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sunnie-angel · 11 months ago

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A Soft Touch (pt. 3)

jason todd x fem!reader

link to part one, part two, ao3 link

summary: Jason’s late for your date, and the two of you have a conversation about your own insecurity

tags: mentions of injury, mentions of trafficking

rating teen | wc: 1.5k

a/n: i simply can’t seem to stop myself from drawing out the slow burn. this chapter is a bit shorter than the previous ones, but i really wanted to get an update out for this series.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s late. They don’t even have a set time to meet but Jason knows he’s late, that this is later than all the time they’ve spent together. Still he’s running through the streets of Gotham hoping you haven’t gotten fed up and left yet.

The last 10 hours have been hell. He caught a break in his human trafficking case only a few hours after parting ways at the coffee shop. He’d spent the night scouting out the docks, waiting to liberate a shipment. He’d been successful, freed 28 people from Black Mask’s operation but it had cost him. There’s a bullet graze in his calf oozing sluggishly through his homemade stitches and his shoulder aches in its socket from where he’d had to reset it against a brick wall. He’d spent most of the day making sure the GCPD could be trusted to look after the survivors and collect evidence, only having to make his presence known once. He’d only made it home an hour ago, had to spend a good 20 minutes meditating just to reel his senses in before tending to his assorted hurts and frantically trying to get the blood off.

That brings him to the present moment, desperately trying to make it to the coffee shop on time. Doesn’t want you thinking he stood you up or that meeting you hasn’t been the best part of his life these past few days. He bursts through the door, and comes to an abrupt stop, panting. You’re still there, sitting in the same little alcove as yesterday, head buried in a book. There’s an empty coffee cup and plate full of crumbs in front of you but you haven’t left. You look up, smile faltering when you see how disheveled he looks. He hurries over to you, apologies spilling off of his tongue.

“I’m so sorry,” he has to stop to pant, “got held up at work. Couldn’t— couldn’t get away.”

“Jason, Jason it’s fine. Take a minute okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Am I— am I too late to buy you that drink?” He sounds so concerned about it, like a little boy about to be denied a treat he’d been promised.

“Jason you can still buy me a drink if you want to, but we can always do a rain check, yeah? We can just spend time together today if that’s what you want.”

Jason straightens as best he can, sending a twinge through his shoulder. He’s determined to seize this opportunity. Can’t quite articulate why this means so much to him but it does. Made the mess of last night easier to bear with this to look forward to.

“What are we drinking then?”

“How about the hot apple cider? It looks like we could both use something comforting.”

Waiting in line for your orders, Jason concludes that whatever magic your attention works on him must be limited by distance because he can feel everything crowding back in to fight for his attention. The dull thud of his heart in his shoulder, the way the ragged edges of his calf pull against the stitches, the too stiff fabric of his least favourite jeans, how the seam of his sock has rotated on his left foot. The grinding of the coffee machine is a hammer behind his eyes, ringing through his temples. He can smell the day-old sweat on the business man in front of him and the coins sitting in the tip jar. Jason’s glad you asked for something that will be prepared quickly. At this point he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to stay today, the feedback on his senses absolutely hellish.

He grabs the drinks from the pickup counter, turns to bring them back to the table but nearly spills them all over himself instead. You’re there, standing behind him, just like the day you met.

“Let’s take a walk. There’s a park just a few blocks away. We can sit on the benches there and share our drinks.” Your tone is cajoling, leaving room for him to disagree if he needs to.

“Yeah— yeah okay.”

The two of you are silent on the way to the park. It’s dark now, but the light of the street lamps is warm and more than enough to get by. The park’s empty when you get there, about the size of a city block with a small fountain in the middle and benches arranged in a circle around it. You choose one just a little outside of the circle of lamplight. You set your bag down and gratefully accept the steaming cup from Jason.

“How’s your leg?”

Jason freezes, before very carefully turning his head to look at you.

“My leg?”

“You were favouring one leg on the walk here. Do you need to put your leg up?” Your voice remains calm, unruffled like you’re trying not to make a big deal of it. He takes a sip of his drink to buy himself some time. It’s good, really good, but not enough to distract him from the weight of your waiting eyes.

“Small injury from work, it’s kind of why I was so late today.”

You nod, turn back to your own drink and blow on it to cool it. The two of you are silent, something expectant but not uncomfortable about it. You sigh, before turning back to him.

“Jason, you and I don’t know each other that well. But I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why I’m telling you this now.” you make sure to look him directly in the eye as you speak, wanting to make sure there’s no misunderstandings. “I don’t like feeling like a burden. I don’t like inconveniencing people or asking for help because I never want to be a weight around someone’s neck.” He’s not saying anything, uncertain of where you’re going with this line of thought. “But you’re hurt Jason. You’re pushing yourself to be here with me when you should be resting. And yeah, it’s not just all about me, but I don’t want to be the reason why you’re not getting better.” Pausing, you wait for him to respond to anything you’ve said so far.

“I didn’t want you to think that I’d stood you up.” He fiddles with the paper sleeve of his cup, voice small for a man of that size.

“I’m glad you didn’t. And I’m glad you let me know. But are you in any shape to stay? The last thing I want is to be why you’re still in pain.”

He sighs, slumping back on the bench. “Probably not.” He admits reluctantly. “But seeing you was important to me. You’re not causing me pain to be here, you’re not inconveniencing me.”

“I— okay. I believe you Jason. I’ll try not to take tonight too personally.” You joke, weakly. “Do you need a hand getting somewhere, or…”

The impossible thought of leaning on you like a crutch has him almost choking on his drink, the image of his weight bowling the two of you over equal parts horrifying and hilarious. “No! No, I’m fine to get myself home. What about you?”

You blink. “Me?”

“It’s dark out and we’re further from the cafe than yesterday.”

“Oh! My apartment’s just the other side of the park, I’ll be fine.” You look down at where your hands are wrapped around your cup, cheeks suddenly just as warm. “But thank you.”

“Can I have your phone number?” Buoyed by the warmth in your cheeks and the taste of apple and spices on his tongue, Jason feels bold. “I’ll text you next time if I’m running late.”

“Oh there’s going to be a next time, huh?” You tease as you reach for the phone he holds out to you. It’s a flip phone, chunky black plastic and rubber buttons with a satisfying give to them, but it suits him. You hand it back to him and a few seconds later a message vibrates your phone.

“Yeah. I’ll see you on Friday. My leg’ll be better, and maybe you’ll let me take you to dinner.” He grins, confident from having his first little gamble pay off.

The two of you say goodbye, breaths mingling as mist in the winter night. It’s not the fairytale date Jason had hoped for, but the afternoon had been redeemed. He watches you leave, coat fluttering around your ankles, before steeling himself for the walk home. His calf throbs and his shoulder pulses to the rabbit-quick beat of his heart but nothing diminishes the grin splitting his face. The wind in his face chafes at his cheeks, for once only carrying the scent of an impending snow fall and the decaying leaf matter of the park. His phone, the only burner he’s kept longer than a month, is clutched protectively in his good hand. It’s so precious to him now, the phone and the new contact labeled ‘Angel’ in it.

link to part 4

#jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd x fem!reader #jason todd x y/n #jason todd imagine #jason todd fic #red hood x reader #red hood x you #red hood fic #jason todd headcanon #sunnie writes 🌻

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handelplayssims · 2 years ago

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Another day! Another-

Ah.

Parenthood adds phases as well to both child and teen lifespans. This one is kinda pretty annoying, mostly for one reason alone. It’s ridiculously hard to take off if somehow you need to cheat it off of your sim. Phases become permanent traits if you don’t manage to take them off before you rotate off of a household. We have plenty of time so I’m not going to worry about it too much at this point. I’m playing until Evie hits 25 days until aging up.

...speaking of which I find that Pierce has 43 days until aging up and that just seems eh. He should be slightly older than her! So I’m going to age him out of teenage-dom a little bit earlier. For this entire session, he’ll still be a teen but next session, when Evie hits 15 days until aging up, he’ll age up into being a Young Adult. And then...it’ll be Uni time! I don’t have set career idea in mind for him yet so we’ll see what options we take that University degrees provide us.

...I’m also being reminded that Evie still has no kid friends as she and her mother talk. Goal for this day of school is to get her to socialize with others and gain those kid friends!

And I had Pierce be woken up by Supriya before school. He yelled at her, mostly because he did all the cleaning yesterday and was miffed. Supriya immediately insulted him back! Yeesh game! She did a light “ask to not be mean” discipline on him...and then immediately got insulted again! YEESH. Actually had her yell at him to not be mean then. Supriya gained the Hurt sentiment after all of this. Just feeling bad all around.

Bills dropped in and- oh how are the NAPs doing as well? Monday is the last day to get those votes in after all! Rock Your Body and Mind is solidly in the lead, so that’s fine by me! Anyway, needs management, setting Evie up to work on her class project with her new acquaintances Kala and Venus as you always get those on Mondays. I was going to have Supriya listen to some tunes but her dog, Blue, needs a walk and so they set off on a jog, in the rain. Pierce’s want is simpler. Just to talk to someone. And somehow Orange is now an acquaintance!? Bah. A friendly social didn’t reset it so...let’s be mean! (Wow, Pierce is under a mean streak isn’t he?) Weirdly the mean socials instead lowered a lot of their romantic relationship. Which they had?! Now it’s time to try friendly ones again! Eh...no changes. Mmm. Relationship’s probably borked. Welp, worry about that another time. It’s time to snooze.

Evie was disturbed by monsters under the bed. Something Supriya easily handled! And then bought a nightlight to prevent further night time disturbances. Thus it’s time for!

Neighborhood Watch!

Nothing of note has happened recently. Check back tomorrow.

This is a bit short so let’s continue on! Pierce has also entered the Picky Eater phase. Because The Sims be like that. Also had a very stinky dog in front of him so Blue got a bath! Pierce and Supriya ran into each other at breakfast so I tried to have Supriya apologize to him. I wanted to have her praise him for all he did around the house but alas, no option. Bridges were attempted to be mended but he’s still automatically doing mean socials. Ah well.

While we do have the necessary things of going into work and working from home, Lazerwolf is sick! We need to take him to the vet before we take care of other things! A simple pop on over we go there and then we head off of to Britechester again to visit another University class. Annnnd again it’s instant so back on over to the Research machine to study up a bit. ...I would love to stay in this student center in Britechester all day to research and stuff but, Supriya strikes me as a lady who would want to go home to be around her kids.

The kids are back from school and Supriya’s off to write her opinion piece, claiming the computer as hers for the night! I would say much to Pierce’s sadness but he was just sad from having chili and had a meltdown right near Supriya. (Come on now, chili is fantastic.) However, the sentiments did kick in for Supriya, making her sad as well. I had her talk a little to Pierce about improving his dietary habits.

...and then I suddenly realized something. It’s the last week of summer! I don’t really have any ‘official’ days off from school but I tend to let the kids take all their vacation days they’ve accumulated. Pierce has two and Evie has three. So let’s have Evie take that vacation day tomorrow!

The evening descends and Supriya aims to cheer herself up with her good boy Blue. And so she does lavishing love and attention on her boy. Fun that Supriya and Evie continue their love of pets but Pierce is kinda not really interacting that much with them. Anyway, I had Evie clean up pet poop from the dogs and the cats and then sent her to bed. Because that’s one of those chores I’ll just assign to anyone I particularly notice and who’s awake at the time.

Time for!

Neighborhood Watch!

Geeta Rasoya in the Rasoya household has started a job as a Freelance Crafter in the Freelance Crafter career.

...Geeta doesn’t strike me as a candlestick maker. Nor a furniture maker. I’d change that if I get back to that household.

Facundo Guerra in the Guerra household left his job as a Freelance Writer in the Freelance Writer career.

Julia Wright in the Best of Friends household has died. Julia blushed so much she exploded.

RIP the Best of Friends household, as Becca already died earlier. Dang it. I liked them.

Kazuya Aoki in the Aoki household retired from the Culinary career.

#sims 4 #liveblogging #delgato family #supriya delgato #pierce delgato #evie delgato

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voskhozhdeniye · 2 years ago

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Happy one year anniversary to Metroid Dread.

I ranted about work this morning, and I’ll rant about home now. It’ll be a year on Tuesday that my mother tried that shit with me last year, and I feel like she might try to start shit again.

For those who weren’t here last year and are interested. A year ago tomorrow, my mother who is in her 70′s and only knows how to use her phone or computer to buy things, accidentally put a lock screen password on her phone. She said she had gotten an email saying she needed to change her password on one of the websites she buys things from, and somehow created a lock screen password, which she then forgot. She asked me to fix it, and I spent an hour trying to figure out if there was a way around it. Eventually I tried and failed to factory reset it. There was nothing I could do, so I gave it back to her and asked her why she felt confident enough to even attempt to do that? She always talks about how she knows nothing about computers. A year later, and I still don’t know how she went from trying to change an online password to making a lock screen one. She asked me if I could call the service carrier on Monday to unlock the phone, and I had to bluntly state to her how bad she had messed up. That a password is to keep others out, and there was nothing they could do either. The only thing that could be done was to factory reset the phone, and I couldn’t get that to work. I had to explain that no matter what she was going to lose all of her contacts.

She didn’t talk to me on Sunday.

On Monday when I got home from work she went on this hour long tirade about how ungrateful of a son I was, and that she had had her tubes tied before I was born because she didn’t want anymore children, yet here I was and so on. She kept bringing up this woman at their church whose son has been stealing land and money from her, and comparing me to him. I thought she was losing her mind. Several things have happened this year that are proving me right. Back in the Spring, she started seeing ghosts walking around the house. Apparently this was from a combination of her meds, but her first inclination was to ask me if I had anything that might be bringing demons into the house. I have moved most of my films, games, books and synths out of the house.

Anyway, a month ago she asked me if I could set up an account for her on Amazon’s streaming service so she could watch it on the tv in her bedroom. I explained that I could do it on the one in the living room because it‘s a smart tv, but the one in the bedroom would need a Roku. She never asked again. Yesterday when I came upstairs one of their church friends was here setting up a Netflix account for her on the living room tv.

I know she told that woman I wouldn’t set one up for her. I heard the friend tell her that since she set the account up on the tv in the living room my mother should be able to just sign in on the one in the bedroom. But the one in the bedroom isn’t a smart tv, so I know at some point today when I go upstairs she’s going to ask me to sign her in on the tv in the bedroom. I’m going to have to explain to my mother like a child that the tv in the bedroom isn’t a smart tv, and that her friend was wrong. Let’s see if we have a repeat of last year.

I’ve become the person who just sits in their room all day stoned listening to music. Never thought I’d become this person. I never wanted to be this person, but it’s the only person I have the strength to be right now.

This life has been one long, unpleasant experience. I hope it’s over sooner rather than later. I know it can get worse. I’m unwilling to see how bad it can get.

And that’s what home life is like. For work life scroll down further.

#This isn't about the game.

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valdomarx · 4 years ago

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Entry, Descent and Landing

Stargate Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard, time loop, 6k, rated M

Also on AO3

“The gate’s not working,” Rodney huffs, entering the mess with a scowl on his face. He's clearly personally offended by this turn of events.

“Eh, I’m sure you’ll fix it.” John currently has more pressing issues to consider, like whether he can reasonably have fruit loops for lunch or whether he should eat some vegetables like an adult.

He picks up the fruit loops.

“I’m serious!” Rodney is all fidgety, talking and waving his hands instead of eating, and that’s never a good sign. “There’s something very wrong with it, and I have no idea why.”

John raises an eyebrow. It’s not often that McKay admits there’s something he doesn’t understand. And without the gate, they are vulnerable.

Regretfully, he puts the fruit loops back. “Alright. Why don’t you show me what the problem is?”

The gate will accept an address, and it spins and dials as normal. But when it should open a wormhole with a whoosh and a ripple of blue light, it simply stops dead. The lights fade out and it shuts itself off.

Huh.

“It’s been like this since we tried to dial New Athos for a check in.” A frown creases Rodney’s forehead. “Hand me that scanner, will you?”

They spend the day poking and prodding at the gate and the control consoles - or, more accurately, Rodney pokes and John swings his legs off the side of the console and provides unhelpful but, he thinks, amusing commentary - but there’s nothing to indicate a problem. No fried circuits, no missing components, none of the usual error warnings which appear when the gate runs into a problem. It just… doesn’t work.

They work through the afternoon, and by the time eight p.m. rolls around John is ready to call it a night and start again tomorrow. But before he can suggest they get some dinner, the gate whirs to life and begins to dial.

“Did you do that?” he asks Rodney, but he already knows the answer is no by the look of confusion on Rodney’s face.

The gate spins as if to dial but it doesn’t connect. It merely sits there, illuminated but inactive, and then -

John wakes up in his quarters.

That’s weird. He’s disoriented, and woozy, and he feels a headache creeping at the back of his skull.

He shakes it off. He probably just needs some food. He heads to the mess and is sitting down to eat when -

“The gate’s not working,” Rodney huffs.

John squints at him. “Again?”

“What do you mean, again?” Rodney waves him aside impatiently. “There’s something very wrong with it, and I have no idea why.”

A cold chill settles at the bottom of John’s stomach. “I know, Rodney. We had this conversation yesterday.”

“What are you talking about? Of course we didn’t. The gate only stopped working today.”

Rodney insists that he has no memory of the gate breaking, and neither does anyone else they talk to. It's like the previous day has simply disappeared.

The more he insists that he remembers it, the more Rodney turns from dismissive to concerned, until he marches him down to see Carson and okay, that's not the worst idea under the circumstances.

Carson checks him over, determines he's physically fine, and tells him it's probably just déjà vu. But that can't be right. It was so real.

Rodney keeps shooting him these worried looks, and that's definitely not helping. So he brushes it off and suggests they get back to fixing the gate. It is, after all, still broken.

They spend another few hours on that, opening up the consoles in the gate room and looking for any faulty hardware. Soon enough it's dinner time, and he's going to suggest heading to the mess when the gate spins up again, and oh shit -

He wakes up in his quarters. He frantically scrambles for his watch and sees that it reads two p.m.

This is definitely not déjà vu.

He heads straight to the gate room. The gate techs are antsy.

"Sheppard, you're here, good." Rodney enters, a tablet tucked under one arm. “We've got a problem. The gate’s not working."

They try to fix the gate again, with no more success than the last two attempts. John keeps checking his watch.

Maybe it's different now. Maybe he's changed enough to stop the day repeating.

At exactly right p.m., his sunny, perhaps delusional, optimism is shattered.

The gate starts dialing.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He sends Rodney off to consult with Zelenka and takes matters into his own hands.

He tries everything he can think of to dial the gate - dialing different addresses, dialing it at different times, even removing and replacing the control crystal in his famed “turn it off and turn it on again” approach to computer repair - but nothing works.

He tries taking a puddle jumper and flying out to the mainland, and into space, and as far around the planet as he can get. No matter how far he travels, at exactly eight p.m. he resets and wakes up back in his quarters.

