#i tried to search that word and nothing shows so that mean its not allowed??

[nepthys-merenset]

A Lesson in Kindness

Summary: Lane shows Cain what kindness means to her, and, together they explore trust, vulnerability, and their feelings for one another. Part of my growing "HSR First Kiss" series!

Pairing: Lane x Cain [Heaven's Secret: Requiem]

Word Count: 3,095

Rating: T

Taglist: @rc-catalog

TW: None

A Lesson in Kindness

Lane slipped into her room, easing the door closed behind her. The fact that the rest of the squad kept her at arm’s length in the wake of Noah’s disappearance had its advantages—she wasn’t trusted to participate in the search mission, so she was allowed to remain behind in the estate, alone with the Book.

They probably think this is some kind of punishment, she thought, reflexively glancing over her shoulder as she opened the desk’s secret compartment and took out the Book. She ran her hands over its cracked cover reverently before opening it to the new spread she’d discovered—the spread she hoped would crack the code of the first part of the Book.

She settled in for a long afternoon, examining each character under a magnifying glass and carefully comparing it against the lines Pileon had written in her notebook. Small similarities began to jump out at her—she was making progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

Just as the beginnings of a new word began to surface, a disturbance outside ripped through her concentration. A gust of wind, then the sound of beating wings, before a flash of white and red streaked by her window.

Cain.

She shook her head and turned back to the Book, then sighed heavily. The word was gone, and her focus was ruined now that she’d noticed him.

The angel occupied her thoughts for reasons she didn’t fully understand. Like the Book, he was a puzzle to which she desperately wanted to find a solution. Unlike the Book, though, she hadn’t managed to figure him out at all, or why she was so drawn to him. Why she felt warm, alive, around him, in ways she hadn’t since he’d pulled her from the Rift.

Picking up her magnifying glass again, she tried to focus on the Book again, but it continued to elude her. The only things on her mind now were white wings, flashing red eyes, and tongues of flame rising seductively from burning books, warming her from the inside out in a way that felt dangerous—and tempting.

She sighed again and put the Book away, accepting that she would get nothing else done today. Not until this strange curiosity was satisfied.

*****

He’d landed in the yard of the estate, his back to her. She quickly realized why she’d noticed a flash of red through the window—he was covered in blood, from the tips of his wings to the tips of his boots. She watched him quietly from the shadows of the porch as he combed his fingers through his feathers, shaking his head in irritation.

He must have run into one of the Infected. Did he tear it apart with his bare hands?

“I know you’re there,” he called, looking at her slyly from over his shoulder. “Haven’t you learned not to stare at me when you think I’m not paying attention?”

Caught.

“You distracted me from the Book,” she said, ignoring the uneven throb in her chest as she caught his gaze. “I noticed you fly by my window.”

He looked away, continuing to absently run a hand over one of his blood-streaked wings. “Ah. Well, I’m sorry for that.”

She nodded mutely, her eyes lingering on his wings, following the path of his hand. His feathers had been soft and warm the last time she’d touched them, sending pleasant thrills down her spine. Thrills that had only intensified when she noticed how he’d stilled under her hand, allowing her to explore him.

“What happened to you?” She asked, leaving the porch to approach him. It was a question she didn’t really need an answer to—more of a tool than anything else.

“An Infected in the woods,” he said, smirking slightly. He’d noticed that she was still distracted by his wings. “The rest of the squad is dealing with the body now.”

“So close to the city?” she asked, mild alarm cutting through the pleasant haze of memory she’d allowed herself to linger in. From what she’d gleaned from the squad, this level of activity was unusual, and the proximity, nearly unheard of.

Could it have something to do with what we’ve been deciphering in the Book?

He watched her closely, his eyes narrowing, before he shrugged. “Yes, but we’ve handled it. For now, at least.” He stepped closer, experimentally, as if testing her boundaries. “I have to rejoin the search soon, but I have to take care of this—” he grimaced as his hand caught in a particularly matted patch of feathers “—first.”

She wouldn’t get anything done while he was gone, that much she knew. Not with fresh anxiety still lurking at the edges of her mind, and a vague sense of loss tugging at her heart. She didn’t want to be alone in the estate—didn’t want him to go, to leave her alone again.

“I could help you,” she offered, then fell silent, shocked by her own statement. Taking a deep breath, she studied him askance, waiting for his reaction.

She’d surprised him, too. He looked at her sharply, his eyes flashing red, before he said slowly, “Do you understand what you’re offering? It’s not like—”

He stopped short, tilting his head as he eyed her like how a predator would stare down prey. She realized that he’d recognized this as a step forward, one that she’d taken perhaps unconsciously.

“Once you figure out what this is, I’ll be waiting.”

Now she was the one waiting, her mind turning over and over as she asked herself where that wild impulse had come from. Curiosity? Reciprocity for the help he’d given her with the Book? It couldn’t be gratitude—he’d broken his promise to her and disappeared on her again, leaving her alone in the hallowed halls of the monastery archives. But still, there it was...a nagging desire to connect with him somehow, coming from some place hidden deep within her.

“I understand,” she said, meeting his gaze steadily as her mind raced through all the possibilities of what she was agreeing to.

Still looking at her closely, he nodded, seeming to come to a decision. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

Her breath hitched as she realized what she’d done. She would have to touch him, her hands roving through his wings, his body hers to explore. Unsure if it was anxiety or excitement racing through her veins, she shuddered, then quickly attempted to disguise it by stepping towards town.

He caught her arm in his hand, nodding towards the forest. “We can’t use the bath house. The General asked us to try not to make the locals uncomfortable,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk as he gestured towards himself with his free hand.

Noticing distantly that he seemed to be in no hurry to take his hand off of her arm, she allowed him to guide her. “It doesn’t seem like you’re trying that hard.”

He laughed quietly, leading her deep into the forest.

*****

After a long walk, most of which Lane spent questioning her sanity, the trees thinned into a small clearing with a still, glassy lake in the center. A rickety dock, half-collapsed against the shore, jutted over the water. Ice ringed the edges of the lake, but the area around the dock was clear.

“I didn’t know this was—oh!”

While she’d been admiring the landscape, the angel had walked to the edge of the lake and begun to strip to the waist. His jacket was carelessly abandoned on the shore, and he was maneuvering his wings through long slits on the back of his shirt, folding and unfolding them carefully.

She had never stopped to wonder how something as simple as clothing worked for Cain, Pileon, and Anhea before, but she realized now that they must have to make accommodations like this constantly. They were living in a world that wasn’t meant for them, wearing clothing that didn’t suit their anatomy, using furniture that wasn’t designed for them. Surrounded by people who didn’t understand them—people who mistrusted them at best, and hated or feared them at worst.

It must be so lonely, she thought, wavering on the spot. She hadn’t truly thought her actions through; she had just followed her impulses and gotten herself in over her head, as usual. This was a bigger step than she’d anticipated.

Cain looked back at her, amusement ghosting over his face when he noticed her reaction. “Are you surprised? How did you think we were going to do this?” he needled, turning to face her, bare chested.

She shook her head, quickly looking away in an attempt to force herself to stop paying attention to how soft his skin looked in the weak sunlight. Seeming to mistake her confusion for reluctance, he smiled thinly and said, “You don’t have to help me. I can handle this on my own.”

“No,” she said, taking a decisive step towards him, her heart in her throat. “I said I’d help you, and I will.”

A strange emotion flitted over his face, gone too quickly for her to identify, before he nodded and said, “Come on, then. We can use the dock.” Then he smirked, his eyes flashing red. “Don’t worry—I’ll keep my pants on.”

“I’m not worried.”

I’m not afraid of you.

After removing his boots, Cain moved to step into the water, then stepped back and looked askance at the dock. Shooting her a quick look, he walked down the dock, carefully testing the boards, before sitting down at the edge and dangling his feet in the icy water.

“It’s safe for you to come on,” he called, slipping into the water. “There’s soap in the front pocket of my pack.”

She took the soap, wondering briefly what else he kept in his bag, and followed his path down the decrepit dock. Feeling as if she was observing herself from a distance, she knelt behind him and tried to settle herself.

His wings rose and fell slowly as he breathed, and she could feel the warmth radiating off of them—off of him—even though he was submerged in icy water up to his waist. Small tremors raced up and down his back, and she frowned slightly. Angels didn’t react to the cold.

Is he nervous?

She reached out a tentative hand and gently ran it across the top of one of his wings. Warm, soft. Comforting. He stilled beneath her touch, seeming to hardly breathe, before his wing raised slightly into her hand. Silently asking a question that she had also been asking herself since the day he’d taken her into the sky.

Can you accept me as I am?

Running her fingers through his feathers, she reached down into the water and gasped at the temperature. It felt like knives against her skin, lancing through her scar and shocking her back into the present—kneeling on a dock halfway collapsed into frigid water, with Cain in front of her, waiting for her to begin.

She’d gone too far to turn back now, if that had ever really been an option, so she worked the soap into a lather in her hands and then began gently picking her way through the first bloody patch marring his wings. It was a methodical task, and she settled into a rhythm quickly: soap and water, preen her fingers through the area she was working on, rinse, clean her hands, repeat.

There was nothing methodical about the way he was reacting to her, though. His wings rustled in constant minute movements, brushing against her hands and body, and he made small sounds occasionally, catching his breath or exhaling quietly through his teeth. Tiny groans, so low that she knew he was trying to keep them from her.

 Does this feel good for him?

Following his reaction, she adjusted her touch to what he seemed to like and watched, gratified, as the tense muscles of his back relaxed. He leaned back a bit, then asked in a low voice, “Is this what kindness looks like to you?”

“If you want me to be kind, teach me.”

“Yes,” she murmured, hardly recognizing her own voice as she continued to comb her fingers through his feathers. “Kindness is...trust that the other person won’t take advantage of your vulnerability.”

In all of her interactions with him, she had never forgotten that she would always be the vulnerable one. A human and an immortal would always be an uneven pair, no matter what she said or did. To even be around him was dangerous, and many would say that she was putting her life at risk by trusting him with kindness.

And yet, here she was, on her knees, fully clothed but still exposed. Trusting him with her safety, as he trusted her with his body.

“You can turn around,” she said, her breath catching in her chest. She would have to look him in the eye now. She wasn’t sure what she would see, but she knew she wouldn’t look away. “I’m finished with your back.”

Slipping smoothly through the water, he turned slowly and caught her eyes with his right away—cool steel blue, open, searching. She returned his gaze, feeling her heartbeat quicken, and reached out to continue her work on the front of his wings. Trailing a hand through the water, he tracked her movements closely, tremors still running across his chest.

As she worked, he lifted his hand from the water. Paused, as if questioning himself, then reached out to rest his fingers lightly on her cheek, cool and damp. “You can trust me, you know,” he murmured, the look in his eyes cutting through her focus. “When I promised to protect you, I meant it.”

“I know,” she whispered—and to her surprise, she meant it, too. Even though he subverted all of her expectations of angels, even though he’d disappeared on her twice, she believed that he would do his best to protect her.

A small smile playing across his lips, he raised his other hand from the water and caressed her shoulder in the barest of touches. She sighed, her breath frosting in the air, as a jolt of electrifying warmth ran through her body. For a moment, he was silent, watching her reaction to him as she shifted into his touch.

“I know you have questions for me,” he said quietly, his eyes following the path of his hand as it trailed up her neck. “But believe me when I say that there are reasons I haven’t told you everything.”

“I do,” she said in the same tone, as if speaking more loudly would shatter this small moment in time. She understood secrets and the patience it would take to unravel them well. She certainly had her own, but even now, a question turned over and over in her mind—were they secrets to him, too? Or were her secrets among the things he couldn’t tell her?

She closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift through a fantasy as the easy motion of his hands lulled her into a trance—one where he would tell her everything, answer all of her questions. One where she knew what had happened to her, where she had been, and why, at times, Cain almost seemed to know her already.

“Did you remember something? Me, perhaps?”

His quiet voice edged into her fantasy—“Where have you gone?”—and she opened her eyes. He was close to her now, so close that she could feel his breath warming her skin.

“I’m still here,” she breathed, feeling as if she were still half-caught in a dream. Secrets, questions, answers—all ceased to matter as she caught his eyes and his hand drifted to the back of her neck. There was no need to speak, all questions answered with one look before they moved as one and their lips met in a burning kiss.

She gasped into his lips, and he pressed his advantage, deepening the kiss, his tongue roving through her mouth. Sinful heat, life, coursed through her veins as she answered him, searching, wondering—could I remember you? Can you help me remember?

Mesmerized, she reached for him, one hand on his chest and the other running through his hair. A small sound escaped him as his wings rose from the water to envelop her in his sanctuary and press her closer to his body. She sighed, leaning into him as his warmth filled her with sensations that she hadn’t even known she’d been missing since he’d pulled her from the Rift.

This must be what it feels like to be alive.

Opening her eyes, she admired him—with his eyes shut, his body warm and urgent against hers, his lips soft and insistent, and tiny ice crystals in his wings catching the sunlight, he looked every bit an angel. Beautiful.

Sensing her gaze, he opened his eyes, a glint of red fading as he pulled back from her. Too soon. Bereft, she tried to will the blush to stop rising in her cheeks, but she knew she had failed with his lips lifted in a teasing smirk and he raised his hand to her face, feeling the warmth he’d nurtured in her body.

“Do you understand yet?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers.

She didn’t have an answer for him. There were still so many questions, but she felt closer to finding answers now. Closer to the woman she may have been before the Siberia base collapsed and she lost three years of her life.

She said nothing, only leaned into his touch, hoping he would understand her vulnerability. After a long moment, she steeled herself and whispered, “You should change and get back to the squad.”

“I should.”

And yet neither moved, frozen in time, tormented by questions, answers just out of reach. Time was nothing to an immortal, but it was everything to Lane—days for the mysteries of the Book to remain unsolved, weeks for her veiled past to haunt her every step, years for the world to tear itself apart at the seams.

But a small burst of hope bloomed in her chest—hope that, in time, they could try to solve these mysteries together. She met his gaze again, a promise in her eyes.

With time, I will understand.

Don’t leave me again, and don’t give up on me.

Wait for me, and I’ll wait for you.

[eluxcastar]

The little brotherfication of Pierro

── ୨୧：pierro & reader

୨୧﹑synopsis :: little siblingfication second last instalment lets gooooo

୨୧﹑genre :: fluff

୨୧﹑content :: gn reader, child pierro, back to fluff this time guys it's ok, not proofread

୨୧﹑words :: 1.1k

there has been interest in regards to either expansions of these or a sister series of older siblingfications after this concludes and I think that would be interesting. I would love to do an older siblingfication series. I don't know the order of those posts yet maybe I'll do a poll later or just leave it to people in my inbox and I'll do them in order of whose shows up first

all little siblingification posts

Life was never easy in Khaenri'ah, a nation devoid of a god and built on flesh and blood, but such was the way of the world when no alternative existed in his mind. It is strange how something so constant could so quickly become foreign once the world became bigger. Teyvat was a continent fought for by the gods rather than the hands of humans and their machines.

The land was never to be tilled with farming tools but rather was to be fought for with iron and blood. That principle doesn't apply anywhere else.

It was not so violent when you spoke those words to him, despite having watched you try to tinker with one of those machines before. You got your hands on the first thing you saw and promptly took to tearing it apart in search of what makes it tick. Watching you is mesmerising.

First, it was alchemy, as you tried in vain to teach him the art. He just didn't have the touch for it, but you assured him it was fine and left it at that, allowing him to watch you fumble your way through whatever your latest interest happened to be. If not alchemy, then it became mechanics; if not mechanics, then it was life itself and its creation. Neither of you thought to question your childhood spent in a wasteland so long as you had life at your fingertips.

You were something he thought he might never be.

The future where he grew into being anything like you felt to him was a dream and nothing more. He'd calculate the years and imagine they'd never come because, at the time, they felt like they wouldn't.

More than anything, you sought to haul him up to the top with you. You were not by any means leaps and bounds ahead of him, a comfortable gap of power between you; however, you saw merit in teaching him anything you learned. Wherever you were going in life, you were going to make sure your little brother got there with you, and to such end, Pierro spent his years as a toddler being carried on your shoulders when he didn't want to walk to see the husk of a field tiller you found, or up the hill that was so high he could see the palace over the rooftops.

At the time, it was, to you, the consequence of your parents forcing you to watch him when he wanted to play outside. To him, the forming of cherished memories that would lead him to linger at your side for as long as they were at the forefront of his mind.

The luxury of being carried around on your shoulder died as he outgrew it. He was too heavy for you not to tire yourself out in the first minute of walking, and it hurt more than it used to. It didn't stop him from fussing until you'd flick his forehead and call him some mean name.

He found his calling in the idea of becoming a mage. He's not sure where it came from, perhaps something you'd shown him sparking as thought that settled in his brain and never got around to leaving. Either way, it seems to be the one thing that doesn't absorb your undivided attention through your ever-changing interests. Nonetheless, through enough begging, whining and irritating you, he managed to convince you to at least try to learn with him.

Someone was always better than him, and you were no exception. You could easily outclass him in many facets of life, yet you preferred to help him despite it all, even in this which bored you to tears. He supposes it came from the fact that you had grown up with your parents shoving him at you and telling you both to work it out.

You were older than him, stronger than him, wiser than him—though only barely—and had more expectations than him. Your parents asked things of you because you were the oldest and the one who would be their legacy. He had less responsibility regarding the things they wanted, though it never kept him from yearning for approval. Yours, theirs, he wanted what felt like the greatest gift—the chance to make you happy.

If you could look at him and smile and tell him that you were proud of him and liked what he could do, then it didn't matter who was better than him. There would always be someone, but your shows of admiration could make him feel like the strongest boy Khaenri'ah could offer.

You should have resented him for being forced to tolerate him as a child, but there remained a soft spot for him all your life that you couldn't shake no matter how willing you were to fight with him. It makes it easier for him to practically dangle off you in search of the things he wants, down to asking you to go scare some kids he didn't get along with or read him bedtime stories under a blanket on his bed well past the time both of you were supposed to be asleep.

You make exceptions for him in his eyes because you love him enough.

At some point, you convinced yourself that the only reason you were willing to keep doing the things he begged of you was because Pierro was annoying and needy, but you were unable to say no to him. It was not for a lack of trying. You tried over and over to shake him off when he'd run up behind you and beg for you to carry him home or shove him away and shoo him to bed when he shook you in the night with a book in his hands.

On nights he was emboldened by disregard, he'd try to sleaze his way into your bed and wriggle under the covers to sleep soundly by your side. Pierro was convinced that no matter what existed out there, you could somehow protect him from all of that, and the safest place available was asleep under your arm.

You drew the line at his audacity to try and crawl into your bed and threw him out.

You had not fallen asleep by his side since winter when you agreed to read stories to him when the cold kept him restless, though your eyes would try to close, and he would feel your head relaxing beside him. It wasn't uncommon for him to witness and take advantage of your exhaustion rather than wake you, snuggling by your side and under your arm. It was more comfortable there than anywhere else.

He spent his youth by your side like you were salvation.

He wants nothing more than to find his way back to your loving arms, where you will spoil him with the luxury of ignorance.

CROSSPOSTED ON AO3

[cappulcino]

Seven Days Til Fall (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Read on AO3 (you do need to be logged in, though)

Words: 4,438

Pairing: Lucifer Morningstar x Angel!Reader

Summary: You're an angel sent on a divine mission to retrieve a powerful relic that has been stolen from Heaven. The orders are clear: gain an audience with the Devil, make deals with them if necessary, anything to return that object to the Silver City. But Hell is not quite what you expected, and neither is Lucifer.

Trigger warnings: Non-graphic allusion to rape (committed by a sinner)

The next morning, when you arrived at the centre of Hell and the giant doors of its ruler's palace opened –letting out the usual gush of blood that each day tainted your immaculate apparels and never left despite how hard you tried to miracle it away–, Mazikeen was waiting for you, body tense, hands on the hilts of her swords.

"I salute you, Mazikeen of the Lillim," you said cautiously as you approached her and the heavy sound of the doors closing behind you echoed in the hall.

She nodded out of sheer respect for etiquette and because you were an honoured guest in her sovereign's realm, but did not bother to greet you with words.

Instead, she immediately informed you, "The Morningstar is occupied with matters of the kingdom. I have been asked to keep you... entertained. And safe." Her tone was dripping with disdain, revealing her clear lack of interest in the task.

"That won't be necessary," you told her after a moment of reflexion.

"What do you mean?"

"Take me to your master, Mazikeen. Heaven's deal is with them alone, and I shall therefore spend my days with them."

By that, you really meant to let her know that you didn't trust her, nor could you even if you wanted to. Unlike Lucifer, Mazikeen was bound by no divine contract, and demons were notorious liars. She would most likely try to mislead and confuse you, and you obviously couldn't allow it.

"There is nothing for you to see at that meeting."

There. She was already trying to divert you.

"Perhaps not, but I still would like to attend. The search for the Cup can wait. Besides, it's evident neither of us has any desire to spend more time together than necessary."

"I received clear orders," she said in a clipped tone, her upper teeth showing a little and her fists clenching harder on her weapons.

"As did I, and as did the Lightbringer, in fact. So I must ask again. Take me to your ruler, and let me discuss this with them."

Mazikeen eyed you with suspicion and annoyance for a moment but eventually relented.

"Fine. If you're so eager to watch our business…" She was already heading to where the meeting was held, and you promptly followed. "But there is no guarantee you will be accepted. Do not try to say I didn't warn you."

"…and I have been told by Pharzuph that–"

The ornate doors of the council chamber creaked open as you and Mazikeen stepped inside, your presence immediately drawing the attention of everyone there. A tall, gaunt demon, Asmodeus, who had been in the middle of voicing his grievance about the recent disturbances in the Second Circle, froze mid-sentence, his eyes widening in surprise while the room fell into a sudden, oppressive silence.

Lucifer, seated at the head of the long, marble table, raised an eyebrow in mild surprise, but they didn't seem entirely displeased to see you.

Still, when they turned to the she-demon at your left and spoke, their voice cut through the silence like a sharp blade. "Explain yourself, Mazikeen."

"It is not her fault," you declared before Mazikeen could get a single word out. "I was curious to know how assemblies in Hell were conducted and asked her to take me here. After all… know your enemies, right?"

Lucifer's lips curled into a faint, amused smile while the demons exchanged hateful glares and whispers of uncertainty.

"Very well," they eventually said. "Take a seat. Observe if you wish."

You only hesitated a split second before gratefully bowing your head and stepping forward with calm resolve to take the offered seat.

"Is this reasonable, Sire? Letting the Opposition so blatantly pry and learn about what goes on here?" a demon you would later come to know as Belial asked.

"Are you questioning Our decision?" Lucifer replied with a warning edge to their tone. "We doubt anything that will be said in today's session could be of importance to Heaven. Let the curious angel indulge. Now, Asmodeus, you were saying?"

"That the, uh… The… The souls assigned to the Second Circle have been… lacking." The demon seemed unsure, constantly throwing glances in your direction.

"Yes, so have the souls in the Fifth Circle," another added.

"Ah, the ever-persistent soul-allocation debate," Lucifer sighed, looking straight at you as if letting you in on an inside joke. You pinched your lips to suppress a smirk as they answered. "Well, perhaps Desire of the Endless has been neglecting their duty. It is not Our concern."

"Is it not?" The demon now talking didn't even have an anthropomorphic body. You had seen them somewhere… But what was their name already?

"No, Azazel." Ah, yes. Azazel. "We do not interfere with the affairs of the Endless."

Azazel's many eyes glimmered with something close to amusement. "Does this apply to the Dream Lord? I recall a rather... public exchange of challenges the last time he came to our domain. Surely, You have not forgotten?"

What was this about? You shifted in your seat, imperceptibly leaning forward, hoping to learn more.

But Lucifer's eyes narrowed, the faintest flicker of annoyance passing over their features. "We remember well, Azazel, as We remember your… compelling offer. Do you have something relevant to add, or are you merely reminiscing?"

"Only that you promised to destroy him, Your Majesty. Yet, here we are, discussing soul allocation as if nothing ever happened. Perhaps the Endless should be reminded of their place and–"

"The affairs of the Endless, as We said, are not Our concern at this time. If and when We decide to address Lord Morpheus, you will be informed. Until then, We suggest you focus on your own duties, Azazel." Lucifer turned their attention back to the rest of the Council. "Now, if there are no further diversions, shall we proceed? Belial, perhaps would you like to share your grievances?"

The demon that had expressed his reluctance to your presence earlier cleared his throat and spoke up. 

"Yes, well… It’s just that the lava flow in the Lake of Fire has been inconsistent. Some days it's more of a trickle than a proper stream from the volcanoes, and… Well, I've heard complaints."

There was a pause as all eyes turned to the Lightbringer.

Lucifer blinked. "Is this your classified state affair no celestial being should ever hear about? What a security breach indeed." And again, they glanced at you with a mock-serious expression. "I do hope you can keep this… earth-shattering revelation to yourself."

For the second time, you had to bite the inside of your cheeks not to laugh, but you still decide to play along. "Oh, you can trust me. We angels are very good at keeping secrets."

Lucifer flashed you the briefest of smiles, and the meeting resumed. The topics ranged from the management of the Damned to disputes between powerful demons, to the distribution of resources in different regions of Hell. And no matter how important or trivial the matter was, Lucifer always listened and provided a balanced solution to everything, showing a surprising level of patience.

This meeting felt so different from those you had to attend to in the Silver City and, at first, you couldn't exactly tell why. You, too, sometimes had to be present at assemblies where your peers complained about clogged Holy Water sources and what needed improvement for next Christmas Mass. So what was the difference?

