#i’ve been working on this dumb ass report for the past ten hours

[floweryoonie]

It’s literally 4am and I’m still working on the report that’s due in three hours, pray for me🥵

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are space Orcs, “Interrogation.”

Wrote this after my first day of work, so forgive me if there are any issues. 

Admiral Vir sighed and tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling overhead. “You can make me wait here all day, it isn’t going to change my story.” He leaned back further in his chair to the point where he balanced on two legs, “You want to know why?” He turned his head towards the mirror across the room, which he was in no small doubt, was a one way mirror. He allowed the chair legs to drop and slam against the floor, “BECAUSE I AM TELLING THE TRUTH.” 

He sighed and slammed his head against the table with a sigh. The energy cuffs on his wrists hummed, buzzing slightly against his skin when he moved.

He groaned, “I’ve told you countless times. I am-being-framed.” With every word, he accentuated his statement by slamming his forehead against the metal of the desk. Not hard enough to hurt, but he was just so bored that maybe pain would be better than just sitting here.

He sighed when no one came and looked around at the small room, the single table, the one way mirror and the two metal chairs, his hands chained to the desk in front of him.

He groaned and slumped down in his chair. Folding his arms before him, he rested his head against his arms taking a deep breath and sighed. Well maybe he might fit in a nap while they were working, at least that wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing he wasn’t enjoying this.

He was asleep within seven minutes.

***

“YOU BASTARDS. YOU MONGRELS. YOU HARRY SYCOPHANTS. IF YOU HURT A HAIR ON HIS HEAD, I SWEAR I WILL RUIN YOU. ADAM VIR IS INNOCENT I TELL YOU, INNOCENT.”

“Stop.”

“I WILL TEAR THIS PRECINCT DOWN BRICK BY BRICK.”

“Krill!”

“DID YOU HEAR ME YOU FUZZY PISSANTS.”

“Krill STOP!”

His ranting was cut off as Sunny clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away from the front steps of the Tesraki prescient, “What are you doing! This isn’t going to help Adam. If anything that is going to make it so much worse.’

Krill turned his head to look up at her, eyes narrowed, “Who are you and what did you do with Sunny.”

She frowned, “what do you mean.”

“Are you kidding me Sunny! Your battle partner is in there, and who knows what could happen to him . Who knows what is happening to him as we wpeek Whoever framed him had a lot of ower and that means they have the power to murder him on the inside.”

Sunny snarled, “Don’t you think I know that Krill! I can’t believe I am saying this, least of all to you, but we have to be rational! Charging in there weapons blazing is only going to get us hurt, thrown in jail or killed, and neither of those would be useful to Adam right now. We have to prove that he is innocent!”

“What more proof can we get that they won’t just reject out of hand. It doesnt matter that he was traveling with the two of us, or that his ship is full of aliens, or that he is the head of a drev clan. Something bigger is going on here Sunny, we have to do something even BIGGER to fight this.”

She frowned tapping her fingers lightly against the bottom of her chin.

Great drops or rain began to fall from the sky plunking down on the pavement with subtle thudding noises.

“We have to find irrefutable proof, something they cant argue with even if they tried.”

“Where do we start.”

“That list Adam gave us should be a good start.”

Krill sighed, “Fine, but there isn’t time to be nice about this. We can’t rely on the authorities. We have to do this our way.”

***

SLAM

Adam jerked awake, his head ringing as he sat up in his chair staring around the room and groggily trying to find the source of the noise. It didn’t take long before he found what he was looking for. The Detective stood over him, his jacket hanging lank and long draped around his shoulders and towards the floor.

On the table before him, there sat a large cream file, which had likely been the source of the noise.

Adam frowned and sat back in his seat.

“Really, a file. Is that supposed to intimidate me or something?”

The Detective sat across from him, “Do you need us to get you anything Admiral.”

“How about the key out of here.”

The man frowned, “So you fancy yourself a comedian.”

“No, I fancy myself a free man.” he would have crossed his arms if the cuffs didn’t get in the way.

“Are you always this resistive to authority.”

Adam snorted, “I’m in the fucking army asshat of course I’m not. I am resistive to assholes who falsely accuse me of something I didn’t do and then ignore my friends when they try to stick up for me.”

“The Drev and the Vrul?”

“Yes.”

“We are looking into them as we speak. We are sure to find their link to your plot soon.”

Adam sputtered, “Plot, what plot you daft dimwit.” he wrigged his fingers comically, “My dastardly plot to give hugs to all the aliens in the universe, or how about my evil scheme to steal cake from the shared company fridge. Oh what a fucking moster I am.”

“Where did you put the body parts?”

He stopped in his tracks, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The body parts of the first Tesraki, where did you put them.”

Adam shook his head in disbelief, “Look Detective dumbass, I didn’t put the Tesraki’s body parts anywhere… do you want to know why?”

