#his pathetic miserable cold ass is from his dad

[mr-nauseam]

See a post saying toxic yuri should win this year and I agreed. Its why I do an unhealthy attached between Julia Snow and Aelia Mars (whos a doble Snow bc she was cousin of Tigris dad...

[bl0odyh3art]

JUST LIKE HER.

warnings: incest (father/daughter), James being disgusting, james comparing you and Mary 😭, non-con to dub-con, and getting turned on by yelling.

this is dead dove/dark content. if are uncomfortable with this kind of content or don't like it, then do not interact.

a/n : this lowkey sucks to me

Being with your dad wasn't so bad. He supports you, cares for you, lets you drive his car sometimes, and decided it was okay for you to live with him still. Unless you find a nice spot. But there's one thing.

He's really, really, really, really, a serious loser. I mean come on…he's kinda pathetic. Sad to say it but it's true, your dad isn't always the best of the best. He can be lazy and dumb. Sometimes really touchy with you as well….but that's for another time. Whenever he sees you, cleaning, cooking, or whatever that reminds him of Mary in the slightest.

He'd go insane and go on long stories about her, of course he never told you what really happened…you'd hate him with all your guts and heart. He even feels pathetic for mistaking you for her once.

“Dad, it's been years. I thought you'd let go of it now.” You sighed as you grabbed the tiny towel to dry off a dish.

“I know, sweetie but it's just-....you look like her sometimes and that makes me freak out..” He looked away from you, what kind of father does that? Gets excited over almost seeing his dead wife but in reality it's just his daughter.

Honestly, when did you get so big? When you were a kid, you looked a lot more like him. Exactly like your dad, people would mistake you for a boy sometimes.

He was staring at you, long and good…just looking. ‘Would she feel just like Mary?’ He let his thoughts take over. What the fuck.

He cringed internally and put his head in his hands. He can't. He knows he shouldn't…but fuck. He saw all the bits of Mary…Mary…and himself. Mostly his genes but you were a perfect mix. The tits and ass…god he just wanted to grab them and compare them but that'd already make him more of a loser than he is.

Being miserable and wanting to fuck his own daughter? Really trying to make himself look bad at this point. But what could be the harm? Only once. He hid Mary's death for a bit…He can hide this too.

“What are you doing?” Scoffing at him as he puts his hands on your hips, Trying to swat them away.

“You look like her, y’know..?” He said in the softest and sad voice he had.

Pathetic ass loser trying to seduce his daughter. Barf.

“Okay…and?...” You tried to turn your head to look at him. He stared at you with a certain look you've seen before. The look you saw customers give you at work. “Let's fuck” look. He tried slipping his cold hands underneath your sweater, making you flinch and push him away.

“Hey! What the hell is wrong with you?” Your brows furrow and look disgusted with him. You should be disgusted because he deserves it.

“Honey, I'm so sorry…I don't know what came over me….” He sighed. He knew exactly what came over him but sadly it didn't work.

So plan B. Fuck her while she's sleeping. Not his proudest moments but hey, he's had worse moments. So during the night, while you're all tucked in and fast asleep. He comes in like the boogeyman at night and boom.

He can't wait another minute, feeling up your tits and kissing you…Okay, so it doesn't really taste like her but it's sweeter and softer.

After minutes of kissing you and feeling up your tits, you get up and slap him quickly “God, what the fuck is wrong with you? I can't even sleep anymore? Fuck…you're so gross, I can't believe mom delt with you.” You basically yelled at him and wow, that's what got him hard.

Whiskey Dick the whole time he was touching you but the yelling is what got him turned on. Fucking freak.

You couldn't do much, he's stronger and older, you had to give in and just let it happen. He has a big dick though…a real nice pale, veiny, pink tip dick. Pushing it deeper and deeper into you as he let go of strained groans.

“I'm sorry…. I'm- fuck I'm sorry baby but…I couldn't stop…” He breathed out into your neck, he got red pretty easily. his pretty neck is all red and his dick of course just absolutely throbbing against your soft walls. Making you cry out in pleasure and pain.

“Dad!...Oh God…ahah…please rub my clit…” you whined to him and he instantly listened. It's so cute. the perfect pussy, chubby, tight, and wet. After what seemed like hours, he finally came all in you. His jaw clenching, eyes closed, and hands stuck to your hips while he tried so hard to not moan ‘Mary’. No condom or anything. He wasn't capable of waiting for something like that. He felt guilty. Looking at your tired and exhausted expression.

“Baby…My baby…I'm so sorry for that..” He sighed out, leaning his head down to your shoulder and letting it rest there as you just patted his back. “S’okay, dad…” you slurred out, cock drunk.

At least he got some pussy finally.

[zootzbootz]

wanted to shoot my shot st this since I've seen the community post on YouTube ,, I've never really submitted my ocs to be drawn before so hopefully I do this right 😭

@bredrawz

details + oc under the cut!!!!!!

this is egress. there's a lot I could say about him but I'd hate to overwhelm with many details qwq

also adding this to show what his 'watch' looks like cuz it's a fake watch that just says now on it 😭😭😭😭

I'll give some character details tho but it's probably not gonna be very in depth.

basically he's just,, an absolute people pleaser of a man </3, the type who doesn't really let others see him upset, yk? blud kinda just let's people treat him however to an extent 😭 he does NOT have a backbone.

he's a former child actor but quit that kinda life a long time ago. now he's in a (not so) happy marriage w his former co-star!! and has like. four??? kids (might be five my dumbass forgot) . tho,, he's closeted gay (not for religious related reasons tho he's a 'born again' Christian, he fully accepts lgbtq stuff but only really understands like, the basics, 😭😭😭) he currently works as a museum curator, residing in the fictional town of township, ut (pronounced towns-ip, LMAOO)

*(his kids n partner r friends' ocs. ion feel comfortable naming the chars w/o their permission so yeah!!)

he's so miserable and tired and pathetic /aff

bonus trivia too 😋

- he was based on bloberta's dad from moral orel, and the les gold song 'cold hawaii'

- his name is cruelly ironic- as egress means essentially, [an] exit. be it the physical act of leaving/going from a place, or to refer to the exit of a building. meanwhile egress himself is 'trapped' in an unfavourable situation, that he can't easily exit

- secretly he has very immature humour ("peepee poopoo" type beat)

- his favourite band is hollywood undead (yes, seriously)

- probably severely malnourished because he ONLY eats foods that r sweet.

- his ass is NOT neurotypical!!! (he has hpd (appeasing subtype) , osdd-3, and is autistic :3 )

That's all for the ramble. hopefully it isn't too much or overwhelming 😭😭 I just love talking about my little guys

anyway uh!!

ion rlly expeft to be chosen cuz I bet a lotta pll r gonna be submitting characters but hey. never know until u try!!

- (drew)

[howaboutcastiel]

Hi hello!

I would rreeaalllyyy love protective Marc content, maybe something like the readers dad is being an ass and Marc stands up for her and makes her feel better?

Baby I swear I was gonna answer you a month ago when you sent me this…

I have a longer Fic on this concept coming very soon, but it strayed a bit from the source prompt so here’s some headcanons in the mean time. Rambling self-indulgence incoming.

Your dad doesn’t approve of your choices in life. Not your job, not your degree, not your partner. Not your unwillingness to stop your ambitions and drop everything to start a family. You’re simply not the woman he thinks that he raised you to be.

He sees tall, dark, and handsome Marc and he assumes the worst. Maybe he’s polite, maybe he’s wealthy, but daddy just don’t like it. He’s all wrong for you, just one more bad decision in a long list of yours. He doesn’t take it out on Marc, though.

“I knew you couldn’t do better than this. You’ll whore yourself out to any man with deep pockets who shows some kinda interest in you.”

You physically restrain Marc, and he only lets you hold him back because it’s you. The grits his teeth and mutters the swear words that Jake taught him in Spanish. He knows quite a few now.

Daddy cuts deeper. He wants it to hurt because you’re his baby girl and he’s hurting too and it’s all your fault. Why couldn’t you just be a good daughter?

“When that degree of yours proves useless as it is, I don’t want to see you come crying to me. Your boyfriend will find someone else to screw when you start being more trouble than you’re worth.”

It isn’t even that. Jake’s voice is screaming in headspace. “!Rompele le cara!” He shouts. “Break his nose! Wipe that smug smile off his face.”

“Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

That. That’s the one that takes the cake. Something snaps inside Marc and even your loving touch can’t keep him at bay for one miserable second longer.

“Why can’t you just crawl back into whatever gate to hell you came out of?”

It wasn’t his best jab, but he was all seething inside. The others were just as upset, but no way was Marc letting up control of the body right now. He rolled his eyes and clenched his fists till his knuckles cracked.

“You stay out of this, son.”

“I’m not your son. You’ve made that pretty clear. Pretty fucking good thing, too. I wouldn’t want to be, seeing how you treat the kids you’ve got.”

“This isn’t nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, it is. You cut into her, you cut into me. And you fucking cut into her. What piece of shit kinda dad takes his daughter’s success as a personal offense?”

“You call that success?”

“I’ll tell you what kind—the pathetic kind. The pansy-ass kind that blames everyone else for the fact that his life won’t amount to anything. Tough break, dad, but it’s not her fault. It’s yours.”

“You’re gonna let him talk to me that way?” Your father scoffed and pleaded like he’d ever cared about your voice before.

“She doesn’t have to let me do anything. Same thing goes for her. I trust her to make decisions for herself, and she makes damned good ones. I love her for that.”

Your father moves to prove his manhood. He won’t be talked down to by some punk who thinks he knows what’s best for daddy’s little girl. He moves to throw a punch, or just to spit in Marc’s stoic, calm face, but one darkened glare and your dad is cowering.

“Take your opinions somewhere else. They aren’t needed here. You aren’t needed here.”

Your dad turns to you, offended and small and longing. His eyes turn glossy and soft and you don’t let it make you feel cold.

Marc’s hold is much too warm for that.

“You’re not needed here, dad.”

Marc throws his arm around your shoulder, pulling you close and tight and safe, and nothing can move your father from his paralyzed stance as you patter away.

“Baby, you could never be more trouble than you’re worth.” He plants a kiss to your forehead tenderly.

“But holy shit. Your dad sure is.”

I know I know I KNOW it’s a mess and it’s impressionistic and it’s niche and I HAVE NO THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD. ENJOY. OR ELSE.

anyway, sincerely sorry that it’s been a whole ass month and this is all I have to show you right now. I hope you can find it in your heart to utterly not give a shit lol

[poisoned-peppermint]

Part 4 of incorrect quotes because i feel obligated to make more due to the sheer number of people who liked it

Dream: My dearest beloved fuckos, is a fun, gender-neutral way to begin a speech

George: See also, esteemed bastards

Bad: Gentlefolk, Ferals, and Domesticated cryptids. 

Sapnap: My fellow yees and haws

~~~~~~~

Techno:Hey I know skyrim is revered as a classic but are we just going to ignore the fact that the entire game only had like 3 voice actors

Wilbur:Stop right there criminal cum

Techno:My ancestors are smiling at me, bastard, can you say the same

~~~~~~~

Foolish:When's your bedtime :)

Purpled: Whenever I next collapse in purely up to the gods

~~~~~~

Ranboo:Human skin is a fursuit for skeletons 

Tubbo: i’m going to debone you like a fucking trout

~~~~~~

Bad:You’re enough

Bad: love yourself!!!!!!! or suffer my wrath!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dream:And by wrath I mean love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bad:no I mean wrath!!!!! You reading this, if you don't love yourself I’ll beat you with a stick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~

Bad:I hope everyone is today well! And tomorrow!!!! After that you’re on your own.

~~~~~~

Bad:what am I supposed to do all day while you’re at work

Skeppy:I don’t know, what do you normally do while I’m gone

Bad: wait for you to get back

~~~~~~

Velvet:For my next stunt, I’ll wake up at 5am on the day I can sleep in

Ant:Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Velvet:Early to bed and early to rise makes me a massive bitch

~~~~~~

Tubbo: 3:23 AM make a wish

Ranboo: I wish that you would go to sleep

Tuddo: Yeah well I wish I grew an inch taller every day as you get an inch shorter until you’re as flat as as a piece of paper and I’m 11 feet tall

Ranboo: You’re going to die of a mixture of skeletal instability and heart disease.

Tubbo: Yeah but I’ll look good while doing it.

~~~~~~

Bad:Disrespect me again and I’ll determine your bodies resonant frequency and play a jaunty horn solo that boils your miserable organs inside out 

~~~~~~

Quackity: If I were dating you?  Well, heh. Let’s just say horses wouldn't be called horses anymore

Karl: hey what the honk does this mean…..I’m shaking what does this mean!

~~~~~~

Skeppy: Are you ok?

Bad wrapped in a burrito blanket drinking his 6th cup of coffee: Yes, this is exactly what mental stability looks like

~~~~~~

Sam: My hands are cold

Ponk: *holds their hands*

Ponk: better?

Sam: My lips are cold too

~~~~~~

George at dream’s funeral: can I have a moment alone with them?

Sapnap: of course *leaves*

George leaning over dream’s casket: Now listen, I know you’re not dead.

Dream: yeah no shit

~~~~~~

Skeppy, jokingly: I should have Bad kill you for that.

Bad, peering around the corner: Who do I need to kill?

Skeppy: Wh- no, I was just kidding around.

Bad, pulling out a switchblade: No, who’s bothering you

~~~~~~

Bad *watching the news*: Some idiot tried to fight a squid at the aquarium.

Skeppy *covered in ink*: Maybe the squirt was being a dick.

~~~~~~

Peacock: *spreads feathers at Bad*

Skeppy: It’s trying to attract a mate

Bad, extremely confused: *shyly lifts top*

Skeppy: No!

~~~~~~

Sapnap: Karl, do you eat olives? My dad wants to know

Karl: No, I hate olives. Olives are the spawn of satan. I hate olives so much my mom forced me to live in Mount olive for the rest of my childhood as a curse from the olive gods. Do you understand how much olives have ruined my life? I'm so offended that you asked me that have some consideration for people who have been abused by olives please!

Sapnap: K A R L ……….they’re just olives!!?

Karl: JUST OLIVES EXCUSE!

~~~~~~

Tommy: If you’re bored you can simply close your eyes and rotate a cow in your mind. It’s free and the cops can’t stop you

~~~~~~

Wilbur: is there anyone even named sheldon irl?

Tubbo: my class turtle from 6th grade :)

Wilbur: that’s a turtle

Tubbo: When god sings with his creations, will a turtle not be part of the choir?

~~~~~~

Ranboo: No bcuz why do ppl like salad?? What’s so good about it

Tubbo: chew leaf like god intended

Ranboo: No

Tubbo: Abandon god and see what he does next time you lift your hands in prayer

~~~~~~~

Tommy: Guys, there’s a monster under my bed and it’s really ugly.

Wilbur, on the bottom bunk: Honestly, fuck you.

~~~~~~

Quackity: So according to the cease and desist order I got, apparently you can’t ‘legally’ be a lawyer if your license is ‘cut out of a cereal box’.

~~~~~~

Puffy: If you had too, what would you give up food or sex?

Bad: Sex.

Skeppy: Seriously, answer faster.

Bad: I’m sorry honey, when they said sex I wasn’t thinking about sex with you.

Skeppy: It’s like a giant hug.

Puffy: Ant, what about you? What would you give up sex or food?

Ant: Food.

Puffy: Okay, how about sex or dinosaurs?

Ant: ……...Oh my God it’s like the movie Sophie’s Choice.

Gumi: What about you Velvet? What would you give up sex or food?

Velvet: Oh… um… I don’t know, it’s too hard.

Gumi: No, you gotta pick one.

Velvet: Um, food… no, sex… no, food…sex… food. Ugh! I don’t know! I want both! I- I want Antfrost on bread!

~~~~~~~

Tommy, holding a gun: If the conspiracies about life being a simulation are true WHOEVERS CONTROLLING MY SIM I JUST WANNA TALK.

~~~~~~~

Bad: Why are you guys acting like this?

Boomer: Oh, we’re not acting. We really are like this.

~~~~~~

Techno: Dream has only knocked me out three times this week. Our friendship is really developing.

~~~~~~

Tommy: You’re pathetic!

Wilbur: You’re pathetic-er!

Techno: You’re both losers.

~~~~~~

Bad: I wish I could help you, but I shorn’t.

Skeppy: Bad, please!

Bad: What part of shorn’t don’t you understand?

~~~~~~

Tubbo: Why did you leave Wrestlemania on for Michal?

Ranboo: They need to learn how to protect us.

~~~~~~

Antfrost: I regret getting dragged into your heterosexual tomfoolery.

~~~~~~

Bad: Strawberry milk doesn’t taste like strawberry OR milk.

Skeppy: Go the fuck to sleep Bad!

Bad: LANGUAGE!!

~~~~~~

Ranboo: Tubbo, please calm down.

Tubbo: I asked for two large fries!

Tubbo: *dumps fries onto table*

Tubbo: But all they did was give me a MILLION FUCKING LITTLE ONES!

~~~~~~

Bad: That was the worst throw ever. Of all time.

Skeppy: Not my fault. Somebody put a wall in the way.

~~~~~~

Wilbur: When you’ve been on the internet for as long as I have, you develop thick skin.

Tommy: Navy blue isn’t your color.

Wilbur: Navy blue brings out my eyes you prick! *Chases after Tommy*

~~~~~~

Bad: *Pulls a glass a water from out of nowhere*

Puffy: Where did you get that?.

Bad: My pocket.

Puffy: How do you keep a glass of water in your pocket?

Bad: Skills.

~~~~~~

Tubbo: I will come to your house after work and knock on your window at 11 AM. You will not open the curtains, knowing full well what awaits you, but the knocking only grows louder, more demanding. Finally it stops, your ears ringing. You nervously let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. You're safe now. Minutes pass by and you start to relax. And then you hear a knock at the front door. Like before, you stay still and clutch the blankets around you. You try to tell your self that it's just your imagination. Maybe the milk man? But why would he come so late? Everyone else was asleep, save for Naomi who was playing video games down stairs. To your relief, the knocking stops after a few. Minutes and you breath easy once more. Until you hear a knock on your bedroom door. You don't move. It's just your imagination. She isn't here. She can't be here. You tell yourself, shutting your eyes and willing yourself to sleep. The knock comes again, but with horror you realize that it came from the closet inside your room. You know that you have no choice. You get up, climbing out of bed with shaking limbs. You walk to the closest, trembling, and holding back the tears threatening to spill over your porcelain cheeks. You hesitate with your hand over the closet handle. Maybe it's just your imagination? She's not really there. You can go to sleep and laugh it off in the morning. Your naive thoughts are cut off by another, more demanding knock on the closet door, inches from your face. You know what you have to do. You open the closet door, and there she stands. Chuck e cheese, the mouse looms over you in the dim light. It's soulless eyes boor into you. It raises its arms, and you flinch as it begins to floss at lightning speed. Tears spill over your cheeks. This is the last thing you'll ever see.

Ranboo: Wait, Chuck e cheese’s pronouns are she/her? Trans Chuck e cheese? Good for her.

~~~~~~~~

Bad: Would you like something to drink? *They opened the fridge* We have water, milk, juice, spiders, Dr. Pepper-

Quackity: Spiders?

Bad: Spiders it is then.

Quackity: No, that wasn’t-

*But they were already pouring him a brimming glass of spiders…

~~~~~~

Puffy : Make her pussy wet not her eyes.

Velvet : Make his dick hard not his life.

Punz : Break her bed not her heart.

Skeppy : Play with his boobs not his feelings. 

Ant : Get on his dick not his nerves.

Bad : Always salt your pasta while boiling it.

~~~~~~~

Wilbur: Bet you can’t eat 15 crayons!

Tommy: Bet you I can!

Phil: *sips coffee, checks to make sure 911 is still on speed dial, and goes back to reading the paper*

~~~~~~~

Ant: We need a way to lure in new customers?

Ponk: Maybe we could have some fun, interactive events!

Skeppy: Badboyhalo bath water.

Bad: ABSOLUTELY NOT!

~~~~~~~~

Fundy: GET BACK HERE YOU DUMB FUCK!

Wilbur: LET ME RUN FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY ACTIONS!

~~~~~~~~

Bad: Mint is just cold spicy.

Pummel party Squad: …

Gumi: What the actual fuck is wrong with you.

~~~~~~~~

Quackity: Isn’t it amazing how I can feel so bad and still look so good?

~~~~~~~

Tommy: Why does my arm shake and turn bright red when I’m eating dirt?

Phil:

Phil: Why are you eating dirt?

Tommy: Did I ask you if I should eat dirt? No, so answer my question.

~~~~~~~

Tubbo: I wish I could control wasps and bees to sting my enemies.

Quackity: You’re too young to have enemies.

Tubbo: You don’t even know.

~~~~~~~~

Skeppy: Is there a cactus where your heart should be?

Puffy: What’s up your ass this morning!

Bad: *walks in* …Hi!!

Puffy: Hmm… nevermind.

Skeppy: WAIT NO!

~~~~~~~~

Skeppy: Ha! Don’t you know the trappers trap can trap the trapper?

Skeppy: I must be losing it, I’m quoting Bad.

~~~~~~~

Skeppy: Bad, I sense hostility.

Bad: Good, because I hate you

~~~~~~~

Bad: Are you a painting?

Skeppy: What-?

Bad: Because I want to pin you to a wall.

Skeppy: OH GOD I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY YOU WANTED TO HANG ME OR SOMETHING-

~~~~~~

Tommy: You’re giving me a sticker?

Phil: Not just a sticker. That is a sticker of a kitty saying “me-wow!”

Tommy: I’m not a preschooler.

Phil: Fine, I’ll take it back-

Tommy: I earned this, back off!

~~~~~~

Dream, sweating: George, there’s something I need to ask you-

George: Finally! You’re proposing!

Dream: How’d you know?

George: Dream, you’ve dropped the ring five times during dinner.

George: I even picked it up once

~~~~~~~~

*Bad and Skeppy looking at a locked gate into a park*

Bad: Aw. :(

Skeppy: You know what they say.

Bad: Please don’t-

Skeppy: BE GAY DO CRIME! *hops gate*

Bad: Frick-

~~~~~~~~

let me know if ya’ll want more <3

[axwalker]

CREEP 3: You're just like an angel

Pairing: Drake Walker x MC  (Lexie O’Brien) Book TRR

Synopsis: Drake is a hurt, angry teenager. After being rejected by Lexie, he spends two years bullying her until he discovers the horrible truth behind her rejection. 

MASTERLIST HERE

In this chapter: Lexie gets to know more about the boy hiding behind the monster. 

A/N: This is Lexie’s POV. We’ll be in Drake’s head in the following chapter. 

A/N 2: Thank you to my beautiful prereader @burnsoslow​

Your suggestions made all the difference! LOVE YOUU ❤️

A/N 3: Thank you to @mskaneko​ for the edit that closes this fic. It’s gorgeous! I love youu ❤️

Words: 5,108 🙈

WARNINGS: Parental abuse, domestic violence, toxic love, abuse, bullying. 

THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL MARSHMALLOW DRAKE. He was abandoned as a boy, he’s tortured and he doesn’t know how to express love. 

This is a dark love story. If you think this might trigger you, PLEASE do not read it.  

ALL MY FICS ARE 18+

TAGS ON THE COMMENTS --As this is darker than usual; I’m only tagging the people who commented in the previous chapters. If you want to get on or off the list for this fic; please do not hesitate to ask!!

LEXIE

Watching Drake put my duffel bag on the back of his motorcycle, my pulse is getting out of control on my neck. This is happening. I’m leaving home. I’m getting out, and I’m never coming back. And Drake Walker, my tormentor, is helping me. He actually defended me. The fact that I’m being helped by the person who called me a future trophy wife this morning makes this moment even more surreal. He’s had this tormented expression on his face for the last half an hour that’s stupidly making me want to hug him or make him feel better. For what, though? I don’t know. I don’t owe him anything, and still, I have this pressing need to wrap my arms around his neck and tell him everything will be okay. 