But then it hit you. Lucifer was here. The congregation was talking about petty arguments and lava flow issues, and Lucifer, the monarch of this realm, the second most powerful being of all Creation, was here. And listened. And answered.

You had never seen God at any meeting –or anywhere, for that matter. You merely saw His light illuminating Heaven, and had only heard His voice once when He had created you. Sometimes, in fact, you even doubted the Seraphim themselves truly spoke directly to the Almighty. To the Metatron, yes. Perhaps. Never God.

But Lucifer… Lucifer seemed to care about how Hell was governed. And at that moment, just like your walk through the Woods of Suicides yesterday had made you realise that God did, in fact, leave and forsake His children, you understood that when His words as reported in the Bible said, "I am with you always," that, too, was a lie.

God lied and the Morningstar didn't. Yet you had been taught to praise the former and distrust the latter. Something wasn't right.

It was sometime in the early afternoon, you weren't sure exactly. Time seemed to move differently in Hell than it did in Heaven. With the ruler of Hell still by your side, you were walking through the City of Dis, following your first serious lead regarding the Cup of Eternal Grace, but your steps were less purposeful, your gaze less focused.

"You have been unusually quiet since this morning," Lucifer remarked, glancing at you sideways. "Are you alright?"

Their question jolted you out of your contemplation, and you looked at them with pure surprise. Did they really care about your current state of mind or was this a subtle way for them to tell you that they would not be wasting their time with someone lacking devotion to their mission?

"I'm… I'm fine," you replied with a tone devoid of conviction.

"You most certainly do not seem 'fine'. We have sensed your distraction. Is it about the Cup? We thought you would be delighted to have finally found a serious lead."

"It isn't about the Cup, no."

Lucifer came to a halt and sighed, evidently annoyed to have to worm this out of you. "Then what?"

Still, you hesitated and let your gaze drop to the ground before answering. "It's just… It's hard to reconcile everything I've seen here so far with what I believed about Hell. And I fear this is making me question… Well, everything."

"Ah."

You finally looked up at them. "I mean, how can you be so dedicated to ruling this place? Is it not… confining?"

Lucifer was now regarding you with a mixture of what you suspected was their definition of sympathy and a wry smile.

"Confining? Perhaps. But it is a duty We must not fail in. Hell is Our responsibility. We do what needs to be done because it is Our realm to govern, for better or worse."

"But does it not bother you? The demons, the Damned, the endless circle of torment… This all feels so…"

"Cruel?" Lucifer offered.

You nodded. "And lonely."

The Lightbringer's expression softened ever so slightly. "Cruelty is a matter of perspective, little angel," they said, purposely ignoring the matter of loneliness. "To some, what We do might seem cruel –it certainly does to mortals. To others, it is a necessary order." They then took a step closer, their blue eye boring deep into your soul, and whispered, "Which one is it to you now?"

Maybe you had been too quick to judge. Maybe there were things you didn't understand. You had always thought Hell to be a place of pure evil, but maybe there was much more than what Heaven had taught you, and you were glad to get to see it from a different perspective.

You opened your mouth, wanting to tell Lucifer just that when their eyes shot up, catching sight of something behind you.

"No. No, no, no," they called out, gracefully picking their robes to stride towards a demon hauling a poorly-looking soul. "This will not be sufficient, Baal. Take him back."

You took a deep breath to regain your composure, swallowing the strange emotions Lucifer's proximity had stirred within you, and turned around to observe the scene.

The soul's form was grotesque, twisted by the torture it had visibly just endured. His skin was pale and his limbs were contorted unnaturally, as if they had been repeatedly broken and healed in all the wrong ways. A faint wail escaped his cracked lips when he felt the Morningstar approach.

"Your Majesty," Baal said. "I don't think he can take any more today."

"Oh, he can," Lucifer assured. "And he will."

The dead man shook his head, his whole body quivering. "No… No, please, no. I… I beg you. I beg you!"

"Mmh. We do like the sound of it. But you see, the punishment must fit the crime," Lucifer replied in a delicate tone before leaning to better face the sinner. "Tell Us, did you stop when that poor girl begged you to?"

Lucifer thus gave one silent nod to Baal, and the man resumed sobbing as the demon dragged him back to where he had come from.

Then, as he passed by you, he shouted, "Hey, you! The angel! Help me, please, help me! Take me with you! I'll be a good servant to our Lord, I swear!"

Your eyes followed the trail his dismembered limbs were leaving in the ash and dust then moved back to his. His pleas triggered no pity in you; Hell was his rightful place.

"The Devil is your Lord."

You obviously spent the rest of the afternoon gathering further clues as to where the Cup of Eternal Grace might be hidden. There were no concrete results for the moment, but you knew you were heading in the right direction. You could feel it.

The lead you were now following had to do with a demonic marketplace where powerful artefacts and forbidden objects were traded among demons. Lucifer had quickly explained that the Obsidian Bazaar, as it was called, was a hidden, ever-shifting place in Hell, moving with the Shadows, difficult to find and even harder to navigate without the right connections.

How hard could it be? you thought. With the Morningstar as your guide, you couldn't possibly get lost, could you?

But though the initial tip had come from a low-ranking demon who, when questioned by his sovereign, had quickly folded under pressure –and of whom you now couldn't recall the name no matter how hard you tried because you had spent the whole interaction asking yourself if he hadn't been one of those you had personally fought during the Great War in Heaven–, the rest of the demons were not as cooperative.

Sure, you had the Devil on your side, and they had told you just yesterday, after threatening their minions, that nobody here would try to make this any harder for you. But this was your quest, not Lucifer's, and the Devil wasn't exactly one to hand everything on a silver platter. In fact, they seemed rather content to let you lead the way, observing your efforts with amusement.

At one point, after yet another fruitless conversation with a particularly slippery imp who vanished into a cloud of smoke before you could press further, you turned to Lucifer with a hint of exasperation.

"I thought You said Your subjects wouldn't hinder my search," you remarked, trying to keep your tone neutral but unable to mask the edge in your voice.

Lucifer arched a graceful eyebrow, a subtle smirk on their lips. "We did, and they are not. They are merely... exercising caution. The Obsidian Bazaar is not exactly fond of uninvited guests, especially those from above."

You crossed your arms, irritated. "So You're letting me chase phantoms."

The smile that tugged at Lucifer's lips widened a bit. "Consider it part of your education. You might learn something valuable if you keep your eyes and mind open."

You weren't sure if they were talking about the chalice or something else entirely, but the underlying message was clear.

Walking and searching, you witnessed Lucifer interacting with various denizens of Hell –some bowed in respect, others approached with petitions or grievances. Just like at the meeting, Lucifer addressed each with a measured fairness, dispensing judgments and solutions that, while stern, were undeniably just. Some on the other hand had not lost their rebellious tendencies after their Fall, quite the opposite, and Lucifer knew just what to do with each of them as well.

"You care for them," you found yourself saying aloud at some point, the thought escaping your mouth before you could hold it back.

Lucifer glanced at you, an unreadable expression flickering across their features. "'Care' is too strong of a strong word. We told you, it is Our function to maintain order here. Chaos has its place, but too much of it becomes tiresome."

"But You listen to them. You involve Yourself directly," you insisted. "In Heaven, all those trivial matters are delegated."

"We are well aware, dear. After all, this is the very reason of your presence in Our kingdom, is it not? But We are not like Our Father."

"Evidently."

There was bitterness in the ruler's tone, long-held resentment, too, and what you could best describe as hurt despite your knowledge that they were far from being sensitive.

It pained you. But before you could say anything else, Lucifer halted, their eyes narrowing on a demon walking a little further ahead.

"What?" you inquired after a pause. "Should we follow him?"

Frowning, Lucifer remained silent until the demon was out of sight.

"No," they said eventually. "Let us not let the trail go cold."

Unfortunately, you missed the location of the Obsidian Bazaar one too many times, and it became risky to try to find it again if you wanted to be back to the Silver City on time.

It was frustrating, yes, but you were now more confident that you would succeed in your mission than you had ever been, so it didn't matter too much in the end. Besides, as much as you hated to admit it, you weren't particularly in a hurry to complete this task any more. You still had so many questions, there was now so much you wanted to learn… Heaven could wait; there was, after all, all eternity ahead.

"It is getting late. Would you care to join Us for supper again?"

You weren't hungry, of course, and you knew that if Heaven ever got word of how you concluded your daily trips to Hell, you would be accused of fraternising with the enemy. Yet, you only hesitated a split second before nodding. "I would."

The Lightbringer smiled then –a real smile– and, for once, you both flew back to their palace.

"Your wings are strong," Lucifer commented as you entered the dining hall.

"Did You have any doubt?" you replied, only half-joking.

"No."

"No?"

Again, Lucifer invaded your personal space. They were getting increasingly confident in overstepping the boundaries their royal function commanded, and you were getting proportionally incapable of blocking those inexplicable things that happened to you whenever they did.

This time, they even went as far as allowing their fingertips to graze your cheek, and it made you freeze.

"We see so much potential in you, sweet Dominion. And Heaven is wasting it all. Such a shame…"

It took you a second, but you eventually shook your head and sat down, determined to enjoy your supper without thinking too much back on what had just happened.

As it seemed customary in Hell, the meal was succulent, far from moderated, filled with exotic dishes that tickled your senses. Conversation flowed more easily than the previous day, though, with topics ranging from the absurdities of certain demonic customs to shared memories of celestial events long past seen from two very distinctive points of view.

With certain things Lucifer said, you even let yourself laugh. Good gracious Lord… You laughed. The realisation of how at ease you had become in Lucifer's presence made you flush, but though disconcerting to say the least, you had to admit it was not an entirely unwelcome feeling.

"Who thought fun could be found in the depths of Hell?" you said some time around desert, letting your mirth speak.

"Fun can be found anywhere that is not the Silver City," Lucifer retorted as they brought their glass to their lips to sip on some wine.

"Oh, I must disagree, Lightbringer."

"Mmh. Of course you must."

"Angels know how to have fun sometimes, have You forgotten?"

Lucifer leaned forward to try you. "Please, do tell Us one single amusing story from above. Go on, entertain Us."

Not one to back down from a challenge, you thought about their request for a moment.

"Well, there was actually this one time, during one of our routine cloud formation, we were tasked with creating a particularly elaborate pattern in the sky. You know, something grand and inspiring for humans to look at."

You threw yourself into the story which, quite frankly, was not as amusing as you remembered now that you were telling it to the ruler of Hell. But you thought the wine helped and hoped it had the same intoxicating effect on their mind so your words would at least get a smirk out of them.

And so you went on, giggling every now and then, entirely oblivious to how Lucifer was looking at you for over half of the account.

"...and Ariel, poor thing, she was so stuck in that cumulonimbus, desperately flapping about, there were feathers everywhere and–" Finally, you noticed the strangely fond expression on Lucifer's face and interrupted yourself. "What?"

"You truly are something else, are you not?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" You asked with a residual chuckle.

From the other side of the table, Lucifer's eyes raked over your body before avoiding you altogether.

"We're not entirely sure…"

That evening, back in the Silver City, you couldn't shake the day's events from your mind, much less what Lucifer had said at supper.

Even during compline, your thoughts wandered, incapable of focusing on the sermon but replaying conversations and observations, with so many questions swirling in your mind.

And it must have shown on your face because as you exited the Cathedral, Camael, the closest thing to a friend Heaven could allow you and next to whom you often prayed, came skipping to your side.

"Is everything alright?"

"Of course, Camael."

"Are you sure? You seem distant lately."

You paused for an instant, wondering whether to be brutally honest or tell only part of the truth. You chose the latter, picking your words carefully. "This mission in Hell is... more complex than I anticipated. There is much to consider, that's all."

"I could tell," Camael said, a falsely concerned look in their purple eyes. You were so tired of Heaven's hypocrisy. "There is this look on your face…" They looked left, then right, as if to make sure nobody would hear, and then whispered, "I think it's doubt."

Your heart skipped a beat, and you felt your head starting to spin. Doubt? That was a word that couldn't be thrown around carelessly here.

"Well, I–"

"Trust in His Plan," Camael advised you as they put a hand on your shoulder. "Clarity will come in time."

"Clarity… Yes."

"I have to go now. It's my turn to oversee the Warriors' training. Peace be upon you, my friend."

"Uh-huh. Peace be upon you, Camael."

Meanwhile, in the City of Dis, Lucifer was following the faint yet unmistakable trail they had sensed earlier that day while searching for the Obsidian Bazaar with you. Or rather, more accurately, they were looking for the demon that had caught their attention then, Lahash, whose penchant for meddling in divine affairs was well-known.

Finding him home, Lucifer entered the demon's lair with an aura of quiet menace. Lahash, hunched and trembling, had been expecting a confrontation since this afternoon, but the sight of Lucifer's icy gaze actually sent a shiver of fear down his thorny spine.

"Y-Your Majesty," he began, his voice shaking as he attempted to bow. "I… I didn't know it was of such importance. If I had, I would have–"

"Silence," Lucifer cut him off abruptly. "Do not insult Us with your lies, Lahash. You knew exactly what you possessed. Have We not made it clear that this was of personal significance to Us yesterday?"

The demon's eyes darted around the room, searching for some escape or leverage. "Perhaps we could, uh… make a deal? I mean, You–"

Before he could finish, Lucifer's hand shot out, grabbing him by the throat and pinning him against the jagged stone wall. His words turned to choked gasps.

"We do not barter with the likes of you," the monarch hissed, their eyes blazing with fury. "You have meddled with forces beyond your understanding. You will regret this."

Then, as Lucifer reached out to claim the Cup from Lahash' hands, a voice sliced through the silence. "I see You have found what you were looking for."

Mazikeen.

Delicately cradling the chalice, Lucifer let the traitor fall to the ground and replied calmly. "I have indeed. And now it is secure."

Mazikeen's eyes narrowed. "Are You planning to tell the angel? Or will You keep playing this game until You have become bored?"

"This is no game, Mazikeen. Timing is everything."

Stepping closer, Mazikeen's voice dropped to a harsh snarl. "You are treading dangerous ground, my Lord. Celestial beings and Fallen Ones do not mix, it never ends well with them. Remember who and what we are."

Anybody else but the she-demon would have been probably ended by now, because such affront terribly irritated the Morningstar.

"We are well aware of our identities and roles. Perhaps it is you who needs reminding of your place."

But Mazikeen was relentless. "Do You truly believe that angels can be trusted? That any of them could see You for anything other than what You once were –God's most favoured, now cast out? No one will ever understand You as I do."

Lucifer raised their eyebrow, their eyes twinkling with amusement. "Jealousy, Mazikeen? We thought you above such trivialities."

"I only seek to protect You. That angel–"

Lucifer raised their hand to silence her. "Is Ours to deal with, as We see fit. Your devotion is not unnoticed, nor is it unappreciated. But We will not tolerate someone who lets their emotions blind their judgement at Our side. You would do well to remember that."

Clenching her jaw, Mazikeen swallowed her pride with difficulty before leaving without another word. Lucifer watched her with a strange lump forming in their throat as they began to realise what a slippery slope they were on indeed.

But what had been done couldn't be undone, nor did Lucifer truly want to put an end to all this. They would just wait to see how this would play out.

And there was evening, and there was morning –the third day.

[angelic-writer]

Running Through Your Veins - Race Against the Clock

"Joshua!! Josh, are you there?!" Madeline called out as she and Leah ran down the hallway. The wallpaper was beginning to peel away and the wood was already showing its rot. No doubt this place had been abandoned for a while. Six or seven months, Leah guessed.

Her mind was racing, playing back what the creepy guy said to her when she gave him Joshua's information. He just smiled at her and said "There is no reason for that anymore." She gritted her teeth. How could she allow herself to fall for his tricks?

They had wasted their time, trying to appease him by gathering the info they were willing to give him. Of course, they didn't divulge too much information. There were some things that this stranger didn't deserve to know. It was only for them. Joshua's secrets are for them to keep and they would gladly die with them.

As they searched every room, every nook and cranny of the sprawling building, Madeline could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Everything was beginning to spin. She tried to her best to keep herself upright only to end up falling to her knees. Joshua and Isaac are in here somewhere. They were being tortured by one of the devil hunters that had been making the rounds lately. What was their goal? Their agenda? Why do they want Joshua and Isaac so badly? She didn't know. Her mind was too jumbled to think coherently.

Josh... Josh, I'm sorry... I should've tried more to help you. We should've tried more. She put her hand on her chest, feeling her heart racing like a hummingbird. Oh god, this can't be happening. Josh is gonna die. Izzy's gonna die. I'm... I'm a failure. Everything we did is all gonna be for nothing.

A firm hand on her shoulder snapped her out of her trance. She looked up to see the blurry figure of Leah. "Hey, it's gonna be fine. We're gonna find them. It's gonna be okay."

"B-But what if-" She couldn't speak. She couldn't get enough air.

"Shh. It's alright. Joshua's a tough guy. He can make it through anything."

Madeline could only nod at her words. What she said was true, Joshua can regenerate himself. He can heal from anything so why did she have a sinking feeling in her gut? She took a few shaky breaths, holding onto Leah to ground herself.

"Alright, let's just-"

A blood curdling scream cut off what Leah was going to say. For a moment, the two girls couldn't breathe. That scream was all too familiar.

"Isaac?!"

Not missing a beat, Leah pulled Madeline to her feet and ran down the hallway. That scream... It came from the basement. She and Maddie were on the fifth floor of this abandoned hotel so they were a good distance away. If they were fast enough, they might be able to make it.

A few minutes later, they finally arrived. Clambering down the stairs, Madeline stumbled, trying not to trip and fall. Her mind raced, going through multiples scenarios, none of which were good. Did Isaac get stabbed by one of those hunters? No, they said they couldn't hurt humans. Then, that could mean...

"Isaac?! Izzy, are you in here?!" Leah called out, her eyes scanning the multiple rooms they could potentially be in.

"L-Leah?! I'm in here! Help!"

The two girls rushed to the boiler room and what they saw would be described as an actual nightmare.

Isaac was over Joshua, desperately giving him CPR while he was wincing in pain. The Cael devil was limp on the ground, eyes glassy and empty. Black blood stained the stone floors, leaving the room with the smell of rot and iron.

Madeline's gut feeling was right. Something did happen to Joshua. And this time, he wasn't getting back up.

"JOSH!!"

[marythegizka]

Find the Words

Search your works for the given words and post the context of what you find!

Tagged by @mxanigel to find the words hope, smile, choice, and settle. (Thanks for the tag!)

Tagging (if you'd like to play) @deedeemactir, @hinterlost, @dairine-bonnet, @illusivesoul, and anyone else who sees this and wants to give it a shot! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the words rise, pride, relief, and hold.

Hope (From So Long as the Music Plays We Dance)

“It's a display of support," she finally said. "I'm hardly in a position to refuse.”

Loghain stopped.

“Shouldn't Fontaine be handling this?”

“Fontaine is not here.”

“Then wait until she comes back.”

“I can't do that. It could be months! Empress Celene would take offence.”

She couldn't help but notice how Loghain bristled slightly at the name. Old habits died hard.

“Then let her take offence. She benefits from this far more than we do. Show the Wardens are on her side and hope Gaspard gets the hint. Her inviting you to this... ball of hers is hardly disinterested. Celene is a politician, first and foremost. An Orlesian politician, to boot. She's not to be trusted.”

“No, she's not. That doesn't mean I'm walking into the lion's den.”

Smile (From To Hell and Back)

The woman starts scribbling.

“Lord Malak,” she says, “am I to understand that you are no longer affiliated with the Sith Empire? Are you then to be tried as a citizen of the Republic?”

Malak feels his knuckles crack. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. What he does know, right now, is that he wants her gone.

“Lord Malak?” she repeats, and if she says it once more, he’s going to explode. He has no answers for her. And from what he can tell, Revan doesn’t either – not that the woman pays her much heed. That doesn’t stop her from stepping forward and leaning towards the journalist, as if to whisper in her ear.

“It’s classified Jedi business, Miss. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

The woman frowns, but relents.

“Well, then,” she says, handing Revan a card, “should any developments arise… you may contact me at any time.”

Revan slips the card in her pocket and forces a smile.

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

The woman nods and walks away.

“Tell me you’re throwing that away.”

“Nope.”

“Fantastic.”

Choice (From A Woman of her Word, short WIP)

Some things - she realises with bitter amusement - do not change. She watches in silence as Korris closes the hatch behind him, still fuming from their talk, and she knows for a fact that he would have slammed it, had its design allowed it. Let him throw a fit if it pleases him, it changes nothing. The Geth, in many ways, are like spirits - scarce venturing beyond the Veil, as similar and as different from organic life as entities from another realm can be. Like spirits, they cannot be trusted. And like spirits, they can be subdued. That some are capable of emotions - of compassion, even - should not matter. Does not matter. Not when the stakes are this high. Because for all the other Admirals’ distrust, for all they vilify her when they think her out of earshot, she is a woman of her word. They will re-take Rannoch, when the time comes, and she will find a way through the Veil. Whether it is wiser to cross it or remain here... she does not know. Though she is loath to admit it, there are advantages to not being a hunted apostate. Not quite as many to being stuck in an enviro-suit. Still, at this point, the choice is hypothetical, and it is up to her to ensure it does not remain so.

Settle (From Long Live the King)

“See, that’s just the thing. They all want me to be Maric. I’m not Maric.”

“And judging by the stories I’ve heard, I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.”

“Oh, so the pillow-talk also revolves around my father. Good to know.”

“What? No! Stop deflecting.”

“Why should I? It’s what I’m best at. Oh, got a new shield, by the way. Does just that. Deflecting. Or it… would if I used it more.”

She took a breath. Do not take the bait.

“That’s not true, and you know it. You’ve got this. Being King. Besides, who cares that you grew up in a stable? You’re rebuilding Ferelden now. That’s all that matters.”

“Perhaps.”

Another wave hit the hull, and Alistair brought a hand to his mouth. It took him a moment to straighten up and look at her again.

“So… not that I have a bet to settle or anything but… how long?”

Erin smirked.

“That’s rather vague, your Majesty.”

“Oh, you know what I’m talking about. How long have you had it for…” he winced and gestured towards the stairs leading up to the quarterdeck, where Loghain was still sitting hunched over his map. She laughed.

“Long enough.”

“Since the Blight?”

Erin didn’t answer. Alistair sighed.

“You’re mad.”

“You say that as if you’d just found out.”

[harleiquina]

As someone who never truly did the change between CDs and Digital... I mean...

(sorry for the terrible picture, I forget that I should remove the case of my phone when taking pics otherwise I get that pink glow on the right)

And as someone who decided to discover new bands from Russia which makes impossible for me to buy their albums because:

A) I'm broke

B) My country has a limit on how much money you can spend overseas and there is no warranty the the items will be delivered in time or delivered at all.

I had to burn some CDs by myself (I had to stop because finding CDs to burn became a mission) I've used 2 methods. Bear in mind I have an old computer that has a CD burner by itself.

1. Nero Express.

This software allows you to burn CDs and DVDs (I think even Blu-Ray but since I lack that hardware I don't know). It's quite intuitive, you open the Nero Burning ROM and it lets you of choose what to burn.

The one thing I don't like is that when making CD it only allows you burn a certain amount of time, not the full disk (so, let's say 10 songs when the capacity could be between 15 and 20). So, you just have to pay attention to that.

2. Windows Media Player.

Yes, I use Windows, I've told you that I'm broke and I also live by the end of the world. Get over it! Windows Media player lets you record CDs and this was my preferred method to use because I was able to fit 2 albums in 1 CD (opposite Nero). Again, it's quite intuitive, you enter a new CD, select what you want to do, drag the files and hit Enter or OK (can't quite remember, it's been a while).

Now, to get music from Internet.

1. The Oldest Trick: You can put the word "bajar" ("download" in Spanish, I never tried using an English word to do it) between the WWW. and Youtube (so www.bajaryoutube.com/WHATEVERVIDEOURLYOUWANT) and it lets you download MP3 or MP4. However sometimes copyright is an issue so, if possible, do not to use the original video on the official page of your selected artist, there is always someone that reuploaded the song on a fanvideo or something like that.

2. BEWARE WITH THIS ONE: there are websites that let you download either music or videos from Youtube (and other websites as well, you need to taylor your search). The main risk is for the malware/virus that are lurking in them. I use this site a lot but a friend of mine did got a virus by accidentally clicking on one of the pop-ups that show up when doing the stuff. So, be mindful and keep your PC/Cellphone antivirus up to date... and try not to touch anything you don't have to. The good thing is that in that website, copyright is not an issue (or maybe a very rare one) it can download anything.

3. Atube Catcher: my aunt uses this software to download videos. I've never used it myself but if she can do it, it is simple enough (she is not very tech savvy). I think its only for video, so MP4, but you can always download the video and separate the music on a Video Editing software (I use a cracked version of Filmora 9 by Wondershare because the free version leaves watermarks).

4. OBS Studio : this is quite a versatile software that lets you record and stream. If you want to record a video, you have to select the items you want to record (screen, audio output) and always pay attention to that (for instance if you want to record any kind of virtual gathering, you must select "microphone" as well, otherwise whatever you say won't be recorded). It takes a learning curve but its not that hard after all.

5. Telegram: I know that USA is in love with text messages but in the rest of the world we use apps that just need a working line and WiFi to run (so, no charging fees for every message. You might have just the activation code sent on an SMS and nothing else). In Argentina we use mostly WhatsApp but a few times their servers went down -hasn't happened in a while- leaving us incommunicated for almost a whole day, thats why at home we also use Telegram. The good thing about Telegram is that it has fangroups (channels, something WhatsApp is trying to copy) as well and people post media (pictures, videos, songs) in them as they would do in any other Social Media. I found the entire discographies of Агата Кристи (Agata Kristi) and Король и Шут (The King and the Jester) in here and I'm so thankful for it... it stops me from using Spotify. They won't be on MP4 but on m4a, still they can be reproduced and burned on CD by Windows Media Player.

