”

“You think so?” Gummy cocked her head. “I don’t see why it would be. People know we’re friends.”

“That would likely make it more noticeable...but at this point, if it works, I’m willing to handle some curious glances.”

The chef chuckled. “Nat, the people we work with aren’t that nosy.”

“You’re probably right.” She was blushing nonetheless. “I need to go back to work but...tonight, will you come to my room?”

“Can I bring my nightlight?”

Rosa nodded. “If you need yours specifically. I also have one in my room.”

“You do?” She nodded gravely. “This is more serious than I thought. I’ll get back to the kitchen, then. See you tonight, Rosa!”

“See you tonight.” ‘When she says sleep with me, does she mean sharing the room, or sleeping in the same bed? What do I wear to platonically sleep with someone? Or...Do I want to share it platonically? Urk...We’ll figure it out...’

#arknights #rosa (arknights)#gummy (arknights)#this one was stalling me so i snipped it short #potential for a part two #but i'm like a shaaak #can't stall or i might die #arknights fic

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phoebehalliwell · 4 years ago

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A la Dency taking Chris’ place ask, what if Dency got stranded there… because like her timeline got destroyed or something idk like imagine her getting to live in the main timeline 👀 IMAGINE her meeting Cole in the seven year witch

i love just like. the logistics of her meeting cole. bc let’s say that they’re linked bc they both still have echoes of the source and therefore are tied to each other so she can see him. but she still can’t see piper bc for some reason no one could see piper in this episode. so everyone’s all running around the house trying to save piper trying to save leo when dency just sees this whole grown ass man in her living room in conversation with something she can’t see and she’s like who the hell are you who are you talking to what are you doing in my house and phoebe and paige are like sweetie,, who are you talking to and piper’s like cool cole time to pay penance and act as the messenger so i can explain exactly what’s going on and coles like wait give me a minute who are you and why can you see me and piper’s like wait you don’t know who she is and cole’s like why should i know who she is and dency’s like who are you talking to is that piper can you communicate with piper and phoebe and paige are only getting 1/3 of this conversation like what.. the fuck. what is going on and piper’s like i’ll explain to you who that is if you get my message through to my sisters and cole’s like why should i care who that is and piper’s like i’m sorry i thought you were here to make up for all the evil you’ve done not just be a dick and get on my nerves, now tell her that it’s me piper and cole’s like fine that’s piper and dency’s repeating out loud for phoebe and paige okay piper’s here and piper’s like i’m stuck with cole he’s trying to save my marriage for some reason and cole’s like she’s here with me because i’m trying to save her marriage and make up for the wrong i’ve done and dency’s like this dude is trying to save piper and leo to make up for the wrong he’s done?? and paige and phoebe are like What Guy. and piper’s like don’t answer that tell her what you told me about the psychic shock and cole’s like so if piper moves out of the void between life and death and crosses over, the leo should be able to feel it and it’ll break whatever spell the elders cast on him and dency’s like but then won’t piper be dead and phoebe and paige are like why will piper be dead Who Are You Talking To Right Now and cole’s like look leo will be able to feel her death and he’ll come save her that’s the best option and piper’s like or you guys could find a better alternative and cole’s you can try to find another way but this is your best option and piper’s like that’s not remotely what i said and dency’s like okay so if piper dies it’ll cosmically shock leo and give him back his memories all that, and then he can save piper. unless we come up with a better option and phoebe’s like okay i vote we come up with a better option i’m gonna call darryl and see if he can help us track leo down and cole’s like okay i passed along your message why should i care about that girl and piper’s like bc she’s your daughter and cole almost short circuits and he’s looking at dency and now of course the resemblance is obvious but it still doesn’t make any sense how is she here alive not the source what and dency did not get any of piper’s half of the conversation and now cole’s just looking at her like 😦 and dency’s like hey. i don’t know why you should care about me either. what did piper say. and cole looks like he might actually start crying and the words are getting caught in his throat and dency’s looking at paige whattt the fuck is going on and paige is like what the fuck is going on? and dency’s like i don’t know, i think this dude might start crying? and paige is like what and dency’s like i don’t know and phoebe’s on the phone with darryl not getting any of this and cole’s just like looking at his daughter and yeah lowkey crying and like goes to hug her but his hands just pass through her and dency’s still talking to paige all hushed like he’s trying to hug me?? and paige crumples up a piece of paper and throws it at where she guesses this mystery figure would be standing like hey! who the hell are you! and piper’s like are you gonna introduce yourself? and cole’s crying now and he not sure if he wants to introduce himself bc he’s not sure how she’ll react and he asking piper does she hate me? and dency’s like i don’t know you!! but now the gears are turning in her head bc clearly she should know this man and piper’s like she might have some issues, yeah, but wouldn’t you want her to know and dency’s like paige help me out skinny white guy, six foot something, late thirties early forties dark hair green eyes and cole’s just like my name is cole right as paige goes cole??!?!? and phoebe from the kitchen is like COLE!?!?!? and dency just straight up doesn’t react bc like. that’s her dad. that’s her dad and the former source of all evil and a man she swore she hated just like in front of her trapped in the cosmic plane between life and death crying because he met her and also trying to save piper and leo’s marriage like what. what. what is she supposed to do with that. what is she supposed to say. hi dad. i hate you for making me who i am and i hate you for everything you did to mom it’s nice to meet you sorry you’re crying i turned out pretty okay thanks for trying to save piper and leo. does that cover everything? and meanwhile paige and phoebe are having a mini breakdown in the corner like where are you! we don’t trust you you’re trying to kill piper again leave us alone! and cole’s sitting on the couch crying and piper’s like okay i gotta deal with this so she just goes up to phoebe and places her hand on her hand and phoebe starts and we hear empath chimes and paige is like what what’s going on and phoebe’s like it’s piper. i can feel piper. and piper looks at cole and cole’s just like 😢 and piper nods her head at him like get up here and cole like stands up and moves to piper like uhhhhhh what do you want me to do and dency’s looking at him like What Is He Going To Do and piper’s like take her hand, cole and so cole like gently touches phoebe and phoebe starts and she’s like cole and paige balls up another piece of paper ready to throw it again and tears sorta prick at phoebe’s eyes and she just smiles and nods a little and dency sees cole back away and then like fade into the great cosmic void and piper’s like hey what about spirit guiding me and no one can here her but phoebe just looks pointedly like don’t worry piper. we’ll get leo back. and piper’s watching phoebe stare dramatically in the wrong direction and she’s like thanks. also i’m over here.