When it comes to Drake, my emotions have never been truly logical. One second I hate him, and the next, I’m whispering his name in the darkness of my room, my fingers sawing against the wet cotton of my panties. My feelings for him are incredibly confusing…but I know asking him to back off was the right move. Even if I secretly miss his presence everywhere I turn. In my unstable world, there was something comforting about knowing he would always be there. Watching me. Hating me. Wanting me. That last part was never in doubt. He’s made that clear many times. That if I wanted, he would “give me a nice long hate-fuck in the back of his trailer.” And he’d always say, “No one has to know, baby,” in that deep, hoarse tone that keeps me up at night. Makes me shove my fingers down the front of my panties and struggle to breathe, sweating through my covers to an orgasm. I’m having those particularly sexual thoughts when he looks over at me, and I don’t quite manage to hide my lust. His movements slow, a dark eyebrow arching as he fixes on my mouth, my breasts. I’m a real hot mess right now. Beaten and bloody, but there’s no denying he’s still attracted. It’s always there in the rise and fall of his chest, the clicking of his jaw. The tenting of his jeans. How many times have I turned in class and—avoiding his gaze—locked eyes with his jeans instead? At least that’s one thing us poor fuckers have going for us. We know how to fuck.

 Well, if I thought sympathy was a strange emotion regarding this boy, jealousy is even more confusing. Why should I care that he’s been with other girls? Obviously, he must have been with hundreds of girls to get good at sex. It’s none of my business, is it? I’m almost rid of him. And I don’t want to be jealous. Still, when he holds out his hand to help me onto the bike, I ignore it with a raise of my chin and climb on myself. You’re almost rid of him, Lexie. Get a ride and say goodbye. Unfortunately, I may have been a little overenthusiastic in asking to be taken to a motel. I’ve never been to one, but I know a credit card is required—and I don’t have one of those. Nor do I have enough cash in my wallet for more than one night. I need to figure out an alternative plan fast. Still looking damned tortured, Drake places his helmet on my head and gently buckles the chinstrap. Swallowing loud enough to hear over the passing cars. Helmetless, he brings the engine to life, the vibration so exhilarating; I wrap my arms around his middle on reflex.

I can feel taking a deep breath. “Lexie…” He can’t see me, so I give in to the impulse to press my cheek to his leather jacket, absorbing the warmth and his smell, earthy and so masculine. 

“Yes?” Drake clears his throat, his voice even more profound. “My dad left me a cabin a few towns over. Near Portavira lake.” He pauses. “It’s very rustic, but I’ve been fixing it, so it’s clean, and it has a bed and some supplies. I could take you there. You’d be safe.” 

It’s dangerous to start accepting more favors from him, but what choice do I have? My father made sure that I’m helpless. He did it with my mother and now me. Isolated us from everyone who might be a friend. I’ll accept his offer, but only because here and now, I promise myself I’ll find a way to help myself in the future. To leave my father and his house of horrors in the past. Maybe it can’t be done entirely alone. Maybe accepting help is the only option. That doesn’t mean I’m forgetting the way he treated me. Yes, I’m attracted to him but I also hate him. He’s made my life miserable for two years and I won’t let him --or myself, forget that. Maybe he’s hiding right now but I know Drake--as my father, has a monster underneath. His monster might not slap me or make me bleed but that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Poisonous words can hurt as much as one well-delivered blow.  

“Okay,” I say, feeling him relax. “Thanks.” I’ll accept his help for now and leave as soon as I can. 

He responds by turning on the engine of the bike again. That’s when I hear my father yelling my name from the back door of the house. His hands are tied behind his back, and he’s limping, blood coming out his nose. 

“Alexis Jade O’Brien! You get your ass back here right now, or you’ll never be allowed back! You’ll be dead to me!” 

He has to be joking; he’s been dead to me since the first time he hit me. I look back at the pathetic old man with every ounce of rebellion I have. Baring my teeth, I give him the middle finger and dismiss him. Forever. 

“Good girl,” Drake murmurs a second before driving away. I don’t look back a single time. We drive for half an hour. After twenty minutes on the highway, the trees grow denser and denser, the road deserted. We don’t pass a single car on the way to the cabin, which comforts me when I should be worried. Shouldn’t I? I can’t allow the last two years of em2otional battle to mean nothing. To melt away in the face of tonight’s act of kindness. I meant what I said. I need Drake to leave me alone. To release the hold he has on me. I’ve cut one negative force out of my life tonight. The last thing I need is a replacement. But as I grow tired against his strong back, his woody and manly scent lulling me, encouraging the trust he doesn’t deserve, I worry leaving him might be easier said than done. Especially when we arrive at the cabin, and he lifts me off the bike, cradling me to his chest like I’m made of crystal, a moment too long before settling me onto my feet. It’s hard giving up his warmth, but I push off his chest, creating distance between us. He watches me back away like I’m breaking his heart. 

“There is a shower inside,” he says quietly. “You can finally get the, uh…” He blows a breath. “…the blood off.” The sun sets as we stand there. It’s nothing like the light of the night we kissed. This time it's brighter, more intense. It must be the higher elevation. 

“You’re not hurting anywhere else?” 

“I’ll be fine.” Why is he breathing so fast? “What’s wrong, Drake?” 

“What’s wrong?” He fights through a humorless laugh, sliding his hand through his hair. “Where do I start? Most urgent is…I know you’re going to want me to leave you here alone, and I don’t think I can. Look, if you want to lock the doors, I’ll sleep outside on the ground, Lexie, but please don’t ask me to go.” 

He’s right. I was going to tell him it’s OK to go back to his trailer. There was a convenience store with a payphone a mile down the road. If there is no working phone in the cabin, I can still make calls, if necessary. I’m not sure what my next move will be, now that I’ve run away from home. But I know I’ll never be able to think with a clear head as long as Drake is around, looking at me like that. “Drake…”

 “It’s just that once I leave, I know that’s it. You’re going to shut me out again. And this time, it’ll be your choice.” He paces away, still raking his fingers through his hair. “I deserve to be cut off. Fuck, I know that. Believe me when I say I hate myself right now, but if there was something I could do to make up the last two years to you, even just a little—” 

I shake my head. Nothing can make up for the two years I spent loving him while he tortured me. There will be nothing between us. 

“I understand.” His fingers rake his hair one last time. “You can go in the cabin. I’ll sleep outside; that way, I’ll be sure your—father won’t be back.”

Despite myself and my better judgment, I worry about him. “Outside? It’s cold and dark; I can go to a motel.” At least for one night, I’ll figure out what I’ll do after tomorrow. 

“No way. Look, I won’t be able to sleep anyway. Just go inside and try to rest; I’ll be fine. I’m used to it.”

Used to what? Sleeping outside? “Isn’t there a couch or something?”

He shakes his head. “The cabin was in ruins until six months ago when I started working on it. There’s only one bed, but there’s a rug next to the fireplace. Please don’t leave. I—I need to know you’re safe.” 

I know Drake would never abuse me physically. I might be naïve, but I just know he would never do it. And as much as it’s difficult for me to understand why I feel safe with him here. Still, I have to be smart, my instincts tell me to trust him, but my instincts have been wrong about him before. 

“Does the room lock?”

“It does with a bolt that can’t be opened from outside. But you’re safe with me, Lexie. I swear.”

It’s his miserable look that makes me decide. “Okay, if it locks, I can stay here.”

We go inside, and he leads me to his room. When my bag hits the floor next to his bed, I get even more nervous. I just left everything I know behind me and have no idea what’s coming next. School will be over in a few weeks, but I can graduate earlier, thanks to my credits. I’ll need a job, save some money, get an apartment and apply for college in Cordonia. It’s overwhelming. 

I don’t want to cry in front of Drake. I don’t want to show him I feel weak, sad, and pathetic, but something inside of me suddenly breaks, and before I can’t do anything to stop it, I’m sobbing.

Drake is sitting on the bed in a second, and he’s pulling me into his lap, trying to calm me down. “Shh Lexie, it’s okay. Cry all you need to. I’m here. It’s okay,” he repeats in a litany as he rubs my shoulders, kisses my cheek, then my nose. Why do I feel so safe with him? Why, after everything he put me through, do I want to be here with him more than anywhere else? 

“Let it all out, Lex. You’re so strong, baby.” He takes a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and uses it to gently clean my tears. The piece of fabric seems so incongruous in his rough hands that I can’t help but smile a little. 

“Is this yours?”

He shrugs. “My dad collected them. After he died, my mom gave all his stuff away. This handkerchief is the only thing I have left of him. And this cabin.”

“I’m sorry, Drake. I don’t want to ruin it.”

He smiles. “Ruin it? Impossible. If anything, now it's even more special to me.” 

The softness in his eyes looks so sincere it scares the hell out of me. I can’t let myself forget who Drake really is. I stand up from his lap and put my bag on the bed. 

“I’m really tired; I’d better go to bed.” 

“Okay … can I just look at your wounds?” he asks as he inspects my face. “You have some nasty cuts,” he adds, his fist clenching. 

When I nod, he takes my hand and leads me to his bathroom. The room is as simple and modest as expected. Block walls, no tiles on the floor, no curtain on the shower, and an old toilet. A million years away from the white marble bathrooms in my house. 

He follows my gaze and blushes. “I’m sorry. This is not what you’re used to. I—uhm, I’m slowly putting it together when I have time and some money. I’m good with my hands.” I look at said hands, and there’s no doubt he’s good with them. They look big and calloused. Capable and rough but so gentle with me. I want them all around my body. As if he had listened to my silent demand, he grabs me by my waist and sits me on the counter next to the sink. My legs part on instinct, and he puts himself between them. We don’t talk for two long minutes until he opens the faucet and wets a towel. 

“I just got the water running this week; Come on.” Gently --almost reverently, he washes and cleans every cut, every injury. Softly he brushes his thumbs over my face. He doesn’t speak as he does, but there’s a tension between us. A raw feeling that has always been there. 

“Tell me about yourself,” I blurt out, desperate to break the moment. 

“There’s not much to say. Sorry, Lexie!” he exclaims when I wince. “Does this hurt?”

“A little. I. need a distraction. Why do you live alone? I know your dad is –uhm, gone, but where’s your mom?”

“Gone too.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Drake.”

“Don’t be. She was a bitch. She died in a car accident two years ago. She was living in Texas back then.”

“I don’t get it. Two years ago, you were here in Cordonia.” 

“Yeah, she left me after my dad died. Took my sister and left me here. Reminded her too much of my dad, she said.” 

I remember Jackson Walker. Everyone in Portavira does. He was Liam’s dad's bodyguard and died protecting him. But that was five years ago. If his mom left just after his passing, that means Drake has been living by himself since he’s thirteen years old. It can’t be.

Drake turns around and opens a box in the corner of the room. When he turns back, he’s holding a Band-Aid. 

“I keep these around. Construction can get nasty sometimes. Come here, Lex.” He cups my chin with one of his big hands while he cleans a cut next to my eyebrow. His touch is leaving goosebumps all over my skin. I hate to be this affected by him.  

I clear my throat to avoid the embarrassment of talking in a squeaky voice. “So, who were you living with?”

“No one. My aunt got custody when my mom left, but her husband didn’t want kids. He made her choose between him or me, so I’ve been living on my own since I’m thirteen.” My heart breaks then. Not only at the fact that he had to live by himself when he was still a child, but at the way he says it. Matter-of-factly. As if it was the most normal thing in the world that his mother, his aunt, and his uncle abandoned him. As horrible as my dad is, I’ve never had to fend for myself. And my mom loved me so much. If cancer hadn’t taken her away, she’d be here fighting for me. Drake has no one. I can’t help the tears glistening in my eyes. “Hey! Don’t cry, Lexie,” his thumb moves from my eyebrow to my cheek as he wipes the tears off my face. ”I prefer to live by myself than go to a foster house. And Leona checks on me now and then.”

“If your mom died, where’s your sister?”

He takes a deep breath but doesn’t pronounce a single word for a few minutes. Finally, he clears his throat and speaks. “Savvy was with my mom in the car. She died too.” 

I want to say something. Anything. But I can’t. Nothing seems like enough. Sorry is such an empty word—a stupid cliché. I’m horrified at my own muteness, so I do the only thing I can think of. I hug him. At first, he just stands there, his arms hanging at his sides. But soon, I can feel him giving in, his heart beating hard against my chest. He encircles his arms around me, wrapping me in the tightest hug possible. I don’t know who’s comforting whom anymore. I only know that I love being here, and I hope it’s giving him a little solace, this hug.

 It doesn’t mean I’ll forgive or even forget what he put me through, but no one deserves to go through that kind of pain alone. 

“I’ll be outside, Lexie,” he says when he finally lets me go. “If you need anything, anything at all, just call for me, okay?”

“Wait!’ I yell, so he turns around. “Are you really going to sleep on the floor?”

He shrugs. “I don’t mind. I just want to make sure you’re safe,” he hesitates as if he’s going to add something important. “Good night, Lexie.” 

“Wait,” I feel my cheeks redden just thinking about what I’m about to propose. “You can sleep here, I-I know you won’t hurt me.”

“Never,” he says, a determined look on his face. “I would never hurt you that way, and you have no idea how much I regret how I’ve treated you in the past. But I’ll be okay sleeping outside. I know you’ll feel better sleeping here by yourself.” 

I can’t deny that. I meant what I said about trusting him not to hurt me, but I can’t forget what he did either. “At least take this pillow and the blanket. I’ll manage with the pillow and the cover left.” He hesitates, so I insist. “Please. I won’t be able to sleep otherwise.”

After taking them and giving me one of the saddest smiles I’ve ever seen, he closes the door behind him and leaves me alone in the room. I lie on his bed, incapable of sleeping. The pain in his eyes when he told me about his little sister haunts me all night long. 

The following day I toss around in bed, confused and angry at myself. I can’t have feelings for Drake Walker. I can’t forget the insults or the anger in his eyes, the hurt that his words caused me every -single time. I just can’t. I hate what happened to him. I genuinely do, but iI have to think about myself. Denying that I’m attracted to him would be preposterous. Our chemistry is strong and undeniable, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps I just need one night with him, so I can move on with my life. Get him out of my system.

When I finally leave the bed, I find a note under my door: Went to buy some groceries, be back soon. DW

I go to the room where I assume he’s going to build the kitchen. For now, there’s only a more-than-a-few-years-old microwave and a cooler. I open the cabinets, but there’s barely anything there. 

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. I feel my heart slamming in my chest; if it’s my father, I have no means of defending myself. I’m about to escape through the back door when a woman’s voice starts yelling.

“Open up, Drake. I’m not in the mood today.” 

I open the door because the voice sounds familiar. I recognize Leona, the principal’s assistant. And I know she’s related to Drake.

Leona arches an eyebrow when she sees me. “Ms. O’Brien, what on earth are you in my nephew’s cabin? Does your father even know where you are?”

“I’m 18. I don’t have to tell my father where I am.” I answer in a much bolder tone than I feel.

She shrugs, clearly uninterested. “Well, I brought this to my nephew. Tell him I want those signed by next week. We’re not going to lose thousands of euros because of some dumb nostalgia.”

She hands me a big manila folder, I take it, but she doesn’t let go. “Maybe you’re the one who can convince him.”

“Convince him about what?”

“His father Jackson left him this piece of land, but it isn’t worth a dime without cattle or money to invest in it. But, a couple of months ago a big company approached us, they wanted to build a landfill here. Drake refuses to sell. He thinks he’s going to honor his dead father by rebuilding this old piece of crap, but he will never have the money to do it.” 

“Never.” The deep voice that comes from the entrance startles us both. “This was my dad’s dream. He wanted a ranch, and one day this place will be one,” Drake says, “I told you already, Leona. I won’t sell; I don’t care how much they’re offering you to convince me.”

“I’ve never denied that they’re offering me a commission for the sale, Drake. But I still think it’s the best move for you.” Leona leaves the papers on the table, turns and leaves the cabin. 

“You love this land?” I’m genuinely curious. 

He slowly nods. “It’s all I have left of my dad. He’s the only person that ever gave two damns about me.”

“That says more about your family than about you, Drake.”

He looks directly at me. His gaze doesn’t leave mine for a long minute. I want to get closer to him, to touch him. Not only to offer some comfort but because my body reacts to him in the wildest way. Just standing next to him in the kitchen, I feel my heart beating faster, my hands trembling harder, my sex getting wetter. The response he gets from me is maddening. And it’s making me insane. There’s no freaking way in hell; I’m going to have feelings for Drake Walker.

“I- I need to take a shower. I’ll eat later.” Without giving him any time to respond, I run to the bathroom and shut the door. I open the shower and get inside, desperate for some release, anything that’ll take my mind off him. His stupid perfect smirk and deep eyes. That voice of his, intense, soft, and deep at the same time. Those big hands, calloused and capable. Hands that I just know would know precisely how to touch me. Before I realize it, I’m coming as quietly as I can. Sadly, my relief only lasts a few minutes, my body needs him --Drake Walker, and no substitute would do. 

When I come out, he’s waiting for me with a hot cup of coffee and a couple of white chocolate-strawberry muffins---my favorite kind. 

We eat in silence, but I don’t feel the weight of it as I usually do. Ours is a companionable silence. 

After breakfast, we decide to take a hike next to the lake. A bit of exercise and the lake’s breathtaking landscape might be exactly what I need to stop thinking about my father and the confusing feelings I have for Drake. 

“I think I need a job. Do you know how I can get one?” I hate that I’m so spoiled, but I’ve never lifted a finger in my life. I have no idea how I can get a job. 

“Uhm sure. Here in Portavira?”

“Actually, I was thinking of moving to Cordonia city after graduation. “Drake stops walking for a second. “It’s too late to enroll for next semester, but I can get a job and start college next year.”

He finally starts walking again and nods slowly. “What do you want to do?” 

I blush. My dreams don’t include being famous or rich. All I want is a good, quiet life. Falling in love, having a family. Doing a job I’d enjoy and traveling as much as possible -even if it’s on a low budget. “You’ll think it’s dumb.”

Drake looks at me. “I swear I won’t, Lexie. There’s nothing you can say that I’ll find dumb. It’s just not possible.”

“I love books. They offer you new worlds. They allow you to escape and be someone else for a few pages. You can never be alone when you’re reading a book. I’d love to have a job where I would be surrounded by books. Maybe become a librarian and then open a bookstore one day.”

Drake nods but doesn’t reply. I knew he would find my dream stupid.

“I know it’s not much-“

He stands in front of me and tilts my chin until our eyes meet. “It’s amazing, Lexie. I was just thinking how great you’d be at it. Remember the top 5 assignment for Mr. Daniels?”

Of course, I do. Mr. Daniels, our English teacher, asked us to make a list of our five favorite books and recommend them to the class. 

I nod. “Yeah”

“Well, I read all the books on your list. I checked them out of the school’s library and fuck, I loved them all. Especially the one from that Krakauer guy.”

“Into the Wild?”

“Yep. I really enjoyed it. The way that guy Christopher reinvented himself spoke to me.” He holds my gaze. “You’d be an awesome librarian, Lex. You would also be an amazing writer. I remember that short story you wrote for Mr. Daniel’s class. The one about the lonely girl and how she traveled through time with her mind. You have no idea how much I loved it.”

I can’t believe he remembers that story. We had that assignment more than a year ago. “I’ve always wanted to write, but my dad thinks my stories aren’t good enough.”

“Your father is a dick. Your stories are amazing.” 

He looks at me in a way that makes my knees weak. The intensity in his eyes is overwhelming, so I feel it again. The connection with him. The desire. Maybe the only way this would go away is if I give in to it. 

“There is something you can do for me,” I say, surprising myself. As soon as those two words are out of my mouth, though, I know there is something I need from Drake. 

And he’s the only one who can give it to me. “Get you out of my system.” 

He stands still as a statue. “What?” 

“Get yourself out of my system.” It starts to rain, and it makes me speak louder, feel bolder and freer. “For two years, you provoked me, insulted me, stalked me, bullied me…” He makes a frantic sound, his eyes slamming shut. “And yet, I still—I still can’t stop thinking of your hands that night in my garden. How big and warm and rough they were. I can’t stop imagining you taking off my clothes. Even the ugliest things you’ve said to me, I imagine you saying them in my ear while you…while we…” 

Drake falls toward me a step, clutching the center of his chest. “Lexie—” 

“Please, get yourself out of my head. One night together. Okay, Drake? So I can get on with my life knowing fantasy was way better than reality. That I built up some unrealistic idea of what we’d be like together that we can’t possibly live up to.” My throat closes. “Get me on the road to forgetting you. Please.” As we walk, I can see the mixture of devastation and hope in his eyes. 

“And what if reality lives up to the fantasy?” 

“It won’t,” I say fast, with conviction. It couldn’t possibly live up to it. And yet I suck in a nervous breath when he crosses the divide between us, every cell in my body craving him. Fight or flight. In a matter of moments, he’s gone from wounded animal to determined predator, the rain causing his dark hair to hang low over one eye, dripping, his hands ready at his sides. 

“Are you so sure, Lexie?” 

Damn my hesitation. “Yes,” I whisper. “You’ll prove me right in one night. I can move forward without feeling like I’m leaving something behind.” 

“What if your fantasies come true tonight? Could we ever move forward as…as an us?”

 I can’t believe what he’s suggesting. “There can never be an us, Drake. Not after everything that’s happened. I’ll never change my mind about that.” I shake my head. “How can you think I would?” 

“Maybe I think if I want it hard enough, it’ll come true.” 

“It won’t,” I whisper, starting to ask myself if I’m making a mistake. Opening myself up for even more heartache and pinning for this man than I’ve already lived through. It feels like a lifetime’s worth. “One n-night.” 

“No backing out from this point on?” My heart beats urgently. 

“No backing out.” 

He’s silent so long; I’m not sure he’s going to respond. And then, all at once, he reaches me in two strides and scoops me up into his arms. I realize he’s going to bring me into the cabin, “I’ve been studying you for years, Lexie O’Brien. I’ve been hanging on to your every sigh, every expression, and mood. Years. If you don’t think I’ve obsessed weeks of my life away over how you’d like to be fucked, baby, you’re sorely mistaken.” We reach the house in a matter of minutes, and he doesn’t stop; he just keeps going until we’re in his room. And oh God, I have made a severe miscalculation. Because Drake’s showing me exactly what’s always been in my heart and mind when I thought of us together, it’s my fantasy come to life, the two of us wrapped in the arms of the other. And as he turns me, urging my legs around his waist, his ravenous mouth bearing down on mine, I realize I might never recover from this. 

[purplecatghostposts]

@ardate

Oh ho ho :) Gordon Angst Request? I will gladly do that-

—

Gordon is fine. He’s used to handling a lot of stress, this is nothing.

It starts with a dinner party. Gordon invites all of the Science Team, including Tommy’s father and Sunkist, over to his apartment for a fancy dinner to celebrate a year out of Black Mesa. Which requires organizing, of course. He learns how to make a good lasagna from scratch, he plans to cook it hours in advance- it’s going okay.

Then his oven breaks the day of the party. No problem- Gordon gets Bubby’s help to cook it and of course he’s stressed over the possibility of Bubby burning it but he doesn’t have a choice.

Gordon has his suit sent to the dryers to get it pressed. It’s going to look amazing on him and Gordon can’t wait to show it off. He trips and rips it when he’s bringing it home.

This is fine. Gordon has a backup suit that doesn’t look quite as good or fit him as well but it... It works.

Gordon has just enough plates for everyone but last minute, Darnold and Forzen want to join. Gordon doesn’t have the heart to turn them away so he has to run to the store to buy some more- he doesn’t want to give them plastic plates when everyone else has fancy ones. It’s fine, Gordon has a solution, it’s fine.

Gordon’s been having nightmares lately. He thought he was getting over them but apparently not- which is fine. Nightmares bounce back all the time, it’s not unheard of. Even if they’re starting to shake him and Gordon wakes up in a cold sweat, it’s nothing he hasn’t gone through before.