Six hours is simply not enough time to solve whatever the hell is going on here

He tries explaining his situation to Elizabeth, to Teyla and Ronon, to Lorne, to Carson. Even when people are willing to entertain the notion of a time loop, no one knows how to address the problem, let alone suggest a solution. At best, they seem to be humoring him. At worst, they seem to think it’s his apparently inevitable slide into paranoia.

After trying everyone on the base he has even a passing relationship with, he gives up telling anyone. They can’t help him.

He overrides the city’s power usage limits and tries to dial up Earth. The gate still won’t dial, and he overloads the ZPM, and the entire city is plunged into darkness.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He used to love it here, his own little corner of the strange place that is his home. Now it feels like a prison.

He tries to make contact with the Athosians, or with the Manarians, or even with the Genii. But without the gate, his radio transmissions will take years to reach them. He sits by the radio anyway, listening to the crackling static and waiting for a reply he knows will never come.

Maybe he's trapped in a virtual reality, or his mind is being probed by aliens. It wouldn't be the first time.

Maybe none of this is real.

He stands on one of the city’s most distant piers, staring out into the ocean. It’s quiet here, now he’s turned off his radio and tweaked the lifesigns detector so it can’t track him. He watches the waves, the same today as they were yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. He considers his options.

He puts a gun to his temple and counts down from five.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He bangs on the lab door and tries one more time to convince Rodney to help him.

“A time loop is not impossible,” he grits out. “It happened at the SGC.” He knows Rodney has read the file.

“That’s because there was an Ancient artifact involved.” Rodney sounds haughty. “Have you touched any strange Ancient artifacts recently, Colonel?”

John breathes between clenched teeth and shakes his head.

“So. Time just spontaneously started resetting itself, did it?”

“How should I know? All I know is that I have woken up in my quarters a hundred times by now, and every day at eight p.m. the loop resets itself.”

“Why are you the only one this is happening to?”

“I don’t know!” he yells. “I have no idea what terrible sin I’m being punished for here! I’ve made my share of mistakes in my life, but nothing that deserves this.”

Rodney stops moving and looks at him -- really looks.

“Jesus, Sheppard.” Rodney’s brow creases. “You’re not okay, are you?”

John slumps. He can’t summon the energy to deny it. “Not even remotely.”

For some reason, this seems to be what pushes Rodney into taking him seriously. He nods, once, sharply. “What can I do to help?”

He looks at his watch. It’s ten minutes to eight.

“Tell me a secret,” he says.

Rodney gives him a disdainful look. “What is this, a tween girls’ slumber party?”

He grits his teeth. “I spent the entire day trying to convince you what’s happening to me is real. I don’t have time to do that every loop. I need you to tell me something no one else knows, so next time I can convince you I’m not crazy or playing around and we can fix this.”

He sees Rodney’s mind working. He can tell he knows John is right and he’s considering options of what to tell him: details about his childhood, his research, his time here on Atlantis, and discarding each one. For all his faults, Rodney does not dissemble. His life is an open book, and for this to work John needs to know something truly private.

“Alright,” Rodney says eventually. He tilts his chin up and straightens his shoulders like he’s bracing himself for incoming fire. “When I was fifteen, there was a boy at school a couple of years older than me. His name was Mikey Haynes.”

“Have you touched any strange Ancient artifacts recently, Colonel?” Rodney asks with the same look of superiority he always has. “Because that’s the only way-”

“McKay,” he interrupts.

“- and why would you be the only one affected, that doesn’t make sense-”

“Rodney!”

Rodney stops. Something in the tone of his voice has broken through.

“I know about Mikey Haynes,” he says.

Rodney goes very pale and John can feel the anxiety radiating off him in waves.

“How do you know that name?” his voice is barely above a whisper.

“Because you told me, Rodney. In the last loop.”

For a few seconds Rodney stares at him, eyes wild and arms wrapped protectively around his chest. Eventually he gives one, sharp nod.

“Alright. You’re stuck in a time loop. What are we going to do about it?”

He has that conversation with Rodney every single loop. It is, without exception, the worst part of each one. Even feeling himself die wasn’t this awful.

He and Rodney have run every test they can think of. He’s been subjected to medical tests and genetic tests, they’ve scanned him for nanites and viruses and alien mind control, and they’ve turned up nothing. He is, by all accounts, completely healthy -- other than the fact he’s reliving the same six hours over and over and over and over.

“Maybe the problem isn’t with me,” he says. He chews over the idea and it seems plausible. “Maybe the problem is with the city.”

“What?”

“What if I’m not the one being looped through time? What if you are, and I’m the only one who’s aware of it?”

“So you’re sane and everyone else is crazy?”

“Yes.” He folds his arms over his chest. “Maybe my ATA gene gives me some protection against the effect, I don’t know.”

“Your magic genetics strike again.”

He ignores the griping. “If I’m right, the problem is even worse than I thought. The whole city, even the whole planet could be stuck in the loop. What’s happening to our allies while we’re stuck? How far have the Wraith advanced across this galaxy without us to keep them in check.”

Rodney swallows, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him.

“There must be a clue in the city sensors,” he says, pushing bits of drone aside to access the whiteboard in his lab. “If the reset is at the same time, there might be a preceding energy burst we can detect.”

“What good will that do?” John is too tired to think straight. “I know when the loop is going to reset.”

“Because if we know what type of energy it is, we can understand what’s causing it.”

John throws up his hands. Sure, why not. It's not like he's in a hurry or anything.

Rodney pokes through the sensor data, making little hmm noises which he finds unreasonably aggravating.

“See!” Rodney has his smuggest expression on, the one that simultaneously says I told you so and I know you find me charming. “Here, just before the gate failed to connect, there’s a small anomaly in the readings. It looks like… Interesting. It looks like ionizing radiation.”

“What does that mean?”

Rodney’s brow creases. “I’m not sure. There’s a spike of gamma and X-rays as the gate tries to connect. But I have no idea what the source is.”

John barely has time to let out a frustrated breath before the loop resets.

He hurries back to Rodney’s lab and points him to the sensor data.

“Interesting,” Rodney says again. “It looks like ionizing radiation.”

John exhales. “Yeah. You said that last time.”

He doesn’t need to eat, or sleep. His body resets with every loop. And yet, his mind has frayed. He hasn’t rested in so long, his thoughts are a jumbled mess.

He takes a loop off. He goes to the gym and spars with Ronon. His muscles are fresh but his strategy is a disaster; Ronon unsurprisingly wipes the floor with him. All the same, it feels good to stretch and move; to worry about avoiding a flying elbow instead of his sorry fate for a while.

Then he has dinner with Teyla. He doesn’t know how many loops it’s been since he ate, and even though he doesn’t need the sustenance he realizes he has been missing the sensory experience of it, and the camaraderie of a shared meal.

He tells Teyla about the time loop, casually, like it’s not a big deal, and she doesn’t seem convinced he’s telling the truth but she doesn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand either, and he loves her for that.

“If that were the case,” her head tilts to one side, thoughtful, “it would be a kind of opportunity, would it not?”

He squints. Nothing about this feels opportune.

“If time were to always reset itself, you could do anything you wish, without having to consider the consequences.” She shrugs. “Many have wished for such a chance.”

Huh. He never thought about it that way before.

Next loop, he steals a jumper and takes it for a joyride, zipping away from Atlantis and out into the solar system.

He pulls a reckless slingshot maneuver around the third planet out and is sent hurtling toward the star at the heart of the system, traveling so fast the jumper shakes and rattles even with the inertial dampeners. Elizabeth screams at him over the comms and he flips them off.

He approaches the sun at breakneck speed and the temperature in the cabin begins to rise. He swoops low into the sun’s corona, arcs of plasma leaping up around him, even more wild and ferocious than he expected. The sensors scream out warnings about hull temperature and radiation levels and he ignores them, absorbed in the way the jumper dives and banks.

He plunges closer, seeing the star’s surface bubble and erupt, then pulls up in a wild loop and swings down closer still: through the corona and into the chromosphere, the space around him transformed into wild hues of pink, shot through with filaments of white hot gas which snap and twist around him.

In the moment before the jumper is destroyed, as alarms blare and the air rushes out through cracks in the hull, his vision is filled with the surface of the sun. It is entrancing, covered in cells of red and orange and yellow, molten and changing and blindingly, blindingly bright.

He records a message for his father and uploads it to the queue to be sent back to Earth. “Dad,” he begins. “I want you to tell you something, something I’ve been meaning to say for a long time. From the very bottom of my heart: Go fuck yourself.”

He knows it’ll be heard by the gate techs, if not the entire expedition. That somehow makes it even more satisfying.

He finds Cadman.

“You’re an explosives expert, right?”

“Technically it’s high temperature and energetic materials technology,” she grins, “but close enough.”

“Awesome. Where do you keep the good stuff?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“You know. The really fun explosives they don’t let the field teams use.”

“Oh, that good stuff. Right this way.”

They spend an afternoon testing the structural integrity of the city’s farthest piers (not as good as you might think), seeing what happens when you strap C4 to a naquadah generator (an extremely large explosion), and enjoying the simple pleasures of tossing prototype grenades into the ocean (the water sprays rainbows across the sky as it is thrown miles into the air, and it falls on them like rain as they laugh).

Cadman barely needs any convincing.

He tells Lorne that he’s gay. Lorne doesn’t miss a beat.

“Yes, sir,” he says, entirely unperturbed. “I figured.”

He leaves a message for Nancy.

He tells her he’s sorry, that he knows he was a bad husband, that it wasn’t fair the way he treated her. He tells her that she deserved better, that he wishes her well, that he hopes she’s happy, and he means it.

He feels lighter the moment he's finished. He wonders why he never did this before the loop.

He’s struck by a genius idea, and he busts open a few locks and drags the ascension machine out of storage. Sure, it nearly killed Rodney, but maybe he’ll get lucky. Nothing to lose at this point, right?

The moment the light envelops him, he knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

Within minutes his skin is peeling away to reveal hard, blue scales beneath. The sunlight becomes unbearable. He turns the lights out and feels his way by sound instead.

He doesn’t remember much beyond that. There are only brief flashes in his mind: cold metal beneath his claws, horrified screams reverberating in a corridor, the effortlessness of scuttling up the side of a tower, the crunch of bones cracking between his mandibles.

He locks himself in his quarters for a few loops after that.

After a while his guilt is outweighed by his boredom. He picks up the guitar that has been primarily decorative thus far and learns to play Folsom Prison Blues.

Time keeps dragging on, indeed.

Eventually, as seems to be inevitable, he ends up coming back to Rodney.

"Sheppard." Rodney gives him a quick nod. "What can I do for you?"

There are a million answers to that question, and none of them are appropriate for work.

He considers the juxtaposition: Rodney's cool greeting with the way he's bouncing on the balls of his feet, all coiled excitement and nervousness. That's how Rodney often is around him, now he thinks about it.

Is it interest or intimidation? Fondness or annoyance? He's never been good at parsing emotions, and that's been a frequent source of frustration. Now it's particularly acute.

"You want some coffee?" Rodney offers, like an olive branch. "I'm sure we've got a clean mug around here somewhere."

John does not want coffee.

How many times has he thought about this? Too many to count. And how many more chances will he have?

What the hell, he thinks. Teyla was right. He'll never get a better opportunity than this.

He steps forward and puts a tentative hand around the back of Rodney's neck. He hears his breath catch. He rubs the soft hair there between his fingers, watches the blush rise on his cheeks. It's an enticing look.

Slowly, carefully, he leans in and kisses him, uncertain even though he knows the loop will reset, because this is bigger than some silly irresponsible behavior; this is him putting his heart in Rodney's fidgety hands and hoping against hope it won't be crushed.

For a moment Rodney freezes, and John is already formulating frantic apologies when Rodney mouths, "Oh god, finally," against his lips and wraps his arms around his shoulders, yanking him closer and kissing him hot and hard.

It's easy as anything to slip his hands under Rodney's thighs and to lift him onto the workbench, even while Rodney attempts to distract him by unbuttoning his shirt and biting a line along his collar bone.

He fucks Rodney over the bench in his lab, and next time on a balcony overlooking the city, and after that on Elizabeth’s desk. He learns every inch of his body; the soft plump of his thighs, the way he likes to be jerked off nice and slow, the sensitive patch of skin behind his ear.

For loops and loops, he does nothing else. Rodney never turns him down, not once. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll drop everything to be with him, and John has no idea what to make of that.

(Yes he does, but it's too big and too terrifying to look at directly, so he puts it aside.

It can wait. He has nothing but time.)

The first time he gets Rodney to fuck him, he bursts into fat, ugly tears afterwards and Rodney wraps a blanket around him and pets his hair. They stay like that for hours, Rodney holding him and for once not speaking, letting the waves of need and desperation and loneliness ebb and flow as they will, giving the simple comfort of his presence.

Sometimes he tells him about the loop, sometimes not. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to Rodney. Even when he explains nothing, just walks up to him and kisses him, Rodney kisses him back just as hungrily as ever.

And when they’re not fucking, they’re talking. He learns that Rodney has always wanted to learn to paint. He misses his cat (no, really. It’s not funny.) The one person on the base he is most afraid of is Elizabeth, because he secretly suspects she might be smarter than he is.

John tells him about why he doesn’t talk to his family, and about how out of place he always felt in the military. That he likes turkey sandwiches because they’re what his college roommate made for him when he first left home and had to learn to get by on not much money.

Each day, he learns more about Rodney and shares more about himself. And then the loop resets, and he has to walk into the lab and see Rodney regard him coolly and say, “Sheppard,” like that’s all they are to each other.

He misses him, and that sounds insane because he's spent practically every waking hour with the man for what must have been weeks. But he is moving forward and Rodney is staying still. Every time the loop resets, they drift further apart.

He stops sleeping with Rodney.

He gets back to work.

He pulls up the city sensor data and brings it to the lab.

“Here, look. You said before there was a radiation spike.”

Rodney drums his fingers against the tablet. “Yeah, there is. And it looks,” he squints, “sort of familiar.”

“What could cause that?”

“A million things. Radioactive materials. Black holes. Coronal mass ejections. Lightning, if there’s enough of it.”

“Wait, wait wait.” Something important scratches at his mind. “Coronal mass ejections, as in, from stars?”

“Yes. The magnetic fields inside a star shift as material moves in its interior, and when a prominence is formed and collapsed, the star releases a burst of plasma.”

He snaps his fingers. “That’s it! The sun in this solar system, we know it’s periodically unstable, right? And it’s even more active than usual right now.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

He thinks of the arcs of plasma he saw as he dove the jumper into the sun’s corona and decides against trying to explain that. “It’s not important. But we know the stargate has sent Earth teams through time when the wormhole passed too close to a coronal mass ejection, right? What if our stargate had the same problem?”

“That might send whoever was traveling through the gate through time, but it wouldn’t make time loop.” A light flickers in Rodney’s eyes. “Oh! Oh! Unless that’s why the gate failed. It tried to send an outgoing wormhole at the exact moment that the sun’s activity peaked. When the wormhole hit the coronal mass ejection, it bounced back to its origin, carrying its energy with it. And that would mean…” He taps frantically at his tablet. “Right! That spike of radiation is the effect of the outgoing and incoming wormholes colliding, forming a resonance wave. All that energy is forming ripples which must be throwing us through spacetime.”

“Great! So can you fix it?”

Rodney blinks. “I’m not even sure I can model what’s happening, let alone fix it. The mathematical equations alone will be weeks of work.”

“We don’t have weeks, Rodney. We have -” he checks his watch, “- just over half an hour before the loop resets and we lose everything.”

Despair starts crawling up his spine, but he shouldn’t have underestimated the sheer stubbornness of Rodney McKay.

“Well then.” Rodney sits him down and shoves a notebook and pen into his hands. “Looks like you’re going to have to learn some math and help me to remember.”

This is his routine now: Wake up in his quarters, run to the lab, talk Rodney through the problem as fast as he can, get lectured on astrophysics and mathematical modelling until he feels like his head is going to explode, repeat.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

He gets the basics down quickly but there are still pages and pages of math for them to solve, and nowhere close to enough time to figure it out in one loop. So he learns, and remembers, and does his best to save himself.

Rodney explains it well when he’s not being a jerk, and John starts to understand why he likes this work.

He hasn’t done this much math since college, and it’s not as awful as he remembers. There’s a kind of beauty to it, actually, a balance of all the relevant variables quantified and described, their relationships mapped into symbols and equations, the logically clarity of a necessarily true fact.

“See, this variable here, this represents the duration of the outgoing wormhole.” Rodney taps the whiteboard. John stares at the way his hands dance over the numbers. “And this one here, this is the distance between Lantea and its sun...”

Each loop, he learns a little more. Eventually, he understands the equations Rodney has been scribbling for the past god knows how many loops.

Now they just need to actually figure out how to solve them.

“That equation is wrong.”

“What? No it isn’t. I worked that out myself.” Rodney is glaring at him like he insulted his mother.

“I’m telling you, Rodney. Look.” John uses the cuff of his shirt to wipe out a corner of the equations scribbled on the whiteboard. “This is assuming we’re still operating in base 10, but we know the gate operating system is partially in base 16.” He adds in the corrected figures as he goes. “So we need to convert it to polynomial here and here before we can compare the output to the data from our solar radiation readings, then we can figure out the coronal mass ejection’s effects on both the gate and our computers simultaneously and allow for the difference.”

Rodney is squinting at the whiteboard. “That’s… Huh. That might actually be right.” He steps closer, running his fingers beneath the figures John has changed. Then he wheels and rounds on John.

“You,” he says, pointing a finger at John’s chest. “You are a genius.”

And then he’s grabbing John’s shirt and hauling him close and kissing him, wild and messy and with great enthusiasm.

And John had told himself he wasn’t going to do this any more but this is different, Rodney had kissed him this time, and with the way Rodney’s hands are scrabbling at every piece of skin he can reach he doesn’t think he could stop himself anyway.

Afterwards, once they’ve wasted far too much of this loop to get any productive work done, John tells Rodney about all the times that they’ve done this before, and that this is the first time Rodney has been the one to instigate it.

Rodney shrugs. “What can I say? A man who knows his math really gets me going.”

John hides a smile. “You only want me for my brain, huh?”

“Yes,” Rodney says, like that’s obvious. He breaks into a grin and runs a hand through John’s hair. “And the hair, of course. That’s very important.”

“Mmhmm.” John stretches lazily across the sofa in the corner of the lab. “And the rest of me?”

Rodney gives him a sly look. “I guess that’s alright too.”

And then Rodney is giggling as John wrestles him to the sofa as well, and he’s all flying elbows and poking fingers until John gets him pinned beneath him, both of them sweaty and out of breath from laughter.

Oh, thinks John. So this is what happiness feels like. He’d almost forgotten.

The loop is about to end, though this one feels different.

They're lying squashed together on the too-small sofa, inelegantly draped around each other, when Rodney takes his hand. “You have to tell me,” he says. “We’re about to reset, and once we've fixed this and I've forgotten again, you have to tell me how you feel.”