6. VK: В Контакте is basically Russian Facebook the layout is pretty much the same BUT you can share media on it (books, movies, music) however to be able to download it you must pay a fee. So it's not for everyone, but it's an option.

Hopefully you'll find this tools useful on your endevour into piracy.

PS: I do encourage you to buy the original CDs as much as you can. I don't know much about the new wave but old-school artists usually get a big chunk of their money from their physical sales. Lately it was replaced by their sold tickets because no-one was buying CDs anymore.

Unlike streaming services that pay cents on the dollar for each listener/reproduction, labels have a better deal with them (still not 50/50 or anything alike, but better) so buying physical media does 2 things: shows that people are interested in them (making them profitable) and gives them some bucks.

HOLD THE LINE!! KEEP PUSHING!!!!!

[minsarasarahair]

My thoughts about NU Carnival after playing for two days

First of all, don’t play this if you’re a minor and not comfortable with mature content. I did play some Nitro+Chiral BL games (Lamento, Dramatical Murder, Togainu no Chi & Sweet Pool. If you ask what’s my favorite, it’s Lamento bc I like cats and the world building of the story... also Rai) in the past so I’m fine. I’m just surprised bc I tried it without any prior knowledge what is this game all about.

I find the game refreshing and unique. It’s a gacha game but you collect hot guys to unlock H-scenes which is a good motivation for BL lovers. 

The protagonist has personality which is rare to games so that’s a good thing too. He’s making s*x toys as his livelihood and one day he isekai’d to a magical fantasy world where s*x is a way to regulate the magic. Plot is straightforward and easy to digest for people who don’t want complicated story.

The game mechanics is actually fun and figuring out to win the battle is very engaging for me. My knowledge from playing Onmyoji RPG and FGO is quite helpful to understand it easily.

Building your characters is kinda complex. You need lots of things. You have the ascension(You need shards more of that characters to level up his stars, if you dont have the character yet you can collect shards to summon him like onmyoji), unlocking potentials(Leveling up his skills,atk,hp), intimacy(To level up his atk and hp) and leveling up(This is like the EXP cards leveling up). You can only level up your characters based on your current level. For example, I’m in level 16 now so my characters limit is level 16 too. But at least we don’t need to think about getting the right weapon/gear for the characters unlike in Onmyoji RPG or Genshin Impact.

It has auto for farming easily but you need certain limited tickets to do it. It has auto without tickets but I don't recommend it to beginners, your characters will just die if you're not strong enough.

I have nothing to complain about the summon rate up bc its gacha and its really up to your luck. It seem decent but I hope they gave new players one free SSR like Twisted Wonderland. Despite that, I have two SSR tho from my first 10 contracts so I'm quite grateful.

So far, I don’t have a favorite character but the characters are all likable. Its not their fault. Its just me being picky. Maybe Dante the new guy will be my fave but for now I don’t have one. I need a favorite to motivate me. In Onmyoji, Tamamo and Ibaraki are the characters that motivate me. In Twisted Wonderland, its Leona, Jamil and Vil. In FGO, its Yan Qing. I need someone like that. Kuya is quite popular in the fandom tho? And I haven’t meet him yet in the story. I’m still in Olivine’s story. Maybe I’ll like Kuya bc he’s a fox? I don’t know. Edmond is also pretty but I don’t know. I’ll try my best to find a fave.

What else? The community seem fun? Well, I played this also bc I’m done with purists who act like hypocrites but at least in this game, the players play it bc they know what they getting into. 

In case if you’re getting into this game, discussing seiyuu pseudonym for R18 works and sharing H-scenes in public are not allowed. Respect the dev, and the artists who work for this. This is a rare game and deserve respect. That’s all. 

[basichextechml]

Proper Holiday // Ch.2

Tangerine/GN!Reader

Rating: Explicit // 3.5K words // Reader’s gender not described + they/them pronouns, The gun finally gets used, I also don’t know anything about guns, Canon-typical violence starting here, Major Character Death to come

Fate Worked in funny ways, like ruining your holiday.

Ch.1 // Ch.2 // Ch.3 // Epilogue

---

     You liked to think that you were pretty good at your job. You’d never gotten caught, always delivered, and hadn’t died yet. If you were allowed to have a yelp page, you’d probably have a solid 5 star rating. But you had to admit, going after a killer while not knowing what they looked like or their particular method of killing was a bit of a shot in the dark. Not your brightest moment, you’d say. 

     But could you really be at fault? Probably. But arguing with Tangerine seemed to cancel out any sort of logic you had going for you. So then what do we do in times like these, when you’re roaming around a train looking for a killer? Process of elimination.

     Other than bleeding from the eyes, the body showed no obvious other signs of trauma. No wounds from blunt force trauma or from a gunshot. No marks around the neck or blue tint to the lips that would indicate strangulation. And given the fact that The Son died in such a short span of time, and so quietly, you’d have to make an educated guess and go with a quick acting poison. Though, you once again hit a wall. Your knowledge on poison was limited. They were difficult to perfect and by no means the most satisfying way of killing someone, so you never really bothered. Right now, though, you kinda wished you had. There was nothing coming to mind when thinking of the symptoms The Son exhibited. 

     Quickly skirting through a small gaggle of children looking for Momonga, you dip into another luggage cove in order to search for your phone that began to buzz. It was a text from Tangerine.

     K WAS RIGHT.

     GUY IN BLACK GLASSES HEADED L’S WAY!

     STOP HIM!

     Huffing slightly through your nose in amusement, you smiled slightly, texting back something that would really piss him off.

     Told you so

     Laughing to yourself, you turned back into the hallway, ready to continue on in your journey. Yelping slightly, the kids from earlier came running back through the door, chattering and giggling to each other and completely ignoring your presence as you all but fall back against the luggage hold. The bags rattle against one another, and something metal clanks against plastic. Grumbling, you right yourself just before you register a faint hissing noise. Stopping dead in your tracks, you listen for it again, but it tapers off. Shutting your eyes quickly, you brace for impact in case anything exploded. 

     Silence. 

     Thoroughly confused, your eyes darted from one car door to the other, making sure no one else was coming, before dropping to a squat in front of the cage and peering inside. A snake curled up into a ball at the far end gives you another sharp hiss, it’s beady gaze locked onto you, tail recoiled in wait. Taking out your burner again, you snap a quick picture and send it off to the chat with a text.

---

     Tangerine stomped through the themed Momonga carriage, willing away the headache that was very quickly forming from the dimly lit but multi-colored car. He was a hair's breadth away from pulling out his own hair if he had to hear another goddamn plush toy squeak today. Pushing passed the mascot that was shoving toys in his face, he muttered, “Out of my way. I don’t have the time or the patience-” the foam material of the costume gives under his fist as he snatches a plush almost reflexively from the cart, “-let alone the interest.” 

     He stares at the plush in disdain, shaking his head, scolding himself for even grabbing the damn thing. The mascot squeaks behind him, just like those godforsaken toys as it tries to keep up with him.

     “Are you following me?” He sneers, stopping in the middle of the aisle, throwing out his hand. “Stop!” The mascot throws up its hands in compliance, its soulless plastic eyes and embroidered grin contrasting against its movement. Tangerine fucking hates mascots. 

     Without a second thought, Tangerine chucks the plush he’d snagged at the mascot's face, expletives falling from his mouth as he bent down inconspicuously to pick it back up again.

     You said you liked Momonga, and he already had the plush.

     Well, speak of the devil and they shall appear or whatever the saying is, because his phone buzzes just as he’s out of the carriage, your contact name lighting up on his messaging app. 

     Attached is a blurry photo of what seems to be an animal carrier, and he has to squint to even have a fighting chance to figure out what’s inside the crate. Your follow up text provides a few more clues.

     Haha snakes on a train

     Get it

     Like that movie, but with a train instead

     Since we’re on a train

     Realization runs him over like a truck, and he’s already switching out of the app to check where you are on the train. His fingers tap against the screen quickly, legs already carrying him one car down.

     Stay put. I’m headed towards you now.

     DON’T TOUCH THE FUCKING SNAKE.

---

     Tangerine doesn’t let you hold the crate as you both retreat back to Lemon, the man holding the box as far away as possible from you both. Instead, he trades with you, a fluffy little Momonga plushy secured in your grip as you hug it close to your chest. Tangerine had gotten it for you. It was so cute. He was so cute. Thumbs brushing over the soft cheeks of the plush in reverence, you promised you’d give Tangerine a gift of his own once you got off this stupid train.

     As you round the seats, you barely make out the lax body of Lemon before Tangerine is haphazardly tossing the crate onto the table and yanking his brother up by the collar. Your breath hitches at the blood on his face, and you can tell Tangerine is growing ever worried by his state. 

     Lemon lets out a soft groan as he gently comes to, and Tangerine feels like the worry had taken years off of his life for nothing. “Oh my god, for a minute there- Jesus Christ. You had a bit of a bosh, pal?” Lemon mumbles something incoherently. You place the plush toy Tangerine had gifted you in its own chair and fasten a seatbelt around it, before you quickly grab the wet wipes from your bag again to help clean him off. Meanwhile, Tangerine pulls the Momonga glasses- how did those get there?- off the floor, putting them back onto The Sons face. He pats Lemon on the back again. “C’mon man, five stations to Kyoto. Up and up again.”

     “Stop being mean,” You chastise, wiping the last bit of blood from Lemons forehead, “Give the man a little time to recuperate from getting his ass kicked.”

     “Didn’t get my ass kicked,” Lemon slurs, wiping at his eyes and slumping in his aisle seat.

     “You did,” You respond solemnly. 

     Tangerine rolls his eyes at your banter, pulling up the arm rest and grabbing your waist, guiding you to sit as he follows, thoroughly crushing you between himself and the dead body. Making a noise of protest, you worm to the side and throw one of your legs over his own. If you were uncomfortable, he’d have to be uncomfortable too. Didn’t even matter that you were actually enjoying this. Well, not the dead body to your right. Besides the point, though. 

     “So.” You start. “Snake.”

     “Yep, snake.”

     “There’s a snake?” Lemon asks redundantly.

     “Yes, a snake,” Tangerine answers.

     “Why do we have one of those?”

     “I don’t know, but T says I shouldn’t touch it,” You say, “Kinda makes me want to touch it now, though.”

     Lemon groans, “Don’t tell me it’s that missing snake that that Japanese Zoo has its knickers in a twist over.”

     Tangerine grabs your hand that’s already midair, looking to touch the snake. And you tussle for a moment before giving in, your arm pinned between both of you. “You listen to me, yeah? Or else you be bleeding out your fucking eyesockets.”

     A lightbulb dings in your mind a little too late, head whipping over to look at The Son, “Like him?”

     Silence.

     “Oh fucking hell.”

     You’d be more embarrassed that it took you this long to connect the dots if you were the only one who hadn’t realized. But it seems you hadn’t been the only one with the sheet pulled over your head by the looks on Lemon and Tangerine’s faces. “Awesome. Great. Fucking Peachy.” You cursed. 

     Tangerine tensed underneath you, you could feel the way his thigh shifted, ringed fingers coming up to squeeze your knee. He was anxious on the best of days, simply in his nature, but now? He must be tearing himself apart trying to figure out a solution that would get all of you out of this mission alive.

     “I guess our best option now… Is uh…” Tangerine paused, trying to find the right words, handsome features twisted in perpetual unease. “Bring The White Death the man that killed his son.” Well, easier said than done. You could appreciate the sentiment, though. 

     “Yeah but glasses didn’t do it,” Lemon says ruefully, mad about what he himself was saying.

     “I couldn’t give a rats ass-”

     “-No I’m telling you I read him, he’s not the type.” 

     “Lemon’s right,” You interject, pointedly ignoring the incredulous look Tangerine is giving you, “The guy was weird, but I don’t think he has the theatrics for something like this.”

     Tangerine still hasn’t moved his hand off your knee, squeezing it again in thought. Asshole. It kind of made you want to kiss him even more.

     “Well someone’s gotta take the blame, don’t they?” He gripes. You hear a phone buzz, and you all instinctively begin looking for your phones, at the same time he and Lemon ask each other who’s phone it is.

     Your blank screen stares back at you, no notification to be found, and Lemon curses, looking through his coat packets. “Shit, that asshole stole my phone.” Lemon’s search turns more frantic, and you hear Tangerine mutter dickhead under his breath. “And my gun Lucille!-”

     “Oh come on-”

     “-That’s my favorite gun! Son of a bitch.”

     “Fucking asshole,” Tangerine swears, equally incensed at the injustice his brother had faced. You on the other hand searched for Tangerine’s phone, the bussing driving you absolutely batshit. Swiping up his suit jacket, you fumble through the pockets before pulling out the phone, throwing it on the table and picking up the call. You poke the side of Tangerine’s neck to get him to quit bickering and answer the man on the phone. “Right, what?”

     “Step off the train at the next stop with the briefcase and his-”

     Tangerine’s face morphs into confusion, mustache twitching up along with his lip in a slight snarl, “Well hang on a minute- didn’t we say Kyoto?” 

     The accented voice on the other end practically cuts him off. “You will still depart at Kyoto. The White Death wants to make sure you are being honest about situation-”

     You make a finger gun and point it to your temple, mentally blowing your brains out as Lemon laughs, putting his head in his hands over their overbearance. 

     “Well I think it’s a waste of our-”

     The phone beeps thrice, the call dropped. 

     “Alright, all we have to do is get off at the stop with a briefcase we don’t have,” Lemon gestures wildly to the dead body at your side, “and a live son instead of a dead one.”

You sigh, rubbing at your eyes in exhaustion. Vacations were meant to be a time of rest. Fate had completely screwed you over in the fact that your life was now on the line more than you had mentally prepared for this week. Was there a reason for all this? You hoped there was. That some cosmic power or force or whatever the fuck was watching you all get tossed around on this train like a garden salad and had something nice planned at the end of it all. 

     “It was nice knowing you chaps,” You sulk, placing your hand over Tangerine’s. He still hasn't moved it off your knee. “You both were well and truly my best mates.”

     “Oh hop off the cross, buttercup. I’m not letting us die that easily.” The way his thumb grazed over your knuckles nearly made you believe him. He looked at Lemon. “What are you thinking?”

     They exchanged a look.

     A spark lit behind his eyes as he looked at you, a small smirk twitching up as he nodded his head.

     “The old Punch and Judy.”

---

     “This is debasing” You mutter angrily, channeling your rage into making The Son’s dead body wave out the window. 

     “Yeah and I've had to do it like a million times,” Lemon whispered back through clenched teeth, smiling and waving at the men outside, “so nut up or shut up.”

---

     You’d be lying if you said you didn’t find Tangerine hot when he was angry. And he was always somewhat angry, so it was a constant win for you. Maybe not very good for his hypertension, though. 

     “We need to find that glasses prick right the fuck now.” He huffs and puffs in frustration, a prominent vein on his temple that was normally hidden by his curly hair on display with how it’s gelled. Your fingers twitch with the urge to mess it up a little, but it’s definitely not where your priorities should lay right now, and you instead busy yourself with grabbing the cage handle and pulling the thing across the table. “I’m gonna go up, you go down, double back when you’re done. If you see him fucking deal with him, yeah?” 

     The look he gives you is more one of desperation than anger. His eyes a pit of apologies that he would never speak out loud. The biggest grievance in his eyes? Letting you get into this mess with them. This was their assignment. They didn’t even know that you were gonna be on the train. The way you nod your head lets Tangerine know that you don’t mind in the slightest. And it’s true- you don’t mind at all. He’d put his neck out on the line for you plenty of times, and sure, none of those promised an impending sense of doom such as this one, but he’d gotten you out of trouble and lessen the pain more than you could describe. And deep down in your bones, you knew you were meant to be helping them with this. Why else would fate have put you on this train?

     He’s nearly lost for words at the look you give him, before settling on, “What gun do you have on you?”

     “The Walther.”

     “PDP or PPQ?”

     “PPQ.”

     He curses out loud, ignoring the looks of other affronted passengers. The PPQ was a compact, he wasn't even sure he had any magazines that would fit. Lemon tosses him his small bag from the overhead bins and Tangerine rummages through it. “How many rounds do you have?”

     “I didn’t plan on firing it,” It’s not really an answer, so you turn the gun over and show off the single magazine you had tucked into the gun. It was a 10 round. Not ideal, but it was better than nothing.

     Tangerine’s search was fruitless, and he looks to see if Lemon has anything extra, to which his brother only shakes his head. Lemon turns away as Tangerine grabs your hand, palm coming over the gun safety. It’s clicked off. He had to check. “I need you to be fucking on it. If you let that fucker get a head on you, and you don’t come back? I’ll-” Tangerine wasn’t sure where he was going with this. But the way your jaw set firm told his subconscious that you understood what he was saying. Your hand was warm against his as he pushed the gun further into your grasp. He could feel your pulse just underneath his ring finger. “- I won’t let you live it down. Ever. You make every round count.”

     Realistically, you should feel disrespected. A lesser person would take his comment, as a seasoned professional, and feel as if they were being infantilized- looked down upon. But you knew Tangerine. He knew you. And you knew that he didn’t voice his concerns about others safety. You’d only seen it once before, when you all were in a particularly difficult spot, and he had taken a moment to tell Lemon that if he died, he’d come right after him and kick his ass. Sweet, in a morbid sense. Affection bloomed in your chest. 

     “You know I will.”

---

     You’d gone back to where you’d found the snake. Hopefully the killer had figured out their prized possession had gone missing, and were on the lookout. You made it pretty obvious.

     “Oh boy!” You said louder than necessary, ignoring the odd looks as you traipsed around with the absurdly heavy cage, making sure to keep the opening away from both yourself and any innocent bypasser. “I sure do love owning a snake!” This was the first time you’d done this. And you repeated that process, roaming from one car to the next, trying to sleuth your way through the process of finding a killer. There was a very big reason as to why you primarily took assassination jobs. This being one of them. You could be subtle, yes, but the jobs already gave you your target and where you could find them. You were a killer, not a private investigator.

     Trudging through yet another door, your tired body perked up a bit at the themed Momonga car, the mascot already inside and entertaining everyone who’d paid extra for the experience. The cage rattled as you stepped into the car, the train taking a particularly sharp turn that was a bit disorientating. Bending down to check on the snake, you were startled to find the Momonga mascot right in front of you. You hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, but it really did look like the character from the show you loved. It looked soft too. So soft. But you couldn’t hug it. You were on a mission, even if it was technically your holiday. Were you getting paid for this?

     The mascot makes a noise of disgruntlement, and you trail its button eyed gaze down to the cage in your hand. “Hi Momonga.” You chime, pulling the cage behind your back, out of its sight. “I’d really love to chat, but I’m actually looking for someone! So I’ll see you later, okay?” Momonga doesn’t say a word, only watching as you skirt around it, and shuffle away. The soft padded feet of the costume hides the fact that it’s following you. 

     You had no clue there was a bar section of this train. Knowing that maybe would’ve made this whole ordeal a bit more bearable. Sighing into the empty compartment, you take a seat at the bar, setting the cage down onto the marble top. 

     Something catches in the corner of your eye- a figure, and you feel your body jolt in surprise. A man in sunglasses lay sleeping with a bottle tucked under his arm, and you relax. It was… odd, though, he was still, nearly stiff. Quietly slipping off the stool, you creep towards him, lifting a finger under his nose. No breath. Your lips purse in confusion, leaning back with your hands on your hips, mind muddled in thought.

     It could have been done by the same person you were looking for, but the method of killing was different. Yes, there was blood on his face- but it seemed to be more of something you’d get from being knocked around rather than the poison. Taking a picture of the body, you started another message to the twins, but the swishing signal of the car door opening caught you off guard. 

     “Momonga?” You question, an inflection on your voice that matches the uptick of your brow. The fluffy mascot stood looming in the door, blocking the light in a way that sent an ominous chill up your spine. Its arms moved up the crease of the costume's neck, where the head and the body connected. Discreetly, you tucked your right hand underneath your jacket towards your gun, the weapon strapped in the waistband of your trousers. The head of the costume was quickly chucked off, a sweaty, curly haired woman the assumed culprit behind- well, most of your undoing this trip. 

     Your suspicions were confirmed as her eyes narrowed, mouth pulling into a snarl as her hand reached into the costume. “You stole my snake, bitch.” Your breath hitched against your ribs, not even making it to your throat as a needle glinted in the air- barely even recognizable to the eye as you pulled your gun from the waistband of your pants, shooting at the syringe as it hurtled through the air towards you. 

     A cracking sound split your ears as the glass tube shattered mid-air, the poison that had caused half of this mess quickly seeping into the carpet of the train carriage. What was left of the needle sat only inches from you, getting lost among the debris.

     Thank god you had your safety off.

---

Taglist: @white-wolf-buckaroo

[wkemeup]

Graveyard

summary: As the unofficial healer for the Avengers, you pride yourself on the ability to mend heroes with the touch of your hand. Only, your gift comes at a heavy price — one you keep secret from your friends —and when Bucky asks you to do the impossible, they’ll discover why your gift is called a sacrifice, too.  pairing: bucky x healer!reader word count: 10k warnings: canon level violence

As a child, you were told it was a gift; placed upon a pedestal above the quaint suffering of a rural town and removed of your innocence for the good of strangers. You’d been made to be revered – honored – for the touch that could mend the broken.  

It began with a cut upon your father’s finger – a slip of a kitchen knife that had left a small bead of blood in its wake. Curious eyes glanced up at your father as he hissed at the sting of it and you’d reach forward to place your infant hand upon the cut, a grip so mall it barely wrapped around his finger. He stilled as a soft glow began to emit from your palm. When you removed your hand and began to cry, your father was stunned to find his skin perfectly intact – no trace of a scar in its place.  

They told you it was a gift, celebrated you as if you were a blessing from Heaven itself. But they were cruel in their rejoice, selfish in their praise. They had not considered your gift was not a gift at all – but a sacrifice.  

Like energy, pain could not be destroyed— but it could be absorbed. It could be transferred. Your father’s cut had not simply disappeared, but instead manifested on the finger of an infant for a few short moments before it faded into your skin; laid to rest amongst a sea of foreign injuries that did not belong to you.  

“Look sharp, kid! We’ve got incoming,” Banner’s voice startled you from your thoughts as he stood at the doorway to your lab. Arms folded over his chest, an amused smirk upon his face, he must have caught sight of the quinjet landing in the hanger from the windows overlooking the loading dock.  

You nodded, setting down the drill beside the stun absorption pad you were engineering for Stark’s newest suit. You didn't have to wonder long who was on the latest mission and currently on their way to your office, because a familiar bickering began to carry down the hall and into the lab, forcing a smile onto your face.  

For a mechanical engineer, you saw more of the Avengers post-mission than the med wing did these days. You’d been hired for your multiple PhDs and borderline genius IQ, but once you’d rushed across the room to spare Stark from a rather unpleasant laceration on his palm from an experiment gone haywire, your lab had quickly become a rotating door of injured Avengers.  

Sure enough, Barnes and Wilson stumbled their way into the lab, Sam draped over Bucky’s shoulder, barely able to put any pressure on his left leg. While Sam tossed you his charismatic grin and those big, round, puppy dog eyes, Bucky favored to dispose of his partner on the lab table with an aggravated grunt.  

“What do we have today?” you smirked, rolling up the sleeves of your coat as Bruce shook his head in amusement.  

“Broken ankle, I think,” Sam replied, gesturing to the mess of bandages and improvised splint.  

You nodded as you stepped closer, examining the injury before you brushed a hand over the swollen joint. Sam whined at the contact, the pain clearly breaking through the lighthearted grin upon his face though he tried to suppress it. His hand curled into a fist.  

“You know I’m not a medical doctor, but I’d have to agree,” you nodded, planting your hands on your hips.  

“You could just get the x-rays and go through PT like a normal person,” Bucky grumbled off in his corner of the room, narrowing his eyes in warning upon his partner. “She’s not here as your personal healer, Wilson.”  

Bucky was always hesitant of your powers. He never said why, but you wondered most days if he was still seeking penance for the evils he’d committed under Hydra, if maybe he felt as though giving you his pain absolved him in a way he was not worthy of.  

Or perhaps it was a degradation of his pride. Men often found strength in their ability to withstand pain. Though, it seemed to bother him when the others would come to you for injuries like this, too, almost as if he worried they were taking advantage of you.  

He was a good man; certainly, more concerned with your consent in healing his friends than your parents and the town who spent your childhood exploiting you ever were.  

“I don’t mind, Bucky,” you told him, smiling encouragingly back at him until he started to relax his shoulders and uncrossed his arms, softening under your gaze. “If it means less time on the bench and more time out there saving lives and having your back, I don’t mind at all.”

“Yeah, Barnes, who’s going to watch your back if I’m held up in a cast?” Sam teased, chuckling under his breath until Bucky stepped forward and not so subtly bumped his hip to the side of the lab table. The sudden disruption of the table moved his ankle just enough to instantly wipe the grin from Sam’s face.  

“Try to relax for me, Sam,” you eased, stepping forward as you started to remove your gloves. You leaned over the edge of the table, slowly removing the splint and the bandage surrounding the swollen muscle. You handed it off to Bucky as you examined the dark purple and blue discoloration on his ankle.  

He hissed as you laid your palms on his leg, clenching down on his jaw.  

You closed your eyes, concentrating as you felt for the break beneath the surface. A crack splintered through the bone, the surrounding tissue swollen and aching.  