Gordon gets into a fight with Benrey. A stupid, petty, small fight that ends with Benrey storming out. Gordon doesn’t even know why he’s mad but his arms shake and his eyes sting but Gordon sucks it up because he has a dinner party in eight hours and he has work to do.

All of that was fine- 100% fine. Gordon took all of it in like a champ and through all the stress, he found solutions. Benrey would come back and they could kiss and make up. Gordon could do this- he could do this.

Gordon starts setting up the table when he stubs his toe on one of the legs of the chairs. The plate in his hand drops and shatters on the floor.

Gordon stares down at the broken shards and something in him snaps.

Fat tears roll down his face as Gordon drops to his knees. An ugly sob overtakes him and all attempts to stop crying fail. It just gets worse, a choked noise leaving him and all Gordon feels is pathetic.

He can’t even handle one dinner party. He can’t even control his emotions. Everyone’s going to walk through that door and see what a miserable failure he is and they’ll leave. He can’t do this- he can’t do this- he can’t do this-

“Uh. Gordon?”

...Fuck, he forgot Bubby was here. God, can this get any worse?

“I’m fine.” Gordon chokes out. He pulls up his shirt enough to use it to wipe his tears away. It helps but they keep on coming. He can feel Bubby’s gaze burning into him, watching, judging, knowing-

“No you’re fucking not.” Bubby tells him flatly. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re having a mental breakdown over a plate.”

The plate. Gordon’s body starts shaking against his will. “I- I don’t have a backup- oh god someone’s going to get a plastic plate and it’s going to look so out of place I- fuck.”

“Nobody cares about a plate, Gordon. Eat off the table for all I care.”

“It’s- it’s not just-!” Gordon fumbles for his words but his words get breathy. “It’s not just about a fucking plate, Bubby!” It’s more of a shout that he would like but Gordon’s getting lightheaded and he can’t stop shaking. “I can’t- I can’t do this- I can’t do anything!”

Gordon wheezes for a breath but he’s failing to get one. A shadow looms over him and when Bubby speaks again, it catches him off guard.

“Can you stand?” It’s soft. Careful. Gordon wouldn’t believe it was coming from Bubby if he hadn’t been hearing it himself.

Gordon shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can, not on his own.

“I can help you to the couch. Come on.” Bubby offers a hand. Gordon hesitates but he ends up taking it. Bubby guides him to the living room and as soon as he sits down, Bubby gets him a glass of water before settling beside him.

Gordon gulps it down greedily, gasping when he’s finished. It’s all there is to hear at first, Gordon’s breathing. But Bubby finally speaks up once Gordon feels a little more grounded.

“What’s actually going on?” Bubby raises an eyebrow at him. “Spill.”

“I don’t know.” Gordon says honestly. Bubby still gives a skeptical look but Gordon shakes his head. “I mean it, I- I don’t know what happened. I just had all this pressure in my chest and I just... Spilled it out all at once.”

“What kind of pressure?”

“I don’t- just, everything went wrong? And- and I was trying so hard to handle it but it just kept falling apart.” Gordon buries his face in his hands. “I just wanted to do something nice for everyone. And I keep- I keep dreaming of Black Mesa lately so I wanted to laugh at off and celebrate getting out of that hellhole. I got so riled up that I- I just snapped at Benrey for the stupidest thing and I don’t know what to do anymore. Am I just- just ruining everything I touch?”

“You kidding?” Bubby scoffs. He quickly drops it when Gordon averts his gaze and hesitantly puts an arm around him. It’s almost a hug. “Look, all of that sucks, but they’re all temporary. You’re not. You’re gonna pull through this.”

“But- but the plate.”

“Fuck the plate! Just ask everyone to bring their own- none of them are going to care. Stop focusing on one tiny bump and take a step back. All of this can be solved if you just opened your damn mouth and asked for help.” Bubby stifles a laugh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this of all people but it’s not nearly as hard as you think. You’re the only one holding yourself back.”

Gordon laughs. He doesn’t know why. “You uh- you must think I’m pathetic, huh?”

Bubby’s face twists. “Fuck no. Gordon, I had a mental breakdown over fucking ice cream flavors once, I can’t judge you. And I won’t judge you because I care about you, dumbass. You had some bad luck- big fuckin’ whoop. Power through it and have a good time when it’s over.”

Gordon knows he shouldn’t focus on the first part but he can’t help it. “Ice cream?”

Bubby grimaces. “Not my proudest moment. It was in public too- thank god it was the same week Tommy learned how to freeze time like his dad or it would’ve been a hell of a lot more embarrassing.”

Bubby shakes himself and continues. “Point is, your friends aren’t going to judge you. They’re here to have a good time, you think they care about decorations? They’ll comment on it if it’s good but otherwise, they don’t care. You’re Gordon Martinis Freeman and other than food, the main reason they’re coming is for you.”

Bubby stands up, once again offering a hand. He gives Gordon a grin. “Now, ready to kick this dinner party’s ass?”

Gordon swallows but takes his hand anyways. “Yeah, I think I am... Thanks, Bubby.”

“Eh, it was nothing. Couldn’t just leave you crying on the floor. Not fuckin’ heartless.”

“Still. I’m lucky to have you.”

For a moment, Bubby seemed surprised by the statement before he grinned wildly. Gordon smiled back.

—

I really want to write more Bubby and Gordon friendship so here you go!

Thank you for the idea!! I hope you enjoyyyy!

[a-sirens-melody]

Darkwing Duck’s Greatest Enemy: Type 1 Diabetes (And Definitely Not Self Loathing)

Quick author's note: Launchpad switches between he/they throughout the fic, just so no one gets confused! If you have any questions abt diabetes, feel free to ask me. With that said, enjoy!

***

So far, tonight has gone really well.

It's date night, and this time they're spending it eating takeout from Hamburger Hippo and watching Darkwing Duck at Launchpad's place. Wrappers lay on the floor, ignored in favor of watching Darkwing kick Megavolt’s ass on screen.

Drake is currently leaning into Launchpad's side on the couch, his partner’s arm wrapped around his waist. It all feels so cozy and domestic that he never wants it to end.

And then, because Drake must have seriously pissed off some powerful being in a past life, it happens.

Megavolt’s face becomes blurry, and it's a little harder to focus on the TV. A quick look around the room tells him that, actually, it's hard to focus on anything right now. He knows what this means; he's gotten better at picking up on the signs after twenty-eight years of living with a half-functioning pancreas.

His blood sugar’s starting to drop.

He tries to close his eyes and listen instead, but the shake of his hands quickly corrects him. He is dropping and he needs to find something to eat. Even though he just ate, like, an hour ago.

Dammit.

“Drake?”

He opens his eyes and notices that the episode is paused. He hadn't even realized, he was so caught up in his symptoms. The second thing he notices is Launchpad looking right at him.

He guesses that they felt his shaking because there's concern in their eyes now. A brief wave of guilt sweeps over him and he almost misses their question. “Is your blood sugar low?”

He finds it's a little hard to form words right now (and that scares him, it always does), so he nods his head slightly and hums.

“I'm gonna go get you a juice box.”

The arm wrapped around him vanishes as LP gets up. He helps him lay down on the couch, head pillowed on the armrest. He's still cold without his boyfriend, though, so Drake can't help the small whine that escapes him. God, he sounds pathetic.

Launchpad's eyes soften and they lean down to kiss his forehead. “I'll be right back, okay?”

A little embarrassed, Drake nods and watches the other duck head to his fridge. He closes his eyes again and almost sighs in relief as he's met with darkness. You can't lose your focus if there's nothing to focus on in the first place.

Did that even make sense? Whatever. His brain’s not working properly right now.

The sounds of his partner rummaging through the shelves fill the air. Drake is reminded of earlier when things felt so domestic between them. It's only been a couple of months since they started dating, but Launchpad already feels like the home he never had.

Drake doesn't know how he got so lucky; sometimes it all feels like a dream.

Launchpad leaving is his worst nightmare. He knows he's being a little dramatic, but his anxiety gets the better of him sometimes. He's too much, too expensive, too-

“Found it!” Footsteps pull Drake out of his thoughts and he cracks his eyes open. Launchpad already tore off the wrapping on the plastic straw and stuck it in the box. He holds it out now and places it near Drake's beak. “Drink this, okay?”

He moves the straw into his mouth with a hum and starts sucking the juice down, only stunned for a second at the chill. Fruit punch, his mind distantly informs him. It's his favorite flavor, but he's too focused on getting it into his system to really appreciate it right now.

When the juice box is thoroughly drained, he gives his boyfriend a small smile. He feels like he can talk without sounding like he's drunk now, so he says, “thanks, LP.”

“Anytime,” is the warm reply he receives. If Drake was of sound mind, he would kiss Launchpad breathless and maybe, maybe, utter those three little words that have grown harder to ignore as of late.

I love you.

The words are barely on the tip of his tongue even now. Yikes, his filter's pretty weak already. He tries to stuff the words down by chewing on the straw. Struggling with one of the disadvantages of diabetes is not his ideal confession scenario. Besides, it's way too soon to say that. Right? Right.

“Didn't think you kept juice boxes in your fridge,” he says instead. Not only is he trying to distract himself from his low brain feelings, he's genuinely curious. He doesn't recall seeing any juice boxes in LP’s fridge the last time he was here, and their favorite flavor is apple.

“Nah. Not for myself, at least.” They smile fondly at him. “I remembered that it's your favorite flavor, though, and I wanted to have something for whenever you went low over here.”

Wait.

Launchpad bought those for him? Specifically for him? And remembered his favorite flavor from a conversation they had three months ago when they asked Drake what he usually ate when his blood sugar went low?

That's...

“That's really sweet of you, LP. Thanks.” He says, because he's not really sure what to say. It's such a small act of kindness, something he's not used to, and he doesn't know how to deal with the sudden warmth in his chest.

He's too low for this. Feeling more intense emotions is a very frequent symptom of his when he's low, that's what this is. Yeah. Definitely.

His boyfriend's smile turns shy. “You don't have to thank me. Whatever helps you the most. Speaking of which, do you want me to bring your kit over here? I mean, obviously you feel low, but. Better to have an exact number, right?” Launchpad rambles, hand reaching to brush through the hair at the back of his neck.

That's a good point, actually. He has to be in the 40’s if he's feeling this bad. “Yes, please.”

Launchpad reaches to the side of his couch where Drake's bag is. Inside is his blood sugar kit (complete with a pricker, replaceable barrels, meter, test strips, insulin, and syringes), various small snacks in case he goes low when he's out, and a glucagon. He really hopes that last item is not going to be needed tonight.

He probably shouldn't have dropped the bag there, but he wanted to start their date. Can you really blame him?

The kit is found and placed onto the couch. Drake starts to reach for it, but suddenly there's a hand covering his.

“Can I check you, please?” He looks up and finds Launchpad staring at him. “I don't- if you don't want me to touch your stuff, I get it, but. You feel bad. So will you let me do it?”

You...want to help me? You don't want me to do this on my own?

“Sure. Just ask if you dunno what goes where, okay?” Drake says, thankful that his voice is somewhat steadier than his hands.

His partner nods and gets to work. They asked once how everything in the kit worked so Drake laid it all out and taught him. It felt nice having someone who wanted to listen to him talk about diabetes stuff.

He hears the test strip bottle close with a pop and the pricker calibrate with a ca-click. Just as Launchpad asks, he holds out a finger and lets his mind drift.

It's really not something he's used to, having someone around that he trusts will take care of him. For as long as he can remember, Drake could only rely on himself to get through whatever diabetic crisis he faced.

He was eight when he was diagnosed. At first, his parents did most of the hard work. He picked up on checking his blood sugar pretty quickly, but they would manage all his carb ratios and injections.

Then, they just sort of…stopped. Like they had only done it for him in the first place because he was too young to fully understand. By the time he was thirteen, he did pretty much everything on his own. So much so that more often than not on the tri-monthly visits to his endocrinologist, the car ride would be spent drilling his parents on what the past three months had been like.

Not that they ever told him they didn't care or want to care to his face. No, Drake had just picked up on it. But the night he overheard them talking about medical expenses was a particularly rude awakening.

He couldn't sleep for some reason and decided to watch some Darkwing Duck. He barely made it out of his bedroom when he heard voices.

“Why's everything gotta be so damn expensive!?”

Ah. His dad was looking at bills. So much for a DW marathon in peace and quiet. Drake had one foot back in his bedroom when he heard his mother reply.

“It doesn't really help that our current bank account looks like that, either…”

Forget going back to bed, his curiosity was peaked. He stayed still, straining to hear.

He wished he hadn't at what he heard next.

“Yeah, well, having a defective kid ain't cheap. Why couldn't you have had a normal one?”

To this day, he still remembers how his heart sank to his stomach.

Defective.

Defective.

Is that why they stopped helping? Why, at age sixteen, it was unspoken knowledge that Drake managed everything on his own? They didn't see a literal child in need, they saw a column of dollar signs. A black hole that sucked up all their cash and never gave it back.

His mom stayed quiet, and that hurt even more. She didn't care, either. Neither one of them did.

They were both selfish assholes that only cared about the alcohol they could've had stocked in their kitchen.

He cried himself to sleep that night, mourning the days when he could still trust his parents to take care of him and wishing he didn't have to live like this. If no one wanted to help him, he’d suck it up on his own. No one wanted to take care of him? Fine. Drake Mallard didn't need anyone else. He was better off on his own.

Those horrible feelings crash over him like a tidal wave now, twenty years later, and he doesn't know why they're here but he's overwhelmed by it all.

Why can't he just have a normal body? Why does his condition have to be so expensive and annoying and miserable sometimes? Why does he have to be so dependent on people when he tells himself that he’s better off working alone, when no one in his life has loved him enough to care anyway?

There's a price tag on his head (not just physical, because diabetes is a greedy little bitch), and it's only a matter of time until Launchpad figures this out. He won't want to stay up late to keep checking, to keep buying syringes or insulin or tests strips. He won't stay forever, and it's all Drake's fault, for getting so attached and having a broken, shitty body.

“Drake? Did I do something wrong?”

He blinks. There are tears in his eyes, a few of which have spilled down his cheeks.

“Uh,” his voice cracks. He wipes away the tears with his other hand. “No. N-no, you didn't do anything wrong. What were you doing?”

Launchpad cocks his head to the side and squints in concern. He knows there's more to Drake's answer, but he doesn't push yet. “I pricked your finger and put the blood in. You didn't even flinch, but I thought that was ‘cause you're used to this. Was there another reason?”

“I'm sorry.” And before Launchpad can start to ask for what? with his mouth already open, Drake rushes to say, “I'm sorry that out of all the people you could date, you got stuck with a chronically ill mess like me. You deserve a normal partner, and god you have no idea how badly I wish I was, but I'm not. I'll always be a burden and I know you won't want to stick around to deal with all the shit that comes with diabetes.

“Not that I don't want you to stay, please don't think that, but…” More tears fall and he brushes them aside, accidentally smearing blood on his feathers. “I’m not used to someone wanting to take care of me, and I don't want it to stop.”

He doesn't take his eyes off of Launchpad as he cries. If this were a cartoon, he would laugh at how quickly their expression changes. Confusion, concern, and realization flash across their face before their eyes soften again in concern.

“Baby,” they say, reaching out to cradle Drake's face. They gently wipe away the blood with their thumb, and Drake feels weak. Loving touches were something he was never given as a child, and it's taken some getting used to. It burns, unfamiliar and wonderful, every time Launchpad touches him. All he can do in this moment is lean into it and shut his eyes.

“Look at me, please?” He groans internally as he opens his eyes. Later, when his blood sugar isn't so low and he can properly think, he’ll recall the look on his boyfriend's face as determined. “I love you, so much. You're not a burden, and you never will be. Being with you is a new experience, sure, but it's a good one. It's not your fault your body's like this, and it doesn't make you any less amazing.

“Heck, if anything, it makes you even more so. You have to do more to stay healthy than most people, and you're really good at it! St. Canard is a better place with Darkwing Duck and Drake Mallard.” Launchpad leans in to kiss his forehead. “They were wrong, you're not unlovable.”

He's so gentle, so sweet, and it's all too much for Drake to wrap his mind around. Never mind the low, he's just heard what he's secretly always wanted to. He is good. He is loved. He...needs to know what his blood sugar actually was before he cries an entire ocean. One more thing, though.

“Uh,” seems like a good place to start as he scrambles to pick up the pieces of himself. He takes a shaky breath. “Thank you. Sorry I dumped all of that onto you, I don't know where it came from tonight, but. Thanks. I really needed that.”

LP still looks a little sad and it makes his heart hurt, but he bites down on his beak to avoid apologizing again. “No problem. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere.” He strokes his cheek some more, and Drake sighs.

“This is nice and all, but,” his eyes dart to the meter still sitting in front of him. They got distracted for too long and now the little screen is dark. “Did you catch the number that showed up?”

“Buh?” Launchpad's eyes widen as he remembers what they were doing before. “Oh, dang it! Sorry! Do I need to do it again, or-”

Eh, they probably should, but Drake doesn't want to. It hasn't been too long anyways, maybe five minutes? He’ll be fine. “No, you're good, just press the button with the arrows. All the pricks get stored so you can look at them later.”

Any distress on their face is quickly replaced by a beaming smile. “Neat!” They do as Drake asked, and a number pops up: 46.

“Lovely,” Drake groans. “And I just ate. Maybe I just took too much insulin. Or am I getting sick? If I can't keep anything down in the next hour, I swear-”

LP snapping his fingers in his face pulls him away from his rambling. “Hello? Earth to Drake Mallard. I dunno what made you low, but we gotta fix it first. Would more juice work?”

Oh yeah. Hm, more juice or something else? Even though he feels exhausted, going to sleep is a bad idea. He's gotta stay up until he's back in range, so…

“Actually, do you have any Pep?” Launchpad tilts his head and furrows his brow as Drake explains. “Normally I wouldn't ask, but I think something with that much sugar would really help. Plus, the caffeine will keep me awake.”

They look less confused now, but their head remains tilted slightly. “There's not that much caffeine in Pep, though.”

“You forget I don't drink the regular Peps nearly as often as you do, LP.” The last time he actually had one was...ten years ago? They work great for treating a low quickly and that's the only time he ever cares to drink them. It's not worth the extra insulin or highs to try to look normal.

“Oh yeah! So you're not used to the sugar.” He nods. “Okay, be right back.” Launchpad takes about twenty seconds to get a Pep and come back to Drake. The tab's already open. “Uh, do you need to drink the whole thing right now?”

He really shouldn't, the juice is probably still processing. Still, it's very tempting to chug the entire thing just to put more sugar in his body. But he wants his blood sugar to be normal, not sky high. “No, I'll probably drink half of it right now. Thank you.” He takes the Pep and sips, blinking at the sheer amount of sugar flooding his taste buds.

The fact that most people drink enough of this stuff to where they hardly notice it boggles his mind. Not that the diet stuff is really healthier, but it's definitely a different taste.

Guess he's pulling a graveyard shift tonight. But at least he's with Launchpad.

(That's the other thing about drinking regular sodas; he gets really hyper. Last time, he couldn't fall asleep until exactly two am. Being tired but unable to sleep is the absolute worst feeling, and you can't change Drake's mind.)

Now that he can think a little more clearly, he realizes something.

“I can't drive like this,” he says. Driving with a low blood sugar is really dangerous, and not his usual kind. It's the kind of dangerous that could get himself, or someone else, or even both, killed. “And I'm definitely not walking home anytime soon, so. Guess our date’s been extended?”

Launchpad blinks at him, then claps his hands together and grins. “You're staying overnight! I mean, I wish it was under better circumstances, obviously, but. Yay!” He rocks on his heels before catching himself and looking away, a faint blush appearing on his face. “Anyways, is there anything else you need?”

Drake's about to reply not right now, thank you, but then he realizes something that's actually pretty important.

“Wait, since I'm staying here tonight, could I use your bathroom really quick? I, uh, need to take my binder off,” he admits. He’d forgotten it was even there until he remembered wait, you need to take that off before you go to sleep. He put it on about a half hour after he woke up, which was at noon, and it's midnight now so...oops. It's past time to take it off.

His boyfriend nods. “Yeah, no worries! Do what you gotta do. Wait.” His brow furrows. “You need me to help you over there?”

“I,” he falters. “Wouldn't mind it if you did.” The sugar's kicking in now, but he still doesn't trust himself. Given how clumsy he is? Better safe than sorry.

Launchpad holds his arms as he walks to the bathroom. He closes the door, Launchpad sitting in front of it just in case, and turns to the mirror. His shirt hits the floor, soon followed by his binder. A sigh of relief fills the air as he folds it. He hadn't realized how long he'd been wearing it. Tomorrow will have to be a skip day just to stay on the safe side.

(Hormones aren't a concern; he's not on them right now and is perfectly fine with that. The cost of that and insulin would be hard to juggle, anyways.)

He opens the door to find Launchpad staring at him, and he smiles shyly. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Launchpad smiles back, and holds out his hand. Drake takes it and pulls his boyfriend to his feet. They walk back to the couch together. “So, what are we doing? You can't go to sleep until your blood sugar's back up and we were in the middle of an episode of Darkwing Duck.”

“I like the way you think,” Drake teases. “So long as you check every now and then to make sure I haven't fallen asleep yet.” He sits down in his original spot.

“Whatever you need,” they reply, and sit down next to him. They wrap their around his waist and Drake leans into their side as he tries to find the remote. It occurs to him just then that there's still something he hasn't said yet. Something bigger than “thank you.”

He taps LP on the shoulder. They turn to look at him and oh no, he's already flustered. “I just. You said you, uh, loved me earlier and I wanted to say that, that I love you too.” His face is burning, and he got quieter at the end, but at least it’s out in the open now.

Launchpad’s eyes soften and he tilts his head close enough to kiss Drake. It's a quick peck, but sweet nonetheless. When he pulls away, he's smiling. “You're wonderful, you know that?”

Drake only blushes more and buries his face in Launchpad's chest. He can feel Launchpad chuckle and oh. Oh, that's really nice. He likes that a lot. He would stay right here, but the sounds of the Darkwing Duck episode are a siren song that never fails to lure him in.

They stay there, watching episode after episode and Launchpad checking in every so often. By the time Drake's blood sugar has gone back to normal, he stops watching and starts really thinking about the events of the night.

He doesn't have to do this on his own anymore. Someone actually wants to take care of him now.

He is loved. Really, truly loved. And he’ll never let Launchpad go.

[vicegrips-fr]

Into the Black

Azizi divulges his upbringing and the horrors that came with it.

-------------------- I’ve debated sharing this on here because to be completely honest it’s very personal and not for everyone. I’ve decided to open up and share it anyway with the appropriate warnings. It’s no secret that I vent through my own ocs to explore the intense abuse I survived and this is one of those lore posts that delves into that. Hopefully some of you will take the time to read it and if not I completely understand. It’s a long one and difficult to read in many ways I’m sure.

Gustav belongs to my boyfriend @wyvernrising!

Warnings: language, themes of parental abuse, drug/alcohol abuse mentions, and unpleasantness abound.

Pings: @fusefr @kattafr @stimmy-dragons -------------------

They’re together for the night. Himself, Gogo, and the Sub Rosa sent to protect them which includes his boyfriend Gustav. There’s an injury to his hand which isn’t self-inflicted but the product of his past come back to bite him in the ass today. Since then they’ve been sharing their stories to pass the time and ease the tension, getting to know each other better and well, now it’s his turn.

“You don’t have to share,” Gogo peeps up sympathetically, scooting closer so that their thighs are pressed together.

He already knows the truth, knows how hard this will be for Azizi to talk about.

Azizi waves a dismissive hand in the air, happily allowing Gus to take hold of the injured one and press a kiss to the knuckles. Some small part of him does care what they’ll think but it’s drowned out by the stubborn I don’t give a shit what you think of me attitude he’s spent a lot of time cultivating for himself. “We’ll see about that,” he says, pouring himself a glass of wine.