His gut churns. It’s so much simpler to be together when he doesn’t have to think about the consequences.

“Promise me,” Rodney says. “It’s not fair that I should finally get what I’ve wanted for so long, and not be able to remember it.”

He thinks about how he feels each time Rodney is reset: the loss, the ache of it. He tries to imagine what it would be like to have those experiences erased entirely.

“Okay.” He squeezes Rodney’s hand. “I promise.”

“That’s it!” Rodney beams at the whiteboard, covered from top to bottom in dense equations. “I can’t believe we got that done so fast.”

John lets out a sound that might be considered a laugh.

“Ah.” Rodney looks at him sideways. “You’ve been working on this for a while, huh?”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“Well, good news. Now we’ve got the wormhole modeled, we can feed this data into the dialing device and reset the gate manually.”

“And that will stop the loop?”

“I sure as hell hope so, because it’s the only idea I’ve got.”

“Terrific.”

John makes a conscious effort to stop his leg from bouncing anxiously as Rodney loads up their data into the dialing device.

He checks his watch. It’s three minutes to eight.

This is going to work. Right? This has to work. He’s put everything he has into this fix and he honestly doesn’t know if he can cope with looping one single time more.

(He’s thought that so many times before. And yet, here he is, still, willing or not.)

“We need to get the timing just right,” Rodney informs the gate techs. He’s taken over the gate room and thankfully the entire base has learned not to get in McKay’s way when he has that steely look in his eye. “We need to engage the program at exactly the moment the incoming wormhole is set to arrive.”

Two minutes to eight. Adrenaline surges, and he wants to run or to fight, but there’s nothing he can do except watch the furrow in Rodney’s brow and the agitated tapping of his fingers against the Ancient keypad.

“Alright, Chuck, ready on my command.”

Rodney’s got this, he tells himself. They’ve got this.

One minute to eight.

“Now!” Chuck sits up straighter, focused on the instruments in front of him. Rodney taps at the keypad, attention narrowed down to the rapidly scrolling code on his screen.

The lights flicker, spluttering overhead and casting the gate room in an eerie disjointed light. The gate starts to rotate, the screeching noise louder than usual, the illuminated symbols seeming to glow more brightly.

There is a moment of absolute stillness, and then -

The whoosh of the outgoing wormhole connecting is the most beautiful sound he's ever heard. He can get out, he can be free, he can live. He doesn't have to be alone any more.

Blood rushes to his head in great waves and makes him dizzy, like this might all be an illusion, like it might disappear at any moment.

He checks his watch. It's two minutes past eight.

He lets out a hysterical peal of laughter, staggers away from the gate controls, and passes out.

He wakes up not in his quarters. The antiseptic smell of the infirmary is the sweetest breath of fresh air.

Elizabeth insists he needs medical supervision, but there's no chance of keeping a hoard of curious scientists away from an oddity like the man who looped through time. So he's in an infirmary bed being gently grilled about the experience by Zelenka, who has apparently been elected their representative.

Elizabeth does her best to project an air of calm as she asks, "Is there any way to know how long we were looping for?"

Zelenka pushes his glasses up on the bridge of nose. "It is hard to say for certain, but extrapolating the current season based on the length of the days, we must have lost around six months."

"Six months?" Elizabeth turns to him, aghast. "John, I can't even imagine."

She means well, but he can't handle pity right now. He plays it off casually, with a wink and a smile. "Trust me, you don't want to." He swings his legs off the side of the bed and calls out to Carson. "Doc, I'm good to leave, right? Pretty sure I'm healthy as a horse, and I've given the research team plenty of material to work with."

Carson looks him over, takes in the weary lines of his shoulders, and eventually nods. He always was perceptive. "Aye, alright. But stop back in tomorrow for a checkup."

"Sure thing. Now if you'll all excuse me, I'm looking forward to a well deserved night off."

He is looking forward to a night off, but the very last place he wants to wake up tomorrow is in his quarters. He'd sooner sleep on one of the piers, or in the locker room, or on a hive ship. Anywhere but there.

But there's another option. Or at least, there might be. So he finds himself fidgeting outside Rodney's door.

The door opens while he's pacing back and forth in the corridor.

"Sheppard?' Rodney blinks at him. "I was just on my way to find you. Earlier you seemed… so I thought… well, this must have been hard for you. What are you doing in the hallway?"

He doesn't have an answer for that. Instead he considers.

Rodney's hair is mussed, the way it gets when he's been deep in thought and running his hands through it. His fingertips are pinching together, a hum of low-grade anxiety that surrounds him whenever he has to confront emotional situations. He's wearing an old grey hoodie, one of his favorites because it's soft, even though he thinks it makes him look dumpy (it doesn't. Or maybe it does, but it doesn't matter, because it's comfortable and warm and it smells like Rodney. John knows because he's stolen it tens of times. It's one of his favorites as well.)

John knows him, knows every part of him, and he's so close he could reach out and touch him, but he's a million miles away as well.

"... John? Do you want to come in?" Rodney's face pinches into a concerned frown. "We don't have to talk, if you'd rather not."

He could walk away. Turn on his heel and leave, never mention any of this, let the whole incident fade into obscurity. But he's so close to having what he wants: something new, something familiar, something beautiful.

He takes a breath. Here is his chance. Now or never.

"Actually, I think we should talk." He lets himself smile at the precious memory, one perfect moment crystallized like a diamond from months of crushing pressure. "I made a promise."

#stargate atlantis #mcshep #my writing

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keelywolfe · 4 years ago

Text

FIC: A Lonely Impulse of Despair (standalone)

Summary: They knew about the anomaly and the resets, but forewarned is not always forearmed.

Notes: I got this idea into my head that what-if all the skeletons knew at least something about the anomaly and the resets and this is where it went. Read the tags!

Tags: Spicyhoney, References to Undertale Genocide Route, Dark, Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Rough Sex, Lemony

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

Snowdin always lived in darkness, broken only by the lighted lamps along the streets, powered by the core. There was no sun underground, no illusion of dawn and dusk. It was morning simply because the clocks stated it to be so, and that morning, Edge left his home to walk down the empty streets to the shops at the far end of town.

The other houses in town stood vacant. There was an occasional window lit, flickering light casting shadows out onto the snowdrifts, but their former inhabitants were gone.

There was no sign of any violence in those homes. None of those windows were broken, the doors undamaged. He’d gone into one where the door was standing open and found dishes in the sink, a pie sitting on the back of the counter for an upcoming dessert. Half-folded laundry sat in a basket, books and toys strewn about as if they were only waiting for their owners to return.

Edge touched nothing, only left and closed the door carefully behind him.

On this morning, snow was falling in a silent flurry. The flakes were piling up on streets that were no longer cleared daily by the Bun family. It was barely a hinderance. His boots cut easily through the loose drifts as he walked, alone, down to the other side of town.

There were children here once. Not so carefree as the ones he’d seen in the other Universes but even here on clear days they played in the snow until their parents called them back inside as the more dangerous night hours came.

A ridiculous notion. The illusion of safety during the day hours was just that, an illusion. There was no difference in the Underground and every minute of any day could bring treacherous events.

From a distance, Edge could see the lights were still on in the store. He’d left them on the day before when he’d come this same way. The store was the closest building to the edge of town that led into the woods surrounding it. If anyone were still out there, those lights could guide them into Snowdin.

The bell over the door rang as Edge pushed it open, a cheery warning to no one at all. The shop was as empty as the homes. The shelves had never been fully stocked at any time in Edge’s memory and the meagre offerings lining them were thinner than ever. There were no more fresh baked goods and only a handful of dried food remained. Most of the commodities left were canned, their lids coated with a thin layer of dust.

(dust, so much dust, how could it be)

Half of the remaining stock would have fit in Edge’s knapsack. It would make more sense to take all the food there and bring it home with him. Spare him the walk out in the open, keep him with necessary provisions for a time. Sensible.

Edge only took enough for the day and carefully noted what remained so he would know if anyone else came scavenging. Monster food would not rot or spoil, but eventually, he was going to run out of rations.

He gathered up the day’s supplies into his knapsack and went back outside into the swirling snow. He didn’t follow his half-buried tracks back home, instead going around the outskirts of town along the perimeter. None of his traps were disturbed, there was no indication that anyone had traveled this way. Just as it had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that. No signs, no people, no other Monsters.

There was nothing in the woods but hungry shadows that beckoned and cajoled for him to join them. Come to us, they said, there is nothing left for you in that town but emptiness and death. Come with us into the swirling snow and listen to secrets that only the mountain knows.

Edge ignored their call. He stopped at the borders of Waterfall where the snow began to melt into sludge and turned back, heading into town along the main road. He was nearly home when he caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks. A figure in a familiar orange hoodie was sitting on his front porch steps, casually disregarding of the signs to ‘keep out’ and ‘beware’ that were strung on the barbed wire fence around it. There was a lit cigarette in his hand and Edge watched him lift it to his mouth and take a long drag, the exhaled smoke lost in the falling snow.

He hitched his knapsack higher on his shoulder and resumed his stride. Stretch didn’t look at him as he approached. “hey.”

Edge said nothing.

“you’re still here,” Stretch said. He tapped ash from his cigarette, exposing burning red at the tip. “thought maybe you’d’ve headed into new home.” He tipped his head back and looked up at what was not sky, but the high ceiling of a cave deep beneath the mountain that was both their prison and their home. “might be other refugees there keeping ahead of—” He hesitated, then added in a voice like hollow ice, “the anomaly.”

The anomaly, yes. The Human child whose soul offered no salvation, only death and dust.

A child, that was what Edge saw in that one brief instant when he came upon them on the road leading into Snowdin. An innocent child, and in his shock, he didn’t consider how they’d gotten past the Dogs or the traps. He didn’t notice the dust coating their clothes, didn’t even notice the knife in their hand. All he saw was the striped shirt, the round, cherubic face and in that instant, he was so taken aback that he paused. That moment of hesitation was all it took.

If Edge saw them again, he wouldn’t hesitate to strike them down, Edge told himself. He would cut that angelic head from their striped shoulders with a single cutting blow and leave them dead where they stood, even knowing he would never get the answer to his one question.

Why didn’t you kill me?

He told himself that was what he would do the next time and knew it wasn’t true.

It never was.

Stretch finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the snow. “doesn’t help much to know this,” Stretch sighed, “but what the hell. you’re gonna forget this all. one morning you’ll wake up and it’ll be an all-new day. you’ll forget everything, the kid, the pain.” His grimace twisted into a crooked smile. “you’ll even forget me, for a little while. silver linings, am i right?”

“Why are you here?” How many days had it been since he’d last spoken? Edge wasn’t certain, but to his hearing, his voice was harsh with disuse, painfully hoarse.

Stretch rolled his shoulders in an approximation of a hug. “checking in. no one’s heard from this ‘verse in a couple weeks. wasn’t too hard to figure out what was going down.”

Not a difficult guess at all, he was sure. They all knew about the resets, all of them. They knew an anomaly came and what it did, and the price Monsters paid for their hubris was death. He’d known what was coming, he’d been braced for it since his brother took him down to the basement and showed the machine, the path to the other worlds where skeletons with faces that resembled their own lived in towns that were not their home. Anomalies, they explained, resets where time flowed backwards and took memory with it.

He’d known and he’d still failed, failed, because he hadn’t expected death would come with the face of a child.

“Come inside.” Edge didn’t wait to see if Stretch followed.

Inside, Stretch paused on the doormat, glancing around the living room. “keeping the homestead clean, i see, i—whoa!”

His breath left him in a grunt as Edge took hold of his sweatshirt and swung him around, shoving him up against the closed door. The faces were inches apart as Edge gritted out, “Why are you here?”

There was no fear on Stretch’s face, only that same irritating smirk beneath a deadened gaze. “told you, wanted to check on you.” He shrugged again, this time tight and nervous. “no one else was gonna. no one’s real sure what’ll happen if the reset comes while someone from another ‘verse is in town. probably shouldn’t even be here, but, eh, guess i ain’t too bright.”

The question of what would happen if you were in a different universe when the reset occurred had been asked before and it was one without an answer. There was simply no way of knowing if anyone had already tested it. For all anyone knew, they might all once have had an elder brother who tested the theory and found the price was a high one. “You might be leaving your brother alone.”

“heh.” A soft laugh, but Stretch’s gaze shifted, moving to look past Edge at the wall on the other side. “ain’t like i’ve ever been able to save him, anyway.”

Edge didn’t step back, but he loosened his grip on Stretch’s sweatshirt, let him slide a little down until his feet were firm on the floor. “If you’re here to try to convince me to leave Underfell—"

“nah. wouldn’t do that to you. see, i’d ask and you’d say no but you’d feel bad about it.” Stretch shook his head. “nah, you already don’t want to travel, i’m not about to send you on a guilt trip. who’s to say it’s safer, anyway. maybe you’d come over to visit and when the reset hit here, it’d drag you back on home through time and space. not my idea of fun.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Edge demanded. “For fun? Come to see Underfell at its safest?” He stepped back enough to wave a hand towards the window as mockingly as Mettaton on their latest game show. “Please, feel free. Wander through the woods, stroll down main street. But I warn you, the scenery will disappoint. There’s nothing out there. I’ve looked. There’s no one, nothing.” His voice was rising, going shrill and Edge shut his mouth, teeth clicking together painfully.

Patiently, hinting at petulance, Stretch said, “i told you, came here to check on you. it’s hard to be the last one around, all you can do is sweep up, put the chairs on the table, and wait for them to turn the open sign on again.”

Edge searched his face. Their skulls were more malleable than simple bone, their magic gave them life and Stretch’s skull was creased from worry, wearing his exhaustion like a skin. Beneath his sockets were grey shadows that spoke of sleepless nights.

They’d never gotten along, he and Stretch. Something about the other skeleton grated on him past the fact that he despite his face, he was more like Red—

(don’t, don’t think about him, don’t)

--than Edge. Not his twin, but a reversal, a twisted mirror image come to visit from the other side of the looking glass.

Despite his smiles, right now he looked more like Edge than ever, blank and bone-weary.

There was nothing inside Edge. Even his soul was empty, its contents drained by loss, cold and bitter as the snow that danced as it fell.

Yet, deep in the dregs of soul’s ashes there was a single spark left, and Edge reached for it, desperate for any lingering warmth. He leaned up and kissed Stretch, their teeth grinding together almost painfully.

Between their mouths, Stretch made a startled sound, but he made no attempt to pull away. He stood there with his shoulders pressed to the door and let Edge take his mouth, their tongues meeting in a furious tangle. He tasted sweet and did not flinch from the jaggedness of Edge’s teeth, licking daringly at the points in a silent, mocking challenge.

The spark inside him flared, kindling caught, and Edge tore away, panting. Before Stretch could offer a word, taunting or otherwise, Edge took him by the wrist and dragged him stumblingly over to the sofa. He pushed Stretch down, bent him over the threadbare cushion of the arm. Tall as he was, if he’d chosen to struggle, it would have been difficult to pin him. Instead, he sagged willingly down against the sofa arm, let it angle his pelvis upward even as he shifted in a deliberate writhe of offering.

The gray that had haunted Edge’s vision for days receded, like a shroud pulled from over his sockets. He took hold of Stretch’s ridiculous, saggy pants and yanked them down to his ankles to rest on top of his dirty sneakers. Beneath them he was bare, his magic forming in his pelvis. The bright orange filled his sight to overflowing and the slit of his cunt glistened like a taunt.

Without warning, Edge pressed two careless fingers to the opening, slipping both inside and Stretch lurched under him, a strangled cry escaping him. He was merely damp, not nearly wet enough for what Edge intended.

He kept a hand at Stretch’s hip to hold him still and dropped to his knees to bury his face against those soft folds, pushing his tongue in alongside his fingers. A sudden buck nearly threw him off and Edge held him down more firmly, slicking his tongue up that cleft between his scissoring fingers, wetting him thoroughly. Stretch whimpered, shivering, his hips rocking back desperately against fingers and mouth both.

“oh, fuck,” Stretch whined. His breath came in ragged blurts, catching and resuming in a shattered cadence. “edge, your mouth…fuck!” His fingers were curled into the sofa cushion beneath his skull, gripping tightly as Edge pushed his tongue deeply inside, tasting a sudden blurt of honey-sweet wetness that allowed his fingers to move easier.

Slowly, Edge stood, letting his fingers slip free and wiping them on his pantleg. He stood there a moment, taking in the sight in front of him. The quiver in Stretch’s shoulders, the perfect arch of his spine beneath his rucked-up sweatshirt, his femurs spread as wide as his hobbling pants allowed. The shift of his hips was as eager as the wet pussy between them and wordlessly, Edge unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. He spit in his hand and spread the wetness on his shaft before lining up. He held there a moment, pussy lips parted around the broad head and the slippery opening clenching around it as if trying to suck him inside.

Over his own unsteady breathing was a constant stream of obscenity and begging, words spilling endlessly from Stretch. With a long, slow thrust, Edge pressed inside, ignoring Stretch’s increasingly desperate pleading and the urgent rise of his hips. When he was hilted inside, their pelvic girdles grazing against each other, Edge was forced to pause, closing his sockets at the unbearable intimacy of it. Edge couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched someone else, but it was before the anomaly (child) ever came here. Even the person he was closest to, his brother, never touched him, not since he was small and they curled up together to sleep, less affection and more to share their body warmth.

The slick tight heat surrounding his shaft was an overload to his touch deprivation, the rippling clench dragging a ragged cry from him as he tried not to come in an instant. Edge took a steading breath, licked his teeth and tasted his own sweat mingled with the sweetness of cunt, and only then did he move.

“nnngg, god!” Stretch sobbed out, his limp body battered against the sofa as Edge found a rhythm, pounding into him with a metronome-steady pace. His scant ectoflesh offered little cushion, their pelvic bones clacking together achingly. Edge ignored the discomfort, thrusting harder still and listening for protests that did not come.

Beneath him, Stretch covered his mouth with a hand, stifling himself even as he pleaded for more, for harder, fuck me harder, you bastard. His other struggled to reach beneath him, his skinny fingers briefly jabbing where they were joined as he sought out his clit. Edge felt it from within as he found it, the strangling clench of his cunt around him, and choked on a curse as he fucked in hard, his driving rhythm faltering, breaking, as orgasm struck him. He was empty inside, but he filled Stretch with the heat of his come, spilled in thick, hot pulses as Stretch whined and quivered, accepting his offering.

Withdrawing was difficult, made harder by both the spasming clutch of cunt and his own reluctance. In the end, Edge snatched himself free with the haste of someone (a child) pulling off a band-aid from a barely healed wound. He watched the crimson spill of his magic as it followed, wet streaks dripping down to paint the inside of Stretch’s femurs. Stretch didn’t move, his breathing still coming in hitched gasps as he laid in a half-crumpled drape over the sofa arm, his long legs still splayed, leaving him used and exposed.

Edge tugged his pants closed, his zipper loud in the silence. “You need to go.”

“heh.” Stretch stirred, his sockets slitting opened as he shifted enough to look over his shoulder. “kicking me out already? your afterglow sucks.”