A gentle glow began to emit from your palms, a warmth that spread from your hands and directly onto Sam’s skin, through the muscle, and deep into the bone. You could feel the subtle fragments as they began to mend, the swell in his joint as it shrank, the slight movements as he regained feeling.  

Exhaling a tense breath, you shifted your stance onto your right leg as the pressure started to build in your ankle. It wouldn’t last long, just a few minutes in comparison to the weeks of treatment and months of physical therapy Sam would have endured – an easy trade for a man who spend his days so selflessly on the line in the service of strangers.  

You could sense Bucky watching you and you were careful not to let the pain show on your face. There was a privilege in healing the Avengers like this. It gave your life meaning beyond the injuries of your hometown; of careless teenagers falling off skateboards or angry men in bars who took an argument a drink too far. You’d happily take on a few moments of pain in service of heroes.  

Not that you’d let them know.  

“You should be good now.” You held your hands up, the soft glow fading away from your palms as you tucked your hands into your pockets. Careful of the momentary break in your ankle, you took a cautious step away from the table to lean on the chair at your desk. No one noticed the wince in your expression as you put the slightest pressure on the fresh injury.  

“I will never get tired of that.” Sam looked down at the foot in awe, rolling at the ankle and amazed to find the swelling and bruising disappeared completely. He jumped down from the table, bounding on his feet just to test out the freedom in his mobility.  

“Alright, Wilson. Enough,” Bucky rolled his eyes. “You’re going to hurt yourself again and Y/n’s not going to be so generous next time.”

Sam smirked, pausing for a moment as he contemplated. “Nah, my girl will always take care of me. Won’t ya, sugar?”  

It didn’t slip your notice when Bucky tensed up at the pet name. You started to laugh, the teasing smile dropping from his face as his hands curled into fists. Sam really knew how to press his buttons and it seemed, surprisingly enough, you were one of them.  

“Bucky’s got a point, you know. Fancy healing powers are reserved for field injuries these days.” You were only teasing, both of them knowing you’d have healed a papercut if they’d ask. Still, Bucky smirked, taunting Sam over your shoulder as if he’d won.  

You eased yourself off the chair as you started to regain feeling in your ankle, giving more pressure to the heel to find it barely noticeable. You rubbed at the joint with your right shoe to find the swelling had disappeared as well.  

A few moments to spare him weeks of pain. Easy trade.

“What about you, Sergeant?”  

Bucky paused, raising an eyebrow at you.  

You took a step forward, glancing over him in search of injuries. Nothing more than a few cuts that his own advanced healing would take care of overnight. Still, there was one injury you’d been trying to convince him to allow you to heal in the year since you’ve known him.  

“You going to let me work on your shoulder yet or are you still being a masochist?”  

Sam snickered under his breath as he crossed the room to watch what Banner was doing over his shoulder. Bucky gave you that knowing smile of his, the one that pushed up into his eyes and left behind beautiful creases and lines on his face; an exhale of a laugh on his breath.  

“It’s not necessary, doll. I’m fine.”

A frown tugged at your lips. “You always say that, and yet...”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Bucky shrugged. He was watching you with those sweet eyes of his, creating a warmth that spread in your chest entirely independent of the powers in your hands.  

“You shouldn’t have to handle it in the first place,” you pressed, a pain in your voice as he placed a hand on your shoulder, letting it slide down your arm. It was an intimate gesture, more contact that he had with most people, and he offered it willingly. You tried not to let the shivers show in your spine as he pulled away.  

It looked as though he wanted to say more, but Steve suddenly appeared in the doorway, causing Bucky to take an abrupt step away from you. You hadn’t realized how close you’d been standing to one another.  

“Debrief in five,” Steve ordered, eyeing Sam and Bucky, though paused as he saw you, offering a short smile in acknowledgement before disappearing down the hall.  

“I’m not letting this go, just so you’re aware,” you teased, pointing at Bucky’s shoulder as he started to wave Sam towards the door. He smiled, keeping his back to you until Sam was clear of the room and he leaned into the open frame, one quick glance back at you.  

“Wouldn’t expect anything less, doll.”

***

The next month saw another broken leg, a fractured clavicle, two minor lacerations, a sprained wrist, and a number of superficial cuts – all from various members of the team. Though there was always the one exception who wouldn’t accept your offer no matter how badly he was favoring his right arm.  

The clavicle was certainly a challenge to get through, but the world needed Natasha Romanoff in the field, not strung up on a gurney and a brace for a handful of months. It took longer than some of the other injuries to heal, but you’d managed, even if you had to excuse yourself to the restroom as soon as you’d finished, even if you had to shove a towel into your mouth to keep from screaming as it mended itself together under your skin.  

The truth was you liked being useful. You liked the stunned smiles on their faces and the appreciation in their eyes. You liked seeing them run a hand over perfectly smooth skin where an open wound had just been. It gave you a purpose.  

And sure – your work on SHIELD tech was important and perhaps not all of the injuries in your hometown had been a waste of your abilities, but there was something exceptionally gratifying in mending someone who was untouchable, in healing the people who saved the world.

You’d take a dozen broken clavicles for them.  

It was late after your evening shift and you’d taken to running a few laps on the indoor track around the gym. Blow off some steam, use the state-of-the-art equipment Stark spent thousands of dollars on, give your mind something to think about beside how you were going to rewire Sam’s wings to expand in a more fluid motion.  

You’d just started to break into a sweat when you noticed Bucky setting up at the row of punching bags. The gym was otherwise empty as the sky favored the stars over the sun, and you started to smile as you watched Bucky shrug off his jacket and drop the bag at his feet. He rolled back his shoulders, concentrating on the bag as he readied his fists. But as the first punch hit the bag, the smile quickly fell from your face.  

It echoed up into the rafters, startling you enough to still your sprint abruptly. He let out a grunt as he pummeled at the bag; left jab, right hook, kick, until it broke at the seams and split open to spill sand in heaps upon the ground. He moved on to the next one.  

You clasped a hand to your mouth, looking around the gym to confirm you were in fact alone with him. He’d been on a mission as far as you were aware for the last week. You’d missed him hanging around the lab, asking questions as you worked on new advancements on the stun guns for field agents. He must have gotten back a few hours ago and something clearly went wrong.  

“Bucky?” you called, voice far too soft to be heard across the gym and above the thunderous clash of his knuckles to leather. You jogged a few paces closer, wincing as he threw the entirely of his momentum into a hit that would have broken an ordinary man’s hand. “Bucky? Are you alright?”

But he didn’t hear you. You took a cautious look back at the doors, wondering if you should go find Steve, or maybe even Sam – someone who might know what happened, someone who might be able to talk him down. But you were the only one around. You cleared your throat, stepping up just behind him.  

“Bucky?”

You hit the ground before you knew what had happened.  

A blinding pulsing in the back of your head, the wind momentarily knocked from your lungs, you opened your eyes to find Bucky hovering over you. He held a closed fist in the air, the other digging sharply into your shoulder between his grip, pupils blown wide and dark. It took a moment before he seemed to realize who was laying under him.

“Y/n?” He blinked, confused. His stare flickered to the fist held above your head, knuckles dripping red and bloody, and he pulled away instantly, a flash of horror written over his features. “Shit-- I didn’t... What are you doing here?”

You rubbed at the back of your head, brushing over a slight bump that would certainly mend itself within a few minutes. Slowly, you sat up, careful of the sudden darkness that swept over your eyes, though something cool grabbed onto you before you could fall back against the floor.  

“Hey, come lean against the wall, okay?” Bucky urged, carefully guiding you to adjust your position until you could press your back to the chill of the plastered walls. You sighed in contentment, the pain in your pain already dissipating. Bucky swallowed nervously. “Did I hurt you?”

“I don’t stay hurt for long, Buck,” you told him with a teasing smile, though he did not return it. You set a hand on his forearm, squeezing it lightly before returning it to your lap. “I’m alright. I promise. Are you?”

Bucky narrowed his eyes.

“You were beating that punching bag within an inch of its life,” you clarified, chuckling as you gestured to the exploded bag on the floor, and then to the one still hanging with sand streaming down the seams.  

“Rough mission,” was all he said, his eyes downcast.  

You nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head.

The two of you sat in silence for a while, listening to the soft buzz of the air conditioner and the faint chirp of crickets outside the windows. You didn’t expect him to say anything. Bucky was a man of few words, but you hoped the company was enough. He didn’t make an effort to move away, not even when your thigh brushed against his.  

He was trying to close his fist when you heard him hiss in pain. His right hand was coated in dried blood and fresh, open wounds on his knuckles. They’d barely started to crust over and with every attempt to close his fist, they cracked open, drawing a painful sting in their place.  

“Will you let me heal your hand?”

Bucky paused, setting his hand down on his leg. “Y/n, it’s not necessary. I won’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering,” you countered. “Besides, it is necessary, actually. How are you going to punch the bad guys if you can’t close your fist?”

“I’ve got another,” Bucky argued back, though a smile had etched its way onto his face. He raised his left hand, making a show of it as he curled his fingers into a fist one by one. “This one’s pretty indestructible so...”

“Please, Bucky.” You turned towards him, folding your legs as you held out your left hand for him to take. “Just this once. Let me do this.”

A stormy array of ocean blue and thunderous skies stared back at you, unsure. His eyes flickered down to your hand. Always so hesitant to ask for help, always so reluctant to accept the good things when they were offered. But as he watched you, searching for signs to run, to back out, something softened.  

He swallowed and slowly, placed his right hand into yours.  

You smiled, adjusting your grip gently on his hand. You placed it to lay on you knee as you hovered your left hand over his knuckles. The warm glow illuminated from your palm and Bucky’s breath hitched as he must have felt the sudden rush of energy it produced.  

The scars began to mend before his eyes and just as you felt the stinging prick on your own knuckles, you quickly pushed your right hand into the pocket of your jacket to hide the scars as they formed.  

“That’s incredible,” Bucky exhaled, withdrawing his hand as soon as you were finished. He held it out in front of him, examining the dried blood coated around perfectly intact skin. He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re incredible.”  

A rush of heat burned in your cheeks as you looked away, a smile breaking onto your lips. It was enough to distract you from the stinging in your hand tucked away in your pocket.  

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” you asked, biting on your lip nervously. “Think you could do with the company and I’d like to keep you from breaking more of these expensive punching bags.”

Bucky laughed at that, nodding. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

He stood and offered you his hand, thinking out loud about which one of the movies on his list he wanted to try out next. You pulled your hand from your pocket and took his as he offered it to you; the knuckles already clean and healed.  

***

“You should see it, Fitz! It’s a goddamn stroke of genius.” You held up the ventilator no bigger than the pad of your thumb up to the light, admiring your work.  

“I’m sure Stark will be thrilled,” a thick Scottish accent crackled through the speaker on the com beside you. “Send me the schematics, will you?”

You pursed your lips, a smile etching through. “Think you can one-up me?”

“No never,” Fitz laughed. You could hear him tinkering in his own lab on the quinjet, the small clicks of metal and the buzz of a drill humming over the speaker. “Just want to see if I’m still head of our class or not.”

“Pretty sure we both know that title belongs to Simmons.”

There was a slight pause, then, a dreamy, “yeah, you’re right.”

A sudden knocking at the edge of the lab startled you as you spun around in your chair, nearly dropping the ventilator for Stark’s suit. Bucky stood in the doorway, clutching at his left shoulder as fingers dug into the muscle. He wore a sort of guilty look upon his face though he pushed out a smile and waved.  

“Hey, Fitz, I’ll call you tomorrow, alright?” you said over your shoulder to the speaker, waited a moment for his response and ended the call. You turned back to Bucky as a smile grew upon your face. “What can I do for you, Sergeant? I didn’t miss movie night, did I?”

“No, you’re in the clear,” Bucky chuckled, though it was tense. He stepped further into the lab, relaxing a little as he noticed no one else was around. It was pretty late for you to be working, but you were so close to finishing the ventilator, and well, time easily got away from you with Fitz on the other end of the phone.  

“Coming to keep me company then?” you teased. “I’m actually about done anyway, so we could set up the next movie on your—”

“No, I— um...” Bucky started, losing his nerve rather quickly. He exhaled a tense breath, eyes casting down to the floor. “I was, um, wondering if you could work on my shoulder?”

You raised an eyebrow. Even after that night in the gym, Bucky was still hesitant to your offers to heal his various injuries from the field. He’d give you that sweet smile of his, a soft pink in his cheeks, and tell you that he’d be fine on his own. You never doubted that, but it didn’t mean you couldn't spare him just a few hours of that pain.  

“The, um,” Bucky winced, gritting his teeth as he pushed his hand deeper against the tissue, “the nerve endings are acting up. Shuri said it’s to be, uh, expected given how Hydra butchered my arm all those years ago, but...”

“Come here.” You were already removing the files and paperwork from the table, gesturing for him to take a seat.  

His whole left arm was slack at his side as if he could barely tolerate to move it. Shallow breaths hitched in his lungs as he leaned against the table, settling against the hard, metal surface.

“Can you take this off?” you asked, nodding to his shirt. Bucky’s cheeks flushed and you cleared your throat nervously, playing with the ends of your hair. “It’ll be more effective if I can touch the area directly.”

He removed his right hand from the muscle at his shoulder and gripped at the hem of his shirt. Slowly, he started to pull it over his head, though you could tell from the harsh exhale in his breath that it was causing him considerable pain.  

“Here, let me help you.” You stepped forward and helped ease the fabric up his torso and gently guided it off his right arm, over his head, and eased it down his left. He seemed more at ease with the shirt removed, but a chill swept up his spine in the cool air of the lab.  

You kept your eyes on his, determined not to let your gaze fall to the hardened muscles on his chest and stomach.  

“I won’t be able to heal the scars,” you told him as you moved around to stand behind the table. “Just try to relax for me, okay? I’ll do what I can for the pain.”

Bucky nodded, his hands clenched into the lip of the table, enough to warp the surface. He could barely muster out a response.  

“My hands are a little cold, so...” you muttered out nervously, rubbing your palms together in an effort to warm them.  

Then, you set your hands against the mess of scar tissue surrounding his shoulder, starting at his shoulder blades as the glow illuminated bright enough to light up the corner of your lab. Bucky gasped, the first breath in a long time completely filling his lungs as he felt the relief within your touch. You could practically feel the tension melting off his shoulders.  

It didn’t take long before the pain made its way to your body. Starting out slow, in numbing aches, until it was so sharp, it felt like a dozen edges of sharp blades puncturing into your shoulder. You clenched your jaw, held your breath, thankful that Bucky couldn’t see your face when you bit down on the inside of your cheek and tears sprung into your eyes.  

“God, that... shit...” Bucky sighed, his grip releasing on the table. You could hear the smile in his voice, the relief, and it helped to push aside the pain as it manifested in your body.  

You moved your hand up his back, sliding along the scars where his skin met metal, taking as much of his pain as you could. Bucky was exceptionally strong, able to withstand far more than you could without passing out completely. You couldn’t take it all, especially if you wanted to keep him from knowing how your gift truly worked, but you took enough.  

You swallowed back the lump in your throat, preparing yourself as you moved around to face him. There was more on his chest, by his clavicle, you couldn’t reach from behind him. You'd had years of practice, learning how to keep the pain from displaying on your face. You could get through this for him.  

As you stepped in front of him, keeping a steady hold on his shoulder, you could feel his eyes watching you. The glow under your palms was bright enough to illuminate the lab, but it was a gentle light, as soft as the burn of a candle or the golden rays of a sunset. Bucky watched you with a kind of awe that made your stomach twist into knots.  

You guided your hand along the scar tissue on his chest, doing your best to ignore the goosebumps as they rose in your wake. Your heart was stammering, louder than the pain radiating in your shoulder, though it lessened the more you worked. The pain had nearly left him entirely as he started to take in more even breaths, relaxing his muscles as you felt them soften under your touch.  

You exhaled a tense breath through your nose, concentrating on gathering as much of the pain as you could, on mending the broken nerve endings as they misfired and frayed under the torn appendage. You barely noticed as Bucky crossed his right hand over his chest and laid his hand palm against your hands.  

“Thank you,” he whispered, his fingers curling around the undersides of your hands until he gently tugged them away. The glow faded until the lab was only lit by the soft light of the lamp at your desk and the reflection of the moon peering in through the window.  

You met his eye, the pain still prominent in your shoulder though you forcibly softened the clench in your jaw as he looked over you. His eyes flickered down to your lips for only a second, but it was enough. Your heart skipped.  

Bucky slowly released your hands, letting them fall gently against his thighs, as he leaned forward to cup the sides of your face. Fingers tangling into your hair, you stepped closer, pressed against the table between the parting of his legs.  

You wondered if he could feel how fast your heart was racing, or if he could hear it, because you were certain it was going to beat straight out of your chest. The fading pain in your shoulder you’d taken for him was nothing but a forgotten memory as he pressed his forehead to yours, just waiting.  

The moment his lips touched yours, you lost your breath; fireworks and butterflies, twists in your stomach and clamoring in your heart. You could feel his smile as it spread into his cheeks, your hands seeking more of him as you slid them up the sides of his bare chest. He was beautiful and perfect and so incredibly wonderful, you’d take hours of his pain, years even, if you could keep kissing him like this.  

“Hey, Y/n, I thought you were already done for the—oh, sorry!”

You jolted away from Bucky, restless and a little disheveled, Bucky’s cheeks flamed red, as you turned to find Banner standing awkwardly in the doorway. His hand was shielded over his eyes, his back quickly turned to you as papers littered the floor at his feet. You started to laugh, hand clamping over your swollen lips as you looked over at Bucky.  

“It’s no worry, Bruce,” you giggled, quickly skating over to the door to help him pick up the files. Bucky meanwhile shrugged his shirt back on, fixing the flyaways in his hair.  

“So sorry,” he mumbled again, clearly embarrassed by his intrusion as he glanced over at Bucky apologetically. He gathered the papers into his arms. “I’ll be going now and, um, I won’t come back, okay?”

You couldn’t help but laugh as Bucky’s eyes blew wide in Banner’s quick escape.  

“Still want that company?” you offered with a smile, extending your hand to him. The pain was long gone from your shoulder as he shook himself from the flush in his cheeks and nodded. He took your hand and led you down the hall to the living room. There was another movie on the list to get through.  

***

You couldn’t remember the last time you were this happy. Your cheeks began to hurt from how often you were smiling, as if it were a permanent fixture on your features. You’d even caught yourself humming along to the radio as you dusted the surfaces in your lab the morning after Bucky had kissed you goodbye on the landing dock in front of at least a dozen agents.  

He’d been away on a mission for the last few days, but he called when he could. You’d spend whatever spare minutes he could get on the satellite phone with him, distracting him from whatever was going on in his end of the world with talk about your latest project with Stark or old stories from the academy with Fitz or what the next movie on the list was going to be.  

He wasn’t a man of many words, but you liked knowing he was on the other end of the line. You could picture his smile perfectly in your mind, the way he chewed on his lower lip, how his eyes fell downcast to the floor by your shoes, the flush of pink in his cheeks. It was enough.  

“So, things are really heating up with you and Barnes,” Natasha commented as she sipped the top of her steaming coffee before it could spill over the edge. You shrugged, though it was hard to contain your smile. Natasha grinned. “I think it’s good for him. You, too. Don’t know the last time I’ve seen him this happy. He seems more relaxed. Like maybe he’s not carrying the whole world on his shoulders anymore.”

“Helps when he’s not in excruciating pain on a daily basis,” you added, tapping at your left shoulder. He’d let you work on it a few times since that first night. It always took some convincing, but the pain was never as bad as it was that evening. You could take it. You’d do it a thousand times for him without question.  

Natasha nodded, a pleased look upon her face. She parted her lips to say more, but a sudden commotion at the end of the hall stole the words from her tongue. You set your coffee down on the counter, peering out around the tables to find agents jumping out of the way of an oncoming train.  

“Y/n!” Bucky shouted, voice breaking in the effort as he sprinted down the hall and slammed into an unsuspecting agent. Papers flew into the air as he sprinted towards your room. “Y/n!”

“Bucky?” you called stepping out into the hallway where he could see you.  

He skidded to an abrupt stop, his hair flying over his shoulder as he turned in your direction.  

“Y/n! Thank God.”  

It wasn't until Bucky stood in front of you that you realized he was covered in blood; soaking into his hair, caked under his finger nails, drenched into his suit, and stained to his skin. Your eyes widened, breath all but leaving your lungs, as your hands clutched against his jacket. He tried to pull you back towards the stairs, but you couldn’t budge, not with that much blood all over him.  

“What-- What happened? Are you hurt?” You started seeking out exposed skin an effort to draw away any pain you could, even if you couldn’t see any exposed wounds.  

Bucky's hand slid over yours, pulling it away. He softened, though you could still see the frantic rise and fall of his chest.  

“It’s not my blood. It’s Steve’s.”

Your stomach sank; relief mixed into an ugly shade of guilt and grief. Natasha was already sprinting down to the med bay, coffee mug cracked and spilled upon the tile floors. Her footsteps echoed through the hallway, the sudden clanging of the double doors startling you from your daze.  

“Please, I—I need you,” Bucky begged, his voice shaking. Tears were burning in his eyes. You’d never seen him this afraid; this shaken and helpless. “It’s not good, Y/n. He’s-- He’s--”

“Okay.” You pressed a hand to his cheek, brushing your thumb sweetly across his face and smeared the tears as they cleaned the dried blood away. You didn’t need to hear anymore. All you wanted was to take his pain, even if your gift couldn’t touch it as it nestled deep into his heart.  

By the time you reached the med bay, a storm of chaos had already barreled through. Lab equipment was knocked over on its side. Dozens of agents frantically running around, shouting orders at one other. Papers and schematics lined the floor with imprinted of boots damaging the print. But it was the trail of blood that drew your attention.  

Droplets trailing from the loading bay of the jet to down the med wing to the surgical room. Dark red and oozing. Taunting. Far too much for any ordinary man to have lost. You tried to stifle the gasp as it hitched in your breath the moment you saw him.  

Steve was strung up on a gurney, suit cut down the middle and flayed open, exposing his chest and the three bullet holes expelling pints of blood. The hands of several agents were pressing down onto him, trying to keep pressure on the wounds, deep red slipping out from between their fingers. The look on their faces said enough – he wasn’t going to make it.  

“Where’s Helen?” you gaped, staring at Steve.  

“Ten minutes out.” Tony stumbled into the room as he rounded the corner, holding a stat phone in his hand. “She’s in the chopper.”

“He can’t wait ten minutes.” Bucky gripped tight to you hand and you could feel the tension radiating in his muscles. You wanted to take it for him but he pulled his hand before you could, turning to face you. “You’re all we have. Y/n, please. I can’t lose him.”

Bucky had never once asked you to heal someone like this. He could barely muster the will to ask you to heal his own wounds, to ease the constant stream of pain in his shoulder, and the open wounds on his hand. But with Steve’s life in the balance, he didn’t have room to be hesitant anymore. He couldn’t risk his best friend’s life.

But he didn’t know it would risk yours in the process.  

You swallowed, glancing back nervously at Steve. “I’ve never healed anything this bad before, Buck. I don’t know if I can--” survive this.  

Could your body heal fast enough to take on his injuries? Could you do them one by one? Would he live long enough to even try? Would either of you?  

“Y/n, please. He’ll die without you,” Bucky begged, his voice wavering. Tears reflected in his eyes; gentle pale blue obstructed by a swarm of fear and guilt and desperation, a redness straining into the surrounding white until his cheeks were wet. The dried blood cleared in streaks as they traveled down to his jawline.  

You watched him as he bit down onto his lip, shielding his face from the others as he waited. The frantic beeping of the monitor strapped to Steve’s chest was growing frantic, irregular, and you knew there wasn’t much time left.  

The worst you’d ever attempted to heal before had been the stabbing of a stranger. You’d found her clutching stomach in an abandoned alleyway in Queens, contents of her purse spilled to the pavement, jewelry torn from her neck. You'd knelt down beside her and took her pain without so much as a second thought.  

As her wound began to close, your skin split open, blood soaked into your shirt, your vision grew dark and hazy, until it was nothing at all.  

The last thing you remembered of that night was the horror in the woman’s eye as she scrambled away from you and ran back to the safety of the open streets. You woke in a pool of your own blood hours later – longer than it had ever taken to heal before.  

A scar remained on your stomach from that night. The only one on your body. A warning.  

Test the limits of your gift again and learn why it’s called a sacrifice.

But as you looked back at Bucky, at a man who never dared to ask you for anything until it was unbearable, who wore his own scars and healed his own injuries in fear of exploiting your gift, who was impossibly gentle for the evil he was surrounded in for decades – you couldn’t find it in yourself to say no. You didn’t want to.

Bucky must have noticed the change in your expression because his shoulders softened immediately, a heavy sigh sinking through his body. He pushed forward and pressed a quick kiss to your lips; short, chaste, and still—filled with a world of emotion, of gratitude, of relief. It gave you the courage to do what needed to be done.  

Tony began to shout for the room to clear the moment you approached the table. You stared down at Steve, whose skin had grown nearly translucent, the monitor above displaying his heart beat as it evened out to a nearly thin line. He was fading fast. You wouldn’t have much time.  

Everything around you became muted, distorted, as you channeled your focus; the huddled whispers of the agents hovering over Steve with their hands pressed to open wounds sounded as if they were miles away.  

Bucky stood at your side, watching anxiously though he tried his best to remain stoic and unaffected, though you knew he was splintering apart at the seams. Natasha and Sam were huddled in the far corner, talking quietly amongst themselves as they tried to put the pieces together as to what happened out in the field. Tony was shooing away stay agents with the threat of force, while Banner did his best to remotely disengage the power on Tony’s glove.  