He pauses, bottle in hand as his eyes land on Gustav’s glass. There’s still wine inside but he fills it back up to the top for him anyway. Whether he chooses to drink it or not is irrelevant. Maybe he doesn’t want him to; more wine for him.

Their previous compliments earlier in the night did not fall on deaf ears and bring a smile to his face when he remembers them. “Ha! I am a pleasure to be around, aren’t I?” he chuckles, licking his teeth, “If I were a bore then I wouldn’t be netting as much dick as I am on the daily.”

It’s crude but true. He’s popular for a reason and part of it is his bombastic, nasty personality. Truth is sunshine and rainbows have no place in a brothel, no matter how hard Gogo tries to change that fact.

“But you’re right about what you all said,” he sighs, “It’s an ugly story, just like the rest of you have.”

For a solid few seconds he lapses into silence, picking through the pieces of his life inside his head like dusting off an old photo album. None of the pictures inside are things he wants to see, they’re kept in a box for a reason, after all.

“Where to begin?” he muses to himself, swirling the wine in his glass around, transfixed by the dark red liquid sloshing around the sides.

“Like Gustav and Gogo I was born in Neo Necropolis. The slummy part, obviously. My mother’s name was Tiwa but she went by Candy. If that doesn’t tip you off she was a stripper. A popular one, I was told.”

He stops to sip his drink, the mere mention of his mother’s name enough to elicit that response. Jesus. How long has it been since he said her name out loud?

“My father’s name was Ayoola but everyone called him Ayo,” Azizi continues, the wine burning all the way down his throat, “And his biggest claim to fame was his appetite for men and women. He frequented just about every brothel and strip club in a fifteen mile radius.” Azizi looks up, eyes passing over everyone’s faces in favor of focusing on anything but.

“You can all put two and two together and figure out how my parents met,” he laughs without joy, “They were never married, of course, but they lived together and it wasn’t long before I was born. Not like they were kind of people to use protection, but I sort of wish they had.”

It’s a terribly dark thing to say and painfully true. Plenty of people in a bad situation have the same thought- I wish I was never born!- and he can’t count how many times he cursed the world for being forced into it. “They fought all the time,” he says, recalling the first time he was old enough to understand the words they were yelling.

------------------  

”Get off of your ass and do something for once!” Tiwa screams at the top of her lungs, “I work my ass off on the pole every night and you can’t even get off the couch to get Zizi his breakfast? Pathetic!” It's early. Early enough that the sun is only just coming up, bright light streaming in through the dingy window in his bedroom despite the tall buildings that surround their home. It’s not the first time he’s been woken up this early from his parents fighting. His mama is gone all night, returning every morning and sleeping most of the day away, but not before their daily fight. Tail between his legs Azizi tiptoes quietly to the end of the short hallway, his little hands gripping the corner of the wall as he peeks out from behind it to see what’s going on. ”Oh, I’m pathetic?” Ayoola shouts back, “That’s rich coming from a pole crawler who calls herself Candy! The pipsqueak isn’t even up yet so fuck off to bed already and quit your yapping.” Azizi can’t see them from where he’s standing so he lets go of the wall and steps into the living room, ducking back into the hallway as quietly as possible when he catches a glimpse of his father laid out on the sofa, beer bottle in hand. ”No Ayo YOU fuck off,” Tiwa says loudly from the kitchen, bone tired and her tail lashing behind her in anger. “I’m not dealing with this mess when I’ve been up all fucking night, do you hear me? I’m not your mother, I’m your girlfriend and I need your help. We’re barely getting by, for fuck sake. Just… try to be responsible for once in your miserable life. Please.” ”Jesus fucking christ Candy, get a grip,” Ayoola snorts nonchalantly, rolling over so that his face is pressed into the cushions of the couch, “I’ll do the dishes and get the brat his breakfast, alright? Will that shut you up?” Tears in his eyes, Azizi shuffles off back to his bedroom and curls up on the small mattress laid on the floor of his tiny bedroom, pulling the blanket over his head. The shouting continues but it’s muffled through his hands over his ears and, after a little while, he falls back asleep.

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

“It was really annoying,” he scoffs, “How they’d fight over just about everything. It was like they couldn’t help themselves. No matter how small the affront they would manage to find a way to turn it into something more.”

He’s getting off track. Blinking away the memory like it’s nothing, Azizi drinks deeply from his glass and marches forward. “Anyway,” he mutters, taking another small sip, “I was, hm, about eight or nine years old when my mother up and left. I can’t blame her, really. My father was a bum and an addict who brought other men and women home when she wasn’t around. More than once she walked in on him cheating on her and I guess that plus his allergy to contributing anything to the ‘family’ was enough to put the final nail in the coffin. We all have our breaking point.”

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

”Where’s mama?” Azizi asks, tugging lightly on his father’s pant leg. It’s midday and she hasn’t come home yet. Ayoola is passed out on the couch, his dirty hair sticking up in different directions, spit and booze drying in a crust at the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t respond right away. It takes Azizi asking the same question a few times before he’s finally roused awake. ”Huh?” he mumbles, cracking an eye open, “Oh. That.” Ayoola doesn’t seem particularly worried about Tiwa’s absence, just slightly annoyed to have been woken up. ”She left,” he sneers, grunting with effort as he pushes himself up and grabs a crumpled piece of paper that had been wadded up underneath him. “Don’t worry, she’ll come crawling back eventually. Until then how about you go play or something. Daddy is trying to sleep off a cold.”

It would only be a couple more years before Azizi would realize that these frequent ‘colds’ were actually hangovers of varying degrees. A week turns into a month, a few months turn into a year and Tiwa still hasn’t come back. Around the six month mark was when Azizi realized he would never see his mother again. In another three months he would grow angry and resentful, pounding his little fists into the floor because she left him behind. She left him alone with HIM. ”That selfish bitch!” Ayo yells, putting another hole in the wall with his fist, blood seeping from between his fingers, “Leaving me to take care of you by my fucking self! How the hell am I supposed to do that, huh?! Tell me how! Where’s the money going to come from?! I’m sinking here! Do you know how many people I owe money to?” Azizi sobs into his hands, tiny body curled up into a ball on the sofa as his father paces back and forth like a caged animal, ranting like a lunatic at the top of his lungs. ”I… I don’t know!” Azizi cries, far too young to understand all of the things his father is saying, “I’m sorry dad! I’m sorry!” -------------------

“After Candy split the house chores fell to me,” Azizi murmurs darkly, setting his drink down to reach for another cigarette instead, “The cooking, cleaning… Him. Ayoola was a full time job. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had to clean him up after a blackout. Put him on his side and make sure he wouldn’t throw up and drown in his own vomit.”

Azizi pauses, takes a drag from his cigarette and sighs.

“He drank and shot up so much that the floor was littered all over with the aftermath,” Azizi chuckles bitterly, “I’d have to wade through the filth being careful not to stab myself with a used needle, turn him over and check his pulse. Clean the puke off of him with a rag and then pick it all up.”

Gogo sniffles, rubbing his eyes dry on the back of his hand. It’s at this point that he wants to interrupt, to tell Azizi that he doesn’t have to go on if he doesn’t want to. But as if reading his mind, Azizi looks over at him and smiles sadly. 

“It’s okay, Gogo,” he says as soothingly as he can manage, “I’m fine.”

Another pause as he tries to collect his thoughts, memories he wishes didn’t belong to him. “As I got older we started to fight more and more,” Azizi murmurs, “At that point I really had replaced my mother in almost every way.”

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

”Zi! That you?”

”Yeah, it’s me dad,” Azizi replies a little flippantly, “Who the fuck else would it be? One of your booty calls?”

Ayoola snorts with laughter, looking up at him as he walks into the room with bloodshot eyes. ”Have I ever told you that you look like your mother?”

Azizi rolls his eyes, arms crossed over his chest as he leans in the doorway.

”Yeah,” he answers flatly, “Like, fifty times this week.” Ayoola nods sadly, head rolling to the side as he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep again. Frowning, Azizi goes to his room.

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

I won’t cry, Azizi thinks, he doesn’t deserve my tears. “Eventually I ran away,” he informs them, unable to bring himself to give them the gorier details of his life, “And I went out with a bang.” Chuckling softly at his own wording, Azizi brings the glass to his lips again. “That makes it sound like I shot him dead,” he hums, “Sadly, I didn’t. We got into a fight, another bad one where he didn’t just use his words to berate me but his fists. I shoved him backwards, he shoved me harder, I slapped him, and he told me to get the fuck out of his house- I happily obliged.”

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

”You!” Ayoola screams, following Azizi around the house as he does his best to get away from him, “Where do you think you’re going?! I’m talking to you! Where the fuck were you?! You knew you had a client coming over! You knew and you went out anyway- hey!” His hand lashes out violently, grabbing Azizi by the arm and yanking him back. ”I’m not playing with you Zi!” Ayoola says, spittle flying and his teeth grinding together as he gets up in Azizi’s face, “You’re in big fucking trouble. If you’re going to live under this roof-” ”I don’t want to live under this roof!” Azizi screams back, slapping Ayoola in the face in an attempt to get him to let go, “I want to be as far away from you as humanly possible! You’re a fucking monster!” Ayoola doesn’t hesitate to backhand him, the force of it throwing Azizi to the floor where he sits shocked and rubbing tenderly at his freshly bruised cheek. ”Then get the fuck out!” he shouts, jabbing a finger in Azizi’s face as he looms over him, “Leave! Just like your mother did! I’ve taken care of us for how long and you’re acting out like this because I ask you to do your part?! All you have to do is put out! Easiest fucking job on the planet!” Azizi stares at him, dead behind the eyes as he’s yanked back up onto his feet and shoved hard against the kitchen wall, a hand around his throat. ”You hearin’ me? Answer me-” Azizi screams, shoving his father back so hard that he trips over his own feet and falls backwards. ”Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” he wails, shoving past Ayoola and out the front door. Ayoola gives chase, pausing in the open doorway to yell after him. ”Then go! Die on the street for all I care!”

He does not follow.

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

“To make an already long story short,” he says, glancing over at Gustav and then quickly averting his eyes, “I spent a long time, years, on the street just like Gogo. I did what I knew how to do best. Eventually I ran into Chaka.”

At the mere mention of his name his blood runs cold, the events of his sad life replaying all over again. He handles it though, shoving it deep deep down inside himself where it belongs. “He took me in off the streets you know. Well, for the most part anyway,” he admits, “There were plenty of times he’d leave me on a corner. To teach me a lesson, he’d say. I mean, I do have a reckless mouth so is that any surprise to you guys?” He laughs humorlessly, eyes finding Gogo’s. “But I met Gogo because of that,” he adds very fondly, “So hey. Silver-linings.” Sighing deeply, Azizi downs the rest of his drink in one go.

“I’ll save the stuff with Chaka for another time,” he murmurs, “If I go into that right now we’ll be here all night. Needless to say I didn’t go down the best path after leaving that hellhole, but if I’m being honest I don’t regret it. Dealing with Chaka’s bullshit was a hell of a lot better than dealing with my old man’s.” Despite his best efforts there’s a wet shine to his eyes now, but the tears don’t fall. Not even when the memories are threatening to choke the air out of his lungs. “So, that’s part one of my story,” he says faux cheerfully, “Now you know I come from trash. Do with it what you will.”

End.

[agustdomain]

October Ink | #4

TW: Blood, Violence, Murder

Taehyung made a promise to you, one you were terrified he’d keep. After all, love was the most dangerous monster of all.

“WIll that be all?” Your smile grew wider as you pocketed your notepad, your favorite customer waving his hands.

“As much as I’d love to eat another slice of pie, I better exercise some self control,” Hoseok’s beauty was in his kindness, in the way he made sure to acknowledge he knew you were waitress who tried to get the whipped cream on his pie right. If it weren’t for your guarded heart, you were sure you would’ve fallen for him now. 

“Don’t tell my boss,” You leaned closer, “But I’ll pack you a slice. On the house.”

“You’re the sweetest, Sweet Pea,” You laughed at the realization dawning on his face. Heading back to the kitchen, you could say that today, although uneventful, was a successful day. 

The bell ringing at the door made you look out from the back. You waved at Yeji, thankful she was able to pull through tonight. Curse your cheap ass used car. Broken down for the third time in two months.

You had not envisioned this kind of life for yourself. You from two years ago might have a meltdown if she could see you, now. Well, present you would tell her to screw herself. 

You were living and you were surviving. 

“You’re good to go, Sweet Pea,” Your manager patted your shoulder as she swept past, her words making you beam. There was nothing like getting to leave early on Friday night shifts. This little diner thrived the most on late night pit stops. 

After putting away your apron, grabbing your belongings, and clocking out, you headed out through the front. Smiling at people as you walked past, you made sure to nod at Hoseok as you slipped the container onto his table. His smile was small this time, his eyes elsewhere as he watched you go. 

“I’m so ready to pass out,” You groaned, stretching as you stepped out onto the pavement. The sun had just begun to set, and you cursed at the chilly air nipping at your skin. That was one thing you hadn’t grown accustomed to yet- you were a dry heat kind of person, through and through. 

Yeji didn’t say much, even when you asked about her day. She was usually chatty, but you guessed you could say you didn’t know everything about her. She had only recently moved in next door, and after she saw you this morning cursing at your car, she had offered to give you a lift home. Any other person, you would’ve refused. With your options limited, you had accepted without a second though. 

“Hey, Y/N,” You hadn’t noticed her saying your name; everyone that knew you around these parts called you by your nickname, Sweet Pea. It was a safety measure, just in case your past were to come back and haunt you. Only your manager and Yeji knew your real name. That was your first mistake. 

“Yeah?”

She drummed her fingers on the wheel, eyes flashing over to you. “You got any plans for the night?”

You tilted your head back and forth, before you ended with a shaking of your head. “Nah. Probably order takeout. Watch Friends or something. Go to bed. Why?”

“Just… just wondering. You know, I never see anyone around your place,” Seeing you stiffen, she rushed out, “I’m just… I don’t know. You seem so friendly. I’m just surprised you’re not seeing anyone or have any friends dropping by.”

The words, as innocent as they may have been, twisted up your insides with thorns. As much as you tried to avoid thinking about it, your past had no way of being pushed back down. Your lips twitched at the memories of your little siblings’ squeals, your mother’s cooking, your dad’s shows blasting from the living room. Heart plummeting at the thought of him. 

I’ll always find you. His promise, one that haunted you around every corner.

Without realizing, you two had pulled into the complex. Gathering your purse, you got out of the car, more eager than you were before to just crawl into bed and block out the world. As the two of you walked toward the steps, Yeji reached out and grabbed your arm. 

Alarm bells rang in your head as you tightened up, eyes shooting over to her. 

She let go- a little too slowly- and stepped back. “I just wanted to say sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s fine,” Your words sounded breathless, uneven. She was weirding you out, now. You’d only known her for a couple weeks. Why was she butting in all of a sudden?  

Clutching your coat tighter, you bounded up the steps and toward your apartment. Maybe you were being a little too rough on her. She was only being friendly after all. As much as you wanted to avoid the thoughts, you knew who really had you spooked. 

You weren’t sure if escaping him had been luck or something far more complex, but you had taken the chance and ran. Putting your family in danger was out of the question, and the alternative was just as miserable. So over a year ago, you had packed a small suitcase and with little money you had, hit the road. 

The feeling of his lips on your skin stretched throughout your body, goosebumps breaking out as you shakily put your keys into the lock. 

Fangs, grazing your neck. 

Shoving the door open, you locked it tight, including the chain. Resting your head against the cool wood, you breathed in deeply. You forced yourself to push those thoughts away, his smile creeping into your memories, stamping out the bottomless eyes and elongated claws. His laugh blossomed in your ears, blocking out your cries and shrieks of terror at the sound of a body thumping to the ground. 

“I would never-”

“Get away from me.” 

His face changing, his own fangs nicking his lip. The love toward you, gone. 

Your ears strained then, picking up on something long before your mind registered. The sound of a door from down the hall, slowly creaking open. Your blood went cold, body freezing as you listened. Reaching into your purse, you fumbled for your keys as your other hand reached to undo the deadbolts. 

A scream broke from your lips as rapid knocks shook the wood in front of you. After checking the peephole, you blew out a breath before pulling the door open. Yeji stood there in the dim light, face unreadable. 

Glancing over your shoulder, you started to explain, “Someone’s in my-” before something struck you in the side of your head, sending you crashing into the apartment. Blinking away the spots in your vision, you peered up at Yeji with a frown as she stepped into the apartment with the clunk of her boots. Slamming the door shut behind her, she crossed her arms as her face slipped into a mask of rage. 

It dawned on you, then, that everything before this had been the mask. This was really her. 

“Now I know why you don’t have any friends. You’re a bitch.”

“What-What?” You tried to shake off your grogginess, but she had gotten you good. Getting to your feet seemed to be impossible, so you tried pushing away from her, further into the darkness of your living room. She flicked the lights on, pulling off her long coat as if she were making herself at home. Horror crept up on you, knowing already what kind of monsters existed in the world. Was she… one of them? Was she... like him?

“I was just trying to be friendly. Maybe get a feel of who would miss you when you’re gone. Really, I was just trying to be careful. Just in case anyone wanted to show up tonight uninvited. But I’ve been watching you for a while now. Pathetic. No one’s coming, and no one’s going to care when you’re dead.”

She stepped toward you, your hand fumbling for your purse. “You’re… wrong.”

Tilting her head, she stopped. “Am I, Sweet Pea?”

“Yes,” Your tongue was heavy, your body the weight of a ton. Still, you fought it. “You’ll… regret this.”

It was a bluff, you knew. In fact, you knew this was it. But it felt good to see her wonder for a moment, wonder what you meant. It all disappeared in one blink, the same bottomless eyes you’d seen on the man you love bloom in her irises. Her nails bled as they elongated, turning as black as her gaze. Teeth sharpening, fangs jutting out as she stepped closer.

“Maybe I would’ve gone easier on you if you’d just been nice,” She paused before a chilling laugh broke past her lips, “Who am I kidding? I never do.”

The floor creaked from the hallway, her eyes bouncing toward the direction of the sound. Turning back to you, she hissed, “Who’s here?”

Your body knew before you did. Goosebumps broke out across your skin, your breath catching right before he stepped out of the shadows. He was just as you remembered him, long dark hair curling around his ears, magnetic eyes pulling your gaze toward him. 

Him and that blue trench coat he never took off. You didn’t know what was worse: that Taehyung looked as you’d always known him, or that lurking just beneath the surface, the same monster in Yeji was here in this room, too.

It happened so fast, you stumbled as he pulled you up and behind him. 

You breathed in sharply, one hand slowly moving to your bag, hand searching for your pocket knife as you heard his voice for the first time in 14 months. 

“If you want to live,” He tilted his head, “There’s the door.”

Peeking around Taehyung, you saw the shift in her face, the one he had, too.  Human to Monster. “I’ve been craving her for a long time, asshole. She’s mine.”

He hummed, and your heart sighed at the familiar groove in his shoulders, the scent of his perfume lingering to your nose- no. You knew the truth, now. Snapping out of it, you heard him say, “Delusional isn’t a pretty trait, darling.”

Fury twisted her face, her fangs breaking through her mouth as she shrieked, “I’m going to kill you!”

Lunging for him, he ducked out of her reach as his hand went for her neck, slamming her into the coffee table. You heard a crack, heard her wheeze as she reached out and clawed at his face. The hit sent his head twisting in your direction. You swayed at the sight of the gashes on his face, blood dripping from the wounds. Your stomach dropped as his eyes transformed, his head turning back to her.

 “You’re going to regret that.”

You stumbled back in horror, watching as his mouth flashed toward her neck. When he pulled back, her ripped out throat went with it, body stilling on the table. You stumbled backward, knowing what was coming as your hands grazed the bookshelf pressing into your back. Everything you’d done, all of it, was for nothing. He found you. He was going to kill you, then probably kill your family for running from him. 

You broke past the fear just as he finally turned toward you, blood painting the bottom half of his face. Even as a nightmare, he was beautiful. 

Fumbling through your purse, you could cry with relief when your hands gripped the cool silver. Letting your purse sink to the floor, you unbent your pocket knife behind your back. Bracing yourself, you waited just as he stopped in front of you before you plunged the knife into his side, his eyes widening in shock. 

You wondered how you looked, if he still saw the buried love you had for him. Even you saw it sometimes in the mirror. All you could see was the betrayal blooming in his face as his hand shot out, boxing you in as he pulled the knife out with his other hand. Your lunch threatened to rise in your stomach as you spotted the dark liquid on your knife, his hand letting it clink to the ground. 

“Whoever told you silver works on us...lied,” He grimaced, “Though it does hurt like a bitch.”

“Tae… please…” You closed your eyes, flinched at his damp hand grazing your cheek. You were shaking, breathing hard. This was it.

“I missed you.”

“What?” Your breath caught, horrified that he could still cause that reaction. 

He studied your face, and it scared you that all you recognized was the same adoration he always had for you. Even after knowing the truth, why did he still look the same?

Nodding once, he skimmed his thumb across your cheek. “I did. I do love you. That will never change.”

“Don’t. Please,” Your tongue felt heavy, refusing to believe that after all you’d done, he’d still found you. “How did you…?”

Leaning forward, his lips brushed your jaw, your skin lighting up. He hummed when he could hear your heart rate picking up, his lips finding your ear as he whispered, “I said I’d always find you.”

“I… I…” You searched for the words, wondering if there was any way to stop this. “I love you, Taehyung.” It wasn’t a lie. It was the other truth you had run from. You were running from a monster, and you were running from a monster whom you loved. 

“I know you do, sweet pea,” You closed your eyes at that, “Pretty clever to go by the nickname you swore you hate.”

“How did you find me?”

You let him kiss your cheek again, hating yourself for savoring the feeling. It wasn’t easy to just turn off the love you had for the man you’d thought you would marry. Even when you knew he wasn’t exactly a man. 

“At first I thought you’d go far, anywhere to get me away from your family. I knew you were smart, so I followed your trail hundreds of miles out. That’s why it took me a while to realize how deep your love for your family goes. Maybe you did go far at first, but your bond with them is so engraved in you, I knew you’d get nostalgic. I thought of the places you adored, and one struck me in particular. A little run down town you and your family visited once when you were a child. One you dreamt of visiting again, if ever given the chance.”

How? How could he have possibly remembered that?

“And I have a friend. Hoseok. Had him keep an eye on you. Everything was fine until he saw this one,” He tilted his head toward Yeji, “hanging around too close. That’s when I knew I had to make my move.”

“You… left me alone?” You were confused. The betrayal licked at your throat, tears flooding your eyes as you pictured Hoseok’s warming presence. He was Taehyung’s friend? And if he had known you were here all this time, why hadn’t he just killed you then?

He stepped back, eyed his blood-coated fingers. Frowning, he said, “I know you’re terrified of me. But I would never hurt you.”

You shook your head, all the memories flooding back. Sensing something was off with him. Following him, even though you knew it was wrong. Watching as he sank his fangs into someone’s neck, draining them of their blood and their lives. Saw the horror when he spotted you, how it transformed into anger. “You were mad. You wanted to kill me.”

“No. I was mad because you thought so low of me. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have dated you in the first place.”

“How sweet,” You spit, noticing how he genuinely looked upset. What did this even mean?

He shook his head, gritting his teeth in frustration. “You never even gave me a chance.”

“You’re a killer, Tae. A monster. And because I found out, I was next.”

“Never.”  His word sent a tremor through your body. “I would never kill you. You are the love of my life. But… I am who I am. I planned to tell you, someday, but you found out on your own. There was no coming back from that, and you ran. Ran without a second to spare.”

You collapsed on the couch, cradling your head in your hands. Was he lying, trying to make you put your guard down? Either way, you were screwed. He wasn’t going to kill you… but that didn’t make it right. 

He kneeled in front of you, your heart softening as you drank him in. His face was as soft and loving as it had always been. His hands tentatively touched your knees, and when you didn’t move away, they rested on your thighs. The fear in your heart was sitting comfortable with the all-consuming love you had for him. 