#charmed #cole turner #dency halliwell #au #piper halliwell #phoebe halliwell #paige matthews #margaretsminiessays #💌

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neshabeingchildish · 5 years ago

Text

The Swellview Shut In

This is for Pearl @pearlselegancies, though I don’t know if she’ll feel up to reading at the moment. I do want to preface it by saying that it involves the quarantine, but not in a sad and negative way (mostly). Really, I wanted to do more of a focus on the good things in life/friendship/found family and bonding type of premise. Hopefully, she enjoys this and anyone else who reads, too.

Charlotte Page: Student Mentor - The Swellview Shut In

A sickness was sweeping over the globe. Charlotte figured that it wouldn’t get to Swellview. Nothing ever really reached Swellview, but apparently, this was everywhere, because whenever Jasper showed up to her house in the morning, he had on gloves, a mask and was carrying a cleaning caddy in his hand. “What is up with this?” She wondered.

“The sickness has made it to Swellview, they’re closing school for at least two weeks!” He said. Then, he pulled out a can of disinfectant and began spraying her door and her things.

“There’s no school today?” She asked.

“Oh, no… There IS, but it’s only so that we can go in and grab our things, then they are promptly shutting the doors until further notice. Come on, I have stuff in my locker and I know that you do too.”

“If there’s really something going around, isn’t it stupid for them to even have the school open?”

“They were going to straight up close, but a lot of parents and stuff made a big deal about stuff like devices that teachers took up and locker possessions, so they had to open for that, but they’re like, setting up handwashing stations in the front and stuff. Do you not watch the news?”

The school didn’t have handwashing stations set up at the front of the building, but there were handwritten signs reminding everyone to wash their hands before and after touching things. Charlotte went to her locker and emptied it into her bag, still not fully believing that it was necessary, but taking her stuff, just in case. She texted Henry to see if he was going to do the same. He had no idea what she was even talking about. She texted Piper and moments later, the freshman met her at her locker.

“They’re kicking us out of school for at least two weeks! What do they expect me to do for breakfast and lunch? Eat the food at home? That’s way more expensive! Henry is gonna flip. Can I stay at your house?” Piper made prayer hands. Charlotte thought about it for a moment. Her parents were out of town and she did have an extra bed, but also… Her parents would flip out if she invited someone over in the middle of a possible pandemic… “Tell them it’s for charity!” Piper squealed, knowing by now how Charlotte’s mind worked.

At that moment, Jasper walked up to the two of them and handed his cleaning caddy to Piper, “You need to sanitize and gear up,” he said. “Gloves, mask. Charlotte REFUSED, like a fool.” Piper sighed and furrowed her eyebrows, then dropped the caddy on the floor, letting it spill products, to Jasper’s dismay. He rushed to collect them and also told Charlotte, “Char, I’ve gotta quarantine at your place.”

“What? No,” she said. “I’m not gonna have you and Piper at my house while my parents are gone and school is out!” Charlotte said.

Piper squealed, “You’re letting me stay!” and she bounced up and down.

Jasper stood up, with his products collected and asked, “You’re shutting me out? Ugh. Charlotte. You know that I can’t stay at my house for something like this. I spent hours cleaning up last night and barely made a dent. My mom’s not working again. This morning, the threw her empty ice cream pint right onto the recliner next to the couch she’s been sleeping on. I JUST cleared all of the trash off yesterday! I don’t want the illness in my space, Charlotte. LOOK AT ME!” She looked at him. He really appeared to be freaking out about the possibility of germs.

She sighed, “I’ll ask my parents, Jasper.” She wrapped an arm around Piper and said, “Come on. Let’s go get you some clothes from home.”

“TOO MUCH TOUCHING!” Jasper said and began to spray both of them with disinfectant, until Piper punched him in the ribs. “OUCH!”

“Jasper… tone down,” Charlotte said.

“She literally just punched me!”

“After you assaulted us with disinfectant!”

“For your own good!” Jasper said.

Piper let them into her house and was surprised to see Henry there. “For some reason, I assumed that when they closed school, you’d rush into work,” she said. He gave her a little smile, but didn’t respond. Charlotte raised an eyebrow and went over to him while Piper rushed upstairs to get packed.

“So, I’m gonna take her and Jasper in for a few at my place. My parents are actually stuck overseas and the town is officially going under curfew. So, I’ll make sure she’s taken care of for a little bit. Slight bit of stress off of you, right?” He frowned and nodded. “Why do I feel like it isn’t?”

He sighed and glanced towards the stairs, before saying quietly, “I’m temporarily out of work.” Charlotte gasped. Henry was the one who kept them above water and she could tell from his face that being out of work was going to most likely really hurt them. He noticed her face and forced a smile. “Don’t worry, Babe. I’ll figure something out.” He gave her a little kiss on the forehead and she smiled, in spite of being completely worried about him and Piper. But, there was something about him calling her “Babe” that kind of… made stuff at least go under the radar for a moment.

Their relationship was a little assumed, and not officially spoken of, but Henry was usually affectionate with her and called her “Babe,” so in her mind, they were pretty much married. In fact, she had been working out the logistics in her mind, hypothetically, for what if he came along with her whenever she left for college? Sure, it would be a struggle, but he was used to some level of that and the job market where she was going was actually better than Swellview. And, yes… They would have to bring Piper, because he certainly wouldn’t leave her to fend for herself, but she could have a fresh new start at a new school and maybe even thrive if she had a happy Henry there with her and also the mentorship of Charlotte, reaching beyond the school’s program… “Babe? You okay?” Henry wondered, cutting into her overthinking tangent.

“Yeah. You… wanna come over? Since, you’re not gonna be at work? We can maybe play video games and stuff. No school for the next few weeks. You rarely get a relaxing night.”

“Yeah, I actually want to try to see what one of those ‘good night’s sleep’ things feel like,” he said.

Piper came downstairs with her bags and said, “Henry, bring these to Jasper’s junk heap for me. I gotta see what cleaners we have. That’s what I’m using for “gas money” while we’re out of school.”

She dropped them on the floor by the door and Henry laughed and finally let his hand drop from Charlotte’s hip. “Guess WILL be working,” he said.

He went to go get her stuff and she went opening cabinets, “Do we SERIOUSLY not have basic household cleaners in this place? Are we THOSE people?”

“The oldest adult in your home just turned 18 a few months ago,” Charlotte reminded her. “Don’t worry about it, though. There’s plenty of cleaner at my place and Jasper took everything from his, because his folks were never going to use it anyway.”

“Dude… Are we about to do the apocalypse like the last kids on Earth?” Piper asked, excitedly.

“We’re spending some days, maybe a couple of weeks at my house. Did you bring hobby stuff? Because you’re not gonna be able to go out and hang with your girls when you’re bored. You need like books and stuff.”

“Books? Like… in case we run out of toilet paper? I think we’ve got some, somewhere…” Piper left and Charlotte didn’t even stop her.