The detective raised an eyebrow and leaned in a bit as Adam motioned him closer. 

“BECAUSE I WASN’T EVEN ON THE FUCKING PLANET!”

The man nearly lept out of his skin with the strength of Adam’s voice. Adam sat back in his seat, “Just look at my ship’s log. I was busy working in the Perseus spiral of the Milky way before I was called in here. There was no way I could have been involved.”

“I know, we have a ship log that  says you were there.”

He frowned, “Than why try to get me to admit to something I didn’t do.”

The man shook his head, “I didn’t say you didn’t do it, I just said that your ship’s logs seem to state that you were off world during that time.”

Adam huffed in anger and indignation, “Are you suggesting that I doctored my own ship reports?”

“You are the admiral, you do have executive control over things like that.”

Adam sighed in frustration, “I can’t even believe you right now. Changing a SINGLE long would prove nothing. I would have to change hours and hours mabe even days of data. Looking on the ship, you will find collected specimens and photos and videos taken during the time of the killing.” He rattled his hands against the chains, “You are a pretty ass detective if this is the best you can do.”

The man frowned, clearly not very impressed.

“Did you ever stop to think about why you are even here? I CALLED YOU IN. Why the ever loving hell would I do that if i thought there was even a chance that you could come in and catch me. It’s stupid, and it doesn’t add up.”

“You aren’t doing anything to make yourself look better Admiral.”

“Because I shouldn’t have to!”

“I beg to differ.”

***

A bright light flicked on in the darkness.

The human cringed back against it his feet scraping on the floor along with the metal of the chair, which he was tied to.

“Krill I-”

“Shh Sunny,”

The human squinted past the light in confusion and concern as two shadows coalesced before him and his eyes grew used to the glare. He shifted back in his seat, eyes wide as the two aliens stared back at him, one of those big shiny Drev and those weird spider things he forgot the name of.

The little creature paced back and forth in front of him, ‘You will find it interesting to know how easy it was to find you. After we found your three thug friends on the list, surprise surprise, guess how delighted we were to learn you were all staying in the same room together…. And one of you was missing.”

The an hook his head staring at the scuttling legs of the little bug creature as he crawled past, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb with me.” The bug turned to look at him, and he was suddenly very disconcerted by the angry glower that covered the creature’s face, It was too human of an expression to belong on an alien.

“Wha, wh… I have no idea what you are talking about, I swear.”

The little bug leaned forward, as something shiny appeared in his hand, ‘Oh I think you do.”

“Is that a scalpel.” He squeaked out 

“Yes, why yes it is. I am a surgeon by the way.” He glowered at the human, “And I know over 100 ways to.” His voice grew quiet, “disembowel yo, while keeping you alive.”

The man’s eyes widened in panic.

“Krill!” THe Drev hissed.

“Shut up, Sunny.” The Little bug crawled forward, until he was right up in the human’s face. Did you know when I was in medical school, I learned how to completely dissect the nervous system of a krevling. My record…. Ten minutes and twenty three seconds.”

The man turned to look at the Drev, who, surprisingly, out of the two of them seemed less crazy and violent.

She caught his eye, “Maybe you should do what he says. I don’t think he’s kidding.”

THe bug creature inflated his helium sack and rose into the air scalpel held out nonchalantly. He leaned in close quietly, “I hear humans taste like chicken.”

His mouth quivered, “I, I thought you bugs only ate plants.”

The alien smacked his lips together, or at least made the approximation of smacking his lips together, “I don’t know a light based diet hasn’t really been sustaining me lately. He leaned a little further in, “besides, I think sauteed lightly in butter with a couple of onions…. You might just manage to convert me to carnivorism.”

The man pushed back against the ground, metal scraping against concrete until his back was planted right against the wall, “I…. I don’t know what is wrong with you, but I swear….”

THe Drev placed a hand on the bug’s shoulder, “krill, seriously, don’t you think this is going a little too far.”

“This coming from you, Sunny.” He shrugged hr off, “I think I would like his toes first.”

The human took a deep breath staring down into the little creature’s prismatic orange eyes, crazy eyes, manic eyes.

Sunny, the Drev shook her head, “Look we don’t really want to hurt you, we just want to help our friend.”

“Toes.” The Vrul whispered 

The look on the creature’s face was enough to have him loose his nerve completely, “OK OK fine, I will tell you what you want to know, just don’t. Just don’t touch my toes, OK. you Freak.”

*** “Dear lord in heaven above give me the strength not to smash my head through this table.”

“Are you sure you don’t want something to drink.”

“You know that whole trying to be my friend thing isn’t going to work. You called me xenophobic after all, which is the msot damned insulting thing I have ever been called. My best friend is an alien, my g….my gr-reatest allies are aliens. I was the one who DISCOVERED them. I am the leader of a Drev CLAN for crying out loud.”

“People do things they don’t like for power.”

“Were you dropped on your head as a child or were you just born stupid.”