None of it registered. Not beyond the flow of blood coating Steve’s chest and dripping onto the floor, your shoes stepping into the pool below. It was a miracle he was still alive at all. The serum was the only thing tying him to this Earth.  

You stretched out your hands, hovering over his chest and the agents quickly dispersed. You didn’t dare steal a glance in Bucky’s direction as the glow began to emit under your palms, afraid he might see the goodbye in your eyes or the apology for what he was about to witness. There wasn’t time.  

The pain was sudden. Sharp. Like you’d felt the bullets rip straight through you as if you stood on the battlefield in Steve’s place. You cried out at the impact of it, nearly thrown from your stance as you clutched into Steve’s body.  

Bucky jolted beside you, startled as you cried out again, desperate to choke down the screams before they passed your lips. He stared at you, wide eyed, as you clenched your jaw.  

“Y/n? Are you—”

Another scream tore through you and Bucky visibly flinched. You didn’t have the energy to hide the pain from him, not with three bullets tearing through you. You had to save Steve; put the full force of your power into healing his wounds before they consumed him whole. Damn the consequences. Damn the sacrifice of your gift.  

Your body was always meant to be the host of broken bones and bullet wounds and bruises. Made to be broken and mended. A host to others. A graveyard of injuries that did not belong to you.  

It was what your parents had told you from the time you were a child; that you were a gift to others, that you were a vessel to better the world. But it came at a price; one, it seemed, you’d soon enough pay.  

Your legs began to shake as a wave of darkness cast over your vision, tunneling, consuming the space around you. You could only vaguely make out Bucky’s voice calling your name, his tone laced confusion and concern, but you blocked it out. Daring to look in his direction now would only hinder your resolve and you needed to save Steve’s life.  

Concentrating your power, a scream ripped through your lungs as the glow illuminated the entire room, enough that Bucky was forced to shield his eyes.  

The wounds were taking hold on your body. One at your stomach. Another along your ribs. The third, just above your chest. Exit wounds opening on your back. You could feel the drip of blood as it slid down your skin; thick and unrelenting.  

You were growing light headed as the pain started to dissipate. But the wounds were still fresh on your body, still open and bleeding; the pain shouldn’t have faded so quickly.  

The steady beep of the monitor indicated that Steve was stabilizing, the flesh had nearly closed, and you barely registered Helen’s voice as she rushed into the room, ordering her team to take over.  

“Hey, hey, you did it, sweetheart. You did good,” Bucky exhaled. He had the most beautiful smile on his face; filled with a sense of pride an awe, stunning and handsome beyond belief, even with traces of concern still evident in his eyes.  

But you were stone. A statue. You couldn’t move without fear of collapsing completely.  

“He’s stable now, Y/n,” Bucky eased, trying to pull you gently away from the table. “Come here, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

Bucky hand set against your stomach when you didn’t follow and he froze; the sticky wet residue of fresh blood on his hand. He stared down at his palm in horror as the blood began to seep through your shirt in three distinct spots, all perfectly aligning with the ones on Steve’s chest.  

Bucky darted forward, pushing up your shirt to find the wounds he’d seen healed on his best friend moments ago littered over your stomach. His mouth went dry, throat lined with sandpaper, rocks shoved down into his lungs. His hand trembled as it reached out and touched the bullet wound on your ribs. His breath hitched as he felt the warmth of blood and the tear of flesh in your skin.  

He couldn’t breathe.  

“Is Steve alive?” Your voice was barely a whisper and you wondered if Bucky could even hear you at all. His eyes were glossed over in fresh tears, lips parted in shock as he stared back at you. You could hardly keep your eyes open.

Before he could respond, your legs gave way and you stumbled back out of Bucky’s hold. Your vision was closing in, a dark cloud of black swarming around you as your foot caught on the edge of toppled lab equipment. You were in Bucky’s arms again before you made it to the floor.  

You didn’t hear him screaming for help, didn’t hear the shattering crack in his voice, or the crash of equipment behind you as Simmons raced into the room. You didn’t feel his hands as they desperately pressed onto the open wounds, or the heat of his breath as he begged you to ‘stay with me, sweetheart’. But you felt the warmth of his embrace.

It was comforting as the darkness pulled you under.  

***

A heaviness draped over you. Soothing. Pressing you into the soft cushion below. A repetitive chime rang above; even in tone, consistent. It drew you back from the kind embrace of shadows, calling you toward a flicker of light.  

Pressure squeezed at your hand. Cold and warm at once. Solid and soft.  

You listened for the chime; allowed it to guide you as the rest of your senses awakened.

The chatter of voices in the distant too muffled to distinguish. The distinct smell sterilizing alcohol that burned in your nose. The heat of a thick blanket tucked around your legs. The chill of a breeze streaming from the humming vent above. Scratchy bed sheets and laundry fresh clothes a few sizes too big for your frame.  

You groaned, trying to adjust to the influx of light as you opened your eyes. It was a room you recognized. White. Clean. Far too bright. You’d been within the walls dozens of times before, but never laid upon the bed. It was a strange view.  

Glancing down, you found yourself dressed in a dark grey t-shirt that didn’t belong to you. The logo was faded on the chest but it was still recognizable. Vintage. An eagle at the center of a circle, it’s wings remarkably similar to the symbol of the Howling Commandos. Around the edge: Strategic Scientific Reserve. You’d seen Bucky wear it until the hem frayed. Sure enough, as you reached for the bottom of the shirt, you found the split seams.  

A slight squeeze on your hand again drew your attention to your right. There, you found Bucky hunched over the side of the bed; both hands encasing yours, his forehead rested on the very edge of the mattress.  

A smile tugged at your lips until it started to ache. Unused muscles, must be. You wondered how long you’d been out this time. Must have been longer than a few hours. Bucky’s back would need your attention after the way he’s been sleeping.  

“Bucky,” you tried to call, but found your voice was nothing more than a breath of air. You winced, testing it again. “Bucky?”  

He only hummed in response. The sweet vibrations nestled against your arm. It took him a minute as he lifted his head, stretched out his upper back, matted hair fallen down into his face, before he caught your eye; glancing around the room, checking the door, the heart monitor above, like it had become routine, until he realized you were watching him.  

He froze, eyes wide. “Y/n?”

You nodded sleepily, pushing out a smile. “What’d I miss?”

Bucky didn’t laugh. His hands were still gripped tight to yours, squeezing at them as if he were checking to make sure you were real.  

Your smile began to fall the longer he stared at you. “How long was I out? Is Steve okay?”

Bucky cleared his throat, nodding, though it seemed strained. “Y-yeah, Steve’s fine. Doc said he’d make a full recovery thanks to you.”

“That’s good,” you replied, but Bucky couldn’t so much as force a smile. He couldn’t seem to look at you, his hands playing with the lines in your palms. It was then you started to notice the dark circles under his eyes, the wrinkles in days old clothing, the hallowed look upon his face. Your stomach sank. “How long was I out?”

Bucky’s paused for a moment, his movements stilling as he traced your lifeline. He sighed, resuming again. “Six days.”

“Oh.”

A silence swept over the room. You’d never been under that long before. Frankly, you were a little surprised you woke up at all given the extent of Steve’s injuries. Your fingers dipped under the hem of Bucky’s old t-shirt and grazed over the bullet wound on your ribs, feeling for the raised edges of a fresh scar. It didn’t heal, as you suspected the others hadn’t; laid to rest next to the knife wound from the woman in the alley. Injuries you were never meant to survive.  

“Were you ever going to tell us?”  

You looked up, startled by Bucky’s voice as it wavered. He brushed at his eyes; red and glossy.  

“Were you ever going to tell me?”  

“No,” you admitted and Bucky’s shoulders slumped. He sank back further into his chair and you could read the disappointment on his face. You gritted your teeth, preparing to deliver the same speech you’d been telling yourself for years. “My body could handle it, Buck. It was only a few minutes of pain to trade for weeks or months of your own. It kept you in the field and off the bench. The world needs you guys. It was worth it for me. I could handle it.”

“Until you couldn’t!” Bucky snapped, startling you as he tugged his hand from your grasp and began to pace around the room. His fingers raked into his hair, gripping at unwashed strands. “You almost died, Y/n! You almost died because I fucking begged you to use your powers to save Steve and I—Jesus, Y/n — if I had known what it does to you, I never would have asked you to do that!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” you replied gently, wanting nothing more than to ease him. Bucky shook his head, unwilling to accept your answer. “Bucky, if you knew that healing a papercut hurt me, you wouldn’t let me do that either.”

He paused; arms folded over his chest though he wouldn’t look at you. “No, I wouldn’t.”

You softened, sitting up in the bed, though a dull pain rushed made it rather difficult, leaving you to clutch at your stomach. It ached as you moved, an unfamiliar feeling, and the tension quickly faded from Bucky’s shoulders when he heard you whine.

You pushed through the pain in your stomach, holding up a hand as Bucky started to step forward to help you. It would fade. It always does. You’d heal and move on, until the next injury came through. It was routine. It was your life.  

So, you told him as much.  

“I’d do it again.”

Bucky frowned. He looked like he wanted to just lay on the bed beside you, curl up against your chest and sleep. He was exhausted. And still—he couldn’t let it go.  

“You almost died—”

You shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“A sacrifice?” Bucky’s face contorting in horror. “Are you insane? You're not a sacrifice, Y/n!”

You nodded, determined; the words of your parents, the village elders, ringing in your ears. “That what this gift is, Bucky! I can’t actually heal anyone other than myself, but I can transfer the injuries and the pain to my body. That I can heal. It’s what I was born for! It’s my purpose. I was made to be a sacrifice.”

“Not for me!” Bucky held his ground, voice firmer than you’d ever heard it. “Nothing is worth that to me! Do you understand that? I won’t trade your life for anyone’s, not even Steve’s, and I sure as hell don’t care how many bones I break or how bad the nerves in my shoulder misfire. I won’t put that on you again. The team won’t either.”

You clenched your jaw, heart starting race. No one had ever challenged you on this before. No one had ever questioned whether your gift should be used at all. No one ever seemed to care of the effect it had on your body, never thinking to look past the extraordinary abilities to the mutilation under the surface.  

No one until Bucky.  

You curled your hands into the thin sheets at your waist. “Bucky, don’t be ridiculous. I’m saving you all from weeks of unnecessary healing. I can handle the pain. It’s an easy trade for—”

Bucky’s fist met the wall. “You’re worth more than just a vessel for our pain, Y/n!”  

“What the hell is going on in here!?” Helen Cho rushed into the room, eyes darting between Bucky standing by the corner of the room, shaking out his hand, and you as you laid in the bed at the center, the heart monitor above pulsing far too quickly.  

Bucky seemed to notice the frantic beeping of the monitor and the anger quickly drained from his face.  

Helen glared at him as she stepped closer to you, beginning to check your vitals. “You should leave,” she shot over her shoulder. Your stomach twisted to knots as Bucky nodded defeatedly and walked to the door.  

“No, don’t--” you called, voice small, nervous. He paused in the frame, glancing back at you with a raised eyebrow. “Please, Bucky. Stay.”

Helen set a hand on your shoulder as if to ask if you were sure. You nodded.

“You may be able to heal yourself, but you’re still recovering,” Helen advised, tapping on the IV drip. “Take it easy, alright?”

Bucky remained stoic by the door after Helen left. He didn’t say anything for a while, his eyes focused on the tile floors at his feet, waiting until the heart monitor chimed in even, steady counts.  

“Will you sit down? You’re making me nervous,” you chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. It got him to look at you, at least. While he couldn’t muster a smile, it was clear he was drained of the anger that had quickly taken hold of his body; anger that was never once reserved for you, but for the voices in your head that deemed you unworthy of more than a body to be used by others.  

Bucky sank into the chair at your bedside.  

“When’s the last time you slept, Buck?”  

He stayed silent. It was enough of an answer. You didn’t dare ask the last time he left this room, not with the shiny reflection at his roots and the red strained in his eyes. Six days at your bedside, hunched over on a cold, unforgiving chair, clutching your hand. It ached deep into your bones.  

“I mean what I said,” Bucky mumbled, slowly brining himself to meet your eye. He reached out for your hand, letting the comforting chill of solid metal lay below as the warmth of flesh and muscle laid on top. He brought your fingertips to his lips and gently kissed at your knuckles.  

You sighed at the feeling. “Bucky, I...”

“You’re more important to us than your abilities,” he pressed, a sincerity behind his words and laced delicately into sweet shades of blue. “You do a lot of good to keep us safe with the tech you’ve been building and the adjustments to the suits. You’re incredible at what you do, Y/n. Your worth isn’t based on how many injuries you can heal or how much pain you can handle. We care about you. I care about you. Isn't that enough?”

You didn’t know.

You’d never known anyone to prioritize you over your gift. You parents had exploited it from the moment it was discovered your ability; showing you off, treating you as an idol to be worships and adorned. They put their child through broken bones and lacerations and asthma attacks. They sat back and watched as you healed strangers of arthritis and sprained ankles and migraines. Their child cried as they collected their winnings.  

Were you afraid it would happen again? Is that why you kept it from the team? From Bucky? You’d convinced yourself it was noble to silently suffer in their place, but you started to wonder if it amounted to little more than your parent's words whispered into your ear: your ability is a gift to the world, a sacrifice unto yourself.

“Would you ask any of us to suffer in your place?” Bucky questioned, drawing you from the mess inside your head with the gentle vibration in his voice.  

“I just want to help you...” you murmured, tears slipping past your cheeks.  

Bucky reached forward and brushed the tears as they fell, sliding his hand against your cheek and nestling against your hair. You leaned into the touch.

“So, we find a middle ground, okay?” Bucky offered, smiling enough to push into his cheeks, though his eyes were still heavy. “No trivial injuries. No life-threatening injuries. We take the stuff in-between case by case.”  

“Your shoulder,” you added, determined. Buck started to shake his head but you pressed harder. “Five minutes of pain to spare months of yours, Bucky. No lasting damage. Don’t argue with me on this one.”

It brought the smile back to Bucky’s eyes as he eventually nodded. You knew he had no real authority to decide what injuries you could and couldn’t heal, but you’d never had anyone who dared to put you first. You trusted him to do that; you trusted him more than yourself, anyway.

“We decide the rest together,” you told him. “I get the final say but... I need you to tell me if I’m pushing it too much, but I won’t be too cautious, either. No discriminating against Sam.”

“No promises,” Bucky chuckled, playing with the ends of your hair dreamily. “The other stuff I can deal with.”

“Okay,” you exhaled, relief sweeping through your body.  

“Okay.”

“Think I’ll be lucky if anyone on the team even lets me touch them for a few months after this ordeal, though, huh?” You laughed and though it ached in your stomach, it was considerably less than it was moments earlier. You didn’t mind the dull pain. It was familiar, almost a comfort. Steve was alive because of it.  

“Yeah, can’t say anyone was thrilled to find out how your powers actually worked,” Bucky chuckled. “But they’re happy you’re alright. I’m sure Steve will be, too. He was pissed when he woke up and learned what you did.”

You clenched your jaw. “Never good to be on Cap’s bad side...”

“No, it’s not,” Bucky agreed, wide smile pressed to the back of your hand, his lips touching over exposed skin. “He doesn’t like when anyone else pulls a self-sacrificial move. It’s kinda his thing. Diving into the Atlantic and all. We don’t really need two of you running around...”

“Alright, alright,” you laughed, swatting Bucky away. Your cheeks hurt from smiling, the pain in your stomach long forgotten, or maybe it had finally healed. You supposed it didn’t matter.  

They were scars that would never heal. Like the knife wound. Like mesh of hardened tissue around Bucky’s shoulder, stretching out onto his chest and back. Reminders of when you were too both close to the edge, to the brink of darkness. Reasons to push back towards the light.  

read the sequel here!

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

[phantomrose96]

Buds After the Frost

This was supposed to be a short warm-up writing exercise yesterday and then it got... longer. Enjoy!!

...

The doors opened for Maddie Fenton with a pneumatic hiss. Pressurized nitrogen released, splitting open the vacuum seal on the door as its twin halves slid apart, slotting into the wall-mounted sleeves. The nitrogen misted out, cold and dry, air currents catching in swirls around Maddie Fenton’s lab coat. Her feet thocked against hollow metal, amplified by the coldness and the vastness of the containment room beyond.

She paused short of the specimen’s cell, mindful attention drawn to the panel of controls nested rightmost against the wall. The monitor read out stats, tracked metrics of the specimen’s heartrate and blood oxygenation and blood pressure. Dials beneath the screens offered her means of interaction, manipulating the cage’s environment without needing to tamper with it by hand. She ignored these, as she had been ignoring them the entire time, and paid mind only to the single switch which would seal shut the doors behind her.

She pressed it. Another pneumatic hiss followed, locking out the world behind her. Her breath curled, cold. She and the specimen were alone.

“No coffee this morning?” he asked.

Maddie sat down at the control panel, elbow leaning against the dashboard for support. She turned to the cage. “No. One of the interns broke the pot last night. New one should be delivered today.”

Phantom let out a huff of air. “You mean in this whole gigantic mega-hyper-futuristic government lab, there’s nothing that can stand in as a coffee pot?”

“I wouldn’t stay employed long if I tried using equipment to brew coffee.”

“Use one of the big ectoplasm beakers. Ectoplasm washes out with soap and water. Just suds it up and throw it in the coffee maker. I’m an expert about these things.”

“It’s more about protocol.”

Phantom waved her off. “’Protocol.’ Bureaucracy is standing between you and a delicious cup of ectoplasmic coffee, Dr. Fenton.”

Maddie looked forward now, taking him in. He’d hovered to the front of the cell, translucent reinforced glass separating him from the rest of the lab. Green eyes shined above a cheeky smile, a dusting of loose white hairs falling over his eyes, the rest of his bangs swept slightly to the side. His tailed flickered, his aura pulsed, his vital readings blipped out steady, normal, healthy.

“Phantom?”

“Yeah?”

Maddie paused.

“Why are you still here?”

The ghost boy let out a small guffaw. He motioned his arms around him, hands waving. “I dunno. Maybe the big ghost-proof box I’m in has something to do with it?”

“The shield is down, Phantom,” Maddie answered quietly. She set her eyes to Phantom, investigating. “…I put it down last night. It’s down now. You knew this.”

Phantom took just a moment too long to react, eyebrows arching up. “Oh, huh! Nope I didn’t notice. I mean it’s not like I’m constantly throwing myself at the barrier to electrocute myself so no I just didn’t try getting past it last night so I didn’t notice.”

“Phantom,” Maddie said again, voice measured, words stern. “You saw me crank down the dial that controls the shield.”

“Well I don’t know what all those buttons and dials do.”

“Yes you do. You’ve been observing me since day 1. You knew.”

Phantom kicked back in the air, floating a fraction back and higher. “Well maybe I thought it was a trap, I dunno. Or maybe I just like to get in your head, you know? What unpredictable thing will Phantom do next! Gotta write another 200 equations about ghost theory to figure that one out, Dr. Fenton.”

“Phantom.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you not want to leave?”

“Oh I wanna leave.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“We’re having a conversation. That’d be rude.”

“Will you leave as soon as I exit the room?”

“Who knows?”

“Phantom.”

“Yeah?”

Maddie stood. She left her chair and the control panel behind. She walked up to the specimen cage instead. It was cubic, a skeleton of metal bar ribbings with a metal mesh that plastered the glass sides like a membrane. The top anchored to the ceiling, the bottom—raised by about a foot—anchored to a pedestal on the floor. Maddie stared through the mesh into Phantom’s eyes.

“Is there anyone who realizes you’re missing?” she asked.

Phantom chewed on the question. “Nah. Well um, trick question, actually. Probably not. Assuming I do this right, then no one has even realized I’m gone.”

“Do what ‘right’?”

“You know that thing about Clockwork I explained?”

“You said he’s the ghost that controls time and reality.”

“Yeah. SUPER powerful.”

“And you said you …were from one of those other realities.”

Phantom nodded. “Maybe I touched some things in Clockwork’s lair I wasn’t actually allowed to touch. Jury’s still out on whether I’m in trouble for that or not. I’ve been a little too ‘stuck in this reality’ to know if Clockwork is pissed. But yeah, I got um, bopped into your reality instead of mine. So technically my reality is lacking me right now, and yeah there’s people there who’d know I’m missing.”

Phantom flipped upside-down, as though laying on his back. He rested his palms beneath his head, elbows out, suspended in an invisible hammock, head tilted far back so that he still stared at Maddie. “Especially since it’s been, what, a month that I’ve been gone?”

“2 weeks.”

“What? No way. I’ve been here absolutely forever it has to have been at least a month.”

“This is day 14 of your observation, Phantom.”

Phantom blew a strand of hair out of his face. “Anyway. Two weeks is still long enough to have a search party out on my butt. But whether or not that’s happened is up to – it’s kind of a Schrodinger thing. Because here’s my strategy. Assuming Clockwork hasn’t banned me from reality-hopping forever, I can just get him to send me back to my own reality at the precise moment in time I vanished. And then bam, no one ever knows I was gone. And it makes no difference whether I do that today, or next week, or next month. So assuming you eventually let me go, then I’m all set there.”

“You say that almost like you don’t care when it happens.”

“I dunno, more like I’m just not losing sleep over it. It’s not like I have a say in the matter. You do. I don’t.”

“Is the time you spend here just meaningless, to you?”

“I wouldn’t say meaningless. I’m still aging goddammit.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“I’m complex.” Phantom flipped right-side-up again. “If I start growing facial hair, send me back. I’m gonna have some awkward questions to answer if I show up again with a ghost beard suddenly.”

“…And what if I never send you back?” Maddie asked, careful with her words. “How does your plan work if you stay here forever? If I destroy you first?”

“Um. …It doesn’t, I guess.” Phantom set a hand to his chin, thinking. “Yeah um, please don’t do that. I don’t wanna worry my whole family like that.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“What part?”

“That you have a family.”

“I mean. I think that came up in Interrogation Session #3. Consult your notes.”

“I just have a hard time believing you.”

“Because I’m a ghost?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a complex ghost.”

“I know. You keep saying that.”

“It’s true.”

Silence filtered in between them.

“…What is your family like, Phantom?”

Phantom stiffened a fraction, his eyes finding Maddie’s and shifting away. “Oh, you know, family.”

“Do they exist here too?”

“Huh?”

“You’re from another reality, at least you’re claiming you are.”

“I gotta be. The me from this reality died 6 months ago, didn’t he?”

“The you from most realities is dead, Phantom. You’re a ghost.”

“A complex ghost.”

“The you from this reality was destroyed 6 months ago.”

“Which you validated with your own sciencey equipment, right? You said so! So you know I’m not lying. Unless you think I recombobulated myself from being a protoplasmic smear on the sidewalk.” Phantom caught himself, registering the flinch in Maddie’s body. He deflated a bit, eyes averted. “S-sorry. Inconsiderate phrasing.”

“Why?” Maddie asked, tone flat, blunt.

Phantom’s eyes shifted back. “Um. Just. You know. That accident was. There were um, you know—”

“Human causalities.”

Phantom squirmed. “We don’t have to talk about that, you know? No one wants to talk about that. Okay as a ghost I guess ‘talking about how I died’ is sort of a bit more normal, but this is weird yeah, ‘talking about how an alternate-me died permanently’? That’s morbid. No one wants to talk about that.”

“Okay then. You can go back to answering my previous question.”

“Um. I forget.”

“Does your family exist in this reality?”

“Um, well who really knows, you know? I had like a grand total of 20 minutes of freedom in this reality before you captured me, so, don’t ask me like I’m any kind of expert about your reality. What’s it matter?”

“I want to know if there’s anyone in this reality who’s mourning you.”

Phantom’s face schismed with surprise. His front dropped, and the first look of genuine emotion sank into his glowing eyes. “Woah… That’s um, weirdly nice, of you, I guess. Why do you… want to know?”

Maddie said nothing.

“I. Um. I think the answer is no? So don’t um. Worry about that. If you were worried? Which is weird. I’m the enemy, aren’t I? Evil spooky ghost to be studied?”

“I’m not so sure what you are…” Maddie answered. “I heard you got destroyed trying to save them.”

“The um… the human casualties?”

“Yes.”

“I said we don’t have to talk about that.”

“Phantom.”

“What?”

“Do you know who they were?”

“The… casualties?”

“Yes.”

“Come on we’re on a different topic now.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“I don’t—how’m I supposed to know? I don’t know how I died here, you know? You think I’ve got some kind of like… parallel-universe death vision?”

“So you don’t know?”

“N-no.”

“I have a different question, then.”

“Okay, good, because I haven’t been liking these previous ones.”

“Are you staying just to keep me company?”

Phantom faltered. He looked left, then right, hand scratching at his chin. “I’m staying because I’m in a ghost-proof box.”

“It’s not ghost-proof anymore. The shields are down.”

“I feel like you’re circling around some accusation I’m not smart enough to follow. This feels like entrapment.”

“Then I’ll be more direct.”

“Oh no there is an accusation.”

“I think you do know how you were destroyed in this universe, Phantom.” Maddie took a step forward, and she let her left hand touch the glass, eyes focused on her fingers. “I think you know what happened at the Nasty Burger.”

“That’s—um—the human food… consumption… location… that the local human adolescents meet at, yes?”

Maddie looked up, and she locked Phantom with her stare. He squirmed, and he relented.

“I um…” he continued. “I—yeah—yeah, okay? I know about the Nasty Burger accident. It was supposed to happen to me too in my reality but I—Clockwork—stopped it from happening in my reality.” Phantom glanced left, right, as if staring beyond the confines of his cage. “When I first got knocked into this reality, I went to go find the Fenton portal so I could try to refind Clockwork and fix this and… Well it wasn’t there. And I tried to find some people I know and… I checked out the library in case the Fentons just lived somewhere else and. I um. I found the articles.” His eyes focused on hers again. “They all say you were the only survivor, yeah…?”