Henry came back inside and Charlotte wondered, “So… Are you coming over? We might be stuck there and that might mean not seeing your sister for a few…”

He made a confused face. “You worried about me not seeing Piper, or me not seeing you?”

“I mean… Are you worried about it?” She asked, nonchalantly shrugging her shoulders.

“It’d totally suck. Let me go get some stuff packed and I’ll meet you all there.”

“Cool,” she said. She was really cheering inside. In fact, mentally, there was an entire Glee Cheerios performance, complete with stunts as she awkwardly left the house.

Piper came back into view and said, “Well, most of these pages are pretty rough, so I vote making Jasper use these as toilet paper whenever stock gets low…” Henry stared at her in confusion. She waved a hand and stuffed a book into a duffel bag. “That was for Charlotte’s ears. Forget I said it.” She left, too and Henry sighed. This was going to be… Interesting.

Jasper and Piper worked on getting everything cleaned up while Henry unpacked and brought everything to the rooms that Charlotte assigned. Jasper was fine to take the couch, but most of his stuff would have to be kept in Charlotte’s room, simply because she wasn’t going to have her parents come back to see Jasper had moved into their living room! She and Piper were in her bedroom, all of Piper’s stuff fit beneath the spare bed, so Jasper’s was in the closet. And Henry was given her parents’ room, because he was the least likely to impose on their stuff. In fact, he was so uncomfortable that he didn’t want to unpack any of his things in there, but their bathroom was amazing. He was ready to at least spend some time in that shower.

In fact, he got into the shower after he unloaded everything from Jasper’s car. Charlotte was making a list of things that they might need - which, she felt like they were pretty stocked up for the house - but normally, 3 people lived there, and now four were and there was a different basis of need, too. Her mother told her to use the emergency credit card to stock up and to message them everyday updates on how things were, and also photos of the house. She and Jasper went to gather everything, people were really wilding at the store, like… she was shocked at their behavior. Jasper had to guard her several times, and when they finally made it out, hours had passed.

Henry and Piper were in her room whenever they got back to the house. They both felt uncomfortable being anywhere else in the house without permission, so they were just catching up in there. But, Henry rushed to help them bring everything in once they got there.

They all unloaded the truck and Jasper and Charlotte told them about the way that people were behaving and how much more serious it seemed after having been around them like that. Henry was bothered by the fact that people were getting rough with Charlotte and he hadn’t been there to protect her. Protecting was kind of his thing, and Charlotte was kind of his girl.

Piper told the others, “So, I’ve planned out a movie night thing for every night this week, since we’re gonna be in here at least that long. I’m thinking that it’ll be cool to watch some apocalypse kinda stuff. Maybe some zombie stories. End of the world, dystopian mood.”

“In this climate?” Charlotte wondered.

“Especially in this climate,” Piper said.

“I think we should have assigned chores and designated dinner making nights,” Jasper said.

“Good idea, but I don’t cook. I suck at it. It would be a waste of food.”

Charlotte said, “My mom told me to make meals, do meal prep and also freeze some meals, so I’m going to get started on that today, since it’s more people than I usually have had to do stuff like this for.”

“You’ve had to do stuff like that before?” Henry asked.

Piper chuckled, “Her parents are almost literally never home,” she said.

“They work a lot and since I’m older now, they take on a lot more overseas ventures than when I was younger,” Charlotte explained, defensively.

Henry furrowed his eyebrows, wondering how he didn’t know that piece of information, but then again, he and Charlotte didn’t tend to discuss family stuff. Or at least… not hers. In fact, it occurred to him that he didn’t even know what her family LOOKED like. He didn’t want to ask, but he made a mental note to look for a photo later or something. In fact, he checked her social media. Surely, she had something there. But, her social media was pretty lacking in the parental area. He did see some people with her last name, though they were all white, so he clicked on a few, just out of curiosity. He found Fiona Page, who actually had a lot of young photos of her and Charlotte and one of the posts was her wishing her daughter a great time at Future Visionaries Camp. Now, he felt the need to investigate…

Charlotte and Jasper went to the kitchen. They had a routine for things like this, and they got started on their cooking party while Piper learned the remote control to the Pages’ system and Henry sat on his phone, looking at Charlotte’s mom’s page. Charlotte was fine to leave them to that while she and Jasper made a meal. It was the first time that she had Henry over in all the time that she’d known him. Mostly… Charlotte didn’t let people into her home. Piper was the first person in a while, and even she had only been over a couple of times, and only in the past few months. Jasper was the only friend that came over kind of regularly, and that was because (she believed) that her parents saw him as a charity case, and boy were they big on those.

One week of denial passed. Then, a week of realization. By the third week, they had touched base with all of the adults - her parents were going to remain overseas for now, but didn’t mind if she kept her friends there. Jasper’s parents were BOTH so sick that they could barely leave the house. Charlotte told him to just stay put and fight that urge to go help take care of them. They could always call 911 if they simply couldn’t stand it. He was no doctor and this was a pandemic. Henry’s mom had “been trying to figure out where on Earth her children were” this whole time (she was at the Hart house, had found Jake in an alley and brought him home and the two of them were going to spend the citywide quarantine there). Piper wanted to go home, but whenever Charlotte told her that she would have to stay there if she did, she opted for just staying, also; but she was very visibly upset about it. Henry spent time trying to cheer her up. His boss called to tell him that he wasn’t sure if he would even be able to reopen the store after all of this. Nobody was in a good way, except for Charlotte and her family, so she tried not to harp on the things that she was feeling too much, because she felt like it was petty in comparison to the others.

Charlotte left all of her friends in the living room after dinner to go into her room and relax for a moment. She usually had some time just before dinner to meditate and unwind from the school day, but the past few weeks, she hadn’t done so, considering the change in the house. She needed at least a couple of minutes.

After having been there for only a moment, Henry knocked on the door and peeked in, “Hey. You okay?” He asked. She forced a smile and nodded her head. She was lighting a candle and had a record player playing in the background. “I feel like I just interrupted something. I’ll go,” he said. She didn’t stop him. He sat down outside of the door and got back onto his phone. In case somebody else came around, he’d let them know that she didn’t seem to want to be bothered at the moment.

Charlotte went into her bathroom and drew herself a bath. She could shower tomorrow. It wasn’t like she did a whole lot today, anyway… Well… maybe she should shower afterwards, just to be safe, if there were so many germs going around that now they were getting emails about prom being cancelled and POSSIBLY graduation. That was a hit to her gut. She knew that she probably wasn’t going to win prom queen. That Bianca most likely had that in the bag, and while Charlotte got a lot more popular her senior year than previously, Bianca had been on the road to prom royalty since junior high. But graduation? That was basically robbery. That was something that she PERSONALLY looked forward to for 13 years of her life! The first day of school, she asked her teacher, “When does school end?” and they said 3:00. “Forever?” she’d asked. Well, she certainly loved learning, but going to classrooms full of other people to do it was never her favorite thing and now that she was the best of the best in her area at it… she hated the thought of not finally being front and center, standing up to say, “Nobody can force us to go to school anymore!” Though… she wouldn’t really say that and she was gonna continue to go to school, but… Graduation was just really important and the thought of not getting one was a huge loss to her!