The Detective glowered at him, “Name calling isnt going to help you here.”

“I demand a lawyer.”

The detective snarled.

He tired to cross his arms but only managed to tug against his jacket, “I demand a lawyer immediately,  and until I get one, I am not saying another word to you.”

“Admiral Vir, there is no law on the Tesraki homeworld that says.”

“Twinkle twinkle little star-”

“That is really mature Admiral.”

“Wanna hit you with my car.”

“Admiral.”

“Toss you off a cliff so high!” “Admiral, stop that right now.”

“HOPE YOU BREAK YOUR NECK AND DIE”

The detective was seen storming out of the interrogation room not minutes later fuming with the sound of lyrics followed him down the hall, which didn’t stop until the door closed all the way.

It would remain to be seen who was going to break first.

***

Sunny stared at Krill, and Krill did his best to ignore Sunny as he paced back and forth over the ground.

“What the hell was that.”

“What was what.”

“What you just did in there.”

“Interrogation.”

“That guy nearly shat himself.”

Krill looked up at her with a very serious expression, “That is what I was hoping for.”

“Have you gone insane.”

“No, not at all besides, it worked didn’t it.”

Sunny grumbled in acknowledgement. She supposed he was right. The revelations they had received from the man as he cowered back against his chair begging Krill not to cut off his nose.

Someone had hired the four of them for sure. He was in charge of locating their targets while the other three men did their dirty work. Following that he was supposed to doctor some information given to him by his outside source, “I fixed the surveillance to make it look like the admiral was there. I have the doctored files in my computer, and I was supposed to bring them to my source tomorrow night so they could use it as evidence against him.’

“And who are your contacts.’

“I don’t know, I never saw their faces, or asked questions. I was just the guy who dropped off what they needed.”

“Than that means you can take us to this dropoff point.”

“No I…”

“Did you know it only takes a spoon and less than a pound of pressure to pop a human eye out of it’s socket.”

“FINE FINE ILL TAKE YOU. Just get this crazy freak away from me.”

Sunny had grabbed krill then and dragged him out of the room with a disapproving frown. 

“What you are a drev you should love scaring the shit out of people.”

“I love beating the shit out of people krill, not threatening to eat their toes.”

He shrugged seeming very unconcerned about the whole thing, “Either way, we have our way in. As long as Adam can hang in there, we might be able to save him.”

[hermannsthumb]

39 for winter prompt please? It will be so cute!!!! College au...

39. i’m ready to pull out my hair because of winter finals when you offer me a free hot cocoa if i use your flashcards to quiz you for your exams

from winter writing prompts here

honestly this IS cute. and i just finished off my last finals myself so it’s topical. college au, with ideas pulled from this headcanon post I made over the summer especially

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

It’s not technically Newt’s spot in the library, because it’s not like he’s stuck his name onto it or anything, and he only gets it about two-thirds of the times he comes in here to study, but he still thinks of it as being his. He usually turns right back around if it’s taken because it’s the best spot in the whole damn building; private, comfortable as hell, by the air vents (so there’s always a constant supply of either A/C or heat), with two working outlets (not just one), and close enough to the vending machines that Newt can sneak a granola bar or pretzels over while he does his work if he needs to without being snapped at by the librarian at the front desk. (You get crumbs in a computer keyboard one time.) Absolutely optimal circumstances for getting his work done. Newt’s never more productive in his schoolwork than when he sits his ass down in his spot for two hours and plugs in his earbuds.

Of course, on the eve of his massive biochem final, after he trudged all the way across campus in a stupid snowstorm, it would be taken; of course it would be taken by Hermann Gottlieb.

The two of them don’t get along by traditional standards, and they don’t really get along by Newt standards, either. Hermann is an international student in Newt’s year, on loan—indefinitely at this point, it feels like—from TU Berlin, though his prissy English accent doesn’t quite match up to what that and Gottlieb would suggest. He wears oversized, outdated clothing, has an intimidatingly brilliant mind, and typically sports a sour expression which matches his personality pretty marvelously. Newt would consider them rivals, in the sense that they’re pretty much neck-and-neck for the highest grade in their shared classes. He’s also Newt’s lab partner. And now he’s in Newt’s spot.

“Dude,” Newt says, sadly.

It cuts through the quiet room much more loudly than Newt intended. Hermann, who had been fixated on an imposing stack of notepaper, startles, and almost sends the top few pages floating to the ground. He pushes his glasses back up to glare at Newt. “What do you want?” he hisses.

“You’re in my spot,” Newt says.

Hermann rolls his eyes. “I didn’t see your bloody name on it. If you’re going to try to ask me to move, don’t bother. I’m not going to.” He turns a page of his notepaper aggressively; the entire thing is covered in one long equation Newt doesn’t recognize, written in Hermann’s cramped, messy scrawl. It must be for one of the two classes they don’t have together. “I’ve got a final tomorrow morning at—”

“Okay,” Newt says. “We’ll just have to share, then.” He grabs a nearby vacant chair and slides it up against the other side of the desk. It’s not his spot, but it’s still near the heating vents, and he still has access to the two outlets. As long as he knocks Hermann’s laptop charger out of one, anyway. At least Hermann was the one who took it and not a stranger.