“I was sick, that day. It was just a cold. My husband Jack went without me.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It took my daughter and my son too.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“And it destroyed you.”

Phantom opened his mouth, but no words followed.

Maddie looked up.

“You knew this. You’ve known this ever since I captured you.” Maddie let her hand slide away from the glass. “Did you let me capture you?”

“Why would I let you capture me?”

“Because you feel sorry for me.”

Phantom’s eyes flickered about, unwilling to meet hers. “…Nah. Nah. I don’t—come on ‘sorry’? I’m a ghost you know? Bane of humanity! We’re enemies. You were just too skilled a hunter and you captured me.”

“And yet you won’t leave.”

Phantom lapsed silent.

“I um… I wasn’t happy to read about—to know the, the thing at the Nasty Burger happened here, okay? That’s something that I kinda didn’t want to believe existed in any reality anymore, but I guess… And if you were still alive. I was… maybe just kind of happy to see you? That you were okay. And still hunting. That was kind of, like a small relief.” Phantom glanced away, back again. “I wasn’t evil, you know. In my reality or this one. I care about what happened to the Fentons…”

“You let me capture you. …And you did it because you thought it would be a nice thing for you to do for me.”

“I Just—I thought maybe, um… I mean when you phrase it like that. I mean what else could cheer up renowned ghost hunter Maddie Fenton quite like a ghost subject to study? Me, especially? The ghost boy or public enemy #1 or whatever. I’m fun, aren’t I?”

Silently, Maddie pushed away from Phantom’s cage. She moved to the control panel, stiff movements and numb fingers. She entered the release code into the console, and unslung the key from her neck to twist into the override, and she threw down each successive lever in the row of four lining the top of the mechanisms.

The scrape of glass sliding away sounded behind her. All four walls of Phantom’s enclosure dropped away, metal mesh sliding away piece-meal. Phantom stared at her, blinking, floating in place.

“You’re free to go, Phantom.”

“I—uh—well hang on, I don’t think the Guys In White would be too happy about that. You can’t just let me—”

“Go, Phantom.”

“They could like, fire you.”

“I don’t care about this job.”

“I—come on, you still wanna study me, don’t you? Chat with me? If you feel bad maybe just get me a couch and some video games for my cage then I’ll be—”

“Phantom.”

“What?”

“Go home to your family.”

The half-hearted smile dropped from Phantom’s face.

“Come on. You can’t just evict me on such short notice. I’m not ready for Clockwork to kick my ass so soon.”

“Go home.”

“I’m not in any rush! I like talking to you. Don’t you—don’t you like talking to me too? In like a scientific way?”

Maddie lowered herself into the chair by the control panel. She leaned forward, arms pooled in her lap, eyes to the floor. “You have a family to get back to, Phantom.”

“It’s—there’s time travel shenanigans! Like I said they don’t even know I’m gone.”

“Every single day, Phantom,” Maddie looked up, eyes stern, “…I wish every single day that my own family would just come back home. I won’t do the same to you. I won’t do the same to your family.”

Phantom said nothing. A somber acceptance sunk into his eyes.

“They’re… alive, you know. In my dimension.”

Maddie dropped her head, and she blinked away the wetness in her eyes.

“I actually… in my dimension I’m kind of closer to the Fentons than I think the, the Phantom in this dimension was. It’s… complex.”

Maddie said nothing. Silence built between them.

“Jazz is um… Jazz is applying for colleges, y-you know. She got in early-acceptance to Yale but um, we all—they all—visited Columbia last month and I think that’s what she wants the most. I can see Jazz in New York City. I think she’d rock it.”

Maddie blinked again. Tears plicked into her lap.

“…Should I stop?”

“Jack… Tell me about Jack.”

“Oh. Yeah he um… big and goofy as ever. He’s got some kind of eight-armed-octogun he’s working on. I know because I was his target practice, involuntarily by the way. He keeps trying to merge “Fenton” and “octopus” together with mixed results. We—Mo-addie—you… are still trying to talk him out of ‘Fentoctopus’.”

Maddie’s ribcage shuddered, a repressed sob, a repressed laugh.

“And Danny?”

“Danny… um… Danny is...” Phantom’s shoulders fell a little bit. He looked away, and then back at Maddie. “He loves you. I know that.”

Maddie blinked, and blinked again, and her eyes wouldn’t clear.

“And are they happy?”

“They’re happy.”

“Am I happy…?”

“You’re…” Phantom’s tail bounced. “You’re happy, I think. I like to think so. I think you’re very happy. You have a great family.”

Maddie nodded.

“Now go.”

“But I still—”

Maddie reached forward, and she grabbed the ecto-gun propped against the control panel. She lifted it into her shoulder, and flicked the safety, and the charge built along the rising whine.

“Go.”

Phantom balked. He blinked. He kicked away from his wall-less cage. “Not forever. I’ll be back. You won’t be alone here forever.”

He was gone.

And Maddie was alone again.

…

Clockwork surveyed the boy in front of him whose head was bowed nearly to the floor, white bangs trailing along cobblestone, hands clasped, apologies repeated, begging case made.

Clockwork ran a hand along his beard, which unfurled, drew back, undid itself with the shifting of his form to a simple child.

“So let’s see. You have the audacity to break my rules andbeg me to meddle on your behalf in the time stream, all in the same breath? Apologies don’t usually come with additional requests for favors.”

“I know,” Danny’s head dipped lower. “You can punish me however you want for touching the restricted timelines but you have to help it, or let me help this one timeline. Please, please just send me back to the Nasty Burger incident so I can save it.”

“It’s already been saved.”

Danny faltered. He looked up.

“You died at the Nasty Burger incident that night,” Clockwork elaborated, form shifting older. “There is no you to ruin that future. That timeline is safe. It’s a very lucky timeline.”

Danny blinked. “N-no. No that’s not what I mean. Save it like you saved my timeline.”

“That did happen. You’re describing your own timeline.”

“I mean do it to THAT one.”

“You are misunderstanding timelines.”

Danny lapsed silent. Worry bled into his eyes, and Clockwork sighed.

“There is no undoing timelines, Danny. There is only forking them by meddling in the stream. All futures and pasts you witness exist, and do exist, and continue to exist,” Clockwork paused, “with the exception of realities I needed to cull, to prevent utter catastrophe.” His gaze fixed on Danny. “The futures that your evil self destroyed, I did have to cull. And culling a reality is not to be done lightly.”

Clockwork motioned with his staff. “There were a handful of surviving realities that I was able to save. That room you meddled in without my permission—they contain the realities off the main track where, for one reason or another, something else succeeded at destroying your future self. …Your own deaths, in fact. In every one of those realities, Danny, you are dead.”

“I don’t…” Danny shook his head. “So then just tell me how to save that one I was in, okay?”

“Oh, that’s easy.”

“How?”

“You don’t.”

Danny said nothing. Clockwork shifted young.

“You can let it live on in that room, or you could ask me to cull it, Danny. You could ask me to cull every reality in that room, so that the main branch, the one you’re from, is the only reality in existence. So you never have to worry about any existence where your family is unhappy. And it will be that way until you, or I, or someone else, meddles with the timestreams again, and more splits occur.”

Still, Danny said nothing. Clockwork continued.

“Sometimes, a mass culling of realities is healthy for the tree of time, like pruning a plant down to its stalk to survive an unforgiving winter, or a terrible disease. But I did that, just recently, to save all of time from the blight of your future self. It would feel cruel to snip off the first buds that have come after the frost.”

Danny lowered himself to the floor.

“Okay…”

“Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. Just. I have a different question then.” He looked up, a young devastation wet in his eyes. “Can I still go back and visit that reality, sometimes?”

“No. I cannot give you permission to do that.”

“Please!”

Clockwork spun his staff. A portal swirled into being in the space between him and Danny. Washes of color formed patterns, shapes, objects, images. Like a mirror, it reflected Clockwork’s lair beyond its shimmering surface.

“This is a portal back into your own reality. It is set to the location and the time that you vanished. Go there, and leave through the Fenton portal, and nothing will be amiss.”

“No. No no I won’t. Clockwork you have to let me—”

“I am doing you a favor, Danny, getting you home after you caused more trouble. Do not make further demands of me.” Clockwork curled forward, old, sallow skin sagging, and he turned his back to Danny.

“You have to give me permission—”

“I am the only one who has permission to meddle in realities, Danny. This is an absolute.” Clockwork glanced over his shoulder. “And because this is an absolute, I have no reason to have a lock on the room housing those budding other realities.”

Danny blinked.

“I wonder if anyone might break my rules anyway. I wonder if anyone might be nosy, and enter that room anyway, and water the plants in that greenhouse without my permission.” Clockwork stared forward again.

“Clockwork…”

“Luckily I am the master of all time. I would be able to see this coming. And maybe plan for it. If ever such a person would come into my lair, and meddle in my timelines, and try to spread a bit of his own kindness to the realities he couldn’t quite save, I would be fully prepared to stop him.” Clockwork spoke into the green abyss beyond him. “Unless, maybe, I were to accidentally have my back turned.”

Silence trailed after Clockwork’s words. He kept his back to Danny, staring into the abyss of swirling green ether beyond.

“…Thank you,” Danny answered, quietly. “I’ll be back.”

“I imagine you will. Those realities may get lonely without you.”

When Clockwork glanced back over his shoulder, both Danny and the portal were gone.

[baejax-the-great]

Relinquish

Thanatos x Zagreus | M | Chapter 5/6 | 3333 words | AO3

“Did you know?” Zagreus asks softly. “Did he put you up to it?”

He means Lord Hades. He has found the worst possible explanation for what happened, and in his absence, Thanatos has allowed him to believe it. “No. Zag, no.” He turns to face Zagreus, but Zagreus is looking straight ahead, a muscle tensing in his jaw. “I had no idea. I thought you were like them. You’re Olympian; I thought you would be like them.”

This does not soothe the anger etched across his face. “Like them?” he repeats slowly. His next words contain the barest hint of a question. “You can’t live out there either?”

“No. The world out there makes me sick. I have to come back.”

Zagreus takes a moment to digest this. He wets his lips. “You never told me that.”

“I never knew it would matter.”

The river Styx roars around them on its descent to their home. Sunlight leaks in through the cracks around the door, and this is enough to irritate Thanatos’s eyes. Zagreus stares at it hungrily.

“I’m going back out there,” Zagreus says.  

Thanatos can’t have expected any differently, even if he wishes it with all his heart. He’s going to have to do it again. “Then… you know I will have to follow.”

“I don’t know that, actually.” He finally turns to Thanatos, searching his face, his eyes questioning and hurt, before reaching down to take his hand in both of his own. It is the same hand Thanatos last touched him with to end his life, and Thanatos brokers no resistance.  Zagreus holds it between his own, thumb rubbing over his palm, before he draws it up to place it softly against his own cheek, his hand placed firmly on top, holding it there. He looks Thanatos in the eyes when he says, “If you must, then reap me right now, Than, like before, and be done with it. I’ll be less angry if you do it now than if you wait until after I’ve killed my father.”

His words land like a blow. Seemingly of its own accord, Thanatos’s thumb sweeps over Zagreus’s cheekbone. “You promised you wouldn’t ask this of me again,” he says.

“That was before.” His eyes search Thanatos’s face. “When I never thought you would actually do it.”

What little there was between them has shattered. It was the new spring growth Thanatos finds in patches on the surface that tries again and again to struggle for the sun before the never-ending winter frosts strangles their fragile lives. It was the final puff of air from a cold and empty chest that he collects and carries to its final resting place. It was over before it began.

“I didn’t kill you, Zag.”

Zagreus’s face shows every emotion. It always has. It moves with the restlessness he carries in his limbs, eyebrows lifting and scowling, the corners of his mouth always shifting to reflect the thoughts that run through his mind. His father called it a weakness, but Thanatos thinks if his own face could show how he feels as plainly as the anger that washes across Zagreus’s face in pained waves, maybe he would understand.

“You never agreed with what I was doing,” Zagreus whispers, his fingers clutching at Thanatos’s. “You never wanted me to leave.”

“That’s not what this is, Zag. It’s not my choice. I didn’t—” I fought for you to make it to the surface. I broke my own heart because I knew it was right. I resigned myself to lose you forever. The words stick in his too-tight throat. And then he sent him home, his choice or not. “I didn’t kill you. You were already dead.”

Zagreus’s face is so warm under his fingertips, and it would take nothing to throw his other arm around him and embrace him, to hold him here before it’s all too broken to ever be fixed, but Thanatos is Death. His actions always come when it is already too late to change anything, and love has never stopped his hand. “Do you know what happens to lost spirits?” he asks. “Injury, or oblivion, or madness. Do you know how many creatures would love to devour the soul of a god? Zagreus, I won’t allow it. If you go out there, you will die, and I will come for you, every time.”

Read the rest here | Or start from the beginning

[starshipsofstarlord]

Hey! Could I request a fic where the reader and Bucky like each other and she has to pretend she’s Zemo’s girlfriend for the Madripor mission? Bucky gets jealous and all that jazz and they confess their feelings :)

Madripoor Muse

Pairing | Bucky Barnes x reader

Summary | Bucky harbours feelings for you, but despite Sam’s inflatable encouragement, refuses to inform you of them. However, seeing you pretend to be Zemo’s girlfriend whilst on a mission, more so when the criminal knows what strings he is pulling at, happens to infuriate him inevitably.

Warnings | jealousy, violence, references to sex work (there is nothing wrong with it, everyone is free to do what they want or need to do to get by, angst, mentions of death, grief, smut, unprotected sex, fluff, swearing

Quick link to my masterlist, if you’re interested in reading more of my crap 😬

“I mean, if he looks like a pimp, then I look like one of his workers.” Sam snorted at your words, as Bucky’s eyes trailed down the skin that was exposed through the small piece of fabric, that in modern days, was considered a dress.

Zemo simply sighed at the pair of you, shaking his head as though the former winter soldier would understand his point. “It’s Madripoor, not an american graduation. You are not going to be clothed in long robes in this place, expression is in the body, and how it is clothed.”

“Or not clothed.” Bucky retorted, frowning at how you shuffled beneath the criminal’s gaze, crossing your arms, which definitely did not help the situation, considering that it did nothing more than make your breasts rise. Admitting defeat, you let them fall, holding them to your sides, outlining your hips, which once more, was not how you wished to be portrayed as you walked through the illuminated air, careful to keep pace in your heels.

“We all have a part to play, winter soldier.” Helmut spoke, his accent causing waves to ripple through the euphoria of lights that lay up ahead. “I am me, you are you, Sam is the Smiling Tiger, and...”

“I’m a hooker?” Once more, Zemo showed disappointment, pinching the bridge of his nose as he turned to you. It seemed that tonight, you, a smart and well coordinated avenger, was absolutely adoring testing his patience, but that was his trick.

He was the captive here, forced to help the forsaken superheroes that had prompted him with the idea of escaping from the government’s ensured facility. And it was without a doubt that he would mess with their minds each chance that he got.

“No, think of yourself as more personalised to one person than that y/n. Your as you people say ‘arm candy’.” He used quotations with his fingers, causing you to reach for Sam’s arm to assume the role. “Oh no, not his.” Zemo made a come here motion, making you gulp.

“You’re kidding, right?” Bucky huffed, glaring unimpressed towards the Baron, who only tutted in reply, implying that he indeed was serious. “This is stupid.”

“Stupid would be allowing this hurrah of new age super soldiers to continue their war path, don’t you think James?” Zemo asked condescendingly, holding his arm out for you to grasp onto, so that you would look more than an associate, or a serum induced bodyguard.

“Me posing as your sugar baby is stupid.” You muttered, as you walked, Bucky on look out behind you, as he glared frustratedly at where you and the mass murderer were touching.

Zemo tugged you by the arm for the comment, causing you to roll your eyes at the man that had tried his best and succeeded, at destroying your team; your family. Nevertheless, you followed his stride, well aware of the sharp eyes of the man behind you.

As you entered the club, a spectrum of blue lights illuminated your skin, as you stared around in wander. There was a variety of all didn’t people, born from different virtues, wealths and races all intermingling around in the space.

If Zemo didn’t have a leash on your arm, you’d have stared for a little longer, perhaps even gotten purposely lost in the sea of bodies that flashed with such ambition and prospect. All were designed to suit their surroundings, and you wished that you could fit in that easily too.

But you were lost, roped into this journey by the Falcon, the man that denied Steve’s wishes and passed on the shield to firmer hands, still uncertain of where you were planning on going. What you needed was a fight, a reason to keep roaming upon the earth. If you came up empty, you may have well have taken up Thor’s offer, and accompanied him with his new friends.

The avengers were disbanded, dotted with different services. You’d heard nothing from Wanda, it appeared that her phone had been cut off, leaving you gravely confused, but you understood that she needed time to mourn. But you couldn’t give yourself the same pampering, if you did so, then all purpose of life would slip through your fingers, and you’d be left vulnerable, a hero that willingly fell from their graces.

Finally you reached the bar, with the shadow of the winter soldier hovering over your shoulder, watching as Zemo’s untrustworthy hand trailed along your furthest collarbone, using it as his sway to grab your attention. He set his sights upon his touch, glaring harshly at it.

No one would question the expression that he wore, it was only natural for his reputation to be proceeded with such a dagger like gaze; he was supposed to be playing the killer that he once was after all.

“My lady, what would you like to drink?” Helmut asked, turning your gaze towards his, gripping your chin between his thumb and forefinger, forbidding you from even try to look away from his sly eyes.

“White wine will do the trick, my love.” The words felt like spew falling from your mouth, but you withheld the impulse to grimace, instead, flashing him a flirtatious smile, fanning his face with your eyelashes as you were still held to face him.

“Fine choice.” He smirked, nodding towards the bartender, who had just presented the Smiling Tiger imposter with a shot that had the intestines of a snake floating around in its liquid. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched as Sam hesitated to drink it for a moment, before throwing it down the hatch, treating it as an old trick.

Madripoor, for an island trapped in violence, didn’t appear that bad on the outside. That was, until the shooting began, causing the lot of you to leg it from the citizens targeting their rifled hardware towards you, running with your lives depending on it.

You had temporarily lost Zemo, as you put head your own safety, your pace and spot being just between Sam and Bucky, as the first man’s arms flailed as he insisted that he could not run in the heels that he was wearing. Huh, you’d be running in heels all your life, maybe he shoulda learned how to do so earlier, it came as a great talent.

Gunshots rang out, as a hooded figure unveiled themselves, introducing the older face of a blonde that you had once knew. It had been quite some time since you had last seen her, all having gone your separate ways to evade the law, and its cruel jurisdiction. “Sharon?” Bucky spoke, instantly recognising the woman that had aided them in the past.

Once you were all reintroduced, and met with her annoyance, which was surely understandable, she led you to her property, where you were able to part from the Sokovian, and share your distaste to the man, as well as remove the skimpy dress.

It pooled at your feet as you tossed it from your ankle, leaving you in nothing more than your underwear. As you squinted, searching for some reason that you were continuing with this foolishness of thinking that the world still considered you a hero, an echo of a knock rattled against the door. It was metal upon wood; Bucky.

“Come in.” You spoke, as you tied a spare robe around your waist, watching as the super soldier, who appeared less stoic, and more human stepped into the room, closing the door behind his emerging shadow. “You alright man?”

Bucky’s eyes drifted down for a moment, before they splintered back up towards your face, his jaw physically tensing, the notion well visible. He breathed in a long breath through his nose, as he stepped closer, his brow harsh and lined upon his forehead.

“I didn’t like Zemo putting his filthy hands on you.” He admitted aloud, the words of Sharon, teasing him for pining after someone that he had once thought of as no more than a friend of Steve’s. But now that man was gone, and so was the one that he used to be. Instead, he was left standing on his own feet, having to find balance by himself somehow.

“Neither did I.” You informed him. “It was like he was pulling back the images of his collapsing country, pouring every ounce of pain and hatred upon me, evading my mind with guilt, and the memories of what it all amounted to. None of it had been worth it, living like this. We’re treated like animals, no longer idols or heroes, people under the big thumb that keeps pressing down on us.”

“Well we’re both pressed down, limited to our rules and the outlines they want us to obey.” He nodded, raising his flesh hand to your collarbone, wanting to mark his touch upon it to remove that of Zemo’s. At his action, your breath hitched, but you allowed him to sweep his pads over the flesh, shuffling indefinitely closer so that you were chest to chest.

“We’re dangerous in their eyes. That’s a mindset they have in common with our prisoner out there.” You whispered, frowning from the thought. Two monarchies, one still whilst the other already fallen, served the same opinions, though, only one could continue to take action. Zemo was a Baron, but of what country now?

Like all, his home had been vanquished into smithereens, the foundations collapsing into rubble, the history disappearing with its lands, having thrown its dusty remnants in your face.

“I’m fine with being considered dangerous so long as I’m not alone.” He pinched your chin, tilting your head, this time though, you felt in his grasp. It didn’t belong to that of an enemy, it was one of an ally, a friend. “Tell me I’m not alone y/n.”

“I’m here James.” You stared up at him with focused pools, biting your lip as your mind went haywire over everything. “The Wakandans will come for him, you do realise that, right?” He hummed in reply, briskly bringing his metal hand to toy with the belt of the white wrap around.

“Do you think that you could show me that I’m not alone?” He nervously asked, shuffling his weight from foot to foot, as he awaited a reply. But instead of words, he earned himself the sensation of your lips upon his, collaborating in a touch starved jumble of grunts. “You’re beautiful, like...”

“Like what Barnes?” You prompted, brushing your palms onto his shoulders, easing his tenseness. Expectedly, you watched him through half lidded eyes as you leant up to plant supple kisses upon his neck, sucking his skin into your mouth, as though you were trying to thread it gently with your teeth.

“A muse.” He sighed, thinking for a momentum, before dragging your hair through his vibranium fist, lightly grinning as he heard your breath wither from the sensation. “A beautiful muse, one that reminds me to be better everyday. I want to become someone better for you.”

“You shouldn’t.” You unlatched your mouth from him, frowning lightly at the brunette man. “You should become better for nobody but yourself Buck, each day, it’s about self growth, fixing everything that you have ever been taught so that you can learn to do better next time, so that no one else will die because of your expense.”

Bucky nodded, allowing your words to sink in. His fingers returned to playing with the waist band on your robe, his eyes gazing into your own, as he fiddled with the material. “Can I?”

“Go ahead.” You granted him permission, allowing him to push the coverage from you, his eyes widening at seeing you in nothing more than your underwear. His sight traced every curve and bump and dip that was upon your shape, licking his dry lips to make his gawking less subtle.

“You’re killing me doll.” He leant his head back, as he raked his contrasting fingertips down your shoulders, all the way to the small of your back. You smirked, grasping him through his jeans, earning yourself a moan from the elder man.

“I said it’s all about self growth, didn’t I? It seems that you are taking that in quite a literal sense.” You rubbed him through the denim, finding it unsurprising as the man backed you towards the bed, your knees hitting the end sending you falling onto the mattress.

Bucky crawled his way atop of you, rutting his hips against your own. It had been so long since he had been permitted to be this free, and he knew for sure, this would be a secret that he would not inform any therapist of. This was private, the sentiment making it close to his weathered heart.

His lips returned to your own, as your hands scaled beneath your shirt, lightly tracing the scars. He wasn’t as insecure as he thought he’d be about someone touching them, perhaps it was because many of your own materialised stories were written in your skin, or that you understood what it meant to be a soldier, serving under orders.

It didn’t matter too much, he wasn’t overthinking it. Instead, he was yearning as he grasped at the straps of your bra, trying to pull it over your head, as was done with the dames back in his day, but the effort seemed more difficult. Lightly leaning away from him, you reached around your back, unclamping the contraption before tossing it out of his sight.

He didn’t care to ask what the modern day had done to the garment, he was far too focused on your pert nipples, and how they stood to attention before him. The super soldier reached forwards, running his smooth hands upon the underneath of your breasts, before interacting with the present buds, softly tugging at them with his whimsical fingers.

“You’re wearing too many clothes.” Released from you as a sign, instantly becoming pleased as Bucky stripped himself from everything but his underwear, leaving a nest of his clothes upon the wooden floor, as he leant his head down, capturing your left nipple within the warmth of his mouth, moaning lightly as your hands weaved through his locks, tugging lightly at the short roots. “Stop teasing Buck.”

He didn’t miss the way your eyes roll from the slowness of motions, and thus, he reached down, and snapped the band of your underwear, the ripping noise audible, as he then pulled his boxers down, revealing his bobbing cock, that was directing its tip towards your entrance.

With a glance down, he lightly drooled at the way your cunt clenched around nothing, quickly swiping his fingers through your slit, as he brought them up to his lips, humming contently at the flavour that graced his tastebuds. “Need to be in you doll.”

“Need you in me soldier.” You taunted back, digging your knuckles into his shoulders as you pressed him against you, pushing your tongue into his mouth, as he suddenly bottomed out inside of you, waiting for a moment for the pair of you to adjust to the sensations.

He was in you, filling you to the brim, as you tucked your heels into the base of his back, lightly rotating your hips up, as your tongue chased his own, sucking on it as you nipped at the end, causing him to unintentionally jerk his rigid cock into you.

That had prompted him to start moving, screwing his hands into the satin sheets either side of your head, as your bodies succumbed the others to waves of pleasure. It was a luxury, having an outlet to all the stress that your duty brought. If you could just pass the mantle on like Steve had done, and Clint was in the process of doing, you would.