“Be that as it may, you can’t be here when it resets.”

Perhaps something of the kindled spark in Edge transferred to Stretch somehow, in his kiss, in his come, in his words, he didn’t know which. There was some emotion in the smirk Stretch offered him, his gaze less empty as he asked, “worried about me, edgelord?”

“Yes.” The raw honesty was all he could muster.

Stretch exhaled, long and slow, turning his face briefly into the cushions where they’d all sat once, crowded together on the cushions to watch silly movies that were scavenged from the dump. With a low grunt, he slowly pushed up to his feet. He staggered and Edge caught him by the arm, holding him up as Stretch reached awkwardly for his pants, hauling them up over his stained femurs.

“yeah, i should probably go,” Stretch said. He didn’t move, his hands fluttering nervously to his pockets as if to reach for his cigarettes then aborting, moving aimlessly before returning to his pockets before repeating (resetting) again. “listen, you won’t remember this after and my memory is gonna get all smudgy again, but.” For one moment, Stretch’s gaze was entirely unshielded. Edge couldn’t decipher what he saw in his eyelights before he took reached out, taking hold of Edge’s face between both hands as he leaned in to kiss him, softly. A brief, gentle meeting of mouths still sore from the brutality of earlier, then he pulled away. “maybe we can do this again sometimes.” Unguarded eye lights above a crooked smile, then Stretch turned away as he added, carelessly. “hell, could be we already did.”

“Stretch.” He paused at the door, browbones raised, and Edge blurted out, “Do you think they remember what they’ve done? After a reset, do they know?”

A brief silence, then Stretch said, slowly, “to be honest? i’m not even sure it’s the same kid every time.” Stretch shrugged, a loose roll of his shoulders as if his ligaments still weren’t too tight. “maybe somewhere out there someone is sharing a controller. anyway, your bro should be sending ‘em back to the start menu soon enough.”

“Yes.” His brother. If he was still alive and don’t, don’t, don’t.

Stretch left without another word, the door closing softly behind him, and Edge gathered up his knapsack from where he’d dropped it to get his supplies.

He ate directly from the cans and tasted nothing.

Afterward, Edge curled up on the sofa that smelled of their sex, his cheekbone resting on the faded fabric close to the still-damp stains as he waited for the world to end or to begin again.

Whichever came first.

-fin

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #standalone

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fitgothgirl · 3 years ago

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I haven’t been updating too much here, haven’t been making any progress with my nutrition or exercise habits. I’ve actually been focusing on cutting back on weed. For the first time in my life I actually can cut back by using this kSafe I got. I’m forced to put it off until after work/the evening since it’s locked up, but knowing I can have it later keeps me from freaking out and running to buy more like I would when I’d try to go cold turkey. I’ve never had the self-control before to practice moderation; it’s always been that if I have weed, I will smoke it. I haven’t used the kSafe to go over a day without it yet, but I’ve been an all-day-everyday smoker for about ten years - I need baby steps haha. I was setting it for right when I get off work at 4:30, but recently pushed it out a few more hours to 7pm to have some clear-headed time after work for myself. And this past weekend was the first time I set it on a non-workday; on Saturday I locked it up until 5pm. And for today (Monday) I bumped it out from 7pm to 8pm. I think I’ll keep it at 8pm or 9pm on workdays this week, and 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday next weekend.

I’m starting to feel a good difference not smoking during the day. More focused on work and alert and just clear. Obvious stuff you’d expect. I’m still dealing with some minor anxiety of just feeling like I’m missing something, or not knowing what to do with myself. The feeling of something in the back of my mind nagging at me. But it’s good to feel this discomfort and find out what I’m needing rather than numbing it as I always do. Plus yes, I’m just going to crave it for a while still too.

Not even trying to quit though, although a good long break to reset my brain (when I can eventually do that) would probably be good for me. But I just smoke way too much to be able to be a functioning person with hobbies and interests. It’d be nice if I didn’t smoke everyday, maybe just like every few days or once a week or every couple weeks… Something normal lol.

I know when I have updated here lately, I’ve been talking about my issues with weed. Thanks to anyone who reads through my repetitive complaints and struggles lol. I vent about it here since my health blog includes mental health, of course.

In terms of actual physical health, things are pretty much back at square one. My HW on my blog bio is 166.9lbs (75.7kg) in January of last year. I’m 164lbs (74.4kg) right now. I did get down to around 153lbs (69.4kg) last year around May/June, but I’ve gone back up and lost my muscle, etc. As much as I love working from home, I definitely think it’s making my health deteriorate and my weight go up at an exponential rate. I only get a couple thousand steps a day, maybe. When I first started WFH, I was going on little 10-20 minute walks once or twice during the workday and that was nice. I need to get back to that. I did go on a 20 minute walk yesterday, so that was something considering the level of stagnation I’m at lol. I just felt the need to fucking move at least a little lol (and get out of the house); I can really feel it in my body how stagnant I am. I’m getting some lower back pain now too, which isn’t an issue I’ve dealt with before.

I also was excited about WFH because I wouldn’t have to worry about packing a lunch or anything anymore, but even though that’s true, I’m so bored of so many foods and am really struggling to prepare even simple things for myself over ordering out. I know I’ve mentioned this before here too. Still just figuring it out though.

#1/10/22 #fitblr #fitness #personal fitblr #health #healthy #healthblr #exercise #weight loss #healthy weight loss #nutrition #addiction #weed #marijuana #mine

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seiin-translations · 4 years ago

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2.43 S1 Chapter 4.3 - Drifting Yunichika

3. IN-AND-OUTER

Just continuing to wing all the volleyball jargon here cuz i have no idea what’s going on

Translation Notes

1. Don’t know if there are English equivalents for these terms, but the Japanese uses terms like 表レフト (omote-left) and 裏レフト (ura-left), where omote refers to the aces of the team, who are put in the front row for as long as possible, and the ura refers to the players diagonal to them

2. A broad attack is basically where the spiker approaches and jumps towards the net when they hit

3. Pipe in volleyball refers to a back row set aimed at the middle of the court

Previous || Index || Next

He had lied to Haijima about one thing.

Just before he entered the training camp, he received an email from Yorimichi for the first time in a long while. I’ll be back home in August, so let’s have some fun. Then call me when I don’t have practice. That was about all they exchanged back and forth, but he somehow failed to bring that up. Kuroba didn’t think that hanging out with Yorimichi was in itself a bad thing. He wasn’t going to go along with his smoking and drinking and riding double on a bike with no helmet like he used to. Even he had already learned to be sensible about that. He loved volleyball, his team was important to him, and he had self-awareness as a member of a sports team. ��And yet, Haijima talked like he flat-out didn’t trust him.

Ah…geez, I’m feeling kinda gloomy.

“I’m getting a second helping of rice.”

When he stood with his empty bowl in one hand and a sullen look on his face, Uchimura, sitting across from him, looked disheartened.

“After eating so much meat yesterday, how can you eat again in the morning? I’m still not very hungry.”

“That stuff all got digested when I ran at night. Maybe you should have gone for a run too, Senpai?”

“I’ll have to decline, since I’m not so young anymore,” his senpai said like he was an old man, despite the fact he was only a year older than him.

The school cafeteria was usually open to students only at lunch time and only to faculty and staff in the morning, but during summer vacation, breakfast was prepared for club members using the boarding house. In addition, special meals were offered to members of the athletic clubs, which was much appreciated. The morning special for today was the combo of grilled fish and deep-fried chicken. The after-meal fruits were bananas and oranges. They were free to get second helpings of rice.

When he opened the lid of the six-litre gas rice cooker, the only remaining amount of rice was the rice grains sticking to the inside of the rice cooker.

“Ma’am, there’s no more rice!”

He hit the edge of the iron pot with the rice scoop and called out to the kitchen. “How much white rice can you all eat? There are students from other clubs coming for lunch, so please hold back a little.” A small old lady in an apron powerfully carried a stainless steel cauldron to replace the empty pot. White steam was rising from the pot where freshly cooked white rice was glittering.

When Kuroba left the rice cooker after piling a mountain of rice into his bowl, Okuma and Oda were lined up behind him looking like this was perfectly natural. Aren’t these two on their third bowls?

He returned to the table where Uchimura was, poured the natto over his rice and started eating his second bowl. Uchimura was also not lacking in appetite, and even though he was talking about something or other, he stored everything in his stomach without leaving a single grain of rice or a piece of vegetable on his plate, and he was about to peel an after-meal orange.

“I have no complaints about your stamina. But your mental strength though… Can’t you do something about it?”

“…I know that. You don’t have to tell me.”

“And? What happened to your partner with the mental strength of steel?”

“That’s how you’re comparing us…? Haijima’s still sleeping.”

Last night, he and Haijima were dragged out of the boarding house, and the two of them were made to do twenty dashes on the slope between the mountain and the school. In the darkness of night where there was only moonlight, they could only hear each other’s dying breaths as they dashed up the slope, pitching forward and almost falling, then staggering downhill, and repeat. Every drop of his urge to make merry with his school trip-like mood had been wrung out of him, and he fell asleep in an instant as soon as he collapsed onto his futon after he finally returned to the boarding house, where everyone was already completely asleep. As expected of Aoki-senpai, he had felt.

He woke up this morning feeling hungry as usual because he had recovered his strength after sleeping, but Haijima hadn’t recovered yet, and he was still lying flat on his futon as though he was dead. It’s not like one of our senpais came to keep an eye on us, and they wouldn’t have known if you had cut down on the number of dashes… He wasn’t that kind of flexible guy. When it came to volleyball, Haijima seemed to “not want to lose to anyone,” not just in practice, but also in preparation and cleaning, and he didn’t cut corners. Well, I think that part of him is pretty admirable, but he only has two hands, so there are times when you just gotta cut those corners.

“Haijima doesn’t have much stamina, right? I guess he’s not perfect.”

Uchimura tilted his head while tossing an orange into his mouth.

“That guy has plenty of flaws.”

When Kuroba answered sullenly, a plastic tray was placed on the table with a bang.

“O-Oh, Haijima. Good morning.”

Uchimura pulled himself away from the table, flinching slightly.

“…’Sup.”

With a sour expression like there was a sign reading “low blood pressure” pasted to it, Haijima pulled the chair next to Kuroba. His club activity switch still wasn’t flipped, so he was wearing his glasses, and his thin bangs were bouncing in a strange way due to his bed hair. When Kuroba somehow failed to speak up and kept silent, Haijima also kept silent towards him and began to bring his food to his mouth with his eyes mostly closed and a face that looked like he was about to throw up. He spiked with his left and right hands, but he basically used his left hand for holding pencils and chopsticks.

Kuroba, who had been wolfing down his second bowl of rice without a care in the world, slowed down his eating speed to match Haijima’s, thinking that it would look like he had an easier time even though they ran the same amount.

“You don’t look so good, you know? Don’t force yourself to eat if you can’t eat. Just eat a banana or something. I’ll eat one too.”

“I’m just sleepy from all the sleeping time I lost. I can eat.”

Haijima was strangely stubborn towards Uchimura’s concern for him, and he greedily shoveled down the rice that he had been slowly bringing to his mouth with so much vigor that he had to wash it down with miso soup. Is he doing this out of spite…? No wait, I have stuff I’m annoyed with him about too. Kuroba wasn’t happy with him. But Haijima didn’t even notice his dissatisfaction anyways.

He felt like an idiot and began energetically moving his chopsticks again. The fatigue in his body was reset after he woke up from sleep, and he planned to show his best performance today, but the gloomy feelings in his heart still haven’t cleared up.

Uchimura shrugged his shoulders at the two who were tilting their bowls and turning their chopsticks like they were competing against each other, then said, “I’ll be leaving, then,” before taking his tray and quickly leaving the table.

*** Kuroba’s position was the so-called “front-left” among left-side players, and it was considered the ace position in high school volleyball. Oda was the back-left, diagonal from him. (1) The left-side players, who took on a large percentage of the team’s total attacks and hit from both the front row and back, generally had the most number of hits. Aoki was the front center, and the back center who was diagonal to him was Okuma, who they were trying to polish at a quick pace. The right-side position that was diagonal to the setter Haijima was filled by Kanno. The left and right-side attackers, as well as the centers, were the so-called “attacker” positions.

The basic six-person team composition was two left-side players, two centers, and two right-side players. Due to the rotation, front row and back row players often changed places, attackers in the same positions were placed diagonally from each other so that the front row’s height and offensive power were maintained. The ability to receive in the back row was also necessary for the left and right positions. Receiving formations were the key to using more difficult combination attacks.

There was also a player in a special position called a libero. He mainly replaced a center player, who retreats to the back row, and played a central role in receptions (serve receive) and digs (spike receive). It was this position that did the miraculous dive in the middle of a rally. Hokao was this libero. And Uchimura was like a jack-of-all-trades who could step in if there was a shortage of people. There was no way Seiin could afford to have a reserve for each position.

They spent the afternoon of their second day of training camp practicing combo attacks. Two to four attackers went onto the court and coordinated a team play together with the setter Haijima. Although he had many thoughts about Haijima, Kuroba called out to him for a set. “Alright, over here!” Haijima glanced at him. He felt like he had an annoyed look on his face.

Haijima ignored Kuroba, and—also skipped Aoki, who also jumped for a C quick, before jump back setting the ball to Kanno, who ran right up to the antenna on the right side. The precision of Haijima’s back set was so unchanged from when he set from the front that it made one wonder if he had eyes on the back of his head. Quick attacks ranged from A quicks to D quicks, with A being the closest to the left side from the setter’s set position. B was a little farther. C was the closest to the right side with a back set, and D was a little farther. A combination attack was when another attacker got involved with the decoy quicker and disrupted the opponen’s blocking. Of course, there were times when a set went to the quicker. It was the setter’s chance to show what they could do by putting together a tactic that made full use of all the attackers on the court and make the most optimal set at each moment.

That’s what Haijima talked about yesterday. A combo with a center’s C quick and a right side’s broad jump—.

A sharp spike was driven in with a slap from the right side.

Kanno-senpai is so good…he marveled inwardly. He was an attacker whose special qualities were his fast swings and good control, and he was also good at getting around blockers (there was a suspicion that the blockers momentarily forgot his existence because he had such a weak presence). The right side also jumped to a double quick along with the center. A wide-ranged broad attack (2) was also required. Many times, a player who is a consistent receiver would be put in the position. It was a position that required the ability to be an all-rounder. Kanno wasn’t assertive, but he reliably executed the role that was given to him without hesitation. It seemed that Haijima also had a high opinion of Kanno. A guy who fundamentally didn’t communicate with other people always said a few words to him and made minor corrections after each set.

He called the set with all his might and when he was ignored, he felt that he was being lame, so he was determined to make up for it by hitting a big one as soon as possible.

But that didn’t go according to plan. After that, Haijima didn’t set to Kuroba at all. Not even a single one after several hours of play. It seemed that today, Haijima’s interest was in creating a combo between the centers and the right-side players.

Halfway through practice, he stopped calling for the sets and his jumping became half-hearted, which made Oda angry with him several times. “Kuroba—. Concentrate more. Even if a set doesn’t go to you, look around and think about your next move.”

“…I know that.”

When he answered with a rebellious attitude, Oda shrugged his shoulders like he had no idea what to do and made a proposition to Haijima. “Haijima, why don’t you try another combo after you finish this one? The pipe (3) might be faster if you do it with Kuroba.” He didn’t like the way he talked like he was obviously fussing over him. Even though we’re both first-years, it’s like only Haijima is special…I don’t disagree that he is special, but he doesn’t even seem to notice how much he’s valued by the captain, much less be thankful. The things that he was happy to be told about yesterday strangely got on his nerves today.

Though Haijima looked extremely annoyed at having cold water thrown on the practice he was taking part in, this was the first time in a long while he looked over at him.

“Kuroba.”

His body reflexively stiffened at being called. Haijima put his hands on his hips, kicked the floor with his heel once, sighed, and then spoke.

“There’s no point in you being here, so just get out of here.”

“Hah…!?”

His voice cracked at the sudden discharge notice.

“Wha, you…Don’t get too full of yourself, is a setter really dropping an attacker because of a personal grudge?”

“Grudge?” This guy looks like he has no idea what that means.

“You’re still mad that you had to run because of me.”

“I’m not gonna be picky for a stupid reason like that. Are you an idiot?”

This guy really put an emphasis on the first syllable of “idiot”. Don’t play blind to your stupidity! He really is such an unpleasant guy.

“So why…”

He grabbed Haijima’s arm and pressed him for an answer. Haijima’s face twisted slightly as he glared back at him aloofly. He looked and saw that he had put too much strength into his fingers and they were digging into Haijima’s arm, turning the skin there white.

He clicked his tongue and dropped Haijima’s arm as though it was on fire.

“Uchimura-senpai, could you please do receiving practice with me?”

He turned on his heel and left the court with long strides. “Huh? Alright,” Uchimura answered in puzzlement and followed him. “That moodiness of his…” The mutters of his senpais, who seemed to have given up on him, hurt his back, so he couldn’t turn back to the court anymore. I’m not the bad guy here…While frustration welled up within him, he pushed the ball cage to a corner of the gym. If he were to roll this thing with all his strength and smash it against the wall, it would dissipate a little, but that wasn’t going to happen, so he had no choice but to use all his self-control and push it with normal force.

The training camp that had been fun until the first night had suddenly become boring. Was this payback for getting carried away by feeling like he was on a school trip, just as Haijima said? He wasn’t really getting carried away. He had been plenty fired up for working hard at practice. That was all gone now with Haijima’s attitude.

He was the one who joined the team in April, but Haijima, who joined later, became an indispensable member of the team from that point on, and their senpais yielded to him. More than anything, Oda was captivated by Haijima. When it became like that, now that Nagato was gone, he was the only one treated like a halfway middle schooler, and not acknowledged as a necessary part of the team.

Previous || Index || Next

#2.43 #2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club #2.43 book 1 #2.43 translation

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feather-dancer · 4 years ago

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Tales of Arcadia Fanfic Recommendations - Part 4

Are you thinking perhaps, wow I never expected a fourth fanfic recc list so soon? Because if you do I feel exactly the same way! I thought I’d have some more of my own writing out by the time it happened and yet even before Wizards I was building up a good list of reading then the release just set off a flood of ‘em I’ve been duly binging and hoarding. Because of how long this post is getting I’m at the point of wanting it out my drafts and in the wilds before it begins to grow legs.

As when I posted the third list, I suspect within 48 hours I’ll find a new fic and I’ll need to start drafting a fifth one thus the cycle continues...

You can find Part 1 of my fanfic recommendations here!

And Part 2 here!

Part 3 is here!

Plus one shameless plug for my own current fics because I can.

General Trollhunters

Hold My Hand in The Dark - Jim may have escaped the Darklands but even now it still has it’s claws in him.

To Say Nothing of the Dog - A Steli fic that’s very cute. Sometimes trolls aren’t the strangest thing you find out in the woods of Arcadia.

say that you'll stay awake for me - Another Steli fic where they’re both completely useless but it’s full of fluff anyway.