“Hm,” Hermann says. He sniffs distastefully.

“I’ll be quiet,” Newt says.

Hermann flips another page.

“I hope you’re planning on completing your half of our final lab report,” he says. “It’s due next Tuesday. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“Just gotta proofread it,” Newt lies, because he had forgotten it, and he does still need to complete it. It’s not like it’ll take him more than ten minutes though. It’s under control. He hefts his way-too-heavy tote bag onto the desk, and the whole thing shudders; Hermann grabs the edge of his notepaper stack and eyes him warningly. “Anyway, I’ve got other shit to worry about right now. I have a final tomorrow morning, too.”

“Unfortunate,” Hermann says. “I suppose you won’t be leaving any time soon, then.”

“Not a chance,” Newt says. “Sorry, partner.”

They actually work in silence for the better part of an hour. Under normal circumstances—when it’s not finals, when they break apart from the main group for their labwork, or even when they sometimes, sometimes get coffee or a meal in the dining hall together—they’d be arguing about dumb shit by now, and probably would have been arguing for a while, but Newt suspects Hermann is as tired as he is. And as stressed. And as cold. (They really need to blast the heat in here already, damn it.) It’s kinda nice, actually, chilling with Hermann like this.

Newt doesn’t dare break the calm until he finishes translating his class notes into a stack of index cards, and taps Hermann’s arm awkwardly. Hermann heaves a sigh and fixes those dumb librarian glasses on him. “What is it, Newton?”

“Can you quiz me?” Newt says.

Hermann frowns. “Quiz you?”

“Please?” Newt says. He waves the cards in the air. “Please, please, please? You’d really be doing me a solid, dude. It’s only twenty cards. Or twenty-five. It’s just some definitions and—”

“Newton,” Hermann says. “I am sorry, but I am simply far too busy to even consider it. I—”

“Look, what if I quizzed you right back for your shit?” Newt says. “Or got you a snack or something? A coffee? They have those bottles of lattes in the vending machine by the water fountains. Or you can have all the rest of my semester meal swipes, I don’t even care, seriously. Or my meal points. You can—”

“Newton, please,” Hermann cuts in. “I don’t want your bloody—swipes, or points. I have enough of my own left as it is. I suppose I could use some caffeine, but…”

“On it,” Newt says.

The lattes are gone from the vending machine, of course, by the time Newt gets there. His only options are a doubleshot espresso energy drink (which he thinks might send Hermann, who pointedly only picks out the decaf tea bags in the dining hall, into cardiac arrest), or to stick a few quarters into an ancient-looking instant hot drink machine for either watery black coffee or watery hot chocolate. Newt digs around in his pockets and counts his spare change: he has enough for both. Mocha it is. Hope Hermann doesn’t mind.

“Oh, by Jove, that smells atrocious,” Hermann says when Newt slides it over. He wrinkles his nose. “What happened to the—?"

“All out,” Newt says. Who says By Jove? He slides over his index cards next, and Hermann picks them up glare. “Alright, let’s get started.”

They power through the stack; Newt does decently, enough to pass the final if he actually remembers all of it, which he thinks means he can call it a night. Hermann declines Newt’s offer to return the favor. “It would go over your head,” he insists. Like a smug bastard. Whatever. “But thank you for the…” (He clears his throat.) “Coffee.”

He hasn’t even touched it. Newt shrugs. “Sure. I guess I’ll call it a night, then.” He begins to shove his shit back into his tote bag. If he’s quick enough (and lucky enough), he might be able to catch one of the campus shuttles on its route past the library before they go out of service for the night, and he won’t have to walk through the snow again. “You wanna head out with me? We can walk back together from the shuttle stop.” He and Hermann don’t really live in dorms too close to each other’s, because Newt has one of the nicer upperclassman dorms and study abroad students get stuck with the freshman, but they’re at least on the same half of campus. They’ve walked back from class together sometimes before.

“Ah, no,” Hermann says. “I’ve got more work to do, I’m afraid. It’ll be some time before I’m finished.”

There are dark shadows under his eyes; Newt feels a twinge of sympathy. The thought of Hermann having to walk all the way back to his dorm, in the snow, and the dark, and the cold, all alone… “Hey, look,” Newt says. “What if I waited for you?” When Hermann begins to protest, Newt adds a quick lie: “I’m pretty sure I already missed the last shuttle, anyway, and I hate walking back home alone. It’s creepy.”

Hermann hms, and he shakes his head, and then—to Newt’s surprise—he nods. “Only if you’re sure,” he says.

“Totally,” Newt says.