She cried, listening to scratchy vinyl crooning, soaking away as much of her physical stress as possible, and posted a tiny rant about losing the opportunity to have prom and a graduation ceremony, and then just let it all out before taking a shower, doing her hair and resurfacing for her friends to let them know that she was going to go to bed and also to remind them to try to get some rest themselves.

She made it to the living room, where they all appeared to be having like crafts time or something - weird, but maybe not since they were quarantined. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, then said, “Um… I’m gonna go to bed. Probably like lay down and read or something. You all should try to get some sleep too.”

Henry had a pile of flowers he was toying around with until she began speaking, then he looked up and wondered, “Can I tuck you in?”

“I guess?” She said, laughing a little bit. He set down his craft materials and went with her. “You all look awfully busy with… crafts?”

“Yeah. We’re workin’ on something big,” he said, smiling. She wanted to ask him what, but she was actually exhausted from worrying and crying, so she kissed him goodnight and went to bed, opting for a book instead of reading on her phone, because she really didn’t want to see another mention of the quarantine, the virus, or the panic surrounding these things.

She was always the first one up, out of all of them. The few times she’d crashed at Henry’s, she learned that. Today was an exception, though. Whenever she got up, she noted first that Piper wasn’t in the spare bed, but figured that she probably slept on the couch, because that was where the TV was and she loved TV almost as much as she loved social media. Charlotte turned on some music, went to brush her teeth and did morning stretches. She went to the living room, excited to start the day out with her friends, but paused whenever she got there and Piper was hissing at Jasper that he was hanging it wrong. She stood for a moment, taking in the room. There were these individual sheets of paper, with string connecting them to make a banner and each page was a letter, for a banner that read “HOUSE PROM.”

“I have to be careful with it, or it’s going to tear!” Jasper fussed back at the freshman.

Henry came into the house with a bucket full of flowers and paused whenever he saw Charlotte.

“Morning…” He said. “I can explain.”

“You guys saw that I was bummed that Prom is cancelled, so you figured you’d turn my living room into a makeshift prom?”

“This guy gets it,” Jasper said from the step ladder.

“I know it’s not gonna be like a real prom, but… Me and Jasper are gonna wear suits. Piper’s gonna DJ. I made you a SICK flower crown… It’s gonna be okay,” Henry said, smiling and wincing at the same time, hoping that he sounded convincing.

She sniffled and went to hug him. “These are for additional decoration… I was gonna make some arrangements and stuff. Nobody’s buying the flowers from the supermarkets, so I was actually able to get a lot of them pretty damn cheaply.” She gave him a kiss on the lips and he smiled wider. “And, I get to see you in your prom dress! You designed it, right?”

“Yeah…”

“That’s awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of your design work.” He moved out of her reach to get back to decorations. She went to start on breakfast for everybody. He didn’t want to mention it right now, but he also was working on throwing her a mock graduation. Because, even though she had been trying to convince herself that everything would blow over and they would be able to finish the year out properly, the news said something totally different.

The House Prom was fun. Jasper made punch. Piper had great music and went live a few times so that kids at school could know that Henry and her did this FIRST, even if some of the rich kids might wind up doing it fancier. And Henry was stunned by Charlotte’s prom dress. He wasn’t sure what color it was, but went with whites and golds for her flower crown, which didn’t clash bad with the opaque pinkish dress that she had. The style of the crown wasn’t exactly a match for the style of the dress, but she insisted that it was perfect, that everything was perfect, and honestly, that was what really mattered to him.

Henry knew that he wasn’t as smart as her, or have as much money, or as much education and stuff.. But, making her happy… that still mattered to him, because he believed that he could, so he made sure that he did. The thought of them going their separate ways in a few months was always scary for him as he fell for her, but also… it made him aware that he had only a short period of time to impact her life forever. House Prom was one of those forever impacts.

They had an after party in Charlotte’s bedroom, which was just them laughing, eating and taking selfies to post to their House Prom tag, which was POPPING! Everyone at school wanted to be at Charlotte’s house, especially upon realizing that there were no adults there for the whole quarantine. She was extremely happy to have been so unpopular before. Now, nobody could just pop up at her house. Eventually, Piper fell to sleep and Jasper began dozing off in Charlotte’s bed. She scoffed, “How’s he gonna just fall asleep in MY bed?”

Henry said, “I can sleep on the couch, if you wanna crash in your parents’ room.”

“No, no. I’ll take care of it, she said.” She had to shower and stuff, so she went to do that and Henry retired to her parents’ room. After she was all washed up and ready for bed, she went to look at Jasper, halfway hanging off of her bed, his suit all disheveled and his hair tousled. He looked like a little boy and more importantly, peaceful. She sighed grabbed a blanket and left the bedroom. Henry was already in bed when she peeked in, but he sat up, so she either woke him or he hadn’t fallen asleep yet. “Hey… I wanna crash in here, if that’s cool with you?”

“Yeah. I’ll take the couch, sure.”

“No.. I wanted to crash in here… with you.”

He smiled brightly, “Even better!” She came and climbed into bed and pulled the blanket with her. “How did you like being Prom Queen for a night?”

“It was awesome! You’re amazing. Thank you for doing that for me. I really didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Your situation with your parents and Jasper’s… I’m actually so lucky and to complain in front of all of you felt cheap.”

He pulled her to himself and hugged her, “I want to know things about you, Char. You’re my girl. I don’t want you to feel like you have to wait until things are good for me to tell me what’s wrong with you. You’d be waiting forever.” She looked up at his face and he gave her a little half smile. “I never want you to have to wait on me,” he said.

She sat up now and placed both of her hands on his chest, tapping a little rhythm while she thought of how to say what she wanted to say.

“So… I was thinking… I know that you and Piper are a package deal, at least while she’s still so young, and that you hadn’t thought about things beyond graduation very much, but I was thinking and I’ve also kind of been looking into the details… IF you wanted to come with me, when I leave for Harvard, I’m gonna have a place out there. You won’t have to work to pay bills, but if you need something to hold you and Piper over, the job market is better there than it is here, and… I don’t know… Maybe you want to stay here and try to help your parents, or something, but if you did want to…”

“I do.” He smiled and then laughed, with tears in his eyes, “Of course I do! There’s nothing keeping me here and Piper… well, she’ll just have to understand that there’s not actually anything keeping her here either. I was so scared that whenever you left, you’d just forget about us. You’ve been… looking into the details?”