Candy canes and Sugar plums - Two very sweet Christmas themed one shots. In one Not!Enrique has to get ready for a photography session and another Jim as a half-troll gets mistaken for Krampus by a pair of kids.

Despondent Contemplations - Back in the old library that was once their home in Heartstone Trollmarket, Blinky and AARRRGGHH reminisce about old times. Contains minor spoilers for Wizards but not enough to remove from this section.

The Indecency of Courage - The thoughts of Kanjigar during his final battle.

Brotherhood - It’s hard to love a sibling who betrayed then later attempted to kill you and in return you permanently blinded but with some relationships it’s worth seeing if it’s still possible to mend.

In Our Times To Come - Jilaire, trauma comes in many shapes and forms but as long as you have the right people around you perhaps you can work your way through them together.

General Wizards - Skip this section if you wish to avoid spoilers

The City Never Sleeps - Douxie, Archie and Nari are now on the run trying desperately to keep off the radar in their new home of New York City but the flights of fancy of the old traveling days meet a whole new reality where things are a lot more expensive. For his new family though, this wizard willingly burns himself out over and over to keep them safe.

Home Away From Home -The sequel oneshot to the above and the struggle continues. Nari's attempts to figure out her place after a month of adjustment while Douxie seems to have lost all concept of things called plates.

a rescue from the weight you've carried - The ending these kids DESERVE.

Eyes Like Hope, a Smile Like Mercy, a Voice Like Justice - Without even realising it, Jim offered so much to the trolls of the past just by the virtue of being Jim.

Another Mistake - It’s not easy to revisit your past but in Douxie’s case he is offered a unique chance to see his younger self and the humbler roots he once came from.

Strings - Zouxie and oh GOD is this adorable and fluffy and I love it very much.

Waiting for Dawn - It’s over isn’t it? But Jim’s journey isn’t, not quite yet. His next task involves stumbling back home with the help of his friends and family and figure out the immediately of the after.

Center Stage - Douxie’s relationship with Merlin might have been incredibly complicated but it does not make the grief any easier to bear.

i've got to find my soul all before i sleep - Jim has been given a second chance at life and as a human at that but the niggling feeling of his old (New?) skin not quite fitting right anymore.

Stricklake

A Little Bit Pear-Shaped - Even when you think you haven’t taken your eye off the ball you find out maybe you might have and, well, then the title happens.

it's a lovely day in stricklake month - And Dreamcrow is once more coming up with the goods for us all to enjoy. The 6th chapter is nsfw as forewarning.

Dropout - Jim was human, once, then in the course of mere days he was transformed into a half-troll, fought to save the world and then forced to leave home and family behind as a reward for surviving. It’s no wonder that when given the chance to finally breathe again Barbara struggles with what has and what will be.

K.O. - The end result of Strickler’s terrible not so fun day results in a hospital visit but at least the upside involves the fact Barbara is there.

Alternate Universe

The Unwelcome Guest Do you remember Sam from the wonderful Whispers Within aka the Gay Uhl with a monster boyfriend fic? Well here he is a bit earlier than that still causing chaos but this time via trying to be ever so helpful towards a certain avocado coloured changeling who would sincerely like this to stop happening. Please.

left-hand florilegium - Even the great Walter (Stricklander) Strickler was a youngling, once, but no road a changeling may travel was designed to be anything other than a constant test to prove your worthiness in survival to gain a place in a brand new world.

Both Sides of the Sky - Jilaire with a historical regency twist and an arranged marriage that forces Jim into Claire’s path. On the surface he appears extremely nervous of something (Or more specifically someone) and she’s had quite enough of suitors making for a poor match. However, a simple act of kindness can bring with it an awful lot of shadows you might well have better off staying oblivious to.

A Foundation of Fluff - I never knew a ship of Barbara, Strickler and Draal could be so adorable and?? Yet?? The spite ship train is glorious. A foundation of fluff is a very apt description.

Broken Mirror - You might think this is another Unbecoming take but you’ll be surprised. During an argument with Merlin over his general treatment of others after the great move to New Jersey, Jim is flung elsewhere to wake up on the fabled day he found the amulet and very much human again. Not wanting to mess things up this time he goes to rescue Kanjigar before he is felled but nothing goes as expected.

Bitter Sixteen - The stalkling was set on Jim and in a lightning storm he was carried away but what if Toby never got that call to come to his rescue?

The World Ended Yesterday - The events of Unbecoming seem so long ago now yet here something went very wrong during the attempt to return to the future causing Jim to be lost to not only time but the very world he came from. Seemingly within another reset, he is not going to bury his head in the sand but equally the half-troll is determined to spare this world’s self future tragedy.

What the Night Brings - There are trolls in Arcadia, hidden underground and planning payback for having the surface lands stolen from them centuries ago. While there is contention in the ranks nobody dares say no to Gunmar the Skullcrusher and there is no Trollhunter to protect the dissents. Jim unwittingly witnesses what he should not and now carries the scars and no longer does he remain a human when the dusk comes, instead he is now some form of were-troll. What’s worse, he’s having to face this whole confusing mess alone.

Claire The Courageous - In a different universe Claire became the Trollhunter instead of Jim and Steve of all people ends up being the one dragged into the world of trolls with her. That however does not mean that Jim isn’t still involved in her journey in some way...

#Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Wizards #ToAWizards

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 5 years ago

Text

Won’t You Stay (Part 2)

Summary: Jensen starts his first day of work and learns who the reader is...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x Director!reader

Word Count: 2,400ish

Warnings: language

A/N: There is no taglist for this series. Check out the masterlist to see how to be notified of new parts. Please enjoy!

______

“Ella,” you said into your phone the next morning as you walked out of your budget meeting, ready to dive into filming. “It was an accident. I’m sure the girl on the other team knows that.”

“I know. I broke her nose though. I felt so bad,” she said.

“She’ll live. Talk to your coach. Maybe she knows the other one and you can send a get well card or something,” you said.

“Yeah, I think maybe I’ll do that,” she said. “How’s the movie going? I didn’t hear dad come home last night.”

“There was a slight problem yesterday but hopefully it’s settled now,” you said, hearing the phone get shuffled around. “No, Anthony, I’m not getting you Gil Nicholas’ autograph. Guy isn’t even going to be in the movie.”

“Really?” asked your brother.

“Really. He’s kind of a douche. I gotta go and you guys have school. I’ll talk to you guys later,” you said.

“Wait!” said Anthony. “The Nolan situation. You said you’d help.”

“Help what? You two are dating,” you said.

“Mom and dad, genius,” he said.

“Anthony,” groaned Ella in the background. “Mom and dad will not care that you like boys. Y/N and I like boys and they don’t.”

“Yeah but I’m the only boy and our dad literally plays a badass on TV and in movies, El,” he said.

“Anthony. Our dad also was a single father to me for years. He played dress up and princesses and he gave me the puberty talk. He loves you no matter what. So does mom. Trust me,” you said.

“Yeah, but you’re like, his favorite,” he said. You shut your eyes and sighed. “You know what I mean. You’re special.”

“I didn’t meet mom until I was ten years old, Anthony. Dad and I were on our own. I’m not his favorite. There’s no favorite,” you said. “Dad is just overly protective of me is all. We’ll talk about your cute little boyfriend later, okay? I promise.”

“Alright. See ya,” he said. You shook your head as you hung up and headed onto the set, stopping by the breakfast line to grab some coffee.

An hour later you were at the Hale’s house location, everything looking like it was running smoothly. You popped inside and saw your dad rehearsing with Jensen, giving them both a smile.

“How’s it going?” you asked.

“Good,” said your dad. “We gonna start soon?”

“Five or so minutes,” you said, Jensen staring at you.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were a PA on the movie,” he said. Your dad chuckled along with a few other people in the room.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” you said, holding out a hand and watching the color drain from Jensen’s face. “I’m your director and the author of The Dark Woods.”

“Well fuck me,” he said, shaking your hand as you smirked. “Oh my...I am so sorry for being late last night and assuming you were a PA and you’re Ethan Y/L/N’s daughter and you wrote my favorite book ever which I was totally fanboying out over last night and I’m going to shut up now.”

“Don’t do that. You’re getting paid to talk after all,” you said with a smile. “Walk with me for a second.”

He followed you out to the back porch and across the yard, swallowing loudly when you came to a stop by a tree.

“Sorry about not mentioning it earlier. I didn’t want you to be nervous in your audition if I was there and I figured it wasn’t a huge deal if you found out this morning,” you said.

“No, no mam. It’s-”

“Please, no mam or boss or that crap. Y/N, that’s it,” you said. “I’m not even your boss.”

“I’m mostly embarrassed about how I gushed last night about the book to the freakin author,” he said, some blush crossing his cheeks.

“As the freakin author, we live for that shit,” you laughed. Jensen relaxed and let out a small one of his own. “I watched your audition. You knew Lyle inside and out.”

“I’ve read the book more than a few times. I…” he trailed off, face going red.

“Yes?”

“I should quit while I’m ahead,” he said.

“Maybe you can tell me why you like it so much over that drink,” you said, giving him a smile. He looked around and raised an eyebrow.

“You still want to do that?” he asked.

“I’m in charge. It doesn’t mean I’m your boss. That’s casting’s job. I would still expect a drink,” you said.

“Is that such a good idea?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I sort of asked as...not friends,” he said. “You being...you and the director…”

“Oh,” you said.

“Your dad is kind of terrifying too,” he said.

“Yeah. He has scared off more than a few guys. Or they’re more interested in him,” you said, forcing a smile. You’d never in a million years want him to feel uncomfortable so if he wanted to keep things professional, that was okay with you. “I guess I’ll be drinking alone on Saturday then.”

“I mean, I didn’t say…” he trailed off. “Maybe someday-“

“It’s cool, Jensen. Let’s get started for the day, hm?” you said. He nodded and you headed back inside the house, finding your chair in a back room. “We ready to go?”

“Mhm,” said your assistant director AJ as he took a seat beside you. You sat back and pulled on your headphones as various departments started shouting off, the camera lining up its first shot.

“Action!” you called. Your dad walked into the kitchen, pointing for Jensen to take a seat. He begrudgingly did so, your dad going to the fridge and pulling out a carton of eggs.

“You live here?” asked Jensen.

“No. I pay the mortgage on this place for fun. Of course I live here, kid,” he said. “Now keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re not a very pleasant person,” mumbled Jensen. Your dad spun around and grabbed the fork off the table, holding it up to Jensen’s neck. He froze, not even letting a breath escape.

“I am still not positive if I’m letting you live yet so be quiet if you want to increase your odds,” he said. Jensen swallowed and your dad pulled away, going back to the eggs. “I hope you like fried eggs.”

“Actually I don’t,” said Jensen. Your dad spun around again but this time Jensen stared him down.

“Fried eggs it is,” he said with a smirk. Jensen rolled his eyes and you called cut.

“Do it again,” you said. “Jensen, can you pause when you walk in and take a look around this time? Notice the house a bit.”

“No problem,” he said.

“Reset,” you said, waiting for them to get out of view of the camera. “Action!”

“Hey, Jensen,” you said, catching him in the parking lot for the actors near the production office that evening. He spun around with a smile, fixing his backpack on his shoulders.

“Hi, Y/N. What’s up?” he asked.

“I uh, just wanted to say you did really good today. I’m really happy you’re playing Lyle,” you said.

“Oh. Thanks. I’m nowhere near as good as your dad,” he said. “He’s kind of insanely good at this.”

“He’s had more practice,” you said. “Honestly though, I’m glad Gil dropped out. He wouldn’t have done what you were doing today.”

“Why’d he drop out anyways? He’s in freaking Marvel movies. He’s huge,” said Jensen.

“I think he got an offer to do some serious drama. He doesn’t need a breakthrough role. He’s already had that. To be honest I never liked the choice,” you said.

“Well, Lyle’s smart. Gil isn’t exactly known for playing intelligent characters,” said Jensen. You smirked and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I probably shouldn’t trash talk him. I’ve never met him.”

“I have. Trust me. He deserves it. You know your Lyle Sullivan,” you said.

“I started rereading today during a few breaks. Never hurts to have the source material in your head,” he said.

“Not sure Gil can read so you’re already winning,” you said. Jensen laughed and nodded. “You don’t have to reread though Jensen. I kept the script the same as the book.”

“Oh, I know. I could tell there weren’t really any changes between them. I just like rereading it,” he said.

“I like to read it every once in a while too,” you said. “I’d say if you ever had any questions on how to play a scene or how Lyle would act feel free to ask but I have a feeling you won’t need help in that department.”

“You had plenty of notes for me today,” he said, ducking his head down.

“I’m sorry,” you said, his head instantly popping up.

“No, no. They were good. It’s kind of why I’m reading it again. Take the kitchen scene today. It’s very clear in the book how Lyle looks around the space,” he said. You stared at him and smiled.

“Jensen, you don’t have to memorize the thing. It’s why I give you notes, so you don’t have to. I know I went a bit overboard today. I’ll try to ease up some.”

“No, it’s good. Keep doing it. It makes it better,” he said. “I want to make it look as good as possible. I can’t imagine being in charge of everything.”

“Well I only get called kid in every meeting I’m in which is lovely,” you said. “I mean my dad is the other lead. I get the whole people thinking this is nepotism thing.”

“Didn’t you use a pen name during publishing though, at least to get someone to choose it on it’s own merits, not your name? I thought I read that,” he said.

“Yeah. I did. Once I got the deal I gave my real name. I mean, people can think whatever they want. I wanted it published because it was good enough though, not because some chick in an office thinks my dad is attractive or something,” you said.

“I can understand that,” he said. “Hey, can I ask question about the book?”

“Shoot,” you said as he leaned back against his car.

“Why does the cover have a picture of the woods on a bright day if it’s the Dark Woods? I always wondered that,” he said.

“Oh boy,” you laughed. “It’s been a while since I’ve been asked that. If you can believe it, there was a printing error where they forgot to add a filter but it was too late to go back and fix it. I ended up liking it.”

“Here I thought it was because Lyle’s a good guy, Hale too, despite all the reasons they have to be bad,” he said. “You know, light in dark. Symbolism or whatever.”

“Nah,” you laughed, Jensen letting out one of his own. “I do like that interpretation though. I uh, I’m sorry for keeping you. I’m sure you want to get home. I have to go do some more work. I won’t keep you anymore.”

“No, it’s cool. I like talking to you,” he said. “I’ll catch you around tomorrow, Y/N.”

“You too, Jensen.”

You headed into the building, heading upstairs to where your movie had a few rooms to use. You popped into your small office and pulled out your laptop from your backpack, stretching before you grabbed your binder and sat down.

You skimmed through it and made some notes, hopping back and forth between it and your email for a while. You yawned and put your head in your hand, scrolling through a few things and making a choice on a few costume choices for Jensen and your dad.

“Kiddo,” said your dad, shaking your shoulder all of a sudden. You popped your head up from your production office desk, your dad giving you a smile. “You missed mom’s calls earlier. She had me come check on you since you never answered. I think you conked out at some point.”

“What time is it?” you yawned.

“About three in the morning. I checked your apartment first,” he said. “Come on, up and at ‘em.”

“I got to be here at six for prep, might as well stay,” you said, stretching in your seat.

“You’ll burn yourself out if you pull all-nighters all the time,” he said. “It’s only day three.”

“And it took a lot longer to film yesterday’s scenes than I thought it would,” you said. “Everything was good but the location hopping took way longer than I thought it would.”

“Follow me,” he said. You groaned and he pulled you to your feet, guiding you down the hall and outside to the night air. You walked for a few minutes until you were at his trailer door, your dad opening it up and flipping on the light switch.

“Your trailers have gotten nicer over the years,” you said as you stepped up inside

“And what was your favorite part of my trailers ever since you were a little girl?” he asked, walking you back to the bedroom. “The big ass bed.”

“They were awesome for jumping on,” you said.

“Well next time you skip dinner at our place, text mom so she doesn’t worry and the next time you need to stay late, crash here, sweetie,” he said. “Now sleep, kiddo. I’ll be out on the pullout.”

“Thanks dad,” you said, getting a kiss on the forehead before you plopped down on the bed.

“Rest up. Tomorrow’s a big stunt day.”

______

A/N: Read Part 3 here!

#supernatural #spn #jensen x reader #jensen ackles #supernatural series #supernatural reader insert #jensen ackles x reader #spn reader insert #jensen reader insert #jensen x #jensen ackles x you

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ms-a-z-u-l · 4 years ago

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All Over Again (Goro Akechi x Reader)

Summary: Every time, you wake up in April 9. Nothing works and you’re beginning to think you and him are going to keep dying until fate gets tired of punishing you. Until Akira finds the most cruel solution to break the cycle that keeps causing Goro pain, and you have to decide if you want to follow or stay.

Categories: Angst

Warnings: Character death

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A/N: This is the last one I’ve written. I honestly don’t know why I took so long in posting in when it was done some time ago but I sorta got my motivation back (my college essays have been killing me) I hope I can start writing more and post more quickly and get more ideas on more characters. Thank you for reading!

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Over and over, the same events repeated until either or both of you ended up death, blood pooling from your bodies as your eyes went dull and everything faded.

The next thing you know, you wake up once again in bed with groggy eyes, as if what happened last time was just a nightmare.

Every time, you would go to the living room to find Goro sitting in the couch, staring at nothing. Sitting beside him, you stared at your hands, verifying that, yes, you were alive once again and that, no, the cycle that’s been going on for who knows how long now is still taking you back in time to April 9. The day He arrived.

From changing routines, a significant action, a specific response, to the tiniest of details, nothing seem to change what happens in the end. Even letting both of you be killed together, that was the latest tactic and yet you managed to see the repeated light of day. There was silence for minutes, wondering and grasping at possibilities of what could break the torturous cycle, something missing in the equation. Goro’s knee started to bounce, seeming at his wits end.

“I’m beginning to think this is punishment” he chuckled dryly, clearly tired and restless. “If it is, then they went all out, huh?” You replied sarcastically. “It should only be me to be pulled into this bullshit” hearing him whisper that made you turn your head to look at him. His head was down now, looking defeated, or perhaps guilty, you never knew with him. Even though you’ve been living in the same apartment, Goro never really told you anything about himself or his past, and you didn’t pry in fear of appearing nosy. It wasn’t until the first time reset after he almost got shot, but you took the hit and woke up in April 9 that he told you more than he did in almost two years of knowing him. After all, the others had already found out about his father and the shit he got put through in the engine room, might as well tell his assistant and what he could call a friend everything he bottled up.

You didn’t show shock or fear despite knowing his deeds as a hit man for Shido, instead trying to change his actions this time around. None of the Phantom Thieves seemed to notice the reset in time, except for of course the leader himself. Akira didn’t notice right away, it took him the second reset to feel like something was amiss, going to Shujin for the first time again, meeting Ann and Ryuji, feeling like the conversation already happened. You both managed to notice his awareness the moment you “met” his eyes narrowing at Goro, not because of his betrayal, but because he was alive. Revealing your awareness and explaining more in detail, Akira tried to contain his shock and most of all confusion, but agreed to help find a way out.