He smiles and drops back down in his chair. He might be imagining it, but he’s sure (when Hermann returns the smile) that Hermann’s ears have gone a little pink.

[let-it-raines]

Catch Me If You Can (26/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: So you guys had some pretty big feelings about the last chapter. (I love it.) I think you might also have some about the next few. 🙈❤️

AO3: Beginning | Current

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-/-

Liam has been yelling at him for thirty-two minutes and seventeen seconds.

That might be a little off, his timing incorrect since he didn’t start counting until it’d been going on for quite a few minutes, and he’s only been counting with his head. He doesn’t have a watch on, has no idea where his phone currently is except probably in the locker room, and counting in his head is the only way he’s able to keep track.

The clock on Elsa’s wall is dead. That seems apt.

Counting is very literally the only thing that is keeping him sane right now. It’s also distracting him from the throbbing pain that’s emanating from his shoulder every time he so much as flinches or shifts in the wrong direction.

Killian has felt like an idiot more times than he can count – ironic with how much he’s counting right now, he knows – but he thinks that ignoring his shoulder, ignoring the pain, ignoring the signs, and ignoring every other little thing over the past few months has been the dumbest thing he’s ever done.

This could fuck up his entire career, again, and he ignored it for the idiotic hope that things would simply get better on their own.

Things have obviously not gotten better on their own, and he was pretty much carted off of the field and out of the stadium to the hospital so that he could have an MRI and an X-ray done only to find out that he has tendinitis in the rotator cuff that was injured in the boating accident and already had to have surgery to repair it once before.

Liam is currently yelling at him because he made a joke about how at least it was only tendinitis and not another full tear that would require surgery and being out of the game completely for ten months.

Just four to six weeks this time.

That’s nothing, right?

Except the playoffs start in four weeks, and while he can’t remember the rules of eligibility right off the top of his head since this is something he’s never had to deal with before, he thinks that as long as he doesn’t miss the entire post-season, he could still play in the World Series.

If they make it that far.

Shit.

This is not good.

And his hopes for the World Series really shouldn’t be what’s going on in his head right now when he has another arm injury, which is another derailment for his career.

(He’s only twenty-eight years old. It shouldn’t be like this.)

But focusing on this one thing that he wanted, that he wants, for himself and for his team, is inexplicably both driving him into madness and keeping him sane all at once.

“How could you let all of the signs pass you by, Killian?” Liam huffs, his loafers likely going to run a hole in the linoleum floor of the hospital with how much he’s pacing. “Do you not remember what happened the last time you got injured? The lows that you went through? That’s happening again. You finally got to be happy, got to have things going right for you, and you screwed it up because you didn’t want to admit that there is something wrong with you? How fucking dumb can you be?”

“Liam,” Elsa admonishes from her spot in her office where they’ve all gathered now that he’s been released from all of his tests. It’s kind of feeling like a prison in here. “Now is really not the time to yell at him.”

“I think it’s a pretty damn good time.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Killian groans, twisting in Elsa’s office chair to look at his brother. His arm is throbbing, his medicine not quite taking effect yet but the ice pack helping a bit, and that’s all probably not helping with his level of agitation. “I am twenty-eight years old. I do not need you to yell at me like I am one of your children. ObviouslyObviously, I know that I fucked up. The insane amount of ice on my shoulder that’s pretty much going to stay there for the next month as I sit on my ass proves it.”

“All of this could have been solved if you’d come to a doctor. I’m a doctor. Elsa works in a hospital. You have fantastic health insurance. It’s not…the solution was right there. You should have told Archie too!”

“Liam,” Elsa scolds again, and his brother’s head snaps toward his wife.

“What? What could you possibly have to say? He screwed up.”

“No, you screwed up when you started yelling at him like he’s a child. But certainly not your child when there’s no way in hell you would speak to Addison or Lucy this way. Killian gets it. You can see it written over his face, and if you can’t tell that he didn’t say anything because he was scared of finding out something was going to be wrong with him again, I don’t know what to tell you. Is it dumb? Yes. But you see it happen with patients every single day. People get scared, and the confirmation makes injuries and diseases real for them.”

Damn, Elsa Jones.

“Elsa,” Killian sighs, “thank – ”

“No,” she starts, holding up her hand at him, her voice full of emotion. “Just because I understand you and am defending you doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you. I’m not going to yell at you like your brother, though.”

Elsa wipes at the few tears that have fallen underneath her eyes, and before Killian can even get up to give her a hug and tell her just how much he loves her, Liam is crossing the room and wrapping her up in his embrace so that his frame dwarfs hers for a few seconds while Killian continues to get to sulk and loathe himself for doing this.

It’s all his fault.

There’s no other way around it. That’s the truth, and there’s no changing it.

What the hell is he going to do? And is this going to keep coming back if he continues to pitch? If he does proper treatment, is it something he can monitor? Is his career really about to be cut in half? What is Al going to think when he tells him? What are any of his teammates going to think? Or the owners? All of the managers?