But it was all you had known; the gritty route, that had spanned the entirety of your tale. And Bucky now became a part of it, as he became a part of you, unravelling your vulnerabilities with sleek thrusts into your cunt, and smooth words that had swept you from your feet and had landed you in a bed.

A bed thats structure was creaking from the strength behind the animalistic carnage that you spent on one another. His teeth pulled at your lip, opening your mouth so that you could use him as an oxygen mask. Neither one of you had noticed the door opened, and an unimpressed Sharon standing in the entry way, her agent arms crossed unamused.

She cleared her throat, which made Bucky still inside of you, and you to clutch onto his back, to cover the decency of your chest. “You let me go on the run, then you fuck in my bed. It’s like I’m not allowed to belong anywhere.”

“Sharon-“ she halted your speech by raising a finger, her eyebrows pointedly telling you not to bother trying to speak, as sweat beading down your body. Bucky subtly rolled from atop of you, quickly pulling the sheets over you both, giving Sharon views that she neither wanted nor appreciated.

That was grittiness, she was a hustler, not a once avenger. A part of you wished she would understand that, as much as it would be painful to hear, she hadn’t been the top of anyone’s list. She had disappeared, and from so, she had became unreachable, practically falling off the face of the earth.

But she had been here, in Madripoor, the island of bones and whatever else Zemo had described it to be. “You two fucked in my bed. Okay.” She remained cool headed, her eyes trailing through the various fabrics among her floor. “Thought I’d tell you to get ready, and to blend in, though you two have that part already figured out. There’s some clothes in the wadrobe, and from what I can tell, you’re going to need new underwear.”

She bothered no longer once she had informed you of what she had told the other men. Instead she simply left, only for you to brace your head back into the quality pillows, slumping, and dreading the journey ahead.

Though you seemed restless, Bucky still thought of you as a muse. His hands grasped your chin, leading your lips to his own, as he sucked on your bottom one, his right hand grasping one of your breasts, as he pulled you atop of him, your skin flushed as you steadied your weight over his tough thighs.

“Now this is a dangerous sight.” He clicked his teeth, trailing his large hand down from your jaw, surpassing the middle of your chest, to your hip, which he grasp, as he shuffled you up just a little, so that you were seated upon the base of his cock.

“I can show you dangerous Barnes.” You smirked, adjusting the both of you so you were ready to sink down on his length. Your hands softly stroked his erect shaft, as you tapped his tip upon your pussy, before pushing down, filling yourself up one more.

Madripoor was a bad place, but good things could come out of visiting the skull island. This was the job, though, breaks were prompted, and were you glad that Bucky had became your little bit of calm in the arising trouble in the world.

“Fuck.” He groaned beneath you, his balls clenching as he felt you writhe all the way down to his base, beginning to bounce upon him, the years of training that you had endorsed coming in handy as it had helped your stamina. He was a super soldier after all, you were surely going to need it.

[beyondspaceandstars]

The Sleeping Situation

Relationship: Bucky Barnes x Reader Warnings: minor mentions of blood, minor (non-descriptive) violence Summary: You finally convince Bucky to sleep with you in the bed, as opposed to the floor, but you find it doesn't exactly go as smoothly as you had hoped it would, leading to some taunting emotions and revelations. A/N: This one went over pretty well on ao3 so fingers-crossed y’all enjoy too! idk how different audiences are - i just like sharing my work :)

Masterlist

You had finally convinced him. After weeks of hints and attempting, he had finally placed himself beneath the duvet, snuggled up right next to your body. 
It was something close to a miracle. Bucky had been sleeping on the floor for as long as you could remember. It had become really something you accepted — like clockwork, after watching a show or movie in the bed, he’d let you doze off then untangle himself to go to the living room.

When you first moved in, he didn’t think you really noticed. He’d always be up before you anyways, nothing seeming out of place but as if you possessed some sixth sense, you could always feel Bucky’s arms leave your waist as he went to retire in the living room.

During attempts at bringing up the bed, Bucky would dismiss it, saying he just hated how soft it was. He couldn’t get comfortable. He wasn’t used to it at all. And while you didn’t doubt this for a second, you still felt something deeper worries had been brewing.

You had decided to start small by having Bucky stay cuddling after your nightly movie viewing. You two would lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling, mindlessly talking about whatever was going on with your days. He seemed at peace with this until your eyes started drooping. Within seconds, the grip on your waist would vanish and he was heading out.

It was fine, though, since you had your moment together and he had found some way to relax in the bed. While you never wanted to push him, you wanted him at least content.

The next level was napping. After work, nearly every day, you’d announce you were laying down for a nap and ask Bucky if he was tired. Usually, he’d just shake his head. But one day he looked absolutely spent and wordlessly followed you into the room. A thrown arm around you loosely, he was able to get some shut-eye…for about 15 minutes. Soon he was uncomfortable and placing a kiss on your cheek, following it with a recoil of his touch. Still, you were taking the win and slowly but surely, the time spent napping would go up. Days bast but eventually he was up to an hour in the bed, napping peacefully.

When he finally decided to take the step to join you for a full eight hours in the queen-sized bed, you were quite shocked but easily overwhelmed with joy.

The movie had just ended and you were closing the laptop when Bucky left the bed. You frowned, watching his figure disappear to the bathroom, worried he was already backing out before cuddles and pillow talk. But you didn’t say anything and instead got comfortable on your side (well — the whole thing could’ve been your side at this point).

As you drifted off, a heavy arm snaked its way around you as you felt the other side of the bed dip. Blinking your eyes opened, you looked over your shoulder and was greeted by a nervous-looking Bucky staring back at you.

You turned to face him and asked, "Everything okay, honey?"

He nodded, "I- I’m going to try- try sleeping here if that’s okay."

Your eyes beamed as a smile you couldn’t suppress made its way to your face. "Of course," you said and placed a good night kiss on his lips. "Sleep well."

"You too, doll," Bucky mumbled and placed another kiss on your forehead. You curled up into him, feeling that he got more relaxed and his heartbeat went steady, drifting off to sleep.

***

Shaking. You were disrupted by something…shaking. Violently. Your first thought as you blinked, waking yourself out of your dazed sleep, was that a spontaneous earthquake was happening.

Except once your mind adjusted, it didn’t take very long to realize the mattress was the only thing shaking — and was the result of Bucky twisting and turning in fear next to you, lost in a nightmare. At some point, he must’ve untangled your cuddling bodies but thankfully that allowed you to sit up quickly, not trapped under whatever was happening.

You watched him, quite stunned to see Bucky thrashing around uncontrollably as whatever images and scenarios took over his brain. You didn’t really know what to do. All your brain could focus on was getting him out of his own thought. You needed him to calm down and know he was perfectly safe.

"Bucky?" You mumbled, your voice scratchy from the tears and fears creeping up. He didn’t react, only whispered some words to himself that you didn’t understand.

You hesitantly reached out for him, placing an experimental touch on his shoulder. He didn’t react at first so you called out his name again and tried shaking him. That was apparently not the right move because the next thing you knew, you were being flung off the bed, the side of your face against your bedside table on your way down. You landed ungracefully on your side, groaning at the unexpected pain.

The fall must’ve been loud enough because the next thing you could comprehend was watching the bed and seeing a very confused and dazed Bucky sit up. He was looking around the dark room, sweaty and anxious. When your eyes met, any color left in him faded. You could practically see the gears turning as he realized what he had done. You on the other hand were still quite surprised by the incident, simply choosing to stare at your boyfriend, watching him scramble off the bed and kneel at your side.

"Doll?" Bucky asked right beside you but his voice sounded so far away.

Taking some deep breaths, your shaky hand came up to your cheek as you felt something wet. Looking at your fingers, it was a sad mix of tears and blood.

A hand being placed on your shoulder made you snap back. You jerked away, turning towards your boyfriend. Bucky was practically frozen watching you, hands in the air, as you rushed to put space between you two.

Realizing the consequences of your actions, your heart sunk and you began apologizing. "Sorry, sorry," you mumbled, trying to furiously wipe away the tears and blood. "I- What happened? Are you okay?" You situated yourself to sit criss-cross in front of him.

"Am I okay?" Bucky shook his head in disbelief. "Are you okay? I- I’m sorry. God, I don’t even know how to apologize for this I am- I am so sorry, doll, I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t me, I swear, it- I had a nightmare and I just- I don’t know what happened." He was rambling, body shaking as he didn’t know what to do. Where to begin. How to explain. His mind was torn as a part of him wanted to hold you… And the other part wanted to leave you forever, utterly terrified of himself.

"Yeah, you seemed a bit upset," you mumbled, trying to hold your hand to your scraped cheek. Bucky saw your struggle and darted to the bathroom to get a washcloth, offering all he could as his words were failing. He handed it to you then took his seat again on the floor.

You dabbed your skin, checking the cloth as the bleeding slowed down. You weren’t sure what to say, either.

"I didn’t know what to do," you finally whispered, looking down at the carpet beneath you. "You were shaking and tossing and- and I just wanted you to wake up. To know you were fine. You seemed so scared-,"

"Alright, alright," Bucky mumbled, cutting you off as he saw you beginning to get worked up. Your body was shaking now as you recalled the last few minutes. The pure suddenness and terror that took over the room. He placed an experimental touch on your knee and, thankfully, you didn’t jump away. "You were fine, doll. This isn’t your fault. I- I knew I wasn’t ready to sleep with anyone and I got ahead of myself and now… Look what happened. God, what have I done?"

His jaw clenched as he spat out the words. You jumped slightly.

"Bucky, you didn’t mean to-,"

"But I did it," he said. "I hurt you and now I think maybe this just isn’t…" He faded off, his hand leaving your knee. He turned towards the bed as you tried searching him for anything, any answer.

"James, don’t." You shook your head. Bucky’s head whipped back to you as he heard the anger, the seriousness, in your voice. "Don’t say whatever you’re going to say. Let’s just go back to sleep and we can figure stuff out in the morning."

Bucky bit his tongue. He just nodded at your request, seriously not trusting his words anymore. He had half the mind to walk out, disappear into the world without you, all in the name of keeping you safe. And like the mind-reader you could be, you knew it. You saw it in his entire demeanor. He was practically planning an escape route at that very moment.

You two finally stood up from the floor. After disregarding the washcloth, you found your way back under the duvet. Bucky wordlessly gathered a blanket and left for the living room, knowing very well this bed was going to be the last place he fell asleep for a long time.

"Bucky," you called out as you were turned away from him. He stopped in the doorway. "To talk in the morning you have to actually be here."

He didn’t respond and instead just nodded his head as if you could see it. Then he promptly exited the room.

While the bleeding had stopped, the tears weren’t as you only heard the sound of Bucky walking to the living room.

***

Bucky was there in the morning and you talked — you. Only you could formulate words as difficult as it was while Bucky sat across from you. The guilt, shame, the exhaustion, all of it was painted on his normally sweet face.

You had told him you were fine, were feeling better. You were going to be okay. You understood the bed situation and wouldn’t pressure him into sleeping anywhere he was uncomfortable. You just desperately wanted him to be okay, to feel safe and happy in this space with you. Bucky just nodded along as you began attempting to write out a plan in case that had happened again. Nothing seemed to bring a true conclusion but there was at least the idea that there’d be no more touching of either person in their sleep, at least for the time being. It crushed you both, but neither of you commented.

He didn’t really offer much input besides agreeing with your points. Every other word out of his mouth was "sorry" so much so to the point you had to beg him to stop it.

He mostly just listened which you generally would enjoy from any man but in this case, you knew it gave his brain time to wander. Probably still planning how he would get himself out of his. But you didn’t want him gone. He was practically the perfect significant other in every sense. No one had ever treated you with such kindness and respect. Showered you with romance and kisses. Surprised you with date nights and flowers. You were just at a bump in the road and you didn’t want to get stuck behind it so easily.

Few days had passed and stuff seemed to be edging back towards normal. He had begun even holding your hand again, just a gentle touch to work his way up, reminding you greatly of when you first started dating, but you were welcoming it all with great patience.

You were standing at the kitchen counter cutting up vegetables for dinner when Bucky came home. He had a therapy appointment that day and usually emotions could be all over the place when he came home. Some days were good, some days everything would get under his skin.

Today, though, he seemed just… fine. He came in quietly and planted a quick kiss on your cheek before grabbing a beer from the fridge. He asked if you needed any help and when you shook your head, he went over to sit on the couch, watching whatever reality show you had mindlessly playing.

Moments passed and you had just begun sautéing the cut-up veggies when Bucky spoke, cutting through the silence quite surprisingly.

"I told her what happened," Bucky said softly. You froze, eyes trained on the skillet in front of you. His therapist. He had told her.

"Oh?" You asked, silently cringing at your stupid response. Neither of you had exactly brought up the incident since that morning after. And if anyone was going to resurface it, you had assumed it’d be you, so hear him so casual was making your heart pound.

"Mhm," he hummed. "I told her my first reaction was to leave."

"Bucky-,"

Footsteps started towards you, stopping at the little kitchen bar. You could feel him watching you as you tried focusing on the cooking produce. Your breath started to get caught in your throat, so much worry and concern washing over you.

"She wanted you to come in one session," Bucky tapped his fingers on the counter. "So we can talk."

You frowned and finally turned towards him. Worry was splashed everywhere on his face. Your heart practically sobbed. "Bucky, we did talk about it."

He shook his head profusely. "No, you talked," A beat. "I stood there like a statue, thinking of ways to leave you. Ways to get out of this so I’d never had to see that scared, upset look on your face ever again. So I’d never have to cause you any more pain than I already have. But I’ve come to realize I can’t do that because I love you too much and I- I can’t run away from you or anything. I’m going to try… No, I will make it right."

Your heart sank at his confessions. He loved you — a word he had never explicitly said before. A four-letter word he had never stood there and outwardly said. You let out a light sob and went around the kitchen counter, throwing your arms around his neck. He was shocked at first, maybe even a bit unsure, but you weren’t letting go, he realized, until he held you back.

"I love you, too," you eventually mumbled between the tears. You pulled away slightly, keeping your hands on his arms while his hands rested comfortably at your waist. Just feeling his touch had you melting all over again. "We’re going to be okay, Buck. It’s going to be fine."

He nodded, his eyes searching over your face as the scrape on your cheek was just still barely visible. It was going away fast but he didn’t think he could ever unsee it. "You’re right, doll, we’ll be okay. I’m working on it."

You gave a small smile. "You can’t be perfect, Bucky."

"Maybe not," Bucky shrugged as his hand found its way to your face, caressing your unharmed cheek. "But I at least gotta try to be perfect for you."

You sighed, leaning into the loving touch. Looking in his eyes you could kind of see that it truly was going to be okay. He looked so passionate and dedicated when he stared at you like you were it in the world. The only thing there. It made your soul sing and you hoped he saw it in you, too. "You are, honey. You already are."

[random-yandere-fandom]

Hey, can I request a Platonic Yandere!Melodias with a child he had with Elizabeth before she died? Sorry if you don't do platonics!

Of course you can! I hope you like it! I don`t have any experience with writing platonic yanderes and before I knew it I had written more than I had planned for the backstory, so... this is all that happens before the main story of Seven Deadly Sins. Btw. I`m gonna assume you meant the first time Elizabeth died.

Platonic yandere Meliodas with his child

So it`s very likely that the first few months you had both, your mother and your father. There was a war raging on but they still somehow managed to drown you in love and affection. Your parents were very protective of you back then, too. You were a hybrid and while many people of Stigma could ignore your demon genes, especially because your mother is Elizabeth, there were still a lot of glares sent your way. Nevertheless you were raised with much care and love.  

You were barely a few months old when Elizabeth was murdered and both your parents cursed. Meliodas woke up to your confused cries only to discover Elizabeth’s corpse holding your small body in her arms protectively. How you got there was a mystery, they had made sure that you were safe and secure while they would fight, not only for themselves or peace but for your right to exist. He was devastated, grief washing over him as he had to take you from her, what he assumed, last embrace. 

He wandered aimlessly for a while, making sure you were well-fed and in good health, playing with you and hoping that he`d make a good parent. You were his only source of joy and he almost burst into tears when you said your first words, took your first steps or did just about anything. Hide and seek or tag were ordinary pastimes, but your sparkling eyes and joy were contagious and Meliodas found himself enjoying such regularities. When he talked to others he was almost always asking for tips on parenting or where the next food source was. Meliodas never staid long with these people, fearing that they`d somehow harm you. However, he let you play with animals he deemed safe. Should they try anything funny he`ll simply send them a glare, frightening them into obedience.   

It was about that time that he met Elizabeth`s first reincarnation. He was carrying you and when you pointed up, babbling and laughing, he followed your gaze to meet hers. Happiness, relief, glee. Those feelings overwhelmed him and before he knew it he tried to hug her with one arm, balancing you on the other. The rejection was harsh, but he managed to stick by her side. Whenever he had doubts that this wasn`t really Elizabeth he would simply watch her play with you, the two of you having naturally bonded in no time and his doubts would disappear. Meliodas and Elizabeth fell in love again and all seemed well. 

You grew up well in the warrior tribe your mother belonged to. They treated you well, even though you couldn`t help feeling isolated from them with the way your father would sometimes usher you away from them. But it was fine, you were happy. Meliodas would train you on how to control your powers as well as how to defend yourself while Elizabeth showed you how to distinguish between plants and how to cook. You knew that you had lived off of meals made by your father before but you feared the day that would ever happen again. So you studied how to save any dish, no matter how horrible. 

You were a few years older now and you noticed something off about your father. There seemed a sadness to him, one you only understood later on. You were already entrusted with the secret of your mothers rebirth and you had no problem with that, you were simply grateful, happy that you had a close bond with her despite her not remembering your earliest months and I mean, you didn`t either. 

When Elizabeth showed signs of regaining her old power both you and Meliodas were elated. Only later did you two realise that it wasn`t a joyful occasion as you watched your mother die in front of you. Before you knew it your father had covered your vision, holding you close as tears streamed from both of your eyes. You were a happy family, so why had your mother died again? 

Going back to wandering, you and your father were alone again. He was spoiling you, anything you wanted you got, being showered with affection and praise was the norm. When there was something threatening you, Meliodas took care of it swiftly. Only sometimes would he search for an enemy for you to fight together, though he`d make sure you wouldn`t even be so much as grazed. You wouldn`t get attached to anyone else, leaving the new place before any ties could be made. Your dad made sure that no one would dare to get close to you. 

By the time you met your mother’s second reincarnation you were a teenager and it was quite the experience. People would assume you and your father to be siblings and you never stayed long enough to correct them. You couldn`t do that here. No, not if you wanted to have your mother-daughter relationship. So the two of you decided to tell her that the both of you weren`t human, you wouldn`t tell her what exactly you were but yes, Meliodas was in fact your father. And later on yes, you`d love to call her mom.

It didn`t take long for the curse to activate and by the third reincarnation you and your father became aware of its full extend. You had a mental breakdown, damned to watch your mother die over and over again. Meliodas wasn`t feeling any better but he comforted you nonetheless. He never wanted to see you in that state again but he couldn`t bring himself to forbid you and him to seek out Elizabeth. So he promised you that day that you two would never separate, that he`d be by your side forever. 

Like this, centuries passed. You would meet your mom, sometimes even as a child, spend some happy years together before she was taken from you again. Your father would always make sure to be there for you but he was hesitant to letting you make any acquaintances. there were only few exceptions to who you could interact with regularly. One would be Merlin who you soon viewed as part of your family, an older sister figure of sorts. 

Life was fine, the two of you living with Liz in a small kingdom, Meliodas was a well respected knight and you were his apprentice, going with the story of you two being siblings. Until Fraudrin appeared, at least. He took you by surprise, injuring you and murdering Liz. Your dad went ballistic and the next thing you knew you were in Liones, your mother`s next reincarnation being nothing more than a small child. 

From then on you were only allowed to walk around with at least one of the other sins. You weren`t an official member but you accompanied them and occasionally fought alongside them. One of their orders was to never let you get hurt and they followed that one almost religiously unless they wanted their cheerful Capatain to turn livid and everything close by wiped of the face of earth. 

When the country turned against you knights and Merlin sealed his powers you just barely managed to get him out of there and into a cave where you met a new companion, the talking and ever hungry Hawk. Planning to reunite with the momentarily disbanded group you opened a tavern, your father in charge of drinks and serving while you cooked, refusing to let anyone taste the hell your father called edible and he didn`t argue, preferring to keep you from those drunkards either way. . 

Work starting in the evening and ending late at night, gathering any kind of information before going to sleep and then spending some quality time with your father which included hunting ingredients for various dishes. It was peaceful for a few years but before you knew it you stood across from someone in quite the impressive armor, Meliodas shielding you protectively. Anyway, that`s how you met your mother again.   

[wearywinchester]

Not Going Anywhere

Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: When he nearly loses you, Dean finds he can’t stand the thought of that happening.

Requested by Anonymous: “May I please request a one shot of dean and reader with her having an internal bleeding. You know when the character seems fine but then boom they collapse and turns out they're not fine at all?? I LIIIVE for that shit... The shock, the realization, the worry....”

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings: angst, injury, bleeding, shock, anxiety, mentions of alcohol, guilt, fluff

You sat slumped in the backseat of the Impala, exhausted from the hunt. Fortunately, it’d been close to the bunker, close enough that you didn’t need a motel room overnight. Close enough that the drive hadn’t been terribly long like most cases were. You felt like you’d been run over by a semi two times over, a certain weakness running through you that left you feeling less than okay.

You watched quietly as the rain came down and trickled against the chilled windows of the car, falling into each other as they raced down the glass before fresh ones took their place in an instant. It was gloomy weather, something you could have found yourself seeking comfort in on any given day, something that otherwise would have been cozy had you not felt the way you did.

But you did, and it wasn’t leaving any time soon.

Dean had the heat cranked up because he could see that you were cold, could tell by the way you wrapped your arms around yourself. The ache and burn in your stomach had yet to subside, Dean having cleaned your wound before setting off to go home earlier that day, but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

You were less than comfortable, as far from it as you could be as you sat behind Sam. You missed the way Dean had glanced at you in the rear view more often than not, his concern evident in the crease between his brows, deepening each and every time he looked. He saw your agitation, the way your face contorted in discomfort as you slumped against the seat. You couldn’t sit still even if your life depended on it, constantly moving in your seat despite the way the hurt in your abdomen is screaming at you otherwise.

You don’t think you’ve ever been so restless in your life more than you were in that moment, anxiety settling in heavily the more you sat stuck in that car. There wasn’t anything in particular for you to feel this way over—you’d ridden in this car more times than you could count for years, having sat in the very same spot for far longer than this trip has been before. You’d done it all before without fail, without a problem, but this time was different.

It was different and he knew it.

Any other time you’d start a conversation about any and everything, singing along with him to nearly any song that came on the radio for the sake of getting on Sam’s nerves. Any other time you’d take a nap if you were tired, especially on a day like that where the clouds and rain offered ample comfort to allow you to do so, but this wasn’t any other time. This time you looked like you were two seconds from hopping out at the next red light, and it didn’t sit right with him.

“Sweetheart, you okay back there?” He calls out over his shoulder.

You’re not even sure if the words came out of his mouth, not even sure if you heard him as you shifted your gaze. When he didn’t get a response he looked in his mirror at you, calling out your name once more with more concern than the last.

You sat up a little straighter, glancing at him with eyes squinted slightly in confusion. “‘M fine, De.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced of that, not even a little bit as you blinked, trying to gather yourself a bit more than in that moment as he turned down the road that led to the bunker. You had a habit of saying you’re fine when you’re not, and you’re so clearly the opposite and he finds himself grateful he’s home, you’re home. But that doesn’t soothe the worry boiling over in the pit of his stomach, clouding his mind of anything and everything revolving around you.

Your words were merely words as they fell from your lips, that feeling simmering within you feeling awfully bad as you sit there, as the impala descended down into the bunker’s garage. The fluorescent lights were harsh on your eyes, your wince inevitable as you fought the groan sitting in the back of your throat. Dean didn’t need to be worrying over you, though he surely already was.

You think you just need a rest, a few hours sleeping in your own bed would do you some good. It had to.

You hadn’t fully registered the fact that the car had come to a stop, put in park in its usual spot and it gave Dean enough time to round the back end of it before you tried to get out on your own. When he pulls the door open you’ve got that look, one that tugs at his heart because you look so miserable, so tired and defeated. He crouches down closer to your level as you sit there, watches as you take a deep breath to try and steady the race of your heart. To try and calm the queasy feeling in your stomach.

“Sweetheart?” He asks, eyes on you in search of any indication that you’d been listening. You were, you really were, but you were trying to get a handle on how you felt. “Baby, we’re home.”

You nod then, turning your head to look at him with a soft smile in an attempt to assure him you’d heard him. He stood to his feet and held his hand out, gentle as he helped out of the car. You tried to ignore the rush that came down over you the moment you got up, tried to swallow down the intensifying nausea that’d swirled around in your stomach just begging to come up. You tried your hardest and it was proving to be a challenge.

You were dizzy when you stood to your feet, almost overwhelming, but you were quick to balance yourself and you brushed it off. You’d been in the car for the past two hours, doing nothing but sit in the same position for the majority of that time and you’d yet to eat or drink anything. A little dizziness seemed reasonable upon standing in your mind, not to mention the way your head had been hurting for nearly the same amount of time as the drive home.

You felt his hand slip from yours in favor of wrapping around you to steady you, to help you as you walked but you shrugged him off just as quickly, flashing him a look.

“De, I’m fine. You don’t need to fuss over me,” you say, and the look on his face shows just how much he disagrees with you. You could see it with the dimples forming by the very corners of his mouth and the raise of his eyebrow.