However, nothing worked and even he was getting desperate as each reset happened. This might be punishment, but what Goro wonders is why it wasn’t only for him, but for you and Akira as well. You sighed, slowly reading your hand to lay it on his shoulder, “Maybe because I was willing to take it with you. You don’t have to be alone, even in this- whatever you wanna call it, a punishment, curse-“

“You don’t get it!!” He pushed your hand away angrily, “The least I wanted was to pull you into this!! From the moment I stepped foot out of the apartment to go after them in Shido’s palace and told you not to follow, that was the goddamn moment you should of bolted and escaped from me!! But no, you decided it was best not to listen and be stupid by following me. You ruined yourself and for what? For a petty concept such as care and friendship” He sounded harsh, and yet you didn’t dare flinch, you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“Hah, it’s for the same thing that you’re saying this now, idiot” you huffed, looking at him as if he was ludicrous. “What did you-“

“You didn’t want to involve me for the same reason, Goro. Because you cared, because you believed that if I saw you like that, I would be hurt, but guess fucking what, I didn’t. And I didn’t because for once I saw you, not the “look at me, I’m so charming” facade you mastered over time, and I wanted- “ you paused as you were building your resolve and stared directly at his eyes, “I wanted to see more of you, no matter how terrifying it could be, because at the end I’ll see my friend, not a monster. And I’m not justifying you. Yes, I was furious at what you did, but that didn’t mean giving up on you was the best thing to do, or leaving you to die. You will carry on your sins, and turn them into resolve to destroy this shitty system. Now we might died just a few more times-“ you narrowed your eyes and pinched your thumb and index finger close together while he wore a dumbfounded face.

“Buuut, that’s the price I took even if it meant spending all my Aprils and Mays and Junes just to get to spend more time with you” you quickly added, “even if you can be an asshole sometimes” at that, he actually slapped his hand over your mouth to shut you up, trying to keep your laughing at bay, “Keep it up and I just might be the biggest asshole and throw you out-“ you laughed harder at those words, getting him more irked. He let out a long sigh and removed his hand from your mouth, “You’re impossible”

——————————————————————

Akira was finally able to find you in the park, alone since Goro still had his work going on again. He looked disturbed in a way and serious, as if he was anxious to speak. You looked at him worryingly and with furrowed brows, “You do still remember, right? It took you quite some time now call us” you heard him hold in a breath and after a few seconds, released and began to speak, “This time when I woke up it was different, it’s going to sound weird but I kept hearing a voice”

“A voice? Did it sound familiar? Or what did it tell you?” You were brimming with curiosity now, this time it wasn’t him telling you of those dreams where he was in a cell. If something different happened, it must mean something.

“I could only hear it saying... “you have to let go” and I didn’t know what it meant. I kept hearing it this week, what I could pick from it was “loop” “break” “let” and yesterday at night it said.. “Akechi”” and after that she appeared and showed me. Her name was Lavenza, she explained everything, why she couldn’t reach me, why time keeps resetting... what caused it, and.. she told me how to stop it too” Akira stayed silent, scared of your reaction if you had already figured out what he meant, but he continued, “She told me to let Akechi- that we were supposed to let Akechi die back in Shido’s palace” he looked down, dark hair obscuring his eyes. He didn’t hear and he was getting scared that perhaps he made you in snap, but when he felt a hand harshly grab him by the collar of his uniform, he saw the judgmental look in your eyes and tears of anger starting to brim. You hands were shaking but the hold was tight, wanting him to stay still in order to listen to her words, “How..could you think..that we should just stand there.. and.. watch him die DAMMIT!!” You bursted out, “You what me to just stand there and look as they shoot him when we could something??!! I thought you all of people had at least a little regard for him” you tell him with disappointment in your voice.

“It’s not that I want him to die either!! It’s that if we keep trying to save him, he’s going to keep dying and dying, hurting him more and more!! Don’t you get it we changed something that was supposed to happen and now it’s like fate itself is getting back at us for it! We disrupted the order, even with you we-“ He suddenly kept quiet and you looked up at him, frowning, “What about me?”

....

“Akira! What about me?!” You shake him in your grasp, trying to the answer out of him, “You were never supposed to meet him either. Before what you thought was the first reset, well it was already the second. Lavenza showed me what happened the first time.. and there beside him there was no one” your eyes widened and you slowly let go of him stiffly. He tentatively continued, “The first reset was because of me, I took the shot for him and even though I didn’t die I had already changed something. That time, no one noticed that we went back in time, not even Akechi. But for some odd reason, you appeared on his way home and stumbled upon him, and for another more weird reason you became involved in his life and work, not even Lavenza can really explain but she says she has a wild guess.” Either way, the truth of the matter is, that we have to let everything run its course, y/n, even if none of us want it, I prefer letting him go than having Akechi suffer thousands of deaths. If you care for him, please you’ll know what you have to do that day, for everyone and him” he hesitantly put a hand on your shoulder and silently retreated back to Leblanc, leaving you dumbfounded and lost.

What was right? Letting the person you cared about more than anyone die in front of your eyes one last time and ending up alone? Or keep trying to find a solution while making him feel pain countless times? With those thoughts going rampage, tears started to flow freely to the ground and tiny sobs bubbled up in your throat.

You knew the answer, and yet you kept imagining a reality in where both of you could actually exist.

——————————————————————

It happened in the blink of an eye, the last thing from him a simple message that made you cry uncontrollably in the couch. This time you didn’t get to follow, he left without warning. Of course, he had found out as well, what he needed to do, he certainly wasn’t dumb. Wether it was your longing stares, your sad tone after a day with him without work in the way, or the words “this time we’ll make it right” by Akira and the far away looks he gave whenever Goro went for a cup of coffee, you even dared think there was also a hint of longing in his eyes just like yours.

You kept wailing and sobbing, your mind full of memories, of feelings, of words you can never say now, hand tightly clutching your phone. The screen was still brightly showing his message, and it was the only comfort you had that he didn’t feel pain anymore.

From Goro:

Thank you for being the best living pain in the ass in my life.

Because I care too much, I want you to live as if everything started all over again and you took another route from mine that day.

Goodbye, y/n, and thank you for the last months of letting me forget the pain and put a tiny smile in my face.

—————————————————————

December 24, a supposedly jolly day. But as you unusual rain pouring down and bones protruding form the ground, you couldn’t help but say to yourself with a resigned smile, “What a shitty and unfair world we happened to live in huh, Goro”

#persona 5 #p5 goro #akechi x reader #goro akechi #goro akechi x reader #goro x reader #reader #fanfic #angst #its actually more platonic than i intended #oneshot #writing

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undertalethingems · 5 years ago

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Bark at the Moon Chapter 12: Survival Instinct

Or read on my Ao3>

Rating, Setting: Gen, Pre-canon

Chapter Warnings: None

Chapter Summary: The brothers have lost everything but each other--but that’s all they ever started with.

"Brother, I'm so sorry, please forgive me," Papyrus whimpered, fussing over Sans' still form. He'd found a hollow under a massive old tree deep in the distant forests, and hoped he'd covered his tracks well enough. Their future was more uncertain than ever, but one thing was: they could never be seen again.

He sent what energy he could spare to his brother, then curled around him and shivered, still horrified. Had that been a trap laid by Flowey? Even if it was, it didn't matter. They could only wait until he decided to reset, and then all of this would be like a bad dream. But until then...

"Wake up Sans, please, I'm sorry I had to do that," he murmured, snout clattering against his brother's as he tried to nuzzle him--but he shook too much to be comforting. Part of him was screaming that he'd killed him, killed his only family, but another part howled back, clinging to the fact Sans hadn't turned to dust as proof that he hadn't. It was all horrible.

Just when things had seemed to be looking up. Sure, he'd been quarreling with Undyne, but...

Well, it didn't matter anymore. They would both die out here. There was no food. Nothing but wild, non-magical animals that had somehow established themselves down here. Maybe they could eat those after all...? That would be horrible too, no--he'd vowed to never hurt a living creature that way, and the thought of trying to eat such a thing made his non-existent stomach turn. But he was little better than an animal himself now. He had no friends, no home, even the scarf and sash he'd been wearing had shorn off in the attack. There was no point in clinging to monster society when he'd never belonged from the start--and certainly couldn't belong to it now. Everyone hated them.

"You were right, Sans," he rasped, laying his head down. "You knew it all along. We really are just beasts."

Quietly, he cried, mourning all the things he'd once been, and wouldn't be again. At least, not in this timeline.

It was some time later when he felt like moving again. Sans was still asleep, and he sent him a bit more healing magic before stretching. His head still ached where it had been struck by an attack, but his own nap had helped restore at least a little of his energy. It was just enough that he felt up for taking stock of their surroundings. He emerged from the hollow and gazed up at the massive trees, and huffed a sigh.

He had plenty of room to run now.

He set off at a slow walk, head held low as he thought. What a mess. A mess he couldn't clean up either--he didn't even know where to start. Undyne had been right--she'd warned him, told him time and again the town was on high alert. But he'd wanted to see Sans again so badly...

She was right about him, too. He was too nice for the Royal Guard. His creator had said something similar... Not long after he'd realized he was being trained to destroy something alive, not just doing fun puzzles or proving how strong he was. And that felt... wrong. He couldn't explain why, only that... it didn't make sense. Maybe the humans were bad, but... if killing was what made them bad, didn't killing them make a monster bad? What if a human didn't want to kill a monster for some reason? Even if humans were mostly evil, couldn't some be good? So many questions had kept him awake at night, but rather than answer them, his creator had gotten really mad when he'd brought it up and scolded him for being foolish.

It wasn't so different from Undyne.

Maybe he was wrong about everything. He'd thought he could get his old life back. He'd thought he could join the Royal Guard. He'd thought the townspeople wouldn't hurt him. He'd thought he could handle all of this on his own. He thought he'd never be this... creature, again.

Papyrus gave a low moan. Without the right kinds of stimulation, he'd lose his focus soon enough. He'd especially miss his words, but it was all frivolous, unnecessary, just as his creator had decided. He didn't have anyone he needed to talk with anymore anyway. His more complex thinking skills were superfluous after all--instinct would suffice for the life he'd lead now. However long it lasted...

Well... he'd be the best he could be of whatever he was, and currently, that was a creature equipped with sharp senses, cunning, and power. From now on, his only concern would be using those qualities--and they were very good qualities indeed--to keep himself and his family alive. That had always mattered most. The best use of his time now was getting to know the lay of the land, learning if there were any resources out here that might let them survive.

An odd shape in the snow interrupted his thoughts--oh, a skeletal footprint. Had he been walking in circles...? No, it was a hand print, and the digits were heavier with longer claws--though, still small compared to his own hand. It was Sans'...? There were more scattered around--but compared to his tracks, they looked old. Sans had been out here? Papyrus hummed to himself, and turned to head back to their den. He'd ask him about it when he woke up.

He was relieved to see he'd moved in his sleep--he wasn't gone. Papyrus squawked at him and nudged his side, and tried again when there was no reply. With an unhappy rumble, Sans finally woke up--only to stare when he realized it was Papyrus that had disturbed him. And then he tackled him, and they wrested and rolled like they had as youngsters, trilling and cackling happily until Sans was too tired to keep playing. They curled up together in a happy pile, and Sans' panting eventually slowed back to the familiar sound of his snore. Papyrus wasn't sure how, but maybe--as long as they were together--they'd be okay.

He got up the next day still feeling worn, but was glad to see Sans seemed to be resting easily. He stretched, flexing his limbs before setting off to see what he could find. The den lay at the edge of a small clearing; something told him to head to a nearby tree and reach as high as he could to dig long scrapes into the bark with his claws. There. This space belonged to him now. Satisfied, he turned to trot along the clearing's edge, traveling in the opposite direction from where he'd wandered yesterday to see if there was anything of use.

Mostly, there were more trees, and more snow. But a scent--then a sound--told him there was a river, and if he remembered anything about Waterfall it was that you could sometimes find good things in running water. Following his nose led him to it--a rush of icy water that tumbled over well-worn boulders. There didn't seem to be anything useful here, but maybe if he followed along the bank...

As he walked, Papyrus felt like his troubles were slipping farther and farther away. In some sense, it was literal--he knew the town he'd once called home was quite a distance away now. But here, he didn't have to worry about anyone seeing him, or caring what he was. It was lonely, but he still had his brother--and that was all he'd had back in the lab, right? Maybe he'd spent too much time trying to fit in; out here, he could just be himself, no matter what that was. The only pressure on him now was to keep himself and his brother fed. And in a way... that was nice.

He continued scavenging, poking and digging at the few scraps of trash that had managed to wash up, but the river ended up holding nothing of particular use. Tired and disappointed, Papyrus scrabbled up a stony outcrop bordering the water and almost barreled into a dense clump of thorny bushes. He danced back, eyeing the prickly overgrowth warily--but noticed something bright. Berries? He sniffed, cautiously extending his neck. They smelled sweet... what were wild berries doing way out here? Could he eat them? Only one way to find out, but if he could, then maybe finding food out here would be easier than he'd thought. He sniffed again, then nipped one from the branch... and could taste it, feel it restore a little of his health where non-magical food would have done nothing.

It was good!

Elated, Papyrus hooted victoriously, running around the brush before making breakfast of it, carefully stripping the berries from their stalks until he'd had enough. He found another branch laden with fruit and set on it with his teeth, chewing until it snapped--these were for his brother. Picking it up, he set off for home at a quick trot with his prize, energy and hopes restored.

He could do this. They'd survive--he'd make sure of it. That's what he'd been made to do.

#undertalethingem writes #gaster blaster au #sans (undertale)#papyrus (undertale)#bark at the moon fic #no double update today ^^;

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lucifersresources · 4 years ago

Text

as always feel free to change pronouns/alter etc to fit!

nice to me

" if you want to leave, you know i can't stop you. "

" i wanna get wasted and pour my heart out to you. "

" tell me what you want. "

" i guess i've got my guard up. "

" i've had a few cuts along the way. "

" i detox just to retox. "

" my pride is the currency and i've got to pay. "

MAKEMEFEELALIVE

" where is your empathy? "

" no one came to save us. "

" we're on the same team. "

" let's build their self esteem just to fucking tear it down again. "

" make me feel alive. "

" make me feel alive, i'm fucking dead inside."

" i'm so fucking dead inside. "

" you try and fill the papers with dream state connotations. "

" fuck what the facts are, let's just get their backs up. "

" i've gotta confess, i know i'm the best. "

" it's all in your head when you say that we're depressed. "

" lines ain't my thing, drinking's more my scene. "

" i want to numb the pain. "

" i want to numb the pain, you want to get clean. "

beautiful way

" love is a drug but it never comes with a warning. "

" when the comedown comes, you know you're gonna be in mourning. "

" i read between the lines, holding onto better times. "

" i can't let it go. "

" i wanna take back what was mine. "

" only you can change your mind. "

" i won't let it go. "

" tell me what do you mean when you say that we're not okay. "

" we're fucked up in a beautiful way. "

" if you cut me out, you'll never hear my side of the story. "

WYDRN

" is your head still up in the clouds? "

" keep my name out of your mouth. "

" when you talk, i can't understand it. "

" you're fluent in the past tense. "

" if looks could kill, you'd always be staring, you'd use your body as a weapon. "

" i became your new obsession. "

" when will you get the message? "

" no ones got the heart to come and tell you the truth. "

" is your head still up in the clouds? "

" i'm under construction, so are you. "

" i think you misread what i meant. "

" we lost signal, got regrets. "

" you know i still wish you the best. "

SUCKAPUNCH

" i'm getting visions of new beginnings. "

" i'm getting visions. "

" i'm free from my past. "

" we're in the same room but stand on different sides. "

" you could lose your mind trying to understand mine. "

" i rise from the wreckage that you left behind. "

" i'm pessimistic, call it nihilistic. "

" what is the point in making any noise? "

" want to look forward, but i'm so tortured. "

" i'm just a passenger of someone else's good times. "

" why you gotta make it feel this way? "

" a suckapunch, i can take. "

" i wasn't born yesterday. "

" there are no winners. "

" i'm getting visions and you're not fitting in. "

" i rise from the wreckage. "

kill the mood

" why you gotta kill the mood? "

" you're making it so hard for me to like you. "

" now's not the time to give up on us. "

" our champagne toast was short lived. "

" so tell me something i didn't know. "

" you happier on your own? "

" who needs puppy love, when it's full grown, paying rent on a heart you don't own. "

" why you gotta choke those truths? "

" you're making it so hard for me to trust you. "

" every time you walk into the room, dark clouds follow you. "

" rest in peace, that piece of me that holds out for sympathy. "

" i'm not a stepping stone for someone you wanna get to know. "

" to drive me away is such a shame. "

glasgow

" hate to see your heart break. "

" i've got nothing left to lose. "

" i've got nothing left to lose, coz i already lost you. "

" everyone was someone else before feelings flood the room. "

" i was yours before you call me mine. "

" that now feels like another life. "

" it seems as though time has made things worse. "

" i know i said it heals woes, but that was time ago. "

" nothing to be sorry for if i'm not what it is that you want. "

" moving out of town, wanna figure yourself out. "

" don't want to make my house your home. "

" you say you have to lose me, to find you. "

" you say you have to lose me to find you, i hope you do. "

" we don't want the same things. "

" we got to stitch us back together if we can, one thread at a time. "

" you know i don't regret it when i said i had forever in mind. ”

adrenaline

“ my mind’s playing tricks on me. ”

“ i’ve turned into a spectacle. ”

“ i’m on the wrong kind of chemicals. ”

“ the adrenaline is kicking in. ”

“ think i lost my touch. ”

“ what’s the side effects gonna be? a life of codependency? ”

“ when i’m lost, i’m a nightmare. ”

“ there’s a line and i crossed it. ”

voicenotes

“ you’re like a tidal wave of ecstasy. ”

“ you give me something to believe in. ”

“ you are my religion with a sweet disposition. ”

“ there’s no one like you. ”

“ there’s no one like you who finds a way to pull me through when i’m at rock bottom. ”

“ when self doubt creeps in, you make me feel stronger. ”

“ you make me feel stronger. ”

“ i’ve been missing the voice notes that you were sending. ”

“ put name on your skin as if this were permanent. ”

“ i’ll be slipping through your fingers like a bad decision. ”

“ you’re my best decision. ”

“ i hold my breath when you’re leaving. ”

finish what i started

“ i know i’m not the only one who feels that their time has come. ”

“ it’s time to pick yourself back up. ”

“ easy to say that you can relate: you’re not the one staring death in the face. ”

“ are you the one that’s living a lie? ”

“ are you the one that feels empty inside? ”

“ it’s got out of control. ”

“ i’ve gotta start rebuilding my soul. ”

“ i’ve gotta start resetting my goals. ”

“ there’s no one to hold you up. ”

“ i know that i’ve hurt you. ”

“ maybe i don’t deserve you. ”

“ i know that i’ve hurt you and maybe i don’t deserve you. ”

“ my head is an ocean with a depth of emotion. ”

“ do you feel the same, or has too much changed? ”

“ is this something we can save? ”

“ i’m not your enemy. ”

what’s it like

“ life really opened my mind. ”

“ none of us are really one of a kind. ”

“ you and me don’t work as a pair. ”

“ love don’t live here anymore. ”

“ it’s nothing personal. ”

“ tell me what’s it like being perfect all the time? ”

“ about to open up and see how i feel. ”

“ stones and crystals can’t switch out the truth. ”

“ no turn down memory lane, it makes me miss you. ”

“ you used to hold me close as a favour, back when bitterness was my flavour. ”

“ i’m taking one for the road. ”

“ i’ve been gone for way too long. ”

#rp meme #sentence starters #music rp meme #you me at six rp meme #lyric rp meme #lyrics rp meme #roleplay meme #rp memes #angst rp meme

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p-artsypants · 4 years ago

Text

Integrity (Part 6)

Overwhelmed with her responsibilities, guilt, and drama, Marinette has an emotional breakdown in front of everyone, and even hands over her earrings in a moment of weakness. Only for a few seconds, but the damage was done. Adrien's pretty quick on the uptake like that.