What about Emma?  

If he’d told her all of those times he wanted to tell her, all of those times he’d meant to tell her when she caught him in pain over the past few months, she would know about his past and would most likely have had enough sense to tell him to go see a doctor since she would have a more frequent look at how he was every day than either Liam or Elsa.

But “if” doesn’t exist.

What has happened, happened. There’s no changing that.

But if he could…no, nope. No. He can’t go there. “If” doesn’t exist.

Elsa phone starts ringing on her desk, Emma’s name popping up on the screen, and Killian’s hands fumble for it so quickly that he nearly drops it onto the ground. But he doesn’t, managing to slide his finger across the phone to answer so that he can hold it up to his ear to talk.

“Hello, beautiful,” he greets and both Elsa and Liam turn to stare him down.  

“Killian?” Her voice is frantic, hoarse, and he has absolutely no idea how she managed to keep on working when he’s sure that her mind was running through all of the worst-case scenarios. She’s got to be pissed at him. He deserves it. Why couldn’t he have found the time to text her before he left? Right. He doesn’t know where his phone is. “Is that you?”

“Aye, love. It’s me. I’m answering Elsa’s phone.”

“SoSo, you’re not dead then?” He opens his mouth to respond but is cut off before he even can. “Because I have pretty much convinced myself that you were dead. It doesn’t even make any sense because you obviously didn’t have something, like, dangerous happen to you while you were playing, but all I’ve known for the past threewo hours waswere that you were hurt. And then my producer walks in the booth and tells me that you’re in the hospital but doesn’t say anything else and…you weren’t answering your phone. No one was. I don’t even know which hospital you’re in. I assumed Mt. Sinai because that’s where Liam works, but I don’t – ”

“Swan,” Killian interrupts as Emma keeps babbling. “Hey, hey, Emma, love. It’s okay. I’m fine. I am at Mt. Sinai. I’ve already had some tests done on my shoulder, and I’m sitting in Elsa’s office so it’s not like I’m laid up in a hospital bed. And I don’t have my phone. It’s in the locker room somewhere, probably, so that’s why I haven’t called you. I’m sorry.”

“How long are you going to be there? Can I come see you? Or should I just go home?”

“Where are you, love?”

“Maybe ten minutes away. I don’t – I got on the subway to go to your apartment first, but then I changed my mind and got off at the one hundred and third street station realizing that you were probably not there.”

“I think you’ve got a future career as a detective if this whole broadcasting thing doesn’t work out for you.” He smiles, even though she can’t see it, and he definitely ignores that look on Elsa and Liam’s faces. He’s had enough judgment from them today even if he deserves all of it. “How’d that go, by the way?”

There’s a loud blare through the phone followed by Emma cursing, and he chuckles to himself. “Can I tell you later? People don’t know how to drive, and I’m probably going to get run over even though I have the damn right of way.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll text you directions to her office.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Killian sighs. “I’ll see you soon.”

The call ends then, and he doesn’t even have time to digest it all before Elsa is speaking again and causing him some serious whiplash.

“What are you going to tell her when she gets here?”

He shrugs, as much as he can at least. “The truth.”

“All of it?”

That familiar sense of guilt settles in him again, pressing down on his shoulders like a ton of bricks, which really isn’t helpful right now when his shoulder is already in so much pain, but this is the situation he’s built for himself.

“What are you guys talking about?” Liam asks, and Killian has to bite his tongue. “Seriously. What?”

“Killian never told Emma about the full extent of the accident,” Elsa explains, rubbing the heels of her hands underneath her eyes. “And I’m guessing he’s been lying to her about how much his shoulder has been hurting too.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck,” Killian groans, leaning forward to press his face into the stack of papers on Elsa’s desk, but that hurts his damn shoulder. “She’s going to be so pissed at me.”

“It’s not like you lied about something that’s fundamental to your relationship, though,” Liam says, obviously missing the point because he doesn’t know Emma like Killian knows Emma. “I think she’ll just be pissed like we are.”

“No, no she won’t.” Killian He rolls back in his chair and adjusts the strap that’s holding his ice pack there. “Emma’s got a pretty shitty history with people lying to her or not trusting her with things, and she’s going to be pissed that I did this. I don’t…there’s no way around that. I love her, and I wasn’t honest about the struggles I was going through.”

“It’s going to be fine, sweetie,” Elsa promises, but his mind is already running through worst case scenarios too.

He’s already lost the game again, temporarily at least, and he’s not sure that he can lose anything else.

For years he thought that losing the game would be the only thing possibley of beating him down and having him lose the spark for life that he has. Now he knows that’s not true.

Losing the game would hurt. Losing Emma would kill him.