She shrugged her shoulders, “I can’t imagine my life without you in it anymore.”

He smiled and gave her a kiss. “Come on, it’s bedtime.”

*******************************************************************************************

Also Tagging, because now I feel like I should be because of how y’all been talking about it @sunbeameyes @kiddangers @bitchmilsky @chenoahchantel @adorkable-blackgirl @daintyurbanprincess @ciara-knightly I think that’s it. My comfort level has expired. Lol.

#Charlotte Page: Student Mentor #Quarantine Edition #Charlotte Page #Henry Danger AU #hd AU fic #Nesha HD Fics #Henry Danger #Henry Hart #Piper Hart #Jasper Dunlop #Flower Boy Henry

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believerindaydreams · 4 years ago

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autumn winding, part five

Manny

"Getting the group back together," Boone says, as terse and angry as I've ever heard him. This is Boone; that's saying quite a bit.

I sigh and ignore him while I finish counting out caps, because I may love him but I've got a line. There are other priorities in life besides humoring your gun-happy partner, and I take my job at A Quick Fix more seriously than he'll ever understand.

"Manny, you don't get it. He isn't dead."

I drop a Jet inhaler, almost shattering it; lucky thing my customer is keen enough for a fix to catch it with eager hands. "You sure?"

"I'm sure. Gotta mount a rescue mission."

"...Bannon? Do me a solid, take over. This is the price list, these are the customers, I have to run-"

"Now you know I don't deal with your- customers." Bannon is a snooty prick even at the best of times, which I admit a pack of addicts buying fixes isn't.

"I'll get Carla to discount the next garment batch for you, this is hella important. Tell Cindy I'll be back for the wedding, all right?"

Boone's been keeping his cool through all this, but I swear his voice is shaky now. "Wedding?"

"I'll tell you on the way. Let's go."

*****

Carla

Normally, she doesn't avail herself of the communal baby-tending aid; Daisy is her reward for all the hell of pregnancy, and it isn't often she lets her daughter out of her sight.

This time, though, she meekly hands over Daisy to the spiky-haired teenager who's looking out for the kids today. It might be inevitable that her daughter's earliest memories will involve guns and blood; but she's trying to prevent that.

She returns to the tent, still neat and clean a year on. Laying out garments needs a wide clear space.

"Arcade's alive and he's at the Enclave base," Boone's saying. He's smoking, which he promised he wouldn't do in the tent but this isn't normal; she reaches into his jacket pocket, helps herself to one with the lighter.

"But what Hannibal said, the massacre at Paradise Falls," Manny argues. He's picking at a loose knot in his red merc sweater, the only thing that marks him off these days as not being a local. "Everybody died on both sides."

"Maybe he ran for it and got picked up by an Enclave patrol, I don't know what the hell happened," Boone says. "But he got a message out. Raven Rock. He needs help."

"How do you know?" She doesn't want to believe it, Carla knows. Doesn't want to think they gave up on him.

"When we got to vault 112, it was full of...computers, complicated things. Arcade hacked one, I heard his voice."

"Don't suppose it was a trap?" Manny asks, eyebrows raised.

Carla shakes her head at him behind Boone's back. Her husband's a good guard for Project Purity, useful, but hardly important enough to be worth the trouble of the Enclave setting up a plan for. And even if it is...

her heart hurts, thinking of their cheerful Followers doctor being held by the Enclave. They shouldn't have given up on him. "I suppose we'd better figure logistics. Raven Rock isn't an easy journey."

"That's the only bit of luck we've got," Boone says. "Wanderer is heading out that way to get to vault 87, he wants me at the regular rate. We can go that far, and then- maybe he'll offer to help, maybe we part ways there. But it's a start, we're going upriver in two days."

Manny heaves a sigh. "Man, Cindy isn't gonna be happy about this. She thought she was marrying the quiet retired type, not a live one."

Dead silence.

She's sort of seen it coming, but this wasn't how she thought to hear about it. "Then you can't come."

"Ah, I'm not going to be like that. A gang's a gang, you're all in my blood." Thing about Manny is he's always so relaxed, that it isn't easy to tell what he thinks beneath it. "I'll come."

"No- no, you really can't. Somebody has to protect Daisy.""

"Ohhh. Point taken."

Boone takes the cigarette stub out of his mouth, frowns, opens it as if to ask a question, closes it again.

Carla presses in while she can. "I know you'll say Manny has more experience, but be honest, against Hellfire armor and laser RCW's we won't get through this on pure ammo. And I won't look Cindy in the eye and tell her I let her beloved go off to die, when I could have gone myself."

Boone sighs, reaches out to cradle her. "Don't know I like this. Not much of a life for Daisy, if she has to grow up without you."

"I can take care of her like my own- well, you've seen me change her diapers," Manny says, none of his usual humor in his voice now. "But Carla- are you sure about this? Sure it should be you?"

She nods, not trusting herself to speak; because she loves and trusts Manny both, will relinquish her daughter without a second thought, and yet there's so much festering there that he doesn't need to hear, has never deserved.

She's not jealous of Manny for the love. She's jealous for the camaraderie, the partnering, the bloodshed that is the one thing Boone's held apart from her all this time. The intimacy of it, the hell-bought chase, she's learned to forget it with Boone going it alone and Manny cobwebbing into retirement.

But if her husband needs a partner again, it'll be her.

"More sure than you could possibly believe," Carla says, and Manny acquiesces gracefully, and Boone lights another cigarette with the calm certainty of a man awaiting his next order.

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timelords-angel-is-sherlocked · 5 years ago

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Miraculous Holiday Prompts - Snowflakes (kagaminette)

With this 31 day promptmas, I’m going to attempt different ships I’ve never written before. Hopefully, I did Kagami justice.

Kagami was used to the cold. In Japan, the snow sometimes didn’t let up for months. On those snowy days, she would fence with her mother and do her stringent routines. She didn’t have time to think about the cold or any energy to shiver.

But this wasn’t Japan, it was Paris. Despite the clouds that blanketed the sky grey, Kagami figured it was still decent enough to go out for a run. She wore a grey tracksuit and warmed up outside of her house. Normally, she would have just gone to the gym, but Kagami was tired of being holed up inside her house. She wanted to go the scenic route. Plus, it gave her an excuse to stop by the Dupain-Cheng bakery to get some hot chocolate.

Surprisingly, Kagami ran into the baker’s daughter and almost fell into the Seine. Kagami was always focused and sharp-minded, yet she was too busy looking at the heavy clouds to look in front of her. In her defense, she doubted other people were running in this weather, much less the well-known klutz Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

“Hold on, I’ll pull you up.” Kagami was dangling off the side, one hand desperately clutching onto the small girl. With suspiciously no trouble, Marinette was able to pull the girl right up and caught her in a hug. “I’m sorry about that, I wasn’t paying attention.” Her face flushed as she took a small step back.