“Y/n—”

“I’m serious. I just need a little sleep and I’ll be fine,” you say, smiling once more in hopes he’d settle down, but you knew he wouldn’t.

It took a few moments, but eventually he dropped his hand to his side reluctantly and eyed you carefully, cautious as he watched you walk ahead into the bunker’s hallway towards your shared room. He knew you better than you thought, better than you knew yourself. He knew you like the back of his hand, but you were just as stubborn as he was and that’s the problem.

You flickered between bouts of nausea and none at all, between feeling fine, like you said you were, and feeling like you’d been drug all the way home tied to the trunk of the Impala. It was something that worsened the more you dwelled on the feeling, something you wished would subside.

You felt a beat of relief upon seeing the golden eleven mounted on that familiar wooden door come into view just down the hall, could smell the faint scent of Dean’s cologne wafting over you as he walked by towards Sam.

You were almost there, then you could lay down for a good long while, tuck yourself into that memory foam bed that was unbelievably comfortable and smelled every bit like Dean, and rest like you’d been longing to do since the moment you left to come home that day. You could rest in the comfort of your shared space for as long as you needed to get better. You were almost there.

But you weren’t.

In that moment, you felt like you were miles away from your destination, you felt like the conversation the two of them were having just a few feet away had been miles away from you, their voices muffled far more than they should be for how close they’d really been to you.

You slowed yourself to a wavering stop for a minute just to gather yourself a little more than you were then and there, reaching out for the wall that was just a little farther than you anticipated it to be. Your ears began to ring slightly, gradually, as that same nausea made its unpleasant return in your stomach, eyes squeezing shut just for a moment. You weren’t aware of just how awful you looked in that moment, but you knew it couldn’t have been too good if it was a reflection of how you were feeling in that very same moment. To be quite honest you felt like you’d just run a marathon with the way you couldn’t catch your breath, with the way your heart had been hammering within your chest at a faster than normal pace.

You felt like a walking, breathing disaster, and sure enough, you looked like it too.

Dean’s brows furrowed when he followed Sam’s gaze, to you, to you who stood there unsure of yourself as a flurry of emotions flashed over your face within a second’s time. A number of emotions, none of anything positive being displayed and it intensified the worries he’d had running through him. A sheen of sweat had glistened over your skin despite the chill that ran through you, your vision doubled as you opened your eyes once more to try and give Dean a glance.

“Y/n?” Your name fell from his lips, soft and hesitant at first as the initial confusion took over, his mouth going dry as he approached you.

“I’m…” you start, nodding your head as you swallow thickly. “I’m fine, Dean. I just…"

Your words were failing you, your ability to form a coherent thought failing you in that moment as you lost all means of balance, teetering on the edge of collapsing before you’d gone and done it. The shout of your name had come off as an echo to you, the impact of the floor having been cold and unforgiving as you fell, too weak to catch yourself.

He hated just how limp you felt in his arms as he knelt beside you, the pain jolting through him from dropping to his knees on the concrete floor having been the very least of his concerns as he watched you. Panic had lanced through him as your head lulled, caught in the crook of his arm as his other hand grabbed your face. Despite the sweat gleaming across your skin, your cheeks were void of any heat that you’d expect to feel and it only added to his upset.

“Y/n!” He called out, your brows furrowing as you felt yourself go from bad to worse, a steady declining feeling blanketing you. “Sweetheart, stay with me.”

His voice was loud, carrying through the winding hall in an echoing display of his fear, the sound taunting him as it bounced off the walls. You nodded weakly, despite the way your heartbeat hammered loudly in your ears enough to muffle what he’d been saying to Sam, or the way you couldn’t hold yourself up if it weren’t for the way he held you. Despite that, you nodded for him.

That ache from the wound you’d walked away from that hunt with was still very much there, that you knew. You knew things didn’t look good for you in that moment, not with the way Dean looked at you as if his heart had been ripped from his chest, or the fear in his eyes when he’d pressed his fingers to the side of your neck, your pulse faint but bounding beneath his fingertips. Things were continuing to go from bad to worse, to far beyond that and you knew that wasn’t a good sign.

You knew it the moment that feeling hit you in the car an hour earlier and the panic you felt was only increasing the more you thought things over.

You should have said something then, you know that now. You should have stopped saying you were fine when you so clearly weren’t, should have stopped doing what you always do and downplay a situation in fear of thinking about the outcome. You should have known better than to think it’d be as easy as Dean patching you up, not after what that spirit did to you. Nothing in hunting is ever as good as it seems, as easy as it seems, and you should have said something earlier.

Because now, now you were quite sure you were facing your fate when you didn’t have time to prepare for it. And that’s what scared you the most. It could have been something trivial, that’s what you’d been longing for it to be, but you knew it was just your own denial telling you that.

“Dean,” you say, taking a breath as you look up at him. The green eyes you loved so much were filled with a kind of emotion you never liked to see. “I—I just want you to know—”

“No, no c’mon. We’re not doing this sweetheart, okay?”

Nausea hit him like a ton of bricks at the sight of the crimson that slowly began to stain your teeth when you coughed, rage bursting through him in waves over the situation he doesn’t know how to control the ending of. Over the fact that he doesn’t think he can control the outcome for the love of his life in his very arms. He knows nothing in this life is guaranteed, not for the life of someone who hunts the world’s worst monsters.

He’s lost so much in his life, but damn does this one hurt.

“I don’t feel so good,” you murmur instead, watching the expressions flicker across his face through half closed eyes as you groan, brows furrowing at the expression he’d been looking at you with. “What is it?”

He couldn’t tell you what he saw, he wouldn’t do it.

“I know you don’t,” he says softly, chuckling despite it being void of humor, running his hand over your head. “I know you don’t but you’re gonna be okay, you hear me?”

All you could do was hum and nod, a soft noise you can’t quite tell had left your lips as the weight of your eyelids grew heavier and heavier. You were tired, that much was true. But he tapped your cheek with his hand lightly, grabbing ahold of your face.

“Don’t do that,” he urged, “please, don’t do that.”

He looked to Sam, a mirrored look of panic looking back at him that didn’t do much to soothe his stresses.

He feels near paralyzed when his gaze drops to you again, your eyes closed. He’d grabbed your face and called your name till his throat felt like sandpaper, till it felt like he swallowed a thousand knives he shouted your name. He held you tight in his arms as his mind worried in a frenzy of fear, calling out desperately for the one person that could help.

Cas.

If there was one thing that Dean Winchester knew how to do, it was worry. He’d worry himself to death over the ones he loved, in fact, there wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do to keep them safe. But worry is what he’d done for the last two and a half hours and nothing else.

If it was possible, one might think he’d wear a hole in the floor from his pacing at the foot of the bed in the bunkers infirmary. Cas had come in a moment’s notice much to Dean’s relief, had swooped in quite literally and healed you the way he hoped you could be.

It turns out that spirit had done more than just graze you, had gone a little deeper than either of you had thought. It turns out you’d been bleeding more than just on the surface, and that it hadn’t actually slowed to a stop once he’d patched you up back there. You were bleeding this whole time, you just didn’t know it until it almost became too late.

It all made sense now, the way you were acting in the car. The restlessness, the agitation and the way you couldn’t sit still. He knew there was something wrong even when you refused to admit it, and he hated it when you did that. Hated it when you kept your pain to yourself when you really didn’t need to, in favor of staving his worry and trying to be independent, and that’s something he knew well.

But that wasn’t the point, the point was you were lying there in that bed almost within an inch of your life had Cas not come. The point was he nearly lost you in his arms and he couldn’t help the blame that sparked and burst within him that maybe he shouldn’t have believed you when you said you were fine. He didn’t, but he felt he should have kept pushing, kept prying to get you to admit it. Thinking that maybe he should have known there was more to that injury by the way your face crinkled up when it happened, by the way you fell to the floor for a moment or two before you stood back on your feet.

He felt like this was on him, and it was tearing him up from the inside out.

Dean ran through a myriad of emotions that night, each one hitting harder than the last. He was scared, the mere thought of losing someone he found himself rapidly not being able to see himself living without having scared him more than he’d care to even admit. He was angry, his fear masked behind clenched jaws and hands running through hair, chairs kicked and chest heaving. Angry at himself for not having gotten to you sooner back there.

It was a never ending cycle of fear and anger and guilt, a cycle he felt he’d always feel in one way or another so long as the ones he loves keep getting hurt when he feels he has the means to prevent it somehow.

For the better part of that two hours, apart from the anxious pacing, he sat at your side as you rested. He was reluctant to leave your side should something happen again. He couldn’t handle that and he knew it. He sat there with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. He held your hand for a while, thumb absentmindedly brushing over your knuckles as his foot tapped and his knee bounced subconsciously.

For the better part of that two hours, the events of what lead up to that point had replayed in his mind over and over in a taunting loop, having worsened the feeling he held each and every time it restarted. Each time he recalled something more in the way you’d looked in the car, in the way you acted, in the way you felt in his arms.

Cas had to tell him a million times over that you’d be okay. That wound on your stomach had been healed, everything had been healed as though it was never there. He told him a thousand times over that you were stable, you were okay. You were okay, but he couldn’t find it in himself to get over it just yet.

The last time Cas had said it was when he believed it, it was when he couldn’t be in that room another second otherwise he just might crack. He couldn’t bear to see you laying there like that, no matter the fact that you were just fine. It made his stomach churn and twist in knots.

He left, the stack of lore books swept off the table in the library in his wake, a string of curses leaving his lips. He went to your shared room first, the door slamming roughly behind him. He was angry at no one else but himself despite the fact that he shouldn’t be, but he’ll beg to differ on that a thousand times over.

When you woke up, the infirmary was empty. You’d seen the chair at your bedside that hadn’t normally been there. And if it wasn’t telling enough of Dean’s presence, the weight of his jacket splaying warmly overtop of you was sure to make it all the more obvious he’d been there.

You were sore as you sat up, stiff from having been laying in the same position for an amount of time you were sure of. But, when you lifted the hem of your shirt, that burning wound had no longer resided where it’d been. That nausea had since dissolved, that headache had gone away for the most part, and the weakness you felt, the dizziness, it’d all gone away. You knew it was done with the help of no one other than Cas.

You were sure Dean had been there with you for quite some time, but you also knew Dean better than to think he’d handle it well. You knew by the way you’d woken up by yourself that he’d handled it horribly. He gets worked up over injuries that are on a smaller scale, but this, this was far different than that. Inches from meeting your fate had been much too different than that and you knew he’d disappeared to sulk by himself.

You sighed when you pushed yourself off the bed, leaving the empty infirmary before navigating the bunker. The sight of the books splaying messily across the floor had been an indication of something you already suspected, the quiet in the air having added to the tension only followed when one of the three of you had been angry.

Your bedroom was empty, the blankets stretching over to his side of the bed having been wrinkled some from where he’d been sitting. A photo of the two of you had been sitting there on the nightstand, half-tucked under the base of the lamp sitting lit atop it, the drawer not closed all the way.

The Impala was still in the garage where he’d parked it hours ago, a frown tugging at your lips at the sight of the very hallway everything had taken place.

You knew where he’d be at this hour, at one where everyone should be asleep. Sam had been, you were sure of that, but if Dean hadn’t been in either of those places, you knew where he’d be.

A knowing sigh left your lips as you stepped down into the kitchen, the very one you’d been looking for sitting at the table. You saw the bottle of whiskey on the table and you saw the glass in his hand. You saw the way his hair had been a ruffled mess and you saw the ivory of his knuckles as he held that very same glass. You knew that all too well, you knew he’d been all sorts of torn up inside. He was.

“Knew I’d find you here,” you say, his head turning at the sound of your voice.

You could see the relief flooding his expression as he looked up at you, at the way his eyes widened and the way his face lit up just a little bit more than before, though it didn’t take long for the crease between his brows to deepen once more as you sat down next to him. He’s quiet for a moment before he presses a lingering kiss to your temple, and another as his next words are murmured against your skin.

“Sweetheart, you should be in bed, you’ve been through it today.”

You could hear the fatigue in the softness of his tone, could feel his nose brush against your temple before he turned away.

“Without you?” Your words are lighter as a soft smile tugs at the corner of your mouth.

He chuckles, half-humorous as he shakes his head, swirling the whiskey around in his glass. He swallows thickly, thoughts weighing heavy on his mind as a million words sit on the tip of his tongue. You knew a little humor didn’t do much to stave off that feeling he held.

“‘M fine, Dean.”

“Don’t say that,” he says, head shaking before he brings the glass up to his mouth and swallows the rest of his drink, pouring himself another.

You saw the way his eyes were rimmed a pale shade of pink. Dean Winchester wasn’t one to cry too often, but you could always tell when he had been. His eyes were red and so was the very tip of his nose, flushed a soft pink and the quiver in his lip hadn’t quite left just yet.

“I’m serious, Dean. I’m okay.”

“Well you weren’t a few hours ago, Y/n. You were damn near dead,” he says, louder than before as his jaw tenses.

“Well I’m not,” you counter, the huff that puffs through his nose an indication of his frustration.

“I’m glad this is just another day to you, Y/n.”

He brings his hands up to his face, rubbing over it in frustration as he sniffs. You saw that quiver just a little more now, one he hid behind his glass as he tipped his head back and drank it.

“For cryin’ out loud you still got blood on your teeth, Y/n,” he says, softer this time as the tension in his jaw loosens.

You sigh softly, more so to yourself as you stay quiet for a moment or two, your tongue swiping over your teeth before you bite the inside of your cheek. You can see the emotions flicker and roll through him, can see the guilt written clear across his face to match the feeling simmering in the pit of his stomach. When you got up, he’d expected you to just walk away, though instead you find yourself leaning atop the wooden table.

You snag the glass from the loose grip he had on it, setting it aside as he drug his hands down his face.

Your shoulders drop a fraction as you look down at your hands for a moment, foot tapping quietly against the floor. When you looked at him, his gaze was on the table, the inside of his cheek between his teeth. You bring your hand up to smooth over his hair before your palm settles on his cheek, thumb brushing over his chin. His eyes lift to yours, weary and upset.

You don’t fail to miss the way he leans into your touch no matter how subtle, or the way the clench in his jaw dissipates the rest of the way before your hand drops to your lap.

“There was nothing you could’ve done differently back there, De. No matter how much you think otherwise,” you say, watching that tension return as he looks away. “I know that’s what you’re thinking right now, but I’m still here. Now you don’t have to believe me on this, and I know you won’t, but you were there when I needed you the most. And that’s the only thing that matters to me. So you can be mad at yourself all you want, you can blame yourself all you want, but I’m not blaming this on you.”

He sat quietly, simmering in his own silence with closed eyes as his chest heaves a bit more than normal. You swipe your thumb across the crease between his brows, smoothing it softly as you watch the way he bites the inside of his cheek. Dean Winchester’s got a whole lot of stubbornness in him, but a whole lot of softness no matter how many layers of anger and frustration and worry sit atop it.

You move from the table after a beat of silence, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. He relaxed under your embrace, more so when you dipped down from behind him and pressed a kiss on his cheek, one more for good measure.

You don’t know what to say for a little while as your head rests against his, arms dangling over his shoulders as you clasp your hands together loosely. You know for a fact he’s still beating himself up for this, that was something you knew was unavoidable. But that was something you could handle.

“Come to bed, De, it’s late,” you murmur, kissing his cheek once, twice, three times.

He hums at first, nodding his head. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

You let him go with a soft squeeze to his shoulders, spinning on your heel as you sigh softly. But it doesn’t take more than a mere few seconds before you hear him move around.

“Sweetheart, wait.”

You turn around once more, brow raised in curiosity.

He’s hesitant for a moment before he crosses the room in a couple of steps, arms around you in an instant. You wrap yours around his neck, his embrace near bone crushing as his face tucks into your neck. His stubble is rough against your skin, the softness of your smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. He’s got fistfuls of your shirt in his palms, holding you close as you stand up on your toes.

“What do you say we ditch hunting for a little while?” He mumbles into your neck, your soft laughter immediate as you lean back to look at him. “Don’t want you dyin’ on me again, sweetheart.”

You bit your cheek for a moment as you shook your head, fighting a smile. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Winchester.”

He rolls his eyes, looking to the side as he fights the beginnings of his smile. “Yeah, well, I’m good with that.”

The tension he held minutes ago lessened some, his expression softer as he looked down at you. You lean on your toes and kiss him softly, lingering just over his lips for a few seconds before kissing him once more with a smile as you speak up.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

—

Tags: @flamencodiva @stixnstripesworld @elegantbutedgy @humanmistakes @campingmonkey @agalliasi @deandaydreaming @lanea-1 @akshi8278 @kidd3ath

[merakiui]

Half-Off Love

yandere!scaramouche x (gender neutral) reader art credit - kentasha1236 on twt cw: yandere, nsfw, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, gold-digging, implied yandere!childe note - thank you so much for 600 followers! o(≧∇≦o) I’ll work hard!

It’s strange. There’s no other adjective to describe the situation you’ve found yourself in. 

The ring slides itself onto your steady finger and it’s a miracle your discomfort doesn’t show. Your eyes struggle to meet his, but when they do you’re searching for a reason—for a meaning behind such a generous gift. You’ve witnessed this scene plenty of times before, having scoffed at the couples who decide to take their relationship to the next level. Whether it be in Mondstadt or Liyue, you’ve watched your fair share of angelic proposals. Although this is far from a proposal—at least, you hope it’s not a proposal. You’d feel powerless to decline if Scaramouche put you in such a position, and you’re almost certain he’s aware of this. 

But the main thing—you now realize—that’s holding him back is your status and his relationship with you. It’s nothing special, just mere physical attraction rather than the emotional hindrances that come with real, heart-racing love. There’s nothing wholesome in the way you regard one another; it’s just sex. 

“Do you like it? I made sure to find only the highest quality gemstone for you.”

And yet when he performs this caring charade, it doesn’t feel like loveless copulation. 

Ew, you think, plastering a smile to your face. Since when was Scaramouche so concerned with materialistic signs of affection? He’s far from loving; he’s just pent-up, frustrated from his rigorous job as a Harbinger and so he decides to use you as a means of coping. He almost sounds like Childe with his ineffective flirting methods. You’ve received your fair share of spoils from him as well, and you’ve done everything you could to cull that relationship before it grew out of hand. But now you’re stuck with the lesser side of the coin: another troublesome Fatui Harbinger. 

If you didn’t know any better, you might think to chase after Signora or Dottore next. Maybe you’ll aim for the Tsaritsa Herself if you’re especially daring. After all, your life has been nothing but deceit and faux pleasures; there’s little value to a liar’s life. If the Archons wish for your swift end, you’re positive it’ll be a result of your insatiable greed.

“It’s lovely. The color matches my eyes.”

It doesn’t, but you lie about it anyways. And he looks pleased to hear your approval. 

“Then perhaps I should get you a bracelet as well? Or would you prefer something with a little more use, such as a pocket watch?”

Why don’t you just lock me up with a collar instead? you think bitterly, already keen on pawning the ring off once the initial luster fades. Since you’re so eager to buy these things for me in hopes that I’ll return. It’s annoying.

“This is more than enough. I don’t want you to spend a fortune on me.” There’s a sweet lilt in your voice as your hand cups his cheek, and he leans into your warm touch, starved of the affection like a stray mutt. ”I only need you per our agreement. You do remember what that is, right?”

He’d be caught dead bending to the desires of someone so insignificant, but he just can’t stay away. Not when your every word is intoxicating poison he’ll readily ingest. 

“I’m aware." There’s a sigh in his tone as he pulls away, almost as if he wants to simply sit there and indulge in playful conversation. As if he actually wants to familiarize himself with the real you. But that emotion doesn’t last for long and an irritated expression crawls onto his handsome face as he silently recalls something. 

You’re slipping your silks off with grace, curiously tracking his movements. “You look upset. Was it because of what I said?”

“Of course not. You could never upset me.”

Until you get bored of me.

When you cast your robes aside, reaching for Scaramouche’s elaborate outfit, you murmur, “Let me guess. It was that traveler again, wasn’t it? I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on them.” A whimper leaks into your voice and you fix him with a pout. “I’m sad you’d think of others when I’m right here. Aren’t I the only one you need?”

It’s ironic how quickly that line hooks him, dragging him up from the murkiest depths of love that has skewed into obsession. When you tried it out on Childe, he wasn’t so easily swayed. You find their differences to be invigorating. If the arrangement with Childe was still ongoing, you might’ve considered a threesome, if only to wring more glittering treasures out of the both of them. Mora and jewelry galore, it all goes towards your stockpiled savings. And it’s times like these when you’re lucky to have avoided economic business with the Fatui. Being free of Fatui debt has its perks, a bright miracle in your dark relationships. That’s one less tether to Scaramouche and one less reason to cling to him after you’ve had enough. 

He smirks at your forced envy, easily pushing you backwards onto the plush mattress once he’s fully undressed. For a brief moment, he pictures your pliant body sprawled across an office desk while he pounds into you from behind, putting on a lewd show for his leering underlings. There’s something arousing about your secret relationship that has strange ideas formulating within his head. He entertains a simple scheme, one in which he’d shed light on your connection; however, the other side of him wants to keep your existence for himself, where no one will disturb the two of you in your pleasurable endeavors.

Perhaps you would truly belong to him if he were to expose you for the fraud you really are. Oh, the joy of trapping an unsuspecting rat in a corner, with no way out but into his open arms. You’ll hardly have any semblance of a choice, but he knows you’ll choose the option that guarantees another chance at life.

Scaramouche thinks about that as he revels in soft, tantalizing foreplay. He knows you aren’t as dedicated to this relationship as he is and he’s almost certain you’ve got others waiting for you in different parts of Teyvat. He’s just another plaything you’ve picked up for the fun of it. And in these moments where you surrender to his touch, your back arching with avaricious thoughts, you seem to forget about the power he truly wields. The thought that he could suffocate you in this very bed with his love alone should have you taking precautions to cover your vulnerability, but you only have your eyes set on one thing—not exactly minding the outcome so long as it’s monetarily favorable.

And if playing into your covetous hands ensures your weekly arrival, he’ll gladly empty his pockets of spare change.

You don’t like this new side of him. Lately he’s been treating this as if the two of you are lovers: slow, sensual thrusts accompanied with the sweetest of promises. You’ve never really minded the filth he’d moan in your ear and now you wish he’d resort to that instead. Loveless words spoken through the veil of lust—that’s what you want to hear.  

He envelops you like a smothering fog, fitting himself snugly inside of your tight hole in an embrace that’s oh so familiar. You aren’t used to such gentle treatment and as he kisses along your collarbone you feel yourself going under, having fallen victim to a Harbinger who is normally so cold-hearted. Perhaps he’s more sensitive than you originally thought. Months ago, you wouldn’t have imagined your relationship would grow into something so uncertain, where emotionless love becomes packaged and bogged down with so much feeling.

His lips ghost over yours and there’s a slight pause in his actions. You turn your head to the side, denying his choking affection before it can drag you further into a spiraling abyss of regret. Annoyance swells in his hazy gaze, but he uses your new position to his advantage.

“It’s cute,” he says in a hushed voice, breath tickling your ear, “how you seem to rid yourself of my gifts as soon as they fall into your hands. I wonder where they’ve gone. Into the harbor? Traded off for food and shelter? Do tell me.”

When his grip on your hip tightens to a threatening degree, you resign yourself, opting to hold your tongue as his pace remains brutally slow. Rather than speaking out of line, you raise your hand to his face, and he clasps your wrist in a forceful hold. 

The look in his eyes is far from loving—it’s that same obsessed expression Childe wore. And even if he still searches for you for reasons other than sex, you’re aware there’s no luck where Scaramouche is concerned. You can run from Childe because he’ll allow it—because he adores the chase—but Scaramouche hardly finds delight in a game of cat and mouse. You should’ve expected this. After all, he is just as conniving as the rest, always inventing new ways to track down and eradicate that peculiar traveler. Of course he would know about how you handle his presents when he isn’t looking because there’s no denying the stern gazes that would pierce through your backside whenever you went to the market.

"I’d never throw them out like that...” you mumble through another soft moan, hoping he’ll just pick up the pace and be done with you. “Your gifts are priceless.”

And yet the price for your own love is so hefty. If he weren’t Fatui, it might be enough to throw him into lifelong debt.

“Is that so? You seem to put a price on them whenever you visit the marketplace.” His fingers grip your chin, forcing you into an inescapable eye contact. “If you enjoy putting prices on items that you claim are priceless, you won’t mind if I collect a refund for your dishonesty.”

“A...refund?” 

Your lustful thoughts evaporate once you realize his pace has become horribly slow, his dick stilling and creating an itch of barely noticeable ecstasy. You wiggle your hips to increase the friction, wanting to get yourself off before his words can sour the mood. Though it’s already spoiled when you recognize the carnal victory shining in his twisted smirk. Your unfortunate fate was sealed the moment you welcomed his company with foolish openness, and you’ve been indebted ever since he decided to spoil you with lavish foods and accessories. 

For love that is far from cheap, interest must be paid and your very being makes for the perfect bargain.

It’s weird when he kisses you on your lips rather than on the parts of your body that are normally obscured with delicate cloth. And it’s even weirder when that metaphorical collar binds your throat in a vice. It’s more harrowing than any sort of debt you might’ve garnered and it’s just as inconvenient as his boyish adoration.

Scaramouche doesn’t have to purchase your flimsy, half-off love when it’s already prepackaged and ready for the taking. 

“You heard me. A refund is hardly enough punishment for a lying brat, but it will have to suffice for now.”

For now.

Spurred on by his own insinuating threats, he seeks to bruise your very insides with thrusts that are filled with physical vexation rather than the emotional ministrations from before. And since you’re so accustomed to him, your greedy hole eagerly welcomes him.