Killian doesn’t count the ten minutes that it takes Emma to get to the hospital. He doesn’t need to. He feels every second of them. Before he knows it, there’s a timid knock on the door, and then Emma is walking through, her cheeks red and her hair windblown with her eyes widened. She looks like she just ran here instead of taking the train, and the big exhale that she lets out when she makes eye contact with him has him feeling like maybe he ran a marathon too.

Slowly, he stands up from the chair so as not to jostle his arm, and even though he can tell that Emma is a bit hesitant with Liam and Elsa in the room, she walks toward him and wraps her arms around his stomach so that he can feel her over feeling the throbbing in his arm.

“Hey,” he whispers as he rubs his hand up and down her back while his lips press into her forehead. “I’m okay. It’s all okay, love. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“My brain still has me convinced that you’re dead, so give me a minute.”

Killian chuckles. “Okay, okay, I can do that.”

For someone who is so keen on time today, Killian has no idea how long he stands there with Emma’s face buried in his shoulder and his hand on her back. He has no idea.

It’s not long enough though.

Because then Emma is pulling back, the warmth of her body disappearing, and she’s stepping away to wipe out the wrinkles in her dress skirt before moving to hug Liam and Elsa too., almost like she didn’t even realize they were in the room at first.

“So, what happened?” Emma asks. “You said your shoulder? What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

His eyes dart from the green pair to the two sets of blue, pleading for some kind of help in answering her question.

“Liam,” Elsa starts, grabbing onto her husband’s forearm, “why don’t we let them talk? Let’s go get some coffee.”

“You guys can stay,” Emma offers, a sweet, unknowing smile on her face.

“No, it’s fine, sweetie." Elsa nods her head at him, a soft smile on her face as well. “We’ve spent enough time with Killian. We’ll let you guys have this moment. Use my phone to text Liam when you leave, okay?”

“Yeah, Els. That’s fine. I love you guys.”

“Love you too,” Liam answers for them before they’re taking the few steps to the door and walking out of it, letting the wood frame click behind them.

And then he’s left with Emma.

“So, what’s wrong?” she asks again, sitting down in the chair that Elsa has across from her desk while he takes back his seat behind Elsa’s desk. “Did you throw out your shoulder? I know you’re, like, a whole ten months older than me, but I didn’t think you were that much of an old man.”

His chuckle is weak, but he’s thankful that Emma is at least in a bit of a joking mood. Today has been such a big day for her professionally, and he hates that he’s taken away from it.

“I have tendinitis in my rotator cuff.” He’s about to spew out a hell of a lot of information at her, but he doesn’t know how else to do it. The worry etched across Emma’s face certainly doesn’t help. “It’s not a big deal. I’m going to be out for hopefully no more than six weeks as long as I don’t fuck it up again, so I should be able to come back for the Championship Series, not that it matters. I’m in a lot of pain today, but it’s not always so bad.”

“What do you mean it’s not always so bad? Has this been happening more than just today?”

“For a couple of weeks. Maybe a month of two. I don’t – I’m not sure the exact moment that it happened, but it’s gotten worse recently. That day in Boston where we got blown out of the water and I pissed everyone off by being a jackass? That was probably the worst of it on a game day until today.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Emma sighs, holding her hands up to him as her brows furrow, those little worry lines popping up on her forehead. “You’ve been feeling this for more than today? And you didn’t say anything? Not to me or your family or even Archie? You’re a pitcher, Killian. You’ve been warned about rotator cuff injuries your entire life, and you didn’t think to say something?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what?” she asks before she gets up to pace back and forth in the same path as Liam before her. “All you had to do was say that your shoulder was bothering you, you’re benched for a week or two, and you have time to heal. Then you’re not getting carted off in the middle of games while I’m left sitting in a booth with two assholes who couldn’t care less about you being injured and who made jokes about it while I felt like I could throw up the entire time.”

“Emma – ”

“What?”

“I have something else to tell you.”

Her eyes flicker over him as she crosses her arm over her chest, tugging her dress down and bringing attention to the fact that she’s wearing his mom’s ring around her neck. He’d nearly forgotten about that, only remembered really when his hands absentmindedly reached for it out of habit.

“What do you have to tell me?”

Killian swallows, kind of feeling like he’s going to throw up too. It’s not a big deal. It can’t be. Emma will understand. He’s lying to himself thinking that, but that’s what he has to do.

“When Liam and I were in the boating accident, when I had an open fracture on my arm, I also had a rotator cuff tear. It’s why I didn’t come back at all that season. It’s why I have the small scars on my shoulder.” Emma stops pacing and turns to look at him, worry written all over her face as his own worry constricts his throat. “No one knows about it. Only my family, Archie, and the doctors in Florida who did my surgery. I never told anyone because I didn’t want to be seen as weak. I’d finally gotten myself together, stopping the drinking and the women and every other dumb decision I was making, and there I was having my life torn away from me again. I guess I was so over being pitied and being looked down upon that I rationalized not telling anyone. I thought that if everyone didn’t know, things would be just fine. Life would go on as normal, and that’s all I wanted.”