“Tae,” You whispered, and like he knew what you were thinking, he leaned in and brushed his lips on yours, pulling back and waiting for you. Everything came crashing down as you fell into his kiss, his lips moving and molding yours. He was built for you, the one you feared and loved. 

Picking you up, he held you in his arms as he pushed you back into the bookshelf, groaning at the feeling of you. “I love you,” He whispered, said it again and again like it was your name. 

He showed you how much he loved you that night in the darkness of your little apartment, with every kiss erasing your fear little by little. You didn’t understand him, didn’t know what this meant or how you were going to handle this. 

You didn’t even know if you could trust him. 

What did you know? 

Monster or not, the love you had for him had never left. 

“Take me home, Tae,” You whispered as the sun slowly broke the horizon. He could probably sense your distance, your heartache. He didn’t say a word, only pressed a kiss to your temple. 

A promise, you knew. 

No matter what you decided, he meant it. He would never do to you what had scared you off.

Just like that, your deepest fear unravelled, your love for him overtaking you like it did when you first found him. 

You were in a different type of danger now, one in which you were familiar. 

Love was the most dangerous monster of all.

[nessaiscute]

Lemonaid break

Pathetic!” Snarled Mab, “Again.”

I got up, blood dripping down my arms, pain jolting through me like a lighting bolt. Rowen, my older brother grinning at me, this was my first real sword fight. Rowen was way stronger than me, I had only sparred with Sage a few times. Rowen had already cut me several times, and each time I fell on the ground. I gripped the sword in my hand, I was tense. This was to decide if I got to eat tonight. The rule of the winter court, you had to prove your strength to eat.  

I charged and swung my sword, it crossed with Rowen’s, he used glamor to shove me off and then cut my face and I fell to the ground.

“Is this the best my son can do??” Mab roared, “ Are you really a winter fey? You're nothing but a pathetic failure!”

Tears were welling in my eyes, Mab noticed right away and froze me in place,

“Disgusting!A fey never cries! Stay there! A failure doesn't deserve to eat. Let it rot there.”

It, I wasn’t a him to her. I was an it as long as I was weak, my heart felt really low. Had I not been frozen I would have started wailing. What I didn’t realize then, at the age of 8….

That would be the first of many nights of starvation.

“Dad!” Snapped a little boy, breaking me out of my trace.

I gasped, looking around, “What? What is it?”

The little boy was tapping his feet, He had silver hair and blue eyes, and a temper to match all of the summer court. He was wearing a little black coat and brown trousers. He looked slightly annoyed at me.

“What did I do now?” I asked in a husky voice.

“You and Glitch are supposed to spar! I only have twenty mintues before I have to go back to studying! Hurry up dad!”

I chuckled, “Alright boy. I’m moving.”

The boy ran on ahead, Kerrian, my little boy, he's a snarky little jerk but he means well. Hes naive to the world I used to live in. He would never have to worry about being frozen as punishment for being weak. He would never have to worry about being covered in scars, nor would he go to bed hungry. He might have some difficulties in life, like a broken heart or lost friends but he would live a normal carefree life. As long as I live I will protect him.

Even if it means forfeiting my own life.

The reception I got from Glitch was no better.

“About time, little lord Kerrian was going to die of boredom.”

Oh is it bully Ash day?

I drew my sword, “Talking won’t save you from me handing you your butt.”

Glitch smirked and a spark of a bad memory came back.

“Get ready Ash. I’m going to show your son how a true fey fights.”

Twenty minutes later we were panting both on our behinds and covered in sweat. A draw, like it always is. Neither one of us got any blows in though it came close many times.

“That was so cool!” Kerrian exclaimed, “Dad! You were amazing!”

I felt my face get slightly warm, “I-It was nothing..”

A Wire nymph came from the castle, “Little master. Your mother said it's time for your studies again.”

Kerrian groaned and went back into the castle and Glitch left too. He somehow recovered his strength rather quickly. Leaving me by myself, I scanned my body, Glitch might not have got a  cut but he sure left bruises, they stung. I tried to pull myself up but it wasn’t working. Ugh, great job Ash, train with Glitch! What a wonderful idea! Now if anyone were to see me I’d be a laughing stalk. ‘Hahahahha look at the iron knight, on his ass after a little training. When is Meghan going to release him?’

I realized how dumb I was being, Meghan would never release me. We promised to stay together forever. Though, I don’t want to be a burden. And-

“I see boys will always be boys.” stated a voice.

And there she was, my lovely Iron queen. Wearing a green sundress and black high heels, red lips and her hair down. Some of it was in her face, she was carrying a glass filled with lemonade, she was smiling at me.

She approached me and Handed me the glass, I took it and sipped it. The coolness refreshing me.

“Good stuff.” I commented.

“Of course it is, I made it just for you. Did Glitch get too rough with you?”

I shook my head, “No, I’m fine Meghan.” I really was fine, now that she was next to me. Her eyes full of life, her smile made me forget how tired I was. She extended her hand and I grabbed her hand and she pulled me up. I quickly realized how close I was to my queen’s face. My heart started racing, gods she's so pretty. I’d love to just kiss those soft lips. To feel her love yet again, but at the same time I love being this close to her. It's so strange, being near her makes me feel content, happy. Like I’m where I belong, there is no where I’d rather be.

Meghan chuckled, “Finish your lemonade.” and then she softly kissed my lips.

The cherry taste of her lips made my lips tingle, I sat down next to her and took a long drink. The lemonade really was good. It tastes tangy but there was a little sugar in there. I could get used to this, drinking cold drinks after long days of training. I looked to my left and Meghan was scanning my body for bruises, which she saw plenty of. Her disappointed stare was enough to make me want to run through a tornado.

“What?” I asked.

“Did you have another bad memory of your mom?”

How did she-

“A little, I guess you weren’t checking for bruises.”

“If i was checking for bruises all three of you would be grounded.”

I gulped, “Yes my queen.”

“So what was your daymare?”

“I… my first sword fight. With only a few spars from Sage I was thrown into a fight with Rowen who was a 100 years older than me, I… lost miserably,”

“Obviously, you were too young.”

I nodded, “Well Mab hated this, she...froze me still and didn’t let me eat that night.”

“How old were you?”

“8 in about human years.”

I felt a flash of anger erupt from Meghan’s soul, but she didn’t show it. Her eyes had a sympathetic look and then they lit up like she had an idea.

“I know! You’re hungry, I have new orders for you. Sit right here and don’t move till i get back.”

“And if someone tries to get me to move?” I jested.

“Tell them their queen will be very mad if you move. Don’t make me use your full name love.”

“Yes mam!” i stated.

She then kissed me and ran off, What exactly was she planning? Its not time to cook lunch? Does she really think she can cook without any-

“My queen, is it not the time for the cooks-”

“I will cook for my gods damn husband if i want to! And that final!”

I chuckled, She's so amazing and lords does she drive the staff crazy. She goes into the kitchen all the time to cook for me and Kerrian. Glitch must drive himself up the wall with all the complaints.

I didn’t hear much after that, but Meghan seemed happy. Her glamor was really high, she's gotten better at cooking but what the heck is she so excited for. Twenty minutes later I had my answer, Meghan came out with a full course meal. Not only that, my absolute favorites. Lobster tail dripping with lemon juice and cocktail sauce. And tons of shrimp, all lined up perfectly around the lobster.

“Holy crap! This is amazing!” I exclaimed

Meghan sat the plate down and then sat down, “Eat up my love.”

And lords did I, I haven’t eaten this kind of food in centuries. In fact I’ve only had it once, on my 10th birthday Rowen served it for me. But it was a trap, he just wanted me relaxed so I would fall down a hole and not come out for weeks. I was only found cause Mab went looking for me and that just got me locked in a cell for another 2 weeks.

But this wasn’t a trap, This was my wife cooking me lunch. This was my queen protecting me, her knight. This was my boy just wanting to see a bit of excitement before he had to study. This is just my family protecting me. Meghan watched me eat, her eyes full of love and kindness. I love her so much, my heart was filled with so many emotions that I couldn't even explain all of them.

When I finished, Meghan giggled, “Better now?”

“Not yet.” I smirked, I then cupped her face and kissed her softly.

The taste of lipstick sparked my soul, Meghan coiled her arms around me, I sensed a feeling of Safety coming from me. This is just another day of forever, with her.

[whumphoarder]

Dad Level: 3000

Summary: Peter comes down with the flu while visiting the Stark family (and Happy) at the lake house during his spring break from MIT. Thankfully, Tony has been spending the last five years honing his Dad Skills™. He's got this.

Word count: 5,227

Genre: sickfic, hurt/comfort, fluff, whump

A/N: This story is set in March 2025. Morgan is five and Peter is 18 (but also 23 on paper, which totally isn’t confusing at all).

Most of the events of Infinity War/Endgame happened, except Captain Marvel did the snap with her mighty-glowing-lady-warrior-powers and so no one freaking died.

Thanks to @sallyidss and @xxx-cat-xxx for beta reading <3

Link to read on AO3

Tony walks into the kitchen Monday morning to see his five-year-old daughter standing on her tiptoes on a chair, attempting to reach a small cardboard box inside the open freezer.

“What is this, a heist?” he asks, moving towards Morgan. He loops an arm around her middle and lifts her into his arms, planting a quick kiss on the top of her head and causing the little girl to giggle. “I thought Mommy said no juice pops before noon.”

“It’s for Peter,” she says simply.

“Oh it’s for Peter, is it?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow. “And why does Peter need a juice pop at ten in the morning?”

“Because he doesn’t feel good and juice pops always make me feel better,” Morgan concludes.

Tony’s brow furrows, but he just steps closer to the freezer to allow her to reach into the box properly. Now that he thinks about it, Peter had seemed pretty wiped last night, but he’d brushed it off as midterm exam stress. “I think he likes the orange ones best,” he advises.

Morgan fishes out an orange popsicle and Tony lowers her back down to the floor. She skips off down the hall, around the corner, and all the way to the cabin’s guest bedroom where the kid has been staying for the past two days since MIT spring break had officially begun. Tony follows along, his frown deepening when she continues straight through the room and pushes open the slightly ajar door to the ensuite bathroom.

It’s a sorry sight indeed. Peter is slumped on the floor, propped up between the bathtub and toilet, eyes half-closed and his cheek resting on the edge of the bowl. One arm is wrapped around his stomach and he’s pale and sweaty.

Morgan, bless her heart, runs right over to him. “I got you a juice pop!” she says brightly.

Peter blinks up at her and then swallows thickly before offering her the weakest of smiles. “Oh. Thanks,” he croaks. “Uh, do you think you can do me a big favor and eat it for me?”

Spinning around, Morgan gazes up at Tony, her eyes big. “Can I?”

Despite his growing concern, Tony huffs out a quick laugh. “Sure, why not,” he agrees. Pepper is the one always reminding him to choose his battles after all. “We’ll just keep this one to ourselves.”

As Morgan unwraps the plastic from her popsicle, Peter closes his eyes tightly and swallows again, face draining even further of color.

Tony pats Morgan on the shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you go eat that with Uncle Happy? I’m gonna sit here with Peter for a little while.”

“Okay,” she agrees, spinning around on her heel.

The moment she’s gone, Tony’s attention turns back to his other kid, who is looking even more miserable now. “Not feeling so hot, huh?”

Peter shakes his head slightly, letting his eyelids squeeze shut again. “‘M’sorry,” he murmurs.

If Peter didn’t look so pathetic right now, Tony would have rolled his eyes. Instead, he just lets out a small sigh. “Not your fault, kiddo,” he assures. “You throw up?”

“Not yet,” Peter mumbles, then swallows again. “Just... feel really sick.”

“C’mon, Happy’s tuna casserole wasn’t that bad…” he tries to joke, but it falls flat when Peter doesn’t so much as smirk.

Tony steps further into the bathroom and crouches down beside the kid, wincing as his knees click in protest. “Is it just your stomach?”

“I dunno.” Peter shrugs tiredly. “Kinda ache all over...”

Tony places his hand on the back of Peter’s neck and instantly can feel the heat radiating off the kid’s sweaty skin. Peter shivers at the touch. “Your hand is really cold,” he complains.

“Nah, you’re just warm,” Tony disagrees, moving his hand to press to Peter’s forehead instead. He sighs and pushes himself back up to standing. “Think you’ll be okay here for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Peter croaks, looking a little guilty. “You really don’t have to stay. I know you’re busy…”

“Ah, see that’s the beauty of the retired stay-at-home-dad life,” Tony retorts, straightening back up to standing. “This is literally my job now.”

Before Peter has a chance to dwell too much on that response, Tony exits the room and heads to the master bathroom to locate the thermometer, and then to his lab to grab the bottle of spidey-kid-strength painkiller and fever reducer pills he and Bruce had concocted. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to use them—he knows Peter hates the way the meds knock him on his ass and make his thoughts fuzzy and disconnected—but he figures it would be good to have them on hand just in case.

After making a quick detour through the kitchen for a can of ginger ale and some crackers, he heads back to the guest room, quickening his pace when he hears the telltale sound of retching and splashing issuing from the bathroom.

“Aw, Pete…” He winces in sympathy at the gagging boy. Peter’s nose is running and his eyes are red and wet with tears.

“Flu was going ‘round the dorm last week…” Peter moans as Tony sets the items down on the counter and wets a washcloth at the sink. “Thought I lucked out. Guess not.”

Tony places a hand on the kid’s sweaty t-shirt to start rubbing circles on his back. But he freezes instantly when he feels Peter tense up at the touch.

“You alright?” he checks, hand hovering just over the kid’s shoulder blades.

“Yeah,” Peter rasps. “Jus’... you never did that before.”

Tony recalls the handful of times he’d seen Peter sick during their time together before. Vomit has never fazed him—he’s had much too colorful of a past for that—but before he was definitely more inclined to offer a joke or a sarcastic remark than to settle for being a comforting presence. Funny what five years with a child who turns into a clingy octopus whenever she’s ill have done to him.

Then again, Morgan is in kindergarten while Peter is eighteen (or twenty-three, according to his birth certificate—it’s been over a year since Thanos and still no one seems entirely sure how to refer to the un-vanished). Maybe the Comforting Presence™ protocol is different for teenagers.

He is just about to offer to step out in order to give the kid some privacy when Peter interrupts his thoughts. “’S’nice,” he murmurs. “May does it too.”

Tony’s heart swells a bit. Then the moment is shattered when Peter suddenly sticks his head back over the toilet and starts gagging again.

“Alright, alright, get it all out…” With a small sigh, Tony lowers himself down to sit on the floor beside Peter and resumes rubbing his back.

When he’s finally finished, Tony flushes the toilet and Peter slumps back against the tub, his eyes closed. Instinctively, Tony lifts the washcloth up to wipe his messy face. Peter flinches at the contact and weakly reaches a hand up to take the cloth.

“Sorry, can do it myself,” he mumbles. “‘S’gross…”

Tony gives a quick snort. “Nah, you know what’s really gross? When I found Morgan’s secret booger stash on the side of her bedroom dresser.” He shudders dramatically.

Almost instantly, Tony regrets his comment when it triggers another round of heaving from Peter. “Sorry, kiddo,” he says as he rubs Peter’s back. “That was on me.”

This time when the spasms cease and Peter slumps back against the tub, he doesn’t bother protesting when Tony cleans his face and flushes the evidence away for him. Tony cracks open the can of ginger ale and passes it to the kid.

“Small sips, okay?” he instructs, reaching up to the counter for the thermometer.

“Can’t FRIDAY just tell you that?” Peter asks as Tony flips on the device.

“Morgan’s pediatrician convinced me this is more accurate,” Tony replies, inserting it in Peter’s ear. “Just be glad she’s graduated to the aural one now. You would not be happy about where this guy had me sticking it for the first year or so.”

“Huh?” Peter blinks at him. Then all of a sudden it seems to click and he groans, “Mr. Starrrk.”

The thermometer beeps. Still smirking, Tony lowers the device down to read the display. His grin falters for a second at the number.

“Wha’s it say?” Peter croaks.

“Nothing we can’t fix,” Tony replies briskly.

“But what’s it say?” Peter repeats. He weakly attempts to get the thermometer from Tony’s grip, but his mentor just holds the device out of his reach, lightly swatting the kid’s hand away.

Peter stares blankly at Tony for a second before glancing upwards. “What’s my temp, FRI?” he asks wearily.

“103.2,” FRIDAY reports.

Tony scoffs, finally flipping around the thermometer to show the ‘103.1’ displayed on the screen. “See? The doctor was right—manual is much better.”

Peter glances nervously at the orange pill bottle on the counter. “Does that mean I have to take the meds?” he whispers.

Tony hesitates for a second. While he knows 103 is not exactly life-threatening, it’s still a far cry from normal. “It would probably make you feel better if we could get it lower,” he reasons.

“It’s not worth it,” Peter mumbles. “They make me feel weird.”

“I wish we had something better for you, bud,” Tony says with a sigh. He considers their options for a moment. “Alright, how about we wait a while and see if it goes down on its own?” he suggests. “But if you hit 104, I’m making an executive decision.”

“Deal,” Peter croaks.

They sit there for a few more minutes, Peter taking deep breaths and looking like he might fall asleep right there against the tub. Finally, Tony’s stiff back protests. “How’s your stomach now?” he asks.

Without opening his eyes, Peter lifts a hand and makes a so-so gesture.

“Well, you seem pretty empty,” Tony goes on. “What do you say we move this party elsewhere?”

“Mm...‘kay,” Peter breathes. Tony pushes himself up to standing and helps him up, supporting him under the elbows. Peter sways on his feet. “Whoa…” he murmurs.

Tony quickly adjusts his grip to get a better hold on the kid. “You dizzy?” he asks.

“Kinda,” Peter admits. ”Just need a sec.”

When it seems like he can safely move without passing out, Tony helps him out of the bathroom and sits him on the edge of the bed.

“Let’s change your shirt, okay?” Tony says.

“Huh?” Peter glances down, for the first time seeming to notice how soaked with sweat his shirt is. “Oh. Yeah.”

Tony locates (what he hopes is) a clean t-shirt from the kid’s messy duffel bag on the floor and watches him pull it on. The simple act seems to take far more effort than usual.

“You wanna go back to sleep?” Tony offers.

Peter’s only response is a non-committal grunt. “Don’t think I can,” he admits. “Woke up at like, six. Couldn’t really fall back asleep.”

“Should we try the couch then?”

At the kid’s nod, Tony guides him out to the living room, keeping a firm grip around Peter’s upper arm for support. Morgan, Happy, and a staggering array of the five-year-old’s favorite toys are currently occupying at least two-thirds of the room’s large sectional sofa while reruns of Peppa Pig play on the TV.

“Peter!” Morgan exclaims when he comes into view. She hops down off the sofa and runs over to them while Happy stands up and starts clearing off some of the cushions to make room for Peter. “Is your tummy feeling better?” she asks. “Can you play now?”

Despite how miserable Peter looks, he manages to give her a half-smile. “Um, maybe in a little while…”

Tony takes pity on the kid and intervenes. “Peter’s not feeling that great, so how about we just watch a movie?” he suggests as he situates the teenager on the chaise section of the couch.

Morgan’s eyes light up. “Can we see Frozen 3?”

“God no,” Happy grumbles, sinking down into a nearby armchair. “That damn song with all of Olaf’s little frolicking snowball children was stuck in my head for a week last time.”

“There’s a Frozen 3 now?” Peter questions, his brow wrinkling. “There wasn’t even a Frozen 2 when I got dusted.”

“Yeah, well, global crisis or not, Disney marches on,” Tony retorts. He tugs a fuzzy blanket out of the stack in the wicker bin by the fireplace and tosses it to Peter, who gives a little grunt of thanks. “For the record, Cars 4 was better than Cars 2, but it was no Cars 3.”

“See, I think they peaked at Cars 5: European Adventure,” Happy argues.

“Nah,” Tony scoffs. “There were at least three too many roundabout jokes.”

“But Mater and Fillmore driving the Autobahn was peak comedy.”

Peter is still struggling to unfold the blanket, so Tony takes it back and shakes it open for him. “What are you in the mood for, kid?” he asks as he tucks it around Peter.

“Whatever you want,” Peter mumbles, leaning back against the pillows. He looks utterly exhausted—Tony figures he’ll be lucky to make it fifteen minutes into the movie before falling asleep. Best to go with something he’s already seen then.

“Lilo & Stitch?” he suggests.

The kids agree, Morgan with much more enthusiasm than Peter. Happy even gives his begrudging blessing on the basis that at least it’s ‘not another damn musical’.

(As if FRIDAY didn’t already have half a dozen audio recordings of him singing “Let It Go” in the shower).

Tony instructs FRIDAY to start the movie before heading back to Peter’s bathroom to gather all the supplies he left, and also snags the room’s small trash can because if there’s one thing he’s learned from Morgan, it’s that you can never be too careful.

Peter’s breathing has already evened out as the opening credits fade from the screen and Tony sinks down into the sofa beside him, and by the time Lilo explains why she can’t give Pudge a tuna fish sandwich, Peter is snoring quietly.

X

To Tony’s relief, Peter sleeps straight through the remainder of the movie, with Happy joining him somewhere around the halfway point. The moment the film ends, Morgan hops off the sofa. “I’m hungry,” she announces. “Can we have mac and cheese?”

Peter gives a low moan and stirs slightly in his sleep. Tony locks eyes with Morgan and presses a finger to his lips, tilting his head sideways in the boy’s direction.

Her eyes go wide with understanding and she tries again in a stage whisper (which honestly isn’t any better than her normal volume). “Can we have mac and cheese?”

Sighing, Tony pushes himself up to standing and prods her along to the kitchen. “Fine. But only if you eat a vegetable with it.”

Morgan grins. “Okay! I want corn.”

“Corn isn’t a real vegetable,” Tony grumbles. He steers them both into the room and moves towards the cabinet where they keep the pasta. “Pick something green.”

Her face falls for a moment. Then, just as quickly as they darkened, her eyes light up again. “Green jello!”

Tony rolls his eyes. He takes out a box of mac and cheese and then opens the fridge to take stock of what’s on hand. “You’re getting cucumber,” he says after a moment.

“I don’t like cucumber,” she pouts, crossing her arms over her chest.

Tony frowns at her. “But you said it was your favorite last week.”

“I don’t like it anymore,” she says simply. “It’s gross. Can we have pudding?”

“That’s the opposite of a vegetable,” Tony argues. “So if you’re eating that, now you have to have two vegetables.”

“Um… Potato chips?” she asks hopefully.

Tony runs a hand over his face in exasperation. “No, that’s not a—”

“Hey Tony?” Happy’s voice calls from the living room. There’s an edge of worry to it. “Can you come here?”

“Yeah, coming,” Tony replies, a feeling of dread already sinking in. He heads back to the living room, Morgan tailing along behind.

The sight awaiting him causes Tony’s heart to clench. Happy is standing over Peter, urgently shaking his shoulder while the kid moans incoherently and tosses in his sleep, clearly in the midst of a nightmare.

“He’s not waking up,” Happy says worriedly.

“I got it,” Tony says, quickly closing the distance between himself and the sofa. “Hey, Pete, naptime is over,” he commands as he taps Peter’s unusually warm cheek. “C’mon, rise and shine. I’d offer to make you some breakfast, but it looks like you’re already cookin’…”

It takes a moment, but finally Peter wakes. His eyes snap open and he sits up gasping.

“There we go,” Tony soothes, rubbing a hand down Peter’s arm. “You’re alright.”

Peter blinks at him. “...Mr. Stark?” Tears are already welling up in the kid’s eyes and falling before he can stop them. His breath hitches in his throat. “Oh god…” he sobs. “I thought… I-I was trapped and...”

“It’s okay.” He sits down beside Peter on the sofa and wraps an arm around him, pulling him into his side. Even six years out from the initial snap, Tony still has nightmares—he can only imagine what Peter must be going through. “You’re okay, you’re safe, just a dream,” he assures.

“Daddy?” Morgan asks nervously. Tony glances back and sees her standing just inside the room’s threshold, lip trembling.