“I apologize as well. My mind was also occupied.” The two girls studied each other as if wondering what the other was doing out at this time.

“Did you just start?” They started to walk the direction Marinette was jogging.

“I’m only a mile in. I wanted to do four more, but it appears that it may finally snow soon,” the fencer gestured above them.

“You’re right.” Marinette almost seemed disappointed at the realization. “I really needed this run.” Kagami wasn’t used to seeing her this upset or agitated.

“We can continue to run. It may be a little reckless, but I don’t mind accompanying you until it does start to pour. Then we can seek shelter,” she reasoned aloud. The smaller girl lit up at that.

“I won’t slow you down, I promise.” Somehow, the Tsurugi didn’t doubt the statement.

Two hours later, two dripping wet girls entered the Dupain-Cheng giggling to themselves.

“Marinette!” Sabine ran over to her daughter and worriedly looked her up and down before a smile stretched across her face. “And I don’t believe we’ve met before?” She inquired to the girl next to her daughter and offered her hand.

“Kagami Tsurugi, ma’am,” she dutifully reported. “Your daughter and I know each other through Adrien Agreste.”

“It’s nice to meet you! Well, I’ll let you guys go up and dry off.”

“Thanks, Maman.” She kissed her mother on the cheek before heading through the back of the mostly empty bakery. Kagami followed.

“Do you want the Ladybug or Chat Noir pajamas?” The designer held up two onesies and Kagami chuckled at the options.

“I suppose I’ll take the honor of being Ladybug for the night if she doesn’t mind. I can only wish that I’ll live up to her beauty and heroics.” Kagami let a rare smile grace her face at her theatrics, completely missing the blushing Marinette as she went to the bathroom.

“I don’t think she minds at all,” she whispered into the empty room. “Hey Tikki, do you mind if I have company over? I know we were gonna go over some logistics.”

“Even Ladybug needs rest, Marinette! I like Kagami. Just make sure you two stay warm.” The human and kwami shared a face hug before the little god flew up into one of her favorite hiding spots to take a nap.

“This is surprisingly warm,” Kagami noted as she walked back into the room.

“You’ve never worn a onesie before?” The Ice Queen was examing the pajamas with a curious look.

“No. It’s best to stick with the practical things. I don’t think my mother would approve of this attire,” she added as an afterthought.

“Your mother is pretty strict, right? Like Adrien’s father.”

“She trusts me a bit more, so I am allowed to have some freedoms. As long as I’m home before curfew.” She glanced at the time on her phone. “Which is in approximately two and a half hours.”

“We’ll have enough time, then. I’ll change and grab us some treats. Would you like tea or hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate would be nice, please.” Kagami bowed her head, a habit she still had ingrained in her from her time living in Japan.

Kagami realized that this was the first time she was actually in Marinette’s room. When they hung out, they would always go to their cafe or to the park or even walks around the city. After the first two walks with the baker’s daughter, Kagami noticed that Marinette seemed to know all of Paris. No exaggerations. Kagami was still relatively new to the city, and she knows her friend has lived here her whole life, but this familiarity wasn’t one of just by simply living here. It was one who often navigated the streets.

“Wanna play Mecha Strike?” Marinette offered as she laid out the assortments of desserts she brought up with her.

“I’ve heard from Adrien how savage you are at it. I think that’s what he said,” she questioned herself with the wording.

“I am pretty good. I promise I’ll go easy on you.”

10 loses later on Kagami’s part, she huffed. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed or offended with how well you play.”

“I used to do this and design all the time before I got.. Busy.” Absentmindedly, she stroked her earring. Realizing what she had done, she played it off as tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Is it snowing?” Kagami walked over to the window and saw that it was snowing. It was soft in comparison to Japan’s relentless downpour.

“Woah! Wanna see something cool? I’ve been waiting for it to snow to see this. Come on!” Why was she going to ask if she was just going to go up through her trap door anyways?

Marinette’s balcony had a giant awning that covered nearly the whole space. Hanging from it were the cute little mini Christmas lights that Kagami often saw in most movies. They had a green and black pattern, no doubt trying to emulate Chat Noir’s theme. She had some beautiful pink Oleander’s that perfectly complimented the girl. There were also some Chinese Orange Blossoms that sat right at the edge of the awning. There was a pink futon next to a heat lamp. Kagami briefly wondered how they managed to get the stuff up here but was distracted by the view. She could see the fresh coat of white snow decorating the rooftops of Paris as if it were painted on. The wind was a bit strong, but Marinette turned on the heat lamp.

“This is amazing. Gorgeous, even,” Kagami complimented her friend.

“T-Thanks. It took some..help setting it all up, but it was worth it.” Kagami didn’t miss the way her eyes glinted at the word “help” but chose not to comment on it.

The two sat in comfortable silence and drank their hot chocolates. Kagami has hung out with this girl many times, but this feels different. More intimate, even.

“So Mme. Tsurugi is more lenient than M. Agreste?”

“Yes. She cares for me very much so and keeps me on a very strict schedule. Today was a free day I had this week and even then I wanted to spend it on meaningless things like running. I’m not sure I have hobbies. Do you get what I mean?”

“Not really,” she admitted.

“I fence religiously. I skate and read and do archery and so many other things because it is what my mother forced me into. Not because I like doing it. Every minute of my day is planned out, so when I have a day off, I am unsure what to do with myself. I am my mother’s faithful soldier and I will do as she commands with little to no hesitation. I suppose I feel like I am an unoriginal photocopy of my mother. I wonder if Adrien feels the same,” Kagami mused. Friends like this were still new to her, but she found that she actually enjoyed the company and speaking about her feelings. She doesn’t like being repressed. She was the Ice Queen and her mother drilled into her to conceal don’t feel, but it was a horrible way to live. Kagami wanted to be her own person, but she lived on a schedule for so long that she wondered whether that was possible or not.

“You aren’t your mom’s soldier,” Marinette tried to soothe. “I don’t think you are a photocopy of her. You just haven’t had practice expressing yourself. I saw how you ice skate. Precision, no hesitation.” They both smiled at the inside joke. “But ice skating can be more than that, too. It can be flying gracefully against the ice and expressing yourself in complex moves. I do that with my fashion decisions. And you’re just so you. It’s the little things. The way you listen so intently to what other people have to say. The beautiful smile you’ve been showing more and more. Your confidence. Do you know what they say about snowflakes?” She gestured to the snow around them.

“No?” Kagami looked at her with a confused face, although the blush from the kind words still remained.