Ao3 | FF.net

Thank you everyone for the wonderful reviews! Especially with the last chapter where I took a little creative license with Luka’s reaction. I felt like he had been so passive in every situation we had seen in the show, maybe this would be the point where he puts his foot down. Either way, I’m fortunate to have very kind and mature readers! Thank you!!

—

Returning to class, everything felt sort of surreal.

As Adrien and Marinette passed their classmates, instead of awkward smiles, they were greeted with hugs. But not quite in a friendly way. A hug that one would give another after they had been in a car accident, or some similar life-changing tragedy. They never said a word either, just a hug, and then they moved on.

However, it appeared that Lila never took the hint. She stayed completely delusional in the belief that the class was on her side.

In the classroom, she was fishing for attention. Marinette heard her asking around, “hey, do you want to hear about my vacation plans to Hawaii?” And, “oh during lunch I got a call from Jagged Stone! He heard about the whole thing and called to comfort me!”

No one took the bait. Not even a ‘maybe later’. Just cold hard silence.

By the time the school day came to an end, the classmates started to speak to each other, but it wasn’t ever anything more than school and homework related. Absolutely no gossip, nothing about media consumption, nothing.

It was almost as if all friendships had been reset to zero and everyone was reconsidering what they knew about each other.

Thankfully, Nino seemed pretty solid in his loyalty to Adrien. “Hey dude,” he asked softly after the last class of the day. In the silence of the room, he was still heard pretty clearly by everyone. “If you’re not going home, where are you staying right now?”

“Oh,” Adrien tried to keep his voice even quieter. “I’m actually staying with Marinette. Chat Noir thought she was safest.”

“Chat Noir said that? I wonder why?”

“He seems to have a good opinion of her.”

“We’ve talked.” Marinette clarified. “A few times. He’s stopped on my balcony during patrol and stuff.”

There was a scoff in the back of the room. “Really? He’s stopped by your house? You’re that chummy with Chat Noir?” Lila mocked.

Before Marinette could reply, the rest of the class groaned.

“Just shut up.” Alix barked back.

“Chat Noir had to protect Marinette while I was akumatized,” Nathaniel added. “It was on the Ladyblog too.”

“Oh, so now we’re taking all interviews on the Ladyblog as gospel?” Lila huffed, crossing her arms. “Hmm, sounds like favoritism to me.”

“Except Chat Noir corroborated Marinette’s story.” Alya added. “He praised her quick thinking. He’s mentioned her in high esteem a few times.”

“Fine. But did you ever ask Ladybug about our friendship?”

Alix moaned. “Are you still talking?”

Alya forged ahead. “No, I didn’t. But Adrien said this morning that Ladybug called you out in front of him.”

“Adrien and Marinette are both liars, and everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt.” Lila sneered.

Adrien clenched his fist, about to speak, but Marinette just stood from her seat. Calmly, she packed up her bag, and shouldered it. “If this is the hill you want to die on, be my guest. If there’s anything I’ve learned from our classmates, it's that if you call someone a liar, they’ll just think you’re jealous. So good luck with all that.”

Alya inhaled a quick breath, that Marinette ignored.

“You ready to go?” She asked Adrien.

“Absolutely.” He gathered his supplies and they rushed from the room.

Once outside, Adrien let out a sigh. “What a fatal last comment.”

“Ehh, I probably went too far. But I am still kind of salty about the whole thing. I’m ready to forgive and let my bitterness go, but I’d at least like an apology first.”

“I think they definitely owe you one.”

“Maybe I’ll get more on Monday. It felt like everyone was…kinda in shock all day.”

“No kidding.”

“Chloe surprised me. I’ve been…kind of hesitant to trust her again, but what she did for you today was really something.”

Adrien almost forgot he wasn’t supposed to know about Miracle Queen, since everyone in the city, including Alya, had been in a trance. There was no coverage of it anywhere. No one knew why the auxiliary heroes were all retired, and no one knew about the Miracle Box being taken. Thank God.

“I know Chloe’s a brat, but she’s…been getting better?”

Marinette shook her head, and spoke in code, since they were out in public. “She was. Honestly, I was really proud of her and how hard she was working to be a friend again. But…the reason I’m the guardian now, it’s kind of her fault. She was the akuma. But, she did it willingly. The big bad got a hold of the Jewelry Box and offered her the Comb if she worked with him. Him getting a hold of it was my mistake…but all the other friends were revealed because of her.” She paused for a moment. “I wonder why you weren’t summoned forward too, since you had the snake and all.”

“I was inside.” He clarified. “I saw the bees swarming out in the streets, so I stayed hunkered down in my room. I guess I didn’t realize at the time it was Chloe, but with bees and all...it makes sense.” He pursed his lips. “I didn’t notice Chloe acting much different. I wonder if her standing up for us was her trying to absolve herself.”

Marinette shrugged. “She’ll have to keep it up, I’m afraid. But I can’t give her the comb again. It’s just too dangerous.”

“It’s not your responsibility to fix people, Marinette. I know you want to, but Chloe is a damaged person. She will get better in time, but you gave her several chances. You can stop.”

Marinette let out a breath. “Yeah. You’re right. Thanks Adrien.”

“Anytime.”

Desperate for a change in topic as they reached the locker room, Marinette asked, “how’d it go with Kagami? You came back kinda late so I didn’t get the chance to ask.”

“Oh, it went good. Really good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She said she’s over me already. I suspect she’s lying...but we had a good talk. She’s on our side at least. She doesn’t believe I could molest anyone.”

“As she should.”

“She says she hopes to hang out with you again soon.”

“I wouldn’t mind but…I think it might be a little awkward for a while.”

“She said you’d say that too.” He laughed.

“Wow, she sure does have me pegged.”

Adrien wrestled his duffle out of his locker, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Is that everything you need?” Marinette asked. “Do you need me to get Ladybug to get anything else?”

“Nope,” he shrugged. “All of my earthly possessions are in here. At least, the things I can’t live without.”

“Do you need me to carry anything?”

“Nope, I got it.”

So they headed out, not running into any of their classmates. However, as they left the locker room, they could hear yelling coming from the second floor, where their class was.

“Well, it’s not an akuma.” Adrien said with a tiny smirk.

“Should we intervene?”

“No. I think we’ve had enough drama for the last two days.”

“Yeah…” Marinette breathed. “Speaking of drama…I spoke to Luka at lunch.”

“Oh? How’d that go?”

“Not good. Not good at all. He feels…like I wasted his time. He was upset.”

“Oh…”

“He thought that I was trying to get over you so that he and I could date, but that’s not exactly what happened. He thought his persistent pursuing me meant he was first in line to date me.”

Adrien winced. That’s kind of how Chat Noir had acted too. Boy, she would be pissed when she found out who he was. Maybe he shouldn’t tell her after all…

“So yeah, that’s how we left things. I’ve been kicked off the Kitty Section team indefinitely…”

“Oh Marinette…” Adrien cooed, resting a hand on her waist.

“Nope. Don’t talk to me like that, or I will cry.” She blinked rapidly. “I knew whatever I said would break his heart. But…I think if he had been gracious about it, I would have taken it harder. For him to react the way he did makes me feel like I dodged a bullet.”

“I know exactly how you feel. Trust me.” He tugged her close and gave her a little side squeeze.

The rest of the trip to the bakery was taken in silence as both teens were lost in their own thoughts. Both mulling over ‘what if’s of the future, and what was going to happen next.

Especially a very long conversation that had to happen.

At the bakery, Sabine greeted both of them with kisses to the cheeks. “Hello you two! How was school? Survive okay?”

“Survive is an apt word.” Marinette chuckled weakly. “Lila’s not going out without a fight.”

“Well, my offer still stands, if you need me to request a parent teacher conference, I will!”

“Thank you Mrs. Cheng,” Adrien stated, “but…my father threatened a lawsuit. If that doesn’t get her mother’s attention, I don’t know what will.”

“Oh my! She’s that bad? I just assumed it was rumors and gossip. A Lawsuit is quite serious!”

“Well, my father fired her yesterday after she left here. In order to save face, she accused me of sexual harassment.”

Sabine tutted. “That girl is a real piece of work. I’m sorry you’re both having to deal with this! Whatever you need, just ask!”

Adrien gave a weak smile. “Could I have an almond danish?”

Sabine laughed. “Oh sweetie, you didn’t need to ask.” She took one out of the case and handed it to him. “Now, I have to get back to work, but we can finish this conversation later. Adrien, Tom and I wake up very early, so we think it’s best if you stayed in Marinette’s room so we didn’t wake you up. You can behave yourselves, right?”

“Yes ma’am!” Adrien agreed a little too enthusiastically.

“Good, then scoot!” She shooed them out of the bakery.

“Are you okay with that, Marinette?” He asked. “Or are you afraid I’d sexually harass you in your sleep?”

“You touch me anyway I don’t approve, and you’ll be hanging from your ankles from the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

He snorted. “Noted!”

Adrien followed her silently upstairs into the apartment. Now that they were alone, he knew he had to tell her. He needed to say everything, so they could move forward and make a plan. As he took the steps up to her room, his hands began to sweat around the strap of his bag. Just do it. Just say it.

“You can set your bag here,” Marinette began. “The bathroom is across the hall from the living room, but you can keep your toothbrush here at my sink if you want. I’ll get some pillows and blankets—“

“I’m Chat Noir.”

He said it when she had her back turned, so he didn’t have to see her face. She continued to face away from him, her shoulders slowly tightening with anxiety, like a coil about to snap.

“I should have told you yesterday,” he continued, desperate to make sure she heard it all before she freaked out. “But you were so panicked with everything else, I just didn’t want to add to it. I didn’t want to hide from you, My Lady.”

She flinched, ducking her head slightly.

“I went home yesterday. My father greeted me at the door, and we talked about trust. He said he approved of you and I seeing each other, and he said he would remove Lila from my photoshoots. You know this. And then…he said he had something he wanted to trust me with.” He licked his lips, finding them unbearably dry. “He pressed some buttons on the painting of my mother, and this elevator lowered through the floor. At the bottom, there was this huge cavern I had never been in before. There was a bridge, and then a garden on the other side, and in a…it looked like a coffin, but I think it was a life support machine…my mother was there. She’s in a magical coma, from using the broken Peacock Miraculous. Dad revealed himself to be Hawkmoth, and he explained he wanted our Miraculous so he could use the ultimate power to wake her up.” He inhaled, his breath stuttering with faintly concealed sobs. “Then he asked me to help him. He had been using Lila as an akuma trigger, but since she was fired, he wanted me to take her place.”

“And what did you say?” Marinette’s voice was hollow and dull.

“I didn’t say anything. I was just in shock. He was crying and…I wanted to save my mother too. I know his method is wrong, and I can’t help but think the ultimate wish isn’t going to do what we want…”

“So Plagg stole the Miraculous while he was sleeping?”

“Yes. I thought about getting you, but I had to work quickly. I didn’t want to fight him. And after I gave them to you last night, I returned home, and he was waiting for me.”

“So he knows?”

“No. I had an alibi, but…he still drugged me and tore my room apart looking for them. I woke up at some point, disoriented and confused, and I attempted to fight him, that’s how I got my black eye.”

Finally, finally, Marinette turned around, showing the tear streaks running down her face. “I was so worried about you.” She whispered.

“Oh bugaboo…” He rushed to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her into a strong and solid hug. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t risk getting caught. That’s why I left.”

“I understand, you did the right thing.” Her fingers dove into his hair, scratching at his scalp in a calming way. “I’m so proud of you, kitty.”

“Thank you, my lady.” He squeezed her. “And I am most certainly not disappointed in you for what happened. I know it was an accident, and I’m here to help you. I was worried about you, because I love you. I love you so so much, Marinette.”

She croaked out a sob and nuzzled her face into his shoulder. “I’m so glad it’s you. I’m sorry I kept breaking your heart, but I’m so glad it’s you! It was always you, the boy I loved. The boy I kept turning you down for…I’ve always loved you.”

“And now you know how I feel isn’t a celebrity thing,” he chuckled.

“I didn’t doubt you for a second.” She clutched his shirt. “You said you loved me even more since you found out who I was. I trust you, Adrien. With my life.”

He pulled away enough to look down at her. “This was the final loose end I had to tie up. Telling you who I am.” He reached a hand up, tracing the shell of her ear with his thumb, and letting it trail down to her jaw. “Marinette, would you marry me?”

She snorted, “what?”

“Sorry, I skipped a step. Would you like to be my girlfriend?”

“Wait, I didn’t get to say yes to your proposal!”

He laughed, gathering her tightly and spinning her around. “I love you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng! One day, I’ll make you mine!”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she giggled, elated and bursting at the seams with love. “You’ll have to get it approved by my parents first.”

“Your parents!” He gasped. “We should tell them! They might not be okay with me sleeping in here if they know! And I don’t want to get on my in-laws' bad side!”

“Adrien.” Marinette snickered. “It’s okay. We’ll tell them at dinner. And…” She glanced down. “I was thinking about telling them my identity.”

“Oh?” There was no judgement or caution in his tone, just plum curiosity.

“It was Tikki’s idea. Now that Hawkmoth isn’t a threat, maybe revealing myself would clear the air, you know, because of unexplained absences?”

“In that case, can I tell them too?”

“Uh, sure…why?”

He rubbed his arm. “I want adults that I can come to if I need help. My father isn’t that for me. One day, I’ll probably tell him the truth, but…Not now. I’m too scared.”

“Alright Kitty, we’ll tell them tonight at dinner. After all, we have to get their permission to go to Tibet this weekend.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That soon?”

“Sure! We have to talk to the guardians about how to save your mom after all.”

His face melted from giddy to astonished, as he beheld her. “You…you want to save my mom?”

“Of course Kitty! You love her, don’t you? If she can be saved, we should at least try.”

He opened and closed his mouth, fighting for words of gratitude. ‘Thank you’ wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t mean enough. ‘I love you’ was starting to sound repetitive. Emotion seeped out of him, drenching his cheeks with tears of joy of being in love and being so loved in return. It was overwhelming, but so welcomed. He couldn’t hold it back anymore.

He kissed her roughly, thoroughly, solidly. Hands wrapped around her, grabbing, tugging, caressing, bringing her closer and closer, until he could be all consumed with her, her scent, her taste. Her everything.

He took her bottom lip between his, sucking and teasing with his teeth, while he coyly tugged on her belt loop.

Then suddenly, they were tumbling, as her leg hit the edge of the settee and she lost balance. She landed with a little ‘oof’ right on the cushion, as he braced himself above her.

Her impossibly blue eyes stared up into his, before she burst into giggles. “Whoops.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Kitty.”

“Good. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes? Why?”

“Because I’m not done with you yet,” and he returned to capture her lips again with an open mouthed kiss. He indulged for a moment, just before pulling away. “If that’s okay, My Lady?”

“Its alright, my Prince.”

His cheeks colored a little at the pet name. “I like that one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah...” He finally closed the distance, his touch much more gentle, tender, and just savoring the moment.

“I love you.” He whispered between caresses. “I love you.”

“I love—“ she giggled as he cut her off over and over. “I love you! I love you!”

“Marinette! Adrien! Dinner’s ready!”

They pulled apart to look at each other before they started laughing all over again. “Did we just—?”

“Kiss for two hours?” Asked Plagg, with the dullest voice. “Yes. Yes you did.”

Tikki elbowed him. “Leave them alone Plagg. They’re in love!”

“Yeah,” said Adrien, sappily. “We’re in love...”

“Go to dinner!!”

#miraculous ladybug #ml #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrienette #ladybug #chat noir #fanfiction #integrity

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lucy-268 · 4 years ago

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Revelations

A/N - This is ‘the talk’ and it takes place a week after Regrets. You can find that on my masterlist. Also, this meets the requirement for the @choicesweeklychallenge. You belong to me can be found in bold.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to PB

Warnings: none? I don’t think even language.

Series/Pairing: Open Heart - Ethan x f!MC (Charley Valentine)

Word count: 4,466

*****Thursday*****

“Has Denver General sent us any more information, or will I just find out when I get there?” June asked.

Consulting his notes, Ethan answered her. “Dr. Morgan said that he would send us the remaining test results as soon as he gets them. He’ll be sending them to all of us, so if you want to discuss the case with any of us we’ll all have the same information.”

June never looked up from the report she was reviewing. “I doubt it will be necessary.”

“Regardless of whether you think it’s a necessity, you will keep me informed of the case.” Ethan reminded her.

“Of course, Ethan.” June said. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I’m going to get ready for my flight?”

“You don’t want to hear about my new patient?” Baz asked her.

June glanced at him. “My flight leaves in less than three hours, so no. At least not right now.” She gathered her files and left saying goodbye to the rest of the team.

“Baz, what is going on with your new patient?” Charley asked.

“Late-onset Chediak-Higashi Syndrome. For me as an immunologist, I find it extremely interesting, especially as the patient is thirty-two and just diagnosed.”

Charley looked between Baz and Ethan. “Is this a team patient?”

“No. This is a patient of Baz’s. We will have a new patient coming in on Monday for which you will be primary.” Ethan held up a folder.

Baz briefed them on his patient, excusing himself when he received a page saying the patient was being admitted.

“And then there were two,” Ethan handed her the folder.

She flipped it open and read through the file. “Twenty-five year old male. Diabetic. Joint pain and muscle weakness.” Charley looked at him. “Do you know what it is and you want me to figure it out?”

Ethan shook his head. “I have a couple of ideas but I don’t know for sure what it is. You should have several ideas right now.”

“The symptoms can be just about anything. You said he gets here on Monday ?”

He nodded. “He’s already been to Mass Kenmore several times. Even though we have sent a release signed by the patient, Terrance hasn’t sent the files to us. So we may start with spinning our wheels testing for things that they have already tested for and eliminated.”