“Hey, munchkin,” Tony says, giving her a forced smile. “Peter’s fine. You wanna go teach Uncle Happy how to make the mac and cheese? Don’t let him add tuna.”

Eyes still locked on Peter, Morgan nods slowly.

Happy moves over to take her hand. “C’mon, kiddo,” he says as he ushers her back to the kitchen. “And don’t listen to your daddy, tuna is a great source of protein…”

The moment they leave, Tony focuses his attention back on Peter, who is just now starting to get his breathing back under control.

“‘M’sorry…” Peter chokes out. “I just thought I was trapped there, and, and…”

“It’s okay, Pete,” Tony says gently. “You’re here with me, not on Titan, not in the soul stone. You’re safe.”

“Titan?” Peter asks, his brow wrinkling. “Wha’ about Titan?”

Tony frowns. “Your nightmare? Trapped on Titan, right?”

Peter’s tears have stopped now and he’s staring at Tony with glassy eyes. “Wasn’t on Titan,” he mutters. “Nick Fury found out I was a spider and sucked me up in a giant vacuum cleaner”—his breath hitches again—“an’ I was swirlin’ around and I couldn’t get out, and someone was chasing me with a giant spray can, and there was this cat but like, a monster cat, and—”

Okay, that wasn’t what Tony expected. He places a hand on Peter’s forehead and feels the heat pouring off of him. Taking the thermometer from the coffee table, he turns it on and sticks it in Peter’s ear.

When it beeps this time, the display reads 104.2.

Tony lets out a low whistle, already starting to untangle the blanket from around Peter. “Alright... guess we’re doing the meds now.”

Peter groans, rubbing a hand at his eyes. “Mr. Stark…”

“Nope, non-negotiable,” Tony replies. He grabs the pill bottle from the coffee table along with the package of crackers. “And you have to eat something so they stay down.”

Despite his grumbling, Peter takes the crackers Tony passes him and nibbles at them between sips of ginger ale. When he’s managed to get two down, Tony gives him the pill.

“I know you’re not a fan, but it’ll help with the pain too,” Tony promises.

“Hm, that’s good…” Peter croaks. “Have a headache. And my throat hurts.”

Tony hums in sympathy. “I can imagine.”

Stepping out, he wets a washcloth with cool water in the bathroom and returns to place it over Peter’s forehead and eyes.

Immediately, Peter lets out a sigh. “That’s really nice,” he whispers.

They rest like that for a few minutes until a small voice interrupts them. “Um, Peter?”

Peter lowers the cloth and both of them glance back to see Morgan padding into the room, a stuffed corgi dog plushie tucked under one arm, an orange popsicle clutched in the other hand. Happy is standing just inside the threshold, leaning against the door jamb with his arms crossed casually.

“Hey.” Peter manages a half-smile.

“I got you another juice pop,” she says, handing it over. “And this is Korg, he’ll make you feel better,” she adds as she nestles the toy into the crook of Peter’s elbow.

“Korg?” Peter questions as his fingers fumble to unwrap the popsicle.

“Thor named him,” Tony replies. “Apparently he’s got a buddy with the same name—thought it would be hilarious when he learned what this breed was called.”

“Uncle Happy said you had a scary dream,” Morgan goes on, plopping down on the couch next to the boy.

Peter’s already fever-flushed face goes a little redder. “Oh, yeah. I guess it was kinda silly.”

“You can tell Korg about it,” she says, stroking the plush dog’s head. “He can’t laugh because he’s not real.”

Seeming caught off guard by that, Peter barks out a sharp laugh which quickly morphs into coughs, but Tony is glad because it’s the first real humor he’s seen from the kid all day.

X

While Happy and Morgan eat their mac and cheese—with tuna for Happy, peas for Morgan—Tony manages to cajole Peter into eating half a can of chicken noodle before the kid nods off with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Sorry...” Peter murmurs as Tony dabs the spilled broth off his shirt with a wad of paper towels. “Tired.”

Tony sighs. “Yeah, that would be the meds kicking in,” he says. He checks Peter’s temperature again and sees it’s down to 102.7 now. “At least they’re working.”

“Hmm…” Peter hums sleepily.

“Let’s go ahead and move you to your real bed,” Tony decides. “It’ll be more comfortable to stretch out.”

“Hmm…” he says again.

Tony hoists the wobbly boy to his feet, supporting him under his arm. “You should probably have a shower when you wake up, but I’m thinking it’s a safety concern at the moment.”

“Hmm…”

“Okay, not in the chattiest mood, I get it…”

Tony shuffles him back to the guest room and changes his shirt again. Then he helps Peter crawl into bed and pulls the covers up around him.

“Alright underoos, take a nap,” he says softly. “I’ll keep the little troublemaker from bothering you.”

“Hmm... and Morgan too?” Peter murmurs.

“Smartass,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “Keep an eye on him, FRI,” he commands the AI. “Sleep well, kid.”

X

After fixing himself his own lunch, Tony spends the next two hours alternating between entertaining a rambunctious five-year-old and trying to catch up on his backlog of SI paperwork for Pepper. He’s sitting at the kitchen table with Morgan, watching her color a page out of her Frozen 3 coloring book, as he skims through yet another proposal on his tablet. That’s when FRIDAY’s voice comes over the speakers.

“Boss, Peter’s temperature has just reached 103 degrees. He is awake and appears to be in distress,” FRIDAY reports.

“Shit,” Tony mutters, getting to his feet.

“You said only Mommy can say that word,” Morgan complains as she colors Elsa’s hair bright purple.

“Yeah, yeah, I was just borrowing it from her,” he mutters. “I’m gonna go check on Peter, okay?”

She nods, still coloring intently. “‘Kay.”

Tony hurries out of the kitchen and down the hall towards the guest bedroom, fully prepared to talk Peter down from another nightmare. What he’s not prepared for is the sight that awaits him.

Peter is sitting up in bed, hunched over himself and trembling. Liquidy vomit is running all down his shirt and soaking into the comforter.

“Aw, bud…” Tony sighs, quickly moving over to the bed. “You really go all out, don’t you?”

Peter doesn’t even look up. His breaths are coming out far too quick, and he’s mumbling something under his breath.

Tony places a hand on his shoulder, causing Peter to jerk his head up, revealing the tear tracks trailing down his cheeks.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Tony asks in alarm.

“S-Sorry…” Peter chokes out. “I just, for a minute, I didn’t know where I was. Called for May and she didn’ answer, so thought I was at the d-dorm, but this isn’t a bunk bed, an’ then I thought I was in the stone but it’s not orange, and then I felt sick but I couldn't get up fast enough, and I just—”

(Okay so the PTSD was just a bit delayed.)

“You’re okay, you’re fine,” Tony assures, rubbing a hand up and down over the kid’s back. “You’re here at the lake house and you’re safe.”

“’M’sorry…” Peter sniffs, hanging his head. “This is dumb, maybe I should just have May come pick me up”—his nose is dripping and he sniffs again—“you shouldn’t have to take care of me when I’m being all gross”—sniff—“a-and...”

Absently, Tony pulls several tissues from the box on the nightstand and holds them to Peter’s messy face. “Blow.”

Peter goes silent and Tony freezes as the realization of what he’s just done sinks in.

Tissues still pressed to his nose, Peter raises an eyebrow to his mentor. “D-Did… Did you just tell me to blow my nose?”

Tony recovers quickly. “C’mon, it’s swallowing all that crap that’s making you feel sick in the first place,” he points out. “Now blow.”

So Peter does.

Tony lowers the used tissue back down and tosses it into the trash can. “Better?”

Looking mildly traumatized, Peter deadpans, “Iron Man just wiped my nose.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll live,” Tony dismisses him with a hand wave. Then in a more gentle tone, he asks, “Now do you really want to go home? Because I get it if you do, but I promise, I really don’t mind taking care of you. And with your healing, you’ll probably be feeling better in another day or so. There’ll still be plenty of your break left.”

Peter hesitates. “I dunno. I mean…” He shrugs. “I guess, I don’t really want to leave, but…” he trails off, sounding conflicted.

After a moment, Tony intervenes. “Okay, here’s an idea,” he suggests, as casually as he can manage. “You’re looking a little more steady now, so how about I run a load of laundry and you go take a shower? You can call May after and decide what you want to do. Then we’ll go from there.”

A look of relief instantly washes over Peter at the suggestion. “Yeah, that sounds good,” he whispers. “Thanks.”

X

During the next half hour, Tony checks on Morgan—who is contentedly playing with toys on her bedroom floor—before stripping Peter’s bed and running a load of laundry. When he reenters the guestroom, he finds Peter sitting on the bare mattress in fresh pajamas and with wet hair, looking much more relaxed.

“How’s May?” Tony asks.

Peter shrugs. “Her shift just ended. She said she’s sorry I’m sick.” He pauses for a beat. “Also said she’s not surprised, given all the all-nighters I pulled during the last two weeks and the fact I’ve been mostly living off cereal, ramen noodles, and Fig Newtons this semester.”

Tony snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, that’ll do it.” According to FRIDAY, the lukewarm water of the shower has had the added benefit of bringing Peter’s temperature down to just over 102 and he’s looking significantly better for it. “Still wanna bail on us?”

Peter shakes his head, a bit sheepish. “Not if you don’t mind me staying.”

“Nah, ‘course not,” Tony assures. “Now you wanna go see if Morgan’s up for another movie yet?”

Peter agrees and the two of them shuffle upstairs. As they approach the landing, they can hear muffled voices issuing from the little girl’s bedroom.

“Do you want some more?” Morgan’s voice floats down the hall.

“Yeah, fine. Two sugar, no cream…” a gruff voice replies. “And one of those cookies.”

“No, no you have to call it a biscuit,” she insists, her tone just bordering on a whine. “Mommy says that’s more fancy.”

“It’s a double-stuffed Oreo,” Happy grouses. “It’s a goddamn cookie.”

Peter shoots his mentor a perplexed look. Tony just gives a shrug in return as he pushes Morgan’s door open and then they both immediately pause.

Happy glances up at them from where he’s seated cross-legged on the floor beside the kiddie table. One of Pepper’s silk scarves is wrapped around his shoulders making some sort of shawl, and he’s wearing Morgan’s flowery sun hat with several of her homemade plastic beaded necklaces hanging around his neck. Meanwhile, Morgan sits in the chair to his right, pouring pretend tea from her little plastic teapot into a tiny cup.

Peter leans closer into his mentor’s side. “I think my fever went up,” he whispers. “I’m hallucinating.”

Happy shrugs. “What can I say? She makes a mean chamomile.” Pinching the minuscule handle of his teacup between his thumb and forefinger, pinky raised, he lifts it to his lips and mimes taking a sip.

“Do you guys wanna join us?” Morgan asks hopefully. She’s dressed in her yellow Princess Belle dress and her hair is sporting a loose braid that definitely wasn’t there last time Tony saw her.

Peter hesitates a second, looking into the little girl’s wide eyes. Then he lets out a small sigh. “Well, May did say I should be drinking more fluids…” he mutters as he moves towards the kiddie table, Tony following along behind.

X

When Pepper arrives home from work just past seven that evening, she finds Peter, Tony, and Happy passed out on the sofa and snoring softly amid an array of Morgan’s plush toys. The little girl sits beside them with a bowl of popcorn nestled in her lap, intently watching Frozen 3 on the room’s massive TV.

“Mommy!” Morgan greets, hopping off the sofa and running over to her.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Pepper says as she scoops the five-year-old up in her arms. She gazes around the room, taking in the interesting fashion choices on display. It seems half of her accessory drawer has been commandeered to adorn the three men on the sofa.

Morgan’s full plastic tea service—now complete with Gatorade in the teacups and Saltine crackers on the plastic saucers—has been moved to the living room coffee table. Besides the dishes, the table also contains the thermometer, an empty soup bowl, and a box of tissues, and on the floor in front of the couch is a lined trash can. “What happened here?” she asks.

“Peter didn’t feel good, but Daddy took his temperature and gave him medicine and I got him juice pops,” Morgan reports. “And then we had tea and I gave Uncle Happy and Daddy makeovers.”

Pepper peers closer, noticing the two older men’s nails are painted with sparkly lilac-colored polish and their cheeks are looking a bit more glittery than normal.

“Good girl,” Pepper praises, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. “Looks like you all took good care of each other.”

X

Fic Masterlist

For more fluffy illness, try:

Give the Kid an Oscar 

Bedridden Spider

Sick as a Bug

[whumpernickel]

witcher fic number two! also on ao3

still not super confident in my writing, but im a lot happier with this one than with the first.

so here, have some jaskier with the flu and geralt trying not to confront his own emotions.

It had been four hours since Jaskier had last spoken - or at least since he’d said anything more than “shit” for tripping over his own feet - and Geralt was beginning to worry.

Not worry. Geralt didn’t worry, and especially not about Jaskier who was a grown man and whose prolonged, uninterrupted silences were no one’s business but his own. But this was the first nice day after a miserable stretch of cold, dreary, drizzly ones, and Jaskier, hopeless romantic though he was, hadn’t said or sung a word about the frolicking birds or the dancing sunlight or whatever his personification of the hour was.

And Geralt was on edge – that's what he was. Anything out of the ordinary had him like this, because, more often than not, out-of-the-ordinary meant imminent peril. Silence was horribly out of the ordinary for his usually animated, usually singing, usually noisy shadow. The last full sentence he’d heard Jaskier say was, “She’s still mad at you for making us travel in the rain all day yesterday, and, frankly, I don’t blame her,” which Geralt had all but guffawed at him for, for presuming he knew Geralt’s mare better than he did.

So, when Roach headbutted Geralt once again, catching him off-guard and nearly tumbling him headlong into the rain-sodden road, Geralt eyed Jaskier expectantly, bracing for insufferable levels of I-told-you-so smugness and deepening his frown when none was forthcoming. He was surprised to find the tiniest itch of disappointment at this lack of banter, but more prevalent than that was his mounting concern. Something was obviously wrong, and there was a reason that Jaskier wasn’t telling him.

Jaskier flinched as if startled when he caught the sour look directed at him. He scowled to match it, clearly clueless as to why they were scowling at each other, but lending admirable commitment to the act, nonetheless.

"What?" he croaked.

"...You're quiet."

Somehow worse than a smug Jaskier was this halfheartedly-smug one that emerged as he responded:

"You sound disappointed-"

"I'm not."

Geralt cringed inwardly at how quickly the denial came out, but Jaskier barely glanced up at his response. He seemed more than content to take Geralt at his word, for once.

"Wonderful," he said, too cheerful, "then neither of us will mind if it remains that way."

It was an enthusiastic invitation to leave it the fuck alone, but Geralt was nothing if not contrary. He found his attention drawn to Jaskier and his unsettling Jaskier-less-ness even more, now that he knew Jaskier was avoiding it. Every little thing stole his focus: a stumble, there, when Jaskier normally would have been sure-footed on even ground; a shiver, here, when the midday sun ought to have been enough to banish any lingering morning chill.

For the thirtieth time in half-as-many minutes, Geralt's eyes darted back to his quiet travel-companion, and apparently this was just one glance too many.

Jaskier heaved a dramatic sigh and stopped in his tracks. He didn't say anything, but there was a clear and demanding What? in the hands-on-hips posture and dead-eyed annoyance he aimed at Geralt.

Geralt stopped, too. He frowned at Jaskier critically – appraisingly – and watched as Jaskier's attitude from moments before shrunk back within him, the bard’s arms folding over his chest in an attempt to maintain his image of stubborn petulance while also making himself a lesser target. It wasn't working.

Geralt hadn't been entirely oblivious to Jaskier's condition - he could never completely drown out his constant presence, however hard he tried - and so he'd been noticing (and disregarding) little things all throughout the day: the tired bowing of Jaskier's back and shoulders when he thought Geralt wasn’t looking, the uncharacteristic irritability in his normally-playful jabs, the purposeful shallow breathing in an attempt to avoid coughs that occasionally slipped past anyway, the way the pallor to his skin had worsened whenever the trail steepened or whenever their unusually-minimalist conversation had shifted to food, the stagnant scent of cold-sweat and stress underlying Jaskier's usual familiar one whenever he stepped into Geralt's personal space and the slightly elevated heat radiating off of him along with it, the shudders intermittently jolting his shoulders in spite of the warmth of the day, the bruised-looking shadows under his eyes that Geralt was sure hadn’t been so stark just a day ago.

He'd dismissed all of this in favor of basking in rare, blissful silence. But the details had continued compiling in some recess of his mind, building up into a great, nagging, restless-leg kind of feeling that he could no longer ignore.

"Are you ill?" Geralt finally asked.

"Pardon?"

Geralt waited sternly for his answer.

Jaskier rolled his eyes, then hiked his lute higher onto his shoulder and resumed their trek.

"I'm not ill," he said, the harsh crack in his voice on the word "ill" belying his stalwart conviction. "And since when would it matter?"

"It matters when we run into the beast, and I have to waste precious time and concentration saving your useless arse because you're delirious from fever."

It came out a little harsher than Geralt intended – well, no, it came out exactly as harsh as Geralt had intended, but much harsher than he wanted, and he found himself frustrated not for the first time at how often his intentions and desires so poorly aligned. Jaskier kept his attention forward, but Geralt still saw a strange look overtake his companion’s face for a brief moment, equal parts stung and calculating, before falling comfortably back on annoyance.

"Good thing I'm not feverish, then.”

"You're warm," Geralt prodded.

"It's a warm day."

"You're shivering."

"You're scary."

"You're not afraid of me."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

And he did. From the moment the bard’s eyes had lit up with a giddy, “Oh, fun,” after first realizing Geralt was the infamous Butcher of Blaviken, it had been clear that Geralt didn’t scare him in the slightest. It was one of the many things about Jaskier that frustrated and confused him.

Also among these things were his seemingly boundless social energy, his unflappable confidence (no matter what gaudy outfit he wore or what godsawful thing he said), and his insistence on denying that he was sick when he very clearly wasn't well.

"Jaskier."

"Geralt," Jaskier grunted in a mockery of the witcher’s tone – a surprisingly decent one, to be true, but that was mostly owing to his illness-roughened throat.

"We're stopping here."

"Hm, then I guess we're not saving and-or slaying our beast tonight, yeah? You said we couldn't make any extra stops if we wanted to make it there before nightfall."

Geralt stifled a huff of frustration.

It was true. This particular curse reversal required that they find the animal at dusk, so they were pressed for time. Geralt had said so, earlier, when Jaskier was complaining he wanted to rest because he was tired. Geralt hadn't realized, however, that "tired" was apparently the new slang for "ill and grievously stupid,” and he'd been actively trying to ignore Jaskier for... well, for as long as he'd known the bard, really, so it had taken him longer than it should have to start taking the warning signs seriously.

He felt guilty for that, now.

"We can spare ten minutes," Geralt grumbled, leaving little room for objection as he followed Roach to a decent patch of shade off the path.

Jaskier shrugged and trailed behind them. "Well, I usually require a full eight hours’ beauty sleep, but... okay."

He sat himself and his lute down gingerly against a tree, while Geralt browsed Roach's packs for whatever he could scavenge in the way of a human-grade fever-reducer and similar herbs, and Roach snuffled at the ground and ignored the both of them. When Geralt turned back around, Jaskier had shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the tree trunk, brow furrowed and lips pressed together in a taut line. It was a worrisome thing to see the usually-so-expressive human with such an actively restrained look on his face.

Geralt considered this and added another small phial to his handful before walking over. He knelt in front of Jaskier.

"Jask."

Jaskier cracked an eye open. "Yesk?" he responded, then snorted tiredly at his own half-assed attempt at humor.

Geralt didn't laugh. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand to Jaskier's forehead, briefly noting the way Jaskier recoiled, first with surprise and then with a shiver, before becoming wholly preoccupied by the intense heat beneath Jaskier’s skin.

"Your hands are freezing, Geralt!” Jaskier complained. He shuddered and hugged himself, looking three shades more miserable than before. “Gods, I’m starting to wonder if that sylvan had a damned point about your dad being a snowman..."

"You have a fever."

"Hm," was all Jaskier had to say to that. The irony of this was not lost on either of them, nor was the annoyance it elicited from one witcher, who maybe understood a little bit, now, why others found his noncommittal grunts so damned frustrating.

"And a cough."

Jaskier at least had the decency to look guilty for hiding it. The slight edge of accusation to Geralt's voice may have helped, too.

"Pain?" Geralt continued his verbal checklist of Jaskier's symptoms.

"Just a bit of a headache," he half-admitted.

Geralt hummed. He placed a waterskin and a small pouch into Jaskier’s hands.

Jaskier wrinkled his nose when he uncinched the pouch and realized it was food: dried berries and a little leftover bread from their last inn-stay. He started to push it away.

“I’m good, thanks-”

“Eat,” Geralt commanded, “You haven’t eaten. You need to eat something.”

Nausea colored Jaskier’s face a papery grey just at the idea, and the silent plea in his eyes was just pathetic enough that Geralt almost caved and took the bag away from him. But thirst and hunger were an added stress that the bard’s body didn’t need right now.

"Try," Geralt urged more gently.

Jaskier grimaced, but he tore off a piece of bread and placed it in his mouth, chewing slowly and reluctantly.

“Happy?” he spoke around the meager bite.

Geralt smiled encouragingly. This must have been the right response, as Jaskier seemed to yield to the approval, and his next bite was much less hesitant. Geralt made sure he’d drunk some water, as well, before standing to set about gathering what usable wood he could find in the immediate vicinity – not much, but he only needed enough to boil a cup of water.

It was quiet once again as Geralt worked, heating water and steeping herbs, but it was a little more comfortable and a little less foreboding this time around. Perhaps because Jaskier’s silence had a clear explanation, now, no longer the faceless monster lurking in the shadows that it had been before. He didn’t speak up again until Geralt walked back over, cup in hand.

“Oh, did you make me tea?” he quipped. “How domestic.”

“It’s an infusion.”

Jaskier traded Geralt the pouch and waterskin for the cup and stared into its steaming contents. “It looks like tea.”

Geralt gave a snort of impatience to put Roach to shame. “Drink it,” he said, before turning back around to clean up.

Behind him, Jaskier made an exaggerated gagging noise at the bitter herbs. "That is just... vile– Geralt what the devil have you given me? Are you trying to put me out of my misery? I mean, I appreciate the gesture..."

Geralt huffed out a sound that may have been amusement or may have been exasperation – even he wasn't sure.

"It's mostly catnip. Some ribleaf and melissa and a small amount of beggartick,” he answered truthfully, though he knew the plant names meant fuckall to the man.

"It's disgusting, is what it is..."

"Just drink it."

Jaskier all but pouted as he did what he was told, pulling an inordinate look of disgust for just how small of a sip he took.

Geralt sighed and mentally cursed himself for having become so soft as he went rummaging through his bags once again.

“You owe Roach,” he said, dropping a small cube of sugar into Jaskier’s cup.

Jaskier stared dumbly at the ripples in his cup while the words caught up to him. He blinked.

“Hey, I gifted those to her so she’d stop trying to chew my sleeves- I owe nothing,” he argued, but there was a warmth that had crept into his expression at the gesture, and it softened any bite his words might (but most likely wouldn’t) have had. Geralt had to pretend like he didn’t notice it for both of their sakes. Or so he told himself.

There really couldn’t have been much the small amount of sugar did for the bitter drink, but Jaskier seemed to have decided it fixed the problem just fine, and he drank the rest quickly without further complaint. By the time he was finished, Geralt had everything stowed away in Roach's saddlebags. Ten minutes had already turned into twenty, and Geralt was itching to get back on schedule.

He looked between his mare and his bard. Both seemed to have sensed Geralt’s antsiness, Roach scuffing at the dirt impatiently and Jaskier already halfway to his feet.

Part of Geralt told himself that he was only about to let Jaskier ride Roach so the ill man wouldn’t have the chance to slow them down any more than he already had, but another part of him was panicked when he saw Jaskier’s eyes widen and lose focus, and he rushed forward to grab the man as he tilted dangerously forward.