“That they’re unique. No one of them is the same.” Kagami noticed how close they were suddenly. Their thighs were right next to each other, faces inches apart. “The same goes for people. And… And I think you’re a very unique snowflake. You may have some elements of your mother, but you still have parts that make you, you. Once you realize how much of an amazing person you are, you’ll stand out.” Both of the bluenettes were now blushing.

“Thank you, Marinette. No one has had anything to me like that before.” Kagami hesitantly reaches for her hand and grasps it once she has the courage to do so. “You’re inspiring.” Kagami wasn’t great at expressing herself or conveying her emotions, but it seemed as if Marinette got the message. She squeezed her hand in response.

They sat for a little bit under the awning, holding hands until an alarm went off on Kagami’s phone. “Crap, I’ve got to be home in half-hour.”

Before she could panic any further, Marinette took pity on her friend. “Calm down. I can have a friend give you a lift if you meet her downstairs.”

“In this weather though? I-”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” Her answer was immediate. They cleaned up on the balcony and Kagami changed back into her mostly dry clothes. She said goodbye to her friend and her parents before stepping outside the warm bakery.

Once Kagami left her room, Marinette called out for Tikki. “Do you mind a quick patrol?” Tikki knew why she wanted to transform but played along. “Tikki, spots on!”

“I hear you need a lift?” Ladybug asks. Kagami just stared at the superhero with a dumbfounded look.

“I do,” she laughed to herself after she understood what happened.

It was amazing seeing Paris from the back of a leaping superhero. Although most things just seemed like blurs, Kagami was enjoying the experience nonetheless.

“How often do you go on patrol?” Kagami asks before Ladybug could zip away.

“About three or four times a week if there are no akumas that day,” she answered honestly. That would explain how she knew the city so well.

“You know Ladybug,” she leaned in as if about to tell a secret. “I think you are the most beautiful snowflake of all.” Ladybug pulled back in surprise and her face was starting to get red (and it wasn’t because of the cold). Kagami gave a shy wave before stepping into her house, leaving Marinette blushing on the streets, her yo-yo limp in her hand.

After doing a quick swoop of the city, Marinette landed into her room and dropped her transformation. She was going to knit Kagami a snowflake scarf. If Tikki noticed the smile that didn’t leave her chosen’s face, she didn’t comment on it.

#mlholidays2k19 #marinette x kagami #marinette #kagami #kagaminette #snowflakes

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kn1feinthec0ffee · 4 years ago

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in too deep (part 5) - jules

jules x reader

TW: drugging

warnings: beating, homophobia, threat of death, i think that’s pretty much it??

notes: ooooohhh we’re getting closer to the end! not that i’m excited for this to end, but i’m just excited for you guys to see it

i really hope that me putting homophobia in this story doesn’t make you guys think i’m homophobic bc that’s the farthest thing from true. since i changed the gender of the mickey stand-in, i felt like it might be more interesting to add another dynamic into the story so it wasn’t just a word for word copy of the original except with a girl, bc that seems really one-dimensional to me. i feel like i need to put one of those things they have in movie credits like “the views in this film in no way reflect the views of the studio that produced it” kinda thing

also i think this may be my favorite part that i’ve written, bc if you didn’t notice, i’ve never left the reader’s perspective during the whole thing, so i had to improv a bit during the parts of the movie we didn’t get to see with mickey, and maybe i’m just a lil proud of myself :’)

******************************

for the first time since you came up with your brilliant plan to siphon the gas, you actually felt a glimmer of hope. jules was smart, she’d surely find a way out of the house; and she was damn loyal, too, so you knew there was no chance she’d leave you behind.

sadly all those hopes were dashed when you heard the basement door creak open again.

fuck, this whole plan was dependent on the fact that no one else came downstairs! your hands clammed up, your heart rate quickening as footsteps descended the stairs, stopping dead in their tracks once they reached the bottom.

“where the hell’d that little bitch go?” george roared, scanning every nook and cranny in the basement to see if jules was hiding anywhere. “answer me!”

you stayed silent, more out of fear than some sort of strategy. you quickly realized this was the wrong decision as george viciously backhanded you across the face. your head whipped to the side, eyes blinking back into focus from the impact. you felt something sticky on your lips and realized it was blood.

“you’re so angry,” you groaned. “why? just ‘cause you’re shooting blanks?” you pouted in mock sympathy. this sudden boost of confidence seemed to be a mistake as you saw george’s expression shift into a dangerously content one.

“i’m gonna rip your fuckin’ heart out.” your face dropped as he spoke. “i understand you not wantin’ to tell me where she is. in fact, if i were in your position i suppose i’d do the same. but god almighty i’m gonna watch ya’ die. i’m gonna hurt ya’.”

you were stunned into silence but you decided saying something, anything, would be better than nothing. “she’s gone, man. you just need to give it up.”

this seemed to strike a nerve in him. he turned towards you again and delivered another swift slap, knocking the wind out of you. he smacked you again, the back of your head knocking into the pole and causing your consciousness to fade for a moment.

“you think i’m full of hot air, don’t you? only good on roughin’ you up?” he asked rhetorically. “you know i worked as a door-to-door salesman for a few years? learned a lot, but the most important thing i learned was how to read people. and at the end of the day, you’re just an open book, sweetheart.”

the name sounded like poison dripping from his lips. it made you sick, that name belonged to jules.

“i know your type, believe you me, i’ve seen quite a few in my time. you see, you like to think you’re tough, strong, resilient, but at the end of the day, you just value her life above yours.” he laughed to himself. “am i right?”

he chuckled again when you didn’t answer. “that’s alright, you don’t have to answer, i know i’m right. well, you people are more loyal than i thought. guess i gotta give credit where credit’s due.”

“fuck you.” you spat. “don’t fucking talk about her like that.” he stood up again, this time grabbing something from a shelf before making his way back to you.

“alright, no more pussyfootin’ around, time to get down to business.” he revealed the knife, positioning it under your ear as he prepared to slice it off.

“sheisn’tgoingtothecops!” you breathed out quickly, hoping he’d let you keep both ears with the statement.

“what? what’d you say?” he seemed caught of guard by the sudden admission, backing off of you.

“not yet, anyway.” you took a moment to catch your breath. “i told her to wait. yeah, we got a little meet up spot. now if i don’t show up there in an hour or so, then yeah, cops galore. you’re fucked, buddy. but, if i do show up, we just continue on our way like none of this happened.”

you took another shaky breath before you continued. “if we’re being honest here, i don’t want the cops involved any more than you do. y’know, the whole ‘not gainfully employed’ thing? the cops aren’t a huge fan of that one.”

george seemed to take this into consideration, nodding quietly to himself. “what about sweetiepie?”

“her? i don’t give a fuck about her, she’s the whole reason i’m in this mess.” you winked at her, hoping she’d understand the message.

george snapped the blade shut, producing the key from to the cuffs from his jacket pocket.