Charley studied the file again. “Did you see the iron levels here? I think the first thing is a liver biopsy?”

“Are you telling me that’s what you are going to do, or asking me if I think that’s the right choice?” Ethan asked her.

Her head snapped up. “That’s what I’m going to order. I’ll even have the order written so the test is run as soon as he’s admitted.” Charley met his eyes. “What?”

Ethan smiled. “There aren’t a lot of doctors who could have figured out to start with that test after reviewing a file for less than fifteen minutes. Let alone a second year resident. So I am impressed.” He reached over and stroked the back of her hand. “You often impress me.”

She turned her hand and laced their fingers. “It’s Thursday.”

“So it is.”

“Last week you texted me and said we would talk on Saturday.”

“Yes. And we decided we’d have dinner at six.”

Charley met his eyes. “You aren’t going to change your mind?”

“We’re meeting at my apartment. I’ll be there. We are long overdue for the talk. And I’m sorry for that.”

Charley smiles. “Will I finally get my chicken?”

“You will not. We’ve made the chicken together,” he held up his hand when she was going to interrupt, “this time, we’ll make something else. You plan the meal.”

“We may have made the chicken together but I never got to try it.”

“I want to see what you come up with. You can create any menu you want. Email me what we need and I’ll go shopping.” Ethan smiled at her.

Charley considered for a minute. “Anything?” When Ethan nodded, she continued, “My grandma had an amazing pot roast recipe. We could roast it in the oven or use a crockpot. It’s always best if it cooks on low in the crockpot, so that would take about seven or so hours. I’ll email you the list, and I guess I’ll be there late morning. I guess we’ll also have lunch together, too. That’s alright, isn’t it Ethan?” She didn’t even wait for his answer before she left the office.

Charley watched the office door to see if he was going to come after her and inform her they would not be spending the entire day together.

Ethan sat at his desk, he smiled as he realized that life would never be boring around Charley Valentine.

*****Saturday*****

Sienna pushed open Charley’s bedroom door. “Are yo-” Sienna stopped mid-sentence. She heard several loud thuds and wanted to ask if Charley was okay, but she did not expect the scene she witnessed. She also didn’t see her roommate. “Charley!”

“I’m here,” Charley called, pushing herself out from under the bed. “I was looking for this shoe. That I can’t wear now. Thank you, Lucy!” The shoe had become a chew toy for their pet.

Lucy, their fennec fox, sat in the middle of Charley’s bed, looking proud of herself.

“Forget the shoe, we understand what happened to it.” Sienna looked around the room. “Was there a bomb? Are you telekinetic? Did your closet and dresser decide to vomit every article of clothing you own into your room?”

“I’m looking for something to wear, and I don’t have anything! I got off at five yesterday, I should have gone shopping!”

Sienna remembered the day a couple weeks ago when Charley got home late clad in someone else’s clothes. Based on her own conversation with a certain someone, Sienna had a pretty good idea who. Now she was frantically trying to find something special to wear. “What’s his name?”

Charley froze. “What’s whose name?”

“Obviously, the guy that you’re spending your day with. The same one you were with when you came home wearing clothes that were way too big for you. So, who is it?”

“No one,” Charley stated. “I’m not spending the day with anyone.”

“Yet you canceled on Bryce and me for today.” Sienna picked up a Columbia t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a rip in the knees. “Here, put these on.” She smiled. “I mean, if you aren’t doing anything special today, it doesn’t matter what you have on.”

Charley looked at the clothes that Sienna tossed on her bed. She had to leave for Ethan’s before Sienna would be leaving to meet Bryce, and she still didn’t know what she was going to wear.

Sienna watched her. “I heard that Dr. Ramsey also has today off. And he did when you had your second day off two weeks ago.”

Charley froze and looked to the door. “Everyone else is working today and they’re gone?”

Sienna nodded and sat down on Charley’s bed. “Uh-huh.”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“So it wasn’t just the one night when he spent the night here?”

“That day we went to the country club and later I went to his apartment to talk to him? That was the first time, and the night after my hearing was the second. It was also the last time.” Charley sighed. “Then he went to the Amazon so we could ‘reset’ since he would be my director supervisor.” Charley sighed. “Since he’s been back he says we need to stay away from each other, but then he’ll kiss me. Today we’re going to ‘talk.’ We’ve been supposed to talk since right after the softball game, but it kept getting delayed.”

Sienna smirked at her. “You had on his clothes the day you came home.”

Charley's face turned red. “We spent the day together with his dad in Providence. We took his dog for a walk and I fell into a mud puddle.”

“You’ve met his family!”

“His dad. He hadn’t told Alan that he was bringing me with him. Ethan had never taken anyone home with him before, not even Harper Emery.”

“Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Emery were a thing!” Sienna’s mouth dropped open.

“I don’t know if it’s really common knowledge. Aurora probably knows. I saw the two of them talking once and it seemed intimate. It was the day before they announced the opening on the diagnostics team. I did ask him about it later and he said he likes to keep his private life private, but he did say they had an on-again, off-again thing but it ended permanently when she became chief.” Charley rested her head on her hand. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t tell anyone.”

Sienna mimed sealing her lips. “I thought that you and Bryce were kind of together.”

“We hooked up a couple of times but we both agreed to be casual.”

“And with Ramsey, you don’t want casual?”

“I don’t.” Charley chewed on her lip. “Sienna, I’m terrified about today. I know that everything is going to change.”

“Well then, let’s get you ready.” Sienna picked up the t-shirt and jeans. “This probably won’t do; we’ll find something else.”

Charley was just getting ready to leave when her phone rang. She looked at the caller id and sighed. “If you’re calling to cancel-” she started.

“I’m not,” she heard his rich baritone as well as a smile in his voice. “I had to go to the hospital to pick up something. If you haven’t left yet you can ride with me. I’m outside your building.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.” Charley disconnected, smiling.

Soon they were in his apartment. She kicked off her shoes at the door and stood there when he walked further into the apartment. He got half way through the living room when he realized she wasn’t with him. He turned to find her at the door. “If we want to make this pot roast we need to go to the kitchen.”

Charley gave a nervous laugh and stepped away from the door. She tossed her purse on the couch as they walked into the kitchen. They washed their hands and Ethan pulled his crockpot out of the pantry while Charley pulled the roast out of the refrigerator. She saw the printout from her email with the image of her grandma’s recipe. Ethan gathered the rest of the ingredients while Charley brewed a pot of coffee.

“Why the crockpot instead of a roasting pan in the oven? I saw the recipe had directions for both with cooking times for either low or high in the slow cooker.”

“It tastes better and is more tender.”

Ethan smirked. “It does not. And we need to use the Dutch oven even if it’s just to brown the roast.”

“Maybe it doesn’t do a lot for the taste, but it is more tender.” Charley watched as the coffee finished brewing, standing with her back to him. “It takes longer to cook in the slow cooker on low and I wanted to spend more time with you.” She gave a short laugh. “Funnily enough, now that I’m here, I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

She turned to face him. “I think that today may change everything, and I’m hopeful but I’m also scared. I’ve been wanting to sit down with you away from the hospital with just the two of us for so long, but now that we’re actually going to do that...” She bit her lip.

“Now you understand why I’ve been putting it off. But I’ve done a lot of thinking. And I talked to Naveen. We are long overdue. Today will change everything but we will be in agreement with it, I think.”

Charley nodded. Ethan turned back to the counter. “Let’s get this set for dinner, fix lunch, and talk.”

Charley browned the roast in the Dutch oven while Ethan chopped the vegetables and herbs. Once the roast was in the crockpot, Charley cooked the onion. Once they started to soften, they added the rest of the ingredients, including the coffee. “Why coffee?” Ethan asked.

Charley smiled, watching the mixture simmer. “Is this a quiz, same as ‘why neat’ that first night at Donahue’s?”

“Genuine curiosity. As much as I love coffee, I’ve never had pot roast cooked in coffee. I found the recipe interesting.”

“It helps to tenderize the meat and gives the gravy a richer flavor.”

Once the gravy and onion mixture was cooked, Ethan poured it over the meat and set the timer. While Charley washed the accumulated dishes, Ethan fixed salads for lunch. They took their plates to the living room and sat side-by-side on his sofa.

“You talked to Naveen about us.” When he nodded, she continued, “I talked to Sienna.”

They fell into a silence while they ate. Charley glanced at him every so often.

He pushed the last piece of lettuce around on his plate before finally setting the plate on the coffee table. He turned to her; she mimicked his moves and faced him.

“Ethan, I’ve said for a while that a relationship with you is an easy decision for me. It’s what I want. I think that we could be good together, amazing even.”

Ethan nodded. “I know. You aren’t the problem, I am. I want to be able to push you to be the best doctor you can be.”

“You can do that professionally, regardless of any personal relationship we have. I can take criticism from Dr. Ramsey and know that it isn’t coming from Ethan.”

“You’re assuming that I can also have that division.”

That got Charley’s attention. “You’re Ethan Freakin’ Ramsey. You can do anything you try to. If you want to make the distinction you will. And if you cross the line, I’ll let you know.”

“Another problem-”

Charley put her hand on his arm. “If you just want to list a lot of potential possible problems, why are we even having a discussion? Earlier you said that today would change everything and you thought we’d be in agreement.” She folded her arms across her chest and focused on a picture hanging on the wall. “If you thought that I’d change my mind about us, you’re wrong. If you thought you could list all the reasons why we can’t be together and why you won’t be with me, I was right to be nervous about this. If that’s-”

Ethan reached over and grabbed her chin, forcing her to face him. “What I want to do is identify the obstacles or potential obstacles we face so we are both aware of them, and to decide how we need to handle them in the future.” He wiped a tear out of her eye. “Because in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I very much do want to be with you.”

Charley grabbed his hand and kissed his palm before lacing their fingers together. She smiled at him. “I’m sorry for my outburst. Continue, please.”

“Another problem is the board. They don’t like interoffice romances. Naveen seems to think this won’t be an issue. He seems to think that as long as it isn’t impacting the care of the patients, or the bottom line of the hospital, they wouldn’t care, nor would they even need to be aware. I disagree with him on this. I think the board makes it their business to know what goes on in the hospital.”

Charley interrupted again. “I know that there are married couples at the hospital. Was it a problem when you and Harper were together?” Ethan drew in a deep breath when she asked that. “If you don’t want to answer that you don’t have to.”

“I will. It was not a problem and the board did not have an issue with it when she was head of neurosurgery and I was a fellow on the diagnostics team. If our relationship would have continued when she was chief or if I had been a surgeon, it would have been a problem. Any other couples at Edenbrook do not work in the same area, and one member of the couple is not another’s supervisor.”

Ethan continued, “I don’t want anyone to think that you got the position on my team because of our relationship. I don’t want anyone to have any doubt about that. You earned it.”

Charley nodded. “I did earn it. You weren’t even the one who put me on the team. Naveen did.”

Ethan agreed that while that was true, many people at the hospital could have thought that he asked Naveen to do that.

“If anyone has doubts, I graduated at the top of my class at Columbia. Not near, I was ranked first. In fact if anyone had ranked all med school graduates my year from around the country, I’d probably be in the top fifty.”

Ethan laughed. “Someone did. And you are higher than that. You are somewhere in the top twenty. I’m not going to narrow it down more than that for you.”

“Based on that, I think I earned the right to be on the team. Not to mention helping to cure Naveen last year. Our relationship had nothing to do with it. Well except for the fact you inspired me to go to med school in the first place. And I wanted to work with you, which is why I came to Edenbrook.”

“We probably don’t want to advertise our personal relationship at work. The hospital has a wonderful gossip network and we’ll need to be careful. That being said it probably won’t be long before everyone knows about us.”

“That sounds okay. But some people will know. I told Sienna and you told Naveen. My roommates will know I’m seeing someone, and will make it their mission to find out who.” Charley wasn’t sure if she should mention the next part, but figured she might as well. “June does, or she thinks she does. At least that was what she implied the day I caught her with my personnelle file.”

Ethan froze. “She had your file?”

Charley nodded. “She said that she reads the files for everyone she works with. She tried to tell me you asked her to get it for you, but I knew you wouldn’t have.”

“I’ll deal with her when she gets back from Denver. Your roommates and Naveen are fine.”

“If my roommates know Bryce will also know; and if Aurora does, Harper might.” Charley looked up at him. “Can we talk about Harper?”

“I thought we already had.”

“You ended things when she became chief. If she wouldn’t have, would you still be together, do you think?”

“We would not. We were together because it was mutually beneficial to the both of us. But we were never going to last.”

She smirked at him. “By ‘mutually beneficial’ do you mean it was convenient and the sex was good?”

“Yes.” Ethan said. “But then last year something happened that I knew would never lead Harper and I together again.” When Charley tipped her head to show she was interested in his answer, he continued. “Last year, an intern showed up and turned my life inside out. And I can’t get her out of my head.”

Charley started to move towards him, and he stopped her. “What about the scalpel jockey?”

Charley lips twitched. “His name is Bryce.”

“I’m aware, and you didn’t answer the question.”

“We hooked up twice, once at our housewarming party and again once after we were at Donahue’s. We almost did the night we researched treating Mrs. Martinez, but you’d already kissed me in Miami. I wasn’t interested in anyone else at that point.” She looked at the ground before meeting his eyes. “Bryce is a friend and a good one. I trust him. I also know if I ever did want a relationship with him, I’d have that choice. I don’t, and Bryce respects that.”

“As long as he knows that you belong to me.” Ethan pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her.

“And you belong to me!” Charley shifted slightly on his lap and felt his hardness under her thigh. “We could continue this in the bedroom.”

“A very good idea.” As Ethan stood and lifted her, she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her into the bedroom.

Several hours later, they were laying with their legs tangled together, voices soft in the quiet room when an alarm on her phone beeped.

“Somewhere you need to be?” He kissed the top of her head.

She pushed herself up. “Actually, yes. The kitchen. I need to start the vegetables.”

He walked over to his closet and pulled out a robe that on him would reach mid-thigh. He tossed it to her, before grabbing another for himself. This one hit him at mid-calf. “You could have this one if you wanted.” She indicated the robe she hadn’t yet tied. It fell below her knees.

He snorted. “Be responsible for you tripping in this one? I don’t think so.”

As Charley gathered what she needed for the roasted cauliflower, Ethan grabbed the green beans. Charley explained that sometime they would fix potatoes with the roast, but her grandfather grew up near Idaho and often decided he wanted anything other than potatoes, so they would have cauliflower. “I don’t like raw or steamed, but I really like them roasted with this mustard sauce.”

Charley watched Ethan pull a cake plate out of the refrigerator. “Dessert?” At Ethan's acknowledgment she asked what it was. He wouldn’t tell her, saying he wanted it to be a surprise.

They worked efficiently together in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. Ethan selected a red wine for them and opened it to let it breathe. He carried their plates to the dining room table.

“This is good; the coffee does make the gravy richer.”

“Grandma knows best. My grandfather grew up in Spokane and grandma in Seattle. They had a restaurant in Seattle that my dad and all my aunts and uncles worked in while they were growing up.”

“You have a big family?”

“My dad had three brothers and two sisters. But even though they had six kids, my grandparents only had four grandchildren. There was my brother and me; we grew up in Pennsylvania. My one uncle had two boys and they were in Oregon. All of my dad’s family is in the northwest and we didn’t see them often. My dad moved there after he retired and I started med school.”

Ethan watched her. “Are we going to talk about your mom’s family?”

Charley shrugged. “Not much to tell. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was in college. She was an only child and you know why I don’t talk to her.”

As they cleared the table and kitchen he asked her what he had been wondering about. “Why did you decide to do your residency in Boston with most of your family now out west?”

“It doesn’t feel like home to me there. I figured I could do my residency anywhere; it wasn’t a commitment to stay somewhere for my life. It’s only three years.” She smiled at him. “Besides coming here let me learn from the best.”

Ethan poured coffee and set the mugs on a tray with two dessert plates. Charley watched as he lifted the cover off the cake.

“Lemon! How did you know lemon was my favorite?” Charley couldn’t resist. She swiped her finger on the edge of the cake to collect a sample of icing. She popped it in her mouth.

“I asked Sienna the other day and she told me.”

Charley stared at him. “She helped me get dressed this morning and she didn’t say anything!”

Ethan laughed. “You need help getting dressed in the mornings?”

She felt her face redden. “I… well… um. I didn’t know what to wear this morning.”

“I would have gone with clothes, but I understand that some people are fussier than others.”

“I wanted to look nice.”

“You always look nice.”

“I thought that I always looked satisfactory.”

Ethan cut two pieces of cake and added them to the tray with the coffees.

“I thought we could take these into the bedroom. If that would be satisfactory to you?”

She nodded and he carried the tray to the bedroom and set it down on the bed. He flipped a switch causing the gas fireplace to spring to life. Charley picked up her cake and snuggled back against Ethan. “I like the fireplace here.”

“I don’t often use it.”

“Why tonight?”

“Must be the company I’m keeping.”

Charley turned and straddled his lap. “You better be careful. This company could end up corrupting you.”

“I look forward to it, if that’s the case.” Ethan rolled her unto her back.

Several hours later, Charley looked at the clock. “I should go home. I have to work tomorrow and my boss can be tough if I’m late.”

“If you stay with me, I’ll be sure you’re not late,” Ethan buried his head in her neck.

“I don’t have clean clothes for tomorrow.”

“You can either grab some scrubs from the locker room or ask your roommate to bring something for you.” Ethan pointed to his dresser. “I cleared both of the bottom drawers for you, if you want them.”

Charley chewed on her bottom lip. “You knew what the outcome of our talk was going to be before we actually talked today. When did you decide you wanted-”

“The night of the softball game, when I kissed you.”

Charley stared at him. “Then why did you keep putting me off when I wanted to talk?”

“Because I kept coming up with all the reasons why we shouldn’t be together. And I decided not to do that anymore. I’m tired of avoiding whatever it is we have.”

“Why do I get the two bottom drawers?”

“You’re shorter than me!” He indicates the drawer on the right. “You actually do have clean clothes in there. What you wore when we went to my dads. You at least have something to wear to the hospital.” Ethan watched her. “Any other concerns for tonight?”

“Do you have an extra toothbrush?”

Ethan shrugged. “Yes, but it’s one of the standard ones dentists hand out. It should be fine until we can get you one to keep here.”

Charley put her head on his pillow. “Then I can’t think of a single reason to get out of the warm bed right now.”

He turned off the light and slipped under the covers with her. “Neither can I.”

Tag list (if you want to be on or off let me know) @oofchoices @openheart12 @jamespotterthefirst @ohchoices @catchinglikekeronsene @aylamreads @nerdydinosaursweets @eramsey28 @txemrn @starrystarrytrouble @queencarb @thegreentwin @lion-ess24 @caseyvalentineramsey

@choicesficwriterscreations @choicesweeklychallenge

#dr ethan ramsey #dr. ethan ramsey x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan jonah ramsey #open heart fanfiction #open heart #choices open heart

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