“Jaskier.”

“‘M alright,” Jaskier said, though he was clinging to Geralt’s forearms like he wasn’t so sure. “Jus’… Just stood up too fast. Just need a second...”

It was a strange contrast, the harsh heat that poured off of Jaskier and overwhelmed the space between them compared to the weak, clammy chill of his fingers on Geralt’s arms. Geralt silently willed the herbs to take effect and watched Jaskier’s eyes shift as they began registering his surroundings once again. He waited until his companion was able to support his own weight before moving, but he continued to hold onto Jaskier, anyway, as he steered him over to Roach’s flank. 

“Up.”

Jaskier frowned at him, and Geralt sighed.

“Do you doubt my horse, bard?”

“Never! Not Roach. I doubt you, no offense.”

The witcher huffed.

...Maybe just a little taken.

“Get on the horse, Jaskier.”

“Look, you were already wrong about her once today, need I remind,” Jaskier protested, even as he complied and climbed up into the saddle with Geralt’s help. “I just don’t want her mad at me next because of you.”

There it finally was, the I-told-you-so Geralt had expected from earlier. As much of a relief that it was to have that little bit of normalcy back, he still felt no small amount of irritation at being reminded that he’d managed to piss off his mare and also be wrong about it. He opened his mouth, a retort stinging at the tip of his tongue, but then he caught the softly murmured, “Thanks, old gal,” as Jaskier patted Roach’s neck, and Geralt wasn’t quite sure where that irritation fucked off to all of the sudden.

The remainder of their journey was a quiet affair. Neither of them spoke much, and Jaskier was still stifling his coughs, not for Geralt’s sake but for Roach’s, this time, as he spent most of the ride resting against her neck, drifting in and out of sleep.

It gave Geralt little room to ignore the question that had begun to itch at his temples. They were finally nearing civilization again, muddy-ash buildings cropping up gradually over the hill, and Jaskier was stirring awake from another fitful few minutes of rest, so Geralt decided to ask it.

"Why did you deny it?"

Jaskier turned his head to blink at Geralt, hair plastered against one side of his face.

"What?"

"You knew you were sick – Why lie?"

Jaskier sighed. He sat up in a wilted imitation of alertness.

"I dunno Geralt," he deadpanned, clearly knowing. "Supposing I had told you that I might be sick – Would you have let me come along, or would I still be in Dregsdon right now, while you get to have all the fun breaking curses and saving the fine folk of the kingdom and disappearing for weeks-stroke-months-stroke-years at a time?"

Jaskier’s voice sounded worse, now, despite the medicines, and there was a trembling weakness to his posture at the effort of just keeping himself upright. No, Geralt most definitely would not have let him come along.

"Hm."

“Right, that's what I thought."

The bard faced forward with an air of self-satisfaction. Under any other circumstances, it was an expression that would have grated on Geralt’s nerves like metal on stone, but the present context made it one of the most effective guilt-trips he’d ever been dragged along, and Geralt found himself floundering for something - an excuse, an explanation, a deflection.

What he came up with was:

"I would have come back.”

There was about a collective half-ounce of confidence behind these words, and they both knew it.

Jaskier rolled his eyes mightily.

“Oh, would you have?”

Geralt glanced at Jaskier, glanced away, shifted stiffly in his armor, readjusted his grip on Roach’s reins.

"...Most likely," he appended.

Jaskier’s laugh was a short and less-than-amused thing, and it caught on a coughing fit halfway out that made him see spots. He waved Geralt’s hand away when Geralt reached out to steady him, and continued to talk through the tail-end of the fit.

"Look,” he rasped, “not to go and play long-suffering wife to your sea-beguiled sailor, but there really is never knowing when you're going to leave or come back. It’s aggravating."

Geralt could read enough subtext to guess that “aggravating” really meant “disappointing and lonely,” and he couldn’t help but agree. He must have been looking as guilty as he felt, because Jaskier seemed to take pity on him, his expression lightening to something a little more reminiscent of his usual playfulness. Geralt found himself scowling preemptively at the bard’s smirk.

"The children are beginning to ask questions, Geralt."

Geralt glared.

"Think of the childr-"

"Shut up, Jaskier."

Jaskier did, but not without a snicker.

They were lucky enough that there was a hamlet not far from where the possessed waterfowl was alleged to be stalking. Daylight was near-gone by the time they made it there; Geralt would have to move fast, but he reckoned he should be able to get everything settled here and still make it in time to apprehend the beast. The inn he’d found was hardly an inn - really just some person’s home with a sign tacked onto the door declaring it to be one, but Jaskier’s eyes brightened with a glimmer of hope, anyway, when Geralt woke him outside of a building instead of halfway back into the wilderness as he’d been expecting.

“So, do we get Roach put up and head out now, or are we waiting ‘til tomorrow evening?” he asked as he climbed down from the mare in question. His body-language screamed, Dear gods, please say ‘tomorrow.’

Geralt shook his head.

“You’re not coming with me. You’re staying behind to sleep this off.”

Jaskier opened his mouth to protest, but Geralt cut him off before he could get started.

“Keep an eye on Roach while I’m gone.”

It was as close as Geralt was about to get to saying, “I promise I won’t disappear this time,” and it was by no means a guarantee that the same could be said for any future excursions, but Jaskier seemed to get the message.

“Okay,” he agreed, “but she and I are gonna talk about you while you’re gone.”

“Good. Maybe you’ll have lost your voice by the time I get back.”

[syntaxeme]

Nowhere to Go But Up ch. 1

Chapter word count: 3859 Rating: T Pairing: Angel/Val Read on AO3: [x] Next chapter: [coming soon!] Story summary: Angel's history of drugs, gangs, and porn isn't quite as glamorous as most people think. This is the story of how a scrawny, lonely dead boy named Anthony moved up (or down) in the world and became Hell's #1 sex symbol, Angel Dust. The only way to the top is to claw your way up from the bottom.

— — –

When Anthony got to Hell, it didn’t surprise him to find that his old man was already there. Where the fuck else would he have gone? As ‘religious’ as their Catholic family had always been, his father was a piece of shit by all accounts, a sinner through and through. It took a couple weeks for him to figure it out, since people called him ‘Henroin’ down here—but even that made sense. Smack was always his drug of choice in life, so why should death be any different?

It took some doing, some seducing of guards and general sexual favors for his advisors (even though Anthony’s body wasn’t exactly how he remembered it, he still got used to it quickly), but Anthony eventually got an audience with him. And again, unsurprisingly, Henroin wasn’t happy to see him.

“Shit, Anton, you died even faster than I expected,” the boss—even a boss in Hell, apparently—growled, unimpressed. He looked every bit as spidery as Anthony had become, maybe even more so. “Just when I thought you couldn’t disappoint me more.”

“Thanks, Pop, good to see you too,” Anthony said with a roll of his eyes.

“Well? What do you want?” Henroin asked flatly.

“What do you fucking think? I’m your son. Shouldn’t I be involved in your business down here?”

His father let out a cold laugh. “When have you ever been useful to my business? If your brother was here, or even Molly, they might be useful. You? You’re worthless. Always have been. I dunno what you expected to change now you’re dead.”

That was a fair point. His father had never appreciated anything about who he was or how he felt, and vice-versa. Why would he care what happened to Anthony’s soul for the rest of his immortal life? It was Hell. Nobody cared about anybody, as Anthony was soon to learn.

He spent his next few months (assuming he was even perceiving time right in this weird, fucked-up realm) on the streets, whoring around, doing whatever it took to survive. He got ripped off more than once, some demon fucking him all night then beating the shit out of him when he mentioned payment. He figured out pretty quick that drugs were every bit as big in Hell as they were on Earth, so that was where most of his money went. Just to not be conscious. Just to forget for a minute.

It was supposed to be a punishment, wasn’t it? What little he remembered of church was that Hell was where Bad People went because they’d done Bad Things and deserved to Feel Bad. Well, he was, he had, and he did. God, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt like anything other than absolute shit. It might’ve stayed that way forever—or at least until the next extermination—if he hadn’t met Cherri.

That morning, he was slumped against a gutted storefront, his eyes clouded, his head foggy as he was still coming off a high from two days ago. Some woman strolled up to him and nudged his leg with a booted foot. “Hey,” she said flatly. “Get off my street, skid, you’re making me look bad.”

“Get out of my face, bitch,” Anthony grumbled, turning away, covering his eyes to hide from the sunrise’s glaring light.

“Ha!” The demoness bent at the waist, grasped a handful of his hair, and forced his head up. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I said fuck off!” Anthony snapped, jerking away from her hand. “Are you fucking deaf? Get away from me.”

The girl laughed again and gestured at a couple of big demons standing at her back. “Bring him.” Although he didn’t want to be taken who-knew where for who-knew what reason, Anthony really didn’t have the energy to fight. They took him across Pentagram City in a banged-up towncar driven by the girl-boss herself, then dragged him inside what he recognized as a shitty little gang complex.

“You’re tweaked out of your fucking head, aren’t you?” When she grabbed his hair again and forced him to look at her, his eyes were clear enough to realize that she only had one above her sharp-toothed grin. He sneered and tried to escape her grasp, but she just laughed as she released him. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Put his ass to bed.”

Despite Anthony’s attempts to tempt them with his body—probably pretty sloppy attempts, considering how fucked up he was—the guys working for her ignored him and dragged him off to a sort of cell, a bare room with a bed and a barred window, then locked him up alone. What’s-her-tits appeared in a slot in the cell door and told him once he calmed down, maybe they could try talking again. Considering how bad he was coming down, how miserable and unhinged he was, he screamed, he fought, he clawed at his own skin, but nothing did him any good. He tore the room apart. He shouted until his throat shredded and bled. He dissolved into sobbing and hyperventilating in a corner of the room. God, everything, everything felt so fucking bad, and now that he didn’t have some kind of distraction, drugs or sex or booze, whatever, he was being forced to feel every bit of it.

Sometime while he was passed out, they put water inside the room for him, and he savored every drop on his damaged throat. They delivered food, and he ate for the first time in who-knew how long. There was a period, he didn’t have any idea how long, where he was barely even aware of what was going on around him, too angry and scared and agonized to keep track. This wasn’t any better. He wished he could just fucking die to escape it, like he had on Earth, but that wasn’t an option here. Maybe he deserved this. Maybe he had done enough wrong in life to belong in this shithole for the rest of eternity.

Days, maybe weeks passed in this cycle of misery and pain and eventual, merciful oblivion once he passed out. Finally, the girl-boss came back by his room and opened the door to stroll inside, apparently not worried about him trying to escape. Which he didn’t. Dropping to sit in front of the mattress that had been serving as his bed, she rested her chin in one hand. “So?” she prompted. “Who are you?”

“Nobody,” Anthony said quietly, having gotten past all his anger and violence to the point that he was just exhausted and depressed now.

The demoness, his captor, rolled her eye. “Anyway, I’m Cherri. And you are…?”

Despite his reluctance, he huffed out, “Anthony.”

“Great. I’m gonna call you Tony,” she said with a grin, leaning forward to watch him curiously. “What’s your story? How’d you end up on my side of town?”

“What do you care? You saw me before. You’ve seen how pathetic I am all this time,” he muttered, unable to even look at her. “I’m nothing. I’m nobody. If you’re gonna kill me or whatever, just fucking do it.”

“God, you’re depressing,” she said. “Well if you ain’t gonna tell me, you got anybody you know down here? Friends? Family? Some gang I can get you back to?”

“No. I mean, there’s my dad, but he doesn’t give a shit about me. People call him Henroin.”

“Holy fuck!” Cherri crowed, her eye growing wide. “You’re Henroin’s kid? I didn’t think—”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said he doesn’t care,” Anthony snapped. “It’s not like you can ransom me to him or whatever, because he won’t pay.” He knew that for a fact, having experienced something similar in life.

“Huh. Can’t really say I’m surprised. I’ve always heard he’s an asshole.” Refusing to let the subject go, refusing to leave him to suffer alone, she suggested, “So answer me yourself.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is I wanna know. Look, I know you’re in the middle of some bad withdrawal right now. Like, I can tell, I’ve been there, I see it on you. It fucking sucks. Makes you wish you were deader than you already are. But this place ain’t something you get out of by losing your will to live, and eternity is a long time to keep feeling like that or drugging yourself stupid, you know?” She started bouncing one leg, apparently a little restless but keeping her attention on him. “If you quit being so mopey about it, I bet I can help.”

“Why? Why bother with my mopey ass?” Anthony demanded, and Cherri grinned back.

“I dunno, you were kind of a bitch that first time we talked, and I kind of liked it,” she confessed. “Plus, most everybody around here knows better than to fuck with me, so maybe I like the change of pace.”

“Look, if you think I’m gonna be all grateful you ‘saved my life’ and we’re gonna be best pals, you’ve got another thing coming,” Anthony argued, finally managing to muster a little irritation. “I ain’t here to entertain you, and I ain’t fucking you either. If that’s what you—”

Cherri dropped her head back and let out a loud, grating laugh. “I’m not into dudes, you stuck-up prick,” she snickered, though she sounded more amused than offended. “So ditto. How about you take a few more days to chill the fuck out and then we’ll talk about you maybe joining my crew?”

***

It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t easy, but Anthony eventually got used to his role at Cherri’s place. Every day or so, maybe a couple times a day, she would come by his room and they would chat about whatever—his life before all this, her life, her new life, and the shitty excuse for ‘living’ he’d been doing ever since his dad kicked him out. After all, he had nothing better to do with his time, and he found talking with her worked to distract him from all the shit his body was still going through.

She told him more about the gang and her role in it, about how satisfying it was to kick some douchey demon’s ass when he was trying to horn in on her turf. She was shocked that he was a mobster’s son in life and still didn’t know how to use a damn gun, which she said was a crime in itself. When he mentioned the demons who had taken advantage of him before they met, Cherri was absolutely livid and swore on the spot that she was going to teach him how to defend himself.

“You can’t let them get away with that shit,” she growled. “If they think you’re too weak to stop them, fuckers down here will eat you alive. You gotta show ‘em you ain’t somebody they want to mess with.”

Considering how totally opposed it was to the rest of his experience in Hell so far, it kind of threw him off to be around someone who gave a shit about other people again. Maybe not all other people, but Cherri took care of her own gang, at least, and now she was asking him to be part of it. It wasn’t like he had any better options to pursue. So once he had finally gotten all the crystal and cravings out of his system, once he was himself enough to care where his future was going, he left his cell (which hadn’t been locked for some time) and found Cherri to accept her offer.

It turned out that when you weren’t trying to take on everything by yourself, Hell really wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t 24/7 misery, at least, now that Anthony wasn’t completely alone and struggling for life on the street. True to her word, Cherri trained him with guns. And knives. And bombs. And poisons. She even helped him figure out how to use his own spindly, lanky body to his advantage in a fight; it turned out he was a lot more flexible and agile than he’d realized. The inherent violence of Hell was obviously her favorite part of the whole deal, and with her encouragement, Anthony started enjoying it too. It was nice to not feel powerless for once. And even in the moments when he was overwhelmed, it was nice to know there were people on his side. Cherri’s gang was made up of junkies and criminals, but this group of sinners stuck together and looked out for each other. Good to have a family that actually wanted him for once.

***

About ten years after his death, there was a big turf war between their gang and some bird-looking asshole who took himself way too seriously. Called himself Bedlam. If he had been upfront about his whole hostile takeover bullshit, Cherri’s gang would’ve wiped his, easy. But he decided to come at them sideways with a ‘sneak attack’ and took out a third of their guys overnight. Cherri was furious but a little panicked over the sudden decrease in their forces. As far as Anthony could tell, she’d never been in a fight this big, this serious, and it was really getting to her.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked, more laidback than her, as usual. “It’s not like we don’t have way more muscle regardless. He can throw his ‘cultured’ fuckwads at us all day and we’ll gut every one of ‘em.”

“Muscle ain’t gonna win a fucking war, Tony,” she argued, holed up in her ‘office’ and trying to figure out how to approach this. “If he’s smart enough and he pulls another sneaky trick like this, we can kiss our cozy setup here good-bye. Goddamn it!” She grabbed up her desk chair and slung it out the window behind her, not flinching in the slightest at the sound of shattering glass. She had a point Anthony couldn’t argue with; he’d seen enough of his dad’s business to know brains beat brawn nine times out of ten.

“We need guys who are a little bit of both,” he mused, tapping his foot idly from his seat by the wall. “Like, you got your baseline soldiers and your advisors. You got your bruisers and your assassins. You need more of those guys. Specialists, you know? Precision killers. Right?”

“Yeah,” Cherri said thoughtfully, nodding slowly as she considered what he was saying. “Yeah, I think you’re right, babe. But people like that don’t come cheap. I’d have to…I might have to… Ah, fuck.” With a defeated growl, she shoved away from her desk and marched toward the door.

“Hey, where we going?” Anthony asked, hopping up to follow after her.

“Not we. Just me. I’m going to get some help. I don’t wanna do it, but we ain’t got much choice,” she told him as she strode through the complex without once looking back.

“Hey, why can’t I help? You know I can be persuasive, bitch. Let me—”

“Tony.” She rounded on him, her sneer less vicious and more nervous. “Just stay here, okay? I’ll be back and I’ll talk the whole deal out with you. The only way I’m gonna get this done is if I do it on my own. Okay?”

Seeing how shaken up she was and not wanting to make it worse, he heaved a sigh and threw his hands up. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Try not to die.”

He watched her car drive off, both pairs of arms crossed in irritation. But Cherri had been doing this boss thing for a while. He had to trust she knew how to do it. But getting excluded from the plan like this, being told “just stay at home and trust me to take care of it”? It was too reminiscent of his father and brother excluding him from family work. He hated that shit.

It took hours for Cherri to get back. Anthony stalked around the complex, waiting for a call, a sign, the sound of the car’s engine, anything. It was past midnight when she finally trudged inside, dragging her feet, looking exhausted. Anthony was lounging in her room, half-asleep in her bed when the door slammed open.

“Hey,” he said groggily, forcing himself up to look her in the face. “You look like shit. Where you been?”

“Not now.” She wandered unsteadily over to the bed and collapsed, dropping her face against her pillow. “Just. Lemme sleep. I’ll explain tomorrow.” Anthony watched her for a few seconds, realizing she was already mostly unconscious, and let out a defeated sigh. Dragging a blanket over her still form, he lay down and draped one arm over her shoulders.

“All right. Tomorrow.”

But tomorrow came, and he didn’t get his explanation. The next few days were so busy that he and Cherri hardly had time to sit down and talk; they spent too much time fighting or planning to fight or getting ambushed and then defending themselves. And even though Anthony wasn’t sure how she’d pulled it off, the boss had definitely brought in some skilled help, the kind of vicious, calculating bastards who kept cool in a fight but each did just as much damage as a team of ten amateur muscleheads.

“Shit, Cherri!” Anthony laughed during another street brawl, watching wave after wave of Bedlam’s henchmen get cut down by their reinforcements. “Where’d you find these guys? They’re brutal!”

“Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of it?” she asked with a grin, lobbing another bomb and cackling gleefully as it went off. “Nobody fucks with my people and walks away from it.”

After that point, the ‘war’ didn’t last much longer; with the new demons she’d brought in, Cherri’s gang was pretty much unstoppable, even spreading out further to take over the opposing gang’s turf. When she cornered Bedlam, it turned out he wasn’t much of a fighter himself and had to rely on his bodyguards—who had all abandoned ship when they realized they were on the losing side. Loyalty was a foreign concept to most demons, after all.

Cherri beat the absolute shit out of the guy, even shoved a bomb down his throat in her blind fury. The whole thing was real messy, and nobody walked away from it smiling. But at least it was over.

Sort of.

Sometime later in the week, as things were getting back to normal and Cherri was figuring out how to run shit now that her territory was twice as big, Anthony came to meet her in her office, only to find the door locked.

“Look, I don’t have the time right now,” he heard from inside. Cherri’s voice. He got closer and pressed his ear to the door to listen. What kind of conversation could she be having that she’d lock him out of it? “My gang still needs me directing them while we clean up this fucking mess. Tell him I’ll be there when I’m ready.”

“You better not keep him waiting too long, sweetheart,” an unfamiliar voice responded. “Val ain’t the most patient guy, and you wouldn’t want him having to collect your debt by force.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, coming into my place and making threats? I don’t care who your boss is; if you don’t get—” Her voice cut off with what was unmistakably a slap and a cry of pain, sending Anthony’s heart rate through the roof. Without thinking, he took a step back and broke the door in with a single powerful kick, already drawing three different guns to aim at whoever was hurting his friend.

Cherri struggled to her feet behind her desk, jaws clenched in an unyielding snarl. The guy she was arguing with was huge and dressed in a suit, totally out of place among their ragtag gang. “Get the fuck away from her,” Anthony hissed. The guy looked him coldly up and down, then turned away to speak to Cherri again.

“You’ve got a week to get your ass to the studio and hold up your end of the deal. After that, there’ll be consequences.” He left the room without another glance in Anthony’s direction.

“You broke my door, you bitch,” Cherri muttered once he was gone.

“Forget that. What the fuck just happened?” Anthony demanded, putting his guns away and coming over to her desk to check on her. Her head was down, but he could still see a red mark growing on her swollen cheek. He tried to reach out, to see if there was anything he could do to help, but she swatted his hands away.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you kidding? That guy just knocked you on your ass. You wouldn’t’ve let him walk away without a good reason.” What was the name he had used? “Val. Who’s Val?”

Cherri was silent for a few more seconds, curling her hands into tight fists and pressing them against the desktop. Eventually, quietly, she explained, “His name’s Valentino. He’s a bigshot Overlord from the North Side. Tons of money, tons of people, tons of ‘friends in high places.’ He loaned me a bunch of his guys for the turf war, so now I…owe him.”

“Owe him what?” Anthony asked despite the sinking feeling in his stomach. Surely Cherri wouldn’t agree to what he was imagining. The longer she waited to answer, though, the worse his fears got.

“He runs Porn Studios. He’s been trying to get me to shoot with him for years, so I told him if he helped us out with Bedlam…” She trailed off with a shrug, unwilling to even say the words out loud. “We were out of options, babe. I couldn’t let the whole gang get murdered because I couldn’t lead them right. So it is what it is. I’ll go do whatever gross shit Val wants from me and we’ll move on like it didn’t happen.” Even as she was saying it, though, she seemed unsure, which was a very rare state to see her in.

Anthony wasn’t sure how to respond. Whatever Valentino was asking her to do, it was obviously something she was dreading, and he’d seen plenty of times how heated she got about anyone being pressured or forced into sex. Him, on the other hand… Well, sex just wasn’t that big a deal to him. Never had been.

Cherri had done so much for him. She was always the one backing him up in a fight, always the one who made him talk about the shit that bothered him. If it weren’t for her taking him in all those years ago, he would almost definitely be double-dead already, totally wiped from existence. There was really no way to pay her back for all that. But if she was finally in a position she couldn’t handle alone, if this was something that genuinely scared her or made her nervous, he was going to do whatever it took to help her out of it.

He would just have to convince Valentino to let him pay her debt instead.

[a-damson-in-distress]

Havoc - Chapter 2

Pairing: SasuSaku

Plot:  Sasuke knew people were still afraid of the club and especially of its Sergeant at Arms – and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He had been untouchable then and still was now. Indeed, there was nothing and no one in this world that Sasuke Uchiha feared. Except Sakura fucking Haruno. Biker AU.

Note: So hi everybody, I’m also continuing my SasuSaku fanfic after it’s been pronounced dead by my year-long absence *coughs awkwardly* sorry about that. Anyway, I really hope you like the new chapter. I’ve got a few great ideas for this story and depending on your responses, I might just try and finish it. So please let me know if you liked it and if you want me to continue it. My main story is still going to be From Dusk Till Dawn (MadaSaku, check it out if you’re into that pairing too), so Havoc will remain a side project for now, unless you convince me otherwise ;) Enjoy!