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

“any last words for this son of a bitch?” george asked gloria as he trained the pistol on you.

“oh, i do wish you’d handled things differently. we could’ve had somethin’ beautiful here.” she smiled sadly, mourning what could’ve been.

“i’ll see you in hell,” george mumbled as he opened the door for you. you stepped into the doorway, only to stop dead in your tracks when you heard your girlfriend’s voice. shit.

“stop, don’t kill her!” jules shouted from the top of the steps, baby doll in hand. “i will smash it!” she held it over the railing, dangling precariously above the hardwood flooring beneath.

“whew, that was close.” george laughed, closing the door behind you. “unhand my baby!” gloria whined.

“alright, missy, calm down. no one’s gonna get hurt.” he kept the gun aimed at your head, but gloria quickly pried it out of his hands and took a shot at jules. she crouched to shield herself from the bullet that thankfully missed, but in doing so let go of the baby that plummeted to the floor, shattering into hundreds of pieces.

“get your ass down here or i’ll blow her brains out!” george shouted gruffly as jules descended the staircase. she ran to you, hugging you close and helping you to stand on your injured leg.

gloria rushed out of the room, bloody pieces of ceramic in hand as george turned back to you. “look what you gone and did. what did i do to deserve you two?”

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

“cooking’s a zen art for my dear gloria. i’ve found there’s a method to it: the more upset she is, the bigger the dish it takes to pull her out.” george explained. “needless to say, i think the two of you just summoned up a banquet.”

the two of you had been crudely duct-taped to some chairs in the dining room, forced to listen to the stuffy dialogue between the husband and wife. “why? why do you keep her down there?” jules asked.

“it’s not what you think.” he looked over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t listening. “my gloria, she’s always wanted a child. unfortunately, the good lord did not have that in his plans for us. so, i had to take matters into my own hands.”

“oh, so you kidnapped her.” jules stated bluntly. george glared at her, but continued his explanation.

“as you get older, things get... complicated, and i swear to god i had no ill intentions. i just wanted to make my wife happy.” he smiled. “and she was for a bit, until she started to remind her of what she couldn’t have. she asked me to make her go away, but i couldn’t bring myself do that, so the basement is our compromise.”

“dinner is served!” gloria announced, wheeling in a cart full of dishes of shepherd’s pie. she placed one on everyone’s plate before she sat down. they quickly said grace before digging into their food.

“so are you guys gonna kill us or...? what’s the deal?” jules asked matter-of-factly. you wanted to nudge her shoulder and ask her what in the hell made her so bold, but you didn’t want to cause a scene.

“george, you didn’t tell them?” gloria asked confusedly. “i wanted to make ‘em squirm a bit,” he smirked.

“t-tell us what?” you cursed yourself for stuttering but you couldn’t help it, it came out when you were anxious.

“we’re not gonna kill you.” george mumbled, almost sounding disappointed. “i said we’re not gonna kill ‘ya, what are you deaf?” you stifled a grin at jules, not wanting to change their decision to set you free. “we’ve decided that, despite your piss-poor behavior, the logistics of it just don’t make no sense for us.”

“sooner or later someone’s gonna come lookin’ for you two. now, i can hide a body like the easter bunny hides an egg, but the two of you have been sweatin’, spittin’, and pissin’ all over this place.” he paused to take a sip of his drink. “anywho, i’m bound to miss a spot. i figure we have a better chance of hitting the road. we’ll give it 48 hours, tip off the police, they’ll come by and pick ya’ up. i reckon you’ll do some time for whatever the hell you two did, but at least you’ll still be drawing breath. so congratulations, you should be thankful. you just won the damn lottery.”

jules spared a glance at you as if to say, what now? “take your time eatin’ you got another couple days in those chairs.” george muttered as he took another bite of his meal.

screw it, you thought. we’re hungry and going to jail in the next two days, what harm could a nice meal do? you both picked up your forks and knives and tucked in to the plate in front of you. you nearly let out a moan in satisfaction as the food hit your tongue. you scooped up more greedily as you had no clue if and when the next time you’d get fed would be.

“wait,” jules swallowed the food in her mouth. “what’s gonna happen to her?” gloria glanced over to george, waiting for the answer to the question as well.

“well, i’m sure they’ll put her some place nice. these orphanages, i hear they’re like five-star resorts.” george answered.

“does that upset you?” gloria turned to jules, a smile of mock empathy on her face. “anything’s better than down there.” jules mumbled.

“you got a heart of gold, jules. is your full name julia?” jules nodded in response. “my mother’s name was julia. she had a good heart, too, you remind me of her.”

“she died of cancer when i was real little. it was a slow, painful process, but i was with her every step of the way!” she grinned as her husband blew her a kiss. “the day before she died, she told me to look in the closet, that i’d find a special surprise for me in there. it was a package, wrapped up nice and pretty, with a tiny card with my name on it. she insisted i opened it, so i wiped away my tears, tore open the paper and there it was. a doll.”

everything stilled. every sound, the scraping of cutlery on the plate, the sound of everyone breathing, even the breeze blowing through the window decided this was a nice time to take a break.

“she said it was a magic doll,” she continued. “that no matter how sad i became, and believe me, i became very sad, i’d always have him with me. my ethan.”

your gut instincts finally kicked in as you spat out the food that was in your mouth, the gross pile of chewed up beef and potatoes looking oddly blurry to you. jules looked equally as mortified, probably even more since she was the one who brought about the end of the magic doll.

“and she was right; he was magical. and you took him away from me.” she grinned her creepy stepford wife grin once more. jules mumbled something but everything sounded miles away from you as your head swam.

“wha-what is this?” you slurred, the bright colors of the table morphing into one another.

“this is a drug overdose, y/n.” he chuckled when you sluggishly turned your head towards him. “i know, i know, i fibbed about lettin’ you live, but see, you had a veritable pharmacy in that bag of yours. you two just munched down enough pills to put a bull to bed,” his voice muffled into indiscernible nonsense, though you knew he was still speaking.

“f-fuck you,” jules managed, still keeping her head up. you, on the other hand, were slumped over, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

george got up from his seat, pulling your head up by your hair. “not so tough now, are ya’?” he jested.

jules muttered something in your defense, but as soon as your head dropped, you were down for the count; just missing the hopeful ring of the doorbell, possibly signaling you might live to see another day.

******************************

i should probably put a link to previous parts at the top but i have no clue how to do that lol

tags: @emmyrosee @flowers-in-your-hayr @willyourecognisemee @bill-skarsgard-owns-my-ass

#jules #jules x reader #jules oneshot #jules imagine #jules fanfiction #jules fanfic #jules fic #jules villains #villains #villains 2019 #maika monroe #maika monroe character #my writing

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