PS: If you want to read the first chapter, or maybe read it again, because it’s been ages since this story has been posted and you probably forgot what’s going on, you’re going to have to scroll through my blog to get to it. Unfortunately, I can’t post a link to it here, because this way this chapter doesn’t show up under any of the tags. So I had to take out the link to even make this post visible to you guys. Really sorry about that, if anybody knows how to bypass this shit (because it happened to my FDTD chapter, too), I’d be happy if you could help me. :)

Sasuke watched her deliciously bend over the pool table, left hand steadying the cue and right arm drawn back to aim for the white ball. He had to supress a groan threatening to escape his throat at the sight of her tight black jeans stretching over her ass.

God have mercy on him, that woman was still a fine piece of machinery.

He knew he wasn’t the only bastard here ogling the President’s daughter, but at least he had the decency to be subtle about it. Letting his gaze roam around the dimly-lit and packed room of his favourite biker bar, he noticed with a growing rage the many dirty looks and even dirtier gestures thrown her way. Moose’s was not only frequented by the Havoc, but by bikers from other MCs from the region as well. Bikers, who didn’t know about the Havoc’s well-guarded secret in the form of a very enticing, very off-limits pink-haired bombshell. Bikers, who weren’t familiar with the feeling of Sasuke’s foot up their asses – something he was gleefully looking forward to doing should those fuckers not stop drooling like some teenage boys who discovered their dicks for the first time.

Taking a sip of his beer in a feeble attempt to calm his nerves, he watched Sakura throw her head back in laughter at something funny Ino said. As she was rising from her bent-over position, her tiny tank top rose as well, exposing her taut bare midriff. She had borrowed one of her friend’s Black Sabbath tops, because she didn’t want to stick out with her fancy white cashmere turtleneck sweater in a run-down biker bar where one half is clad in dark leather and the other half is basically not clad at all. He would have laughed at the image she was presenting – a delicate, graceful princess in a Black Sabbath shirt – were it not for the fact that he knew Sakura was a die-hard Rock fan.

And by God, she was every bit his dream girl now as she was at seventeen.

Right after she rained down on her dad and him to properly tear the both of them a new one a few hours ago, they convened an emergency church to deal with the clusterfuck one of their latest prospects had dug the club into. As it turned out, the little fucker thought it would be a sneaky idea to hide the small bags of drugs between book pages in Konoha’s smallest, most inconspicuous book shop, tell his customers which books to look out for, and earn some cash on the side that way that nobody would ever have found out about. Were it not for the fact that that tiny little book shop belonged to the President’s daughter, who immediately went and re-introduced the Havoc’s Sergeant at Arms to the soft feeling of her hand slapping the everloving shit out of him.

Despite the fact that the boss tried his best to calm her down and reassure her the club would take care of everything, Sakura stuck around. She made it more than clear that she didn’t trust Sasuke with this matter, especially since she was personally involved. She wanted to make sure there were consequences. So Kakashi invited her to stay for the night and catch up with some old friends before dealing with the poor bastard.

Fast forward a few hours and you had a royally pissed off Sasuke sitting at Moose’s staring daggers into the bikers ogling Sakura’s fine ass. “Bro, you grip that beer bottle any tighter and it’ll burst into a hundred pieces. Pretty sure you don’t want an injured hand for the things you’re gonna do tonight.” Sasuke noticed a shock of blonde hair enter his field of vision and his annoyance immediately went up a notch. “Please, I could beat the crap out of that lil cockroach even when I’m drunk off my ass and with my hands tied behind my back.”

“Probably. But you should still loosen that death grip. Might make some people wonder what makes you so angry,” Naruto cautioned while shooting him a pointed look.

“Drop it,” Sasuke growled threateningly.

Naruto sighed in frustration and leaned back. “Look, man, I know you’ve got history with her and everything, but you gotta stop acting like some brooding love-sick puppy who’s still hung up on his ex-girlfriend if you –“

“She was never my girlfriend.”

“Whatever, dude. My point is, if you really wanna make it up to her, then you’ve gotta stop sulking in the shadows, wondering from afar what could have been. This is your chance, man! She always stays away from the club, but now she’s here, and you have the chance to talk to her and sort that shit out between you two.”

Naruto watched his best friend drop his gaze from the woman in question to the beer bottle in his hand.  This had always been Sasuke’s reaction to all things Sakura: silence. Ever since shit had hit the fan between the two seven years ago, the raven-haired biker refused to talk about the brief time he spent with her. The few times they had seen each other in between, there was nothing but reserved silence and awkward glances.

Naruto sometimes couldn’t believe how utterly dumb his best friend was. Sasuke was incredibly fearless and one of the meanest motherfuckers he had ever met. But when it came to Sakura, his guilty conscience left him a pathetic heap of surly misery. It was sad to watch, really.

“Look, Sasuke… I have no fucking clue what exactly went down between you two, but it’s been eating at you for seven fucking years. Whenever you see her, you become this… this sad little… blob of… I don’t know man, sadness I guess and –“

“You sure have a way with words.”

“It’s just so pathetic, bro. I mean, I can clearly see your eyes tearing up, your nose is getting all red and snotty and –“

“Is that supposed to cheer me up now?”

“Ugh, it’s nasty. And when you start crying, you make all these miserable little noises and –“

“Naruto.”

“You know, snot everywhere.“

“That’s enough.”

“Just… disgusting, really.”

Naruto mentally patted himself on the shoulder when he saw the tiniest hint of a smirk on Sasuke’s otherwise sullen face. Pleased with his execution of a manly encouragement that consisted of straight-up insulting his best friend in order to cheer him up, he leaned forward again, so only Sasuke could hear him.

“Jokes aside, man, I know this shit between you two has been weighin’ on ya. And you think you’re doing the both of you a favour by staying away from her, but you’re not, because it’s obvious that she’s got as much unfinished business with you as you’ve got with her. Otherwise she wouldn’t hold a grudge. You gotta clear the air at some point, because she’s fucking family and you don’t ignore family. So you might as well do it now.”

Naruto took a hold of his beer bottle and moved out of the booth. Before turning to the bar, he slapped his right hand on his best friend’s left shoulder. “But you know, that’s just my two cents. What do I know about love and relationships? I’ve only been happily married for five years now.”

Sasuke just grunted in response and lifted his bottle to his lips to take another sip. He let his eyes find Sakura again and mulled over what Naruto said. He might have been right about a few things. He was definitely right about them finally needing to stop dancing around each other and sit down and have a proper heart-to-heart.

But there was one thing Naruto was without a doubt wrong about: there was absolutely nothing about his clusterfuck of a relationship with Sakura that had anything to do with love.

Instead, it had everything to do with the fact that he had smashed her heart to smithereens on the night of her eighteenth birthday and effectively shut the door on any romance they might have had a shot at, sealing it with a hundred padlocks and nailing it down with wooden boards for good measure.

“He’s been staring at you all night.”

Sakura couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the blonde. She moved around the pool table to determine the angle of her next shot, when she heard Ino’s voice right next to her ear.

“Come on, you know he still has the hots for you, right?”

“Bullshit he still has the hots for me!”

“Aha!” Sakura found herself at the other end of Ino’s accusing finger pointed directly at her face. “I knew that would get your attention. You like thinking Sasuke’s still into you, don’t you?” Sakura resisted the urge to swipe off Ino’s perfectly made eyebrows that were wiggling so hard they were threatening to shoot out of her face.

“Don’t be ridiculous, that has got nothing to do with it. I just find it absurd that the big, bad, cold-hearted Sasuke Uchiha would still think about something that happened seven fucking years ago.”

Ino cocked her head to the side and looked at Sakura with a knowing smile. “But you still think about it.”

Sakura’s shoulders slumped as she exhaled in annoyance. “I’m not talking about it, alright?”

“Look, forehead, I know what he did was terrible, but I also know Sasuke and I know that he’s actually a pretty good guy beneath all that brooding Batman bullshit. I genuinely think that he regrets what he did back then. I mean, he did try to confront you about it several times, but you were the one who shut him down. Why don’t you just let him say what he has to say, let him apologise, and then move on. You might pretend like you’re over that whole thing, but I know what you really want is some closure.”

Sakura sighed in frustration and blew a hair out of her face. She was just about to throw some witty remark back at Ino, when she noticed several bikers move through the crowd at Moose’s. The Havocs were leaving, which was her cue to do the same.

She felt Ino’s hands grab her shoulders and turn Sakura towards her. “Just think about it, alright? You’ll be here for the whole weekend, so this would be the perfect opportunity to finally get this shit over with, which I know is what you actually wanna do instead of ogle his rock-hard abs when you think I’m not looking. Yeah, don’t roll your eyes at me, missy, don’t think I don’t notice these things. Now you go and have fun tonight. But don’t rough him up too bad.”

With a secretive wink, Ino headed for the bar, leaving Sakura alone at the pool table. Just as she was about to turn around and head for the exit herself, she was met with the sight of a seriously pissed off Sasuke who fixed his determined gaze on her.

She watched the muscles in his upper arm flex enticingly as he raised his right hand to his lips to take the cigarette out of his mouth. The smoke was floating out of his inviting lips as they moved to form words that barely reached her sex-starved brain. All Sakura heard was his rumbling growl.

“It’s time.”

The cold air outside of Moose’s did little to clear Sasuke’s head. He was still on the fence about if and how he should approach Sakura. But he’d have to postpone wracking his brain, because the Havocs were gearing up to take care of that lil dipshit who dared to cross the President’s daughter.

“Where’s daddy?”

He whipped his head around to see Sakura trailing right behind him, zipping up that tiny little leather jacket he couldn’t believe still fit her curves.

“Waiting for us at the warehouse.”

The rumbling of his brothers’ Harleys enveloped them as Sasuke watched some of them leave Moose’s lot. He headed for his V-Rod Muscle and grabbed his jet-black helmet with the name of his bike – War Hog – spray painted on the back in silver and scarlet letters. He was just about to put it on when he felt a presence behind him and turned around, only to be met with the sight of a very annoyed Sakura looking up at him expectantly.

“You ridin’ with me?”

His eyes noted the rise of her perfectly sculpted eyebrow before she spoke, “You got a problem with that?”

There it was again, that feeling of unease that spread in his stomach whenever she pinned him with that scrutinising gaze of hers. “No, just figured you’d rather ride with Naruto. Or anybody else, for that matter.”

“Well the others are already gone, and Naruto said he needed the extra space to secure his bag of torture instruments or whatever.”

Sasuke immediately knew that was bullshit, there was no bag on the back of Naruto’s bike. The Havocs weren’t going to torture the poor bastard. It was just going to be a little slap on the wrist, really.

“Alright, you’re riding with me. Here, put this on,” he grumbled while handing her his helmet and reaching for his spare one.

Sakura looked at the round object in her hands as if it just sprouted a head and started talking to her. At the sight of her disgusted look, Sasuke let out an exasperated sigh. “What, woman?”

“You’re giving me the helmet that has the word hog spray painted on it in big fat letters? Real tactful, Sasuke.”

He couldn’t supress the smirk that was dangling on the edge of his lips. “I can recall a few even naughtier words I used to call you.” His smirk widened when he saw a faint blush taint her cheeks. Sakura scoffed and rolled her eyes in an overly dramatic fashion. “Oh yeah, now that I think about it, I remember you doing that eye rolling thing a lot, too. Only they usually rolled into the back of your head whenever I –“

“Okay, thank you, that’s enough. I’m putting on the helmet now, I can’t hear you.”

A triumphant grin graced his features at the sight of his dream girl wearing his helmet.

“Good girl.”

Sasuke ignored the look Sakura was shooting him, put on his spare helmet while straddling his bike and waited for Sakura to do the same. When he felt her soft curves press against his back and her arms circle around his waist, he let War Hog roar to life.

He turned his head slightly, so she could hear him better over the rumbling of his engine and asked, “You ready?”

She nodded in confirmation. “Hit the road, Sergeant.”

Sasuke took her left hand into his own, pulled her arm tighter around his torso, and gave her a little squeeze. “You hold on tight, sweetheart.”

He could still hear her scoff behind him. “I was practically raised on a bike, I’ll be fine. This is no big deal.”

Lowering the visor on both their helmets, Sasuke took off and left Moose’s parking lot. The cool breeze around him and the low rumbling beneath him he felt whenever he rode his bike always had a calming influence on his often raging mind. This time, it was different though. This time, he had Sakura pressed against his back again for the first time in seven years.

And even though she might have claimed riding with him was no big deal, her tight grip on his waist and the way she leaned her head against his shoulders told him a different story.

[the-beastslayers-queen]

Magic and Moonlight: Chapter 13

Chapter 13 is here! Angsty bits here. Tagging: @queenofthearchitect @wwepoppunkprincess @balorrollinsambrose @bethany99stuff-blog @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk @sassyspacedust and @afauss2009 If you want to be tagged, hit the inbox. Enjoy!

So far, Colby has been true to his word. He’s kept his end of the bargain. My dad has not found me and my mom, and for some reason, neither has Morrigan. But my mom and I had put up protection charms on her shop, masking any trace of either of our magical energies from getting out of the shop. Hell, I put up some shielding spells to make it where Morrigan could never set foot on Bourbon Street.

Right now, I was again up on the balcony above my mom’s shop, curled up with a cup of tea, watching people walking by on the street below. I sighed as I watched every couple walk by, looking so love. I missed having that. Sometimes I can see myself and Colby being down there, strolling the historic street, my arm draped over his arm as we walked. But sadly, that was just a fantasy for me.

“I see you like to people watch in your spare time,” I jumped a little and spilled some of my tea at hearing Colby’s voice.

“Damn it,” I groaned as I went to stand in order to get a towel to wipe the tea off my lap, “Don’t sneak up on me, ass.”

“Here,” Colby had left and came back, returning with a towel for me to wipe myself down, “Sorry for startling you. I came by to take you to dinner. Your mom texted me, asking if I was going over tonight to see if I’d take you to get whatever it is you’re craving tonight.”

“She did that,” I rubbed my face, groaning a little. I think my mom was trying to push Colby to break the charms himself, “I was actually going to order some pizza. And you’re going to think I’m stupid and pathetic for what I was about to order too.”

“Try me,” Colby folded his arms against his chest as he leaned against the doorway.

“I was going to order taco pizza,” I began to pick at my nails a little, “I know it’s your favorite pizza and I was craving like something fierce, but I was scared to order it, because of it being your favorite and with everything that’s happened, that’s changed between us, I knew I’d be an emotional wreck. Especially since I’m pregnant, but I don’t know.”

“I’ll call in the order,” he replied with a chuckle, “To save you from making an embarrassment of yourself if you started to cry while on the phone.”

I just rolled my eyes at him as he went inside to order the pizza. I sat back down in my usual seat on the balcony just as my mom came out onto the balcony.

“I can see why you love him,” my mom snickered as she took a seat on the settee across from my rocker, “He’s attractive and thoughtful, even when he’s still being a jerk to you.”

“Yeah,” I sighed and looked out at the setting sun, taking in a deep breath, smelling the salt from the ocean on the breeze, “You know, I never used to smell the salt on the breeze back when I live in Orlando, but I can smell it out here.”

“I think I know why,” my mom grabbed hold of my hands, “The baby is half werewolf, right? So I think you’re going to have some of the heightened senses of a werewolf, like a defensive mechanism, while you’re pregnant. Even during a normal, human pregnancy, mothers get a heightened sense of smell. So I’m sure you’re getting to experience more of it.”

“I also smell Colby,” I sighed, “He smells of spearmint from his gum, bay rum from his beard oil, pine which seems to linger on him after every run he takes when he turns, and cinnamon. I used to only vaguely smell that before, when we were first together and curled up in bed back in Orlando. But now, I smell it so heavily in the air around him.”

“I know he doesn’t have his heightened sense of smell anymore,” my mom looked at me, “And I know it’s hard for you talk about, but do you remember how he described what you smelled like?”

“Colby once told me I smelled of vanilla, lilies, coconuts, and lavender,” I told her, not knowing Colby was right by the door listening in, “But with his sense of smell not like it was, I’m sure he doesn’t smell that around me anymore.”

Colby

She’s wrong about that. I can still smell the notes of vanilla, lilies, coconuts, and lavender. Only now it’s muted and not a pronounced as it once was.

But right now, being so close to her right now, I can feel this nagging feeling deep inside me. It’s like something is tugging on a string that has been so knotted up that it pulls on whatever it’s wrapped around.

I know I’m in love with her. I know I should be feeling that love for her. But because of the magic Morrigan used on me, I just can’t feel that way for her. I know that I’m going to love my child. There is no doubt in mind of that.

But I just wish I had real feelings for my child’s mother. She is my mate still after all. I haven’t rejected her and she hasn’t rejected me. I can still feel my imprint on her. I can sense whenever she gets into danger. But it just feels so foreign too.

Thea

“I ordered the pizza,” Colby finally rejoined us on the balcony, “Was I interrupting anything?”

“Not at all, Colby,” my mom smiled at him, “I’m going to go back downstairs and clean up the shop. Goodnight.”

With that, my mother left me alone with Colby.

“How much did you hear,” I asked him.

“Enough,” he simply replied.

I was laying in my bed, not feeling up to being anywhere else today. I was flipping through old grimoires of my mom’s, trying to find anything that could break Morrigan’s charms on Colby. I wanted him back more than anything. I wanted to see the love in his eyes again. I was so tired of seeing nothing but cold emotions in his once warm brown eyes.

“Thea,” I heard my mom call, “Colby’s here. You have an appointment with your doctor today.”

Colby appeared in the doorway to my room as I swung my legs over the edge of my bed. I just glanced at him before sighing. I tried to heave my body off my bed, but was failing miserably. Colby just rolled his eyes and came over to help me up.

“You’re helpless when I’m not around,” he sighed as he released my arm once I was on my feet, “Now get ready to leave, or we’ll be late.”

Colby

I came to see Thea today for two reasons. One was the fact that she had a doctor’s appointment. The second was that this appointment was when we’d find out the gender of the baby. In the back of my mind I knew I wanted to have a son. I wanted a son that I could be there for, to make up for when I was growing up and not knowing who my real dad was. I mean I love the dad I have and my step-dad, but to know the man that helped bring into this world would have been nice.

Once Thea was ready to go, I led her downstairs and out of her mother’s shop. I helped her get into my rental car, waiting until she was buckled in and settled before heading to her doctor’s office for her appointment.

Once we pulled up into the parking lot and parked, I got out of the car and went over to Thea’s side and helped her out of the car. I walked into the office, putting on an act of being a loving boyfriend, and got her seated before checking her in. I sat down next to her and I could sense her magic stirring.

Thank you for acting like you care while we’re in public. We don’t need strangers to know you could care less.

You’re welcome. I didn’t want you to be embarrassed by me being the opposite of what you remember me being.

At that, Thea pulled her magic back. She laid her hand against her baby bump, rubbing is softly with her thumb. I could tell she was nervous. I could read her like a damn book.

“Thea Bartlett,” a nurse called after we sat for about five minutes, “We’re ready for you now.”

I helped Thea up from her chair and followed her back into the office, getting into an exam room with her. I helped her climb up onto the exam table, making sure she was settled before I sat down in the chair in the corner of the room.

“Alright, Thea,” the nurse opened up the file they had for Thea, “We’re going to check over all your vitals and due some measurements before we bring in the doctor for the ultrasound, okay.”

The nurse measured everything from her temperature, to her blood pressure, and how big around she was. Once she was done, the nurse left the room and Thea began to stare up at the ceiling, getting lost in thought.

“What’s on your mind,” I asked her.

“If we’re having a boy or a girl,” she hummed, “And if they’re going to be more like me or more like you. Both in looks and in supernatural traits. Just little things like that.”

“Either way,” I ran my hand over my hair, “The baby will be healthy and happy. It’s all we can ask for.”

“Very true,” she replied just as the doctor came in.

“Hello Thea,” the doctor greeted Thea, “I see you didn’t bring in your mom today. Who’s this fine young man?”

“I’m her boyfriend,” I answered before Thea could, “I’m also the dad. I’ve been busy with work that I missed the last couple appointments. I made time to be here for this one.”

“Well you picked a great time to come,” the doctor smiled at me as I got up to stand by Thea, taking her hand in mine, “We’re going to get a read on the baby here, see how the baby is doing, and maybe see if you’re having a boy or a girl.”

The doctor turned on the ultrasound machine as Thea pulled up her shirt, exposing her very prominent bump to the open air. The doctor got the wand ready, getting the gel applied to the end before letting it touch Thea’s bare skin. Thea winced at the contact from the wand and I furrowed my brows at the action.

“It’s cold,” Thea explained to me.

“Alright here let me turn on the speakers so you guys hear the heartbeat,” the doctor turned on the speakers and the baby’s heartbeat filled the room. I felt myself smile as I heard my kid’s heartbeat hit my ears.

After a bit of moving the wand, the doctor stopped and looked to me and Thea. I knew what the next question was.

“Now do the two of want to know the gender of the baby,” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” Thea answered before I could, “We want to know the gender.”

“Well I can say with confidence, since it seems the baby is posing for this,” the doctor chuckled as they paused the screen before turning it towards us, “You’re going to have a baby boy.”

Thea

Colby bought me a milkshake before we went back to my mom’s place. I had copies of the ultrasound pictures in my purse, excited to give one to my mom and to send copies off to Roman and Dean too. As we pulled up, I glanced over at Colby, smiling wide in happiness, knowing he and I were going to have a son in few months.

“Thank you for coming with me today, Colby,” I grabbed his hand and laced my fingers with his out of instinct, “I’m glad you were here to see that we’re having a son.”

“Me too,” he sighed as he looked down at our hands, “Let’s get you inside and tell your mom the news, alright.”

With that, Colby removed his hand from mine and went back to being cold to me. I seriously thought I was making progress with him. I just sighed and climbed out of his car. I went inside and found my mom waiting for us at the front counter of her shop.

“So am I going to get a grandson or a granddaughter,” she asked.

“We’re having a boy, Mom,” I replied as I got out a copy of the ultrasound for her.

After talking to my mom for a while about going baby shopping tomorrow to get cute baby boy stuff for my son, I went upstairs to go to my favorite spot on the balcony. I was joined by Colby. I was lost in my thoughts, rubbing my belly, just thinking about what my son might look like when he gets here.

“So have you thought of a name for him yet,” Colby asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

“I haven’t thought of a name for him yet,” I replied, “I haven’t thought about names in general really.”

“I think I know what to name him,” Colby took a deep breath before continuing, “Tyler Daniel Lopez. I want to name my son after me.”

“Tyler,” I asked puzzled, “How is Tyler being named after you?”

“Back in the indies my ring name was Tyler Black,” he replied, “I think naming my son Tyler is way better than naming him Colby. I mean I love my mom, but Colby is not a great name.”

“I think it is,” I told him, “But I like Tyler. Let’s name him Tyler.”

That night, I was in bed and Colby was about to leave. I had caught Colby’s scent as he came into my room. I decided to pretend being asleep, not really in the mood to talk to him and having him leave in a sour mood after the events that happened today.

“Are you asleep, Thea,” he asked, but I didn’t answer, “I need to get this off my chest. I know this isn’t fair to you. I shouldn’t be coming around, reminding you that I’m not the same man you fell in love with. It’s not good for you and Tyler. I think I’ll stay away for a while. But I swear, when the day comes that I’m able to feel anything for you that comes close to how you feel about me, I’ll be back to be with you again. I loved you, Thea. I loved you and I can tell it kills you that I don’t anymore. I’m sorry.”

Colby placed a kiss on my temple, stroking my hair gently, before going to leave.

“Colby,” I sat up, giving up my rouse, “You don’t have to stay away. Tyler is going to need his dad. And like you said it yourself the first time you came here, you didn’t know your birth father and you don’t want that for your son.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Thea,” he smiled sadly at me, “Get some sleep, okay. I’ll think about coming back when I’m off the tour circuit again.”

And with that, Colby was gone again. And in that moment, I knew I had to work extra hard to break Morrigan’s charm on him. I will not let him get this close, only to lose him again.