He takes a breath and tries to figure out what’s going on in Emma’s head, but he can’t tell. There’s no emotion on her face. Absolutely none at all.

“Last season,” Killian continues. “I played with pain. It wasn’t much, and it was really more when I was working my way back than anything. By the time we made it to the Series, I felt fine. This season, not so much. It’s hurt randomly. Sometimes on game days. Sometimes when I’m waking up in the morning or in the middle of the night. Those days I can’t really move it for awhile. I – I know I shouldn’t have ignored the signs, Swan, but I couldn’t have it all taken away from me again. I just couldn’t.”

He’s not even sure if he said everything he needed to say. He’s got no clue. If he had to, he couldn’t even repeat the words that just passed through his lips. But they’re out there, and the bricks on his shoulders don’t feel quite so heavy.

“Every time we’ve talked about the accident,” Emma starts, and he recognizes the change of tone in her voice immediately, “you have never once mentioned that you tore your rotator cuff and that you had to have surgery to repair it. I would get you keeping that from me as a journalist but not as your girlfriend. How many times have we talked about that day, Killian? How often have we discussed it? How often have you sat there and lied to my face about it? And not only it. Every time you’ve been in pain this year, you’ve lied to me. This morning when I asked you what was wrong, you lied to me. In Boston when we were mad at each other, you lied to me. And those are just the times that I know of. I’m sure there are more. I can’t…”

“Swan, I’m sorry, okay?” he pleads. She shakes her head from side to side, and he rises from his the chair to come to the other side of the desk, leaning against the wood so that they’re not separated by it. “I wanted to tell you. I kept telling myself that I would and that maybe I’d work up the courage to say what was going on, but I never could.”

The clench in Emma’s jaw is visible, especially when she turns to the side to look away with another shake of her head. “I am sorry that you have been through so much, that you are still going through so much. I love you. I really do. But it almost makes it worse to me that you’ve known you were keeping something from me and still didn’t tell me. It doesn’t matter what it is. You actively lied to me, and I am not okay with that.”

“I was terrified, Emma. Don’t you get that?”

Her head turns back to him then, green eyes full of tears, and he can barely hear anything over the sound of his heart thumping.

“I think I just…I think I need some time is all.”

“Emma – ”

“No, Killian,” she starts, holding her hand up and stepping backward, “I need time. Because I’ve trusted you with so much of what’s going on in my life, I’ve let myself lean on you and need you more than I have ever let myself need someone else, and you couldn’t bother doing the same. Why couldn’t you bother doing the same? This is the same exact thing that’s happened to me every time I’ve put my heart on the line, and I – I need some time to think.”

“Emma.”

“I’ll call you soon,” she says as she rises from the chair, but he’s not sure that he believes her. “You have Liam and Elsa to take care of you, right?”

“Aye,” he nods, biting his tongue at all of the things he wants to say right now. Emma is fighting between wanting him to be okay and being upset with him. He can tell, and he has to respect her wishes right now. In a few days, it’ll be different. But damn if this doesn’t hurt. “I don’t…I’m sorry. I promise I didn’t mean to hurt you, love. That was not my intention here.”

“I know. That’s what makes this worse.” Emma blinks, her lips pressed together, before silently walking out the door and leaving him sitting there.

Alone.

Fuck.

He knew it was going to happen, and not even that could have prepared him for it.

But all she said was that she needed time, right? She didn’t yell at him saying that they were over, that she was breaking up with him, that she didn’t love him anymore. None of that was mentioned, so there’s hope, right?

There has to be hope.

It doesn’t matter that he didn’t hurt her in the same way that Neal and Walsh hurt her, that he didn’t hurt her the way the foster system did. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t maliciously set out to inflict pain. What matters is that she’s upset with his actions, with his lies, and who is he to try to say what she can be mad about and what she can’t be mad about?

He’s no one.

Only Emma can decide how she feels about things.

He probably deserves all of this for how much of an asshole he is.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

And he’s still got to tell his team. And Ariel will have to release a statement and oh shit, Ariel. She’s going to murder him.

She really is.

Killian uses Elsa’s phone to text Liam that he and Emma are finished talking and that he’s going home now. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t give any more details. No one needs any. They know where they live, and if all else fails, he will answer their texts from his laptop.

When he gets home fifteen minutes later, though, he sees it sitting on his coffee table and ignores it. He’s really not in the mood to talk to anyone or to do anything. All he wants is to take a shower and wash this damn day away. It’s not like he’s got any deadlines anymore or anything to do.

He can’t even do his job.

And it’s his fault.

How could he have been so stupid?

The moment Killian walks into his bedroom, he sees Emma’s clothes everywhere. She’d brought over a bag of things last night, outfits that she was considering wearing but hadn’t decided on, as well as seemingly everything else she owns. She’s not the neatest person in the world, never has been, but it seems that this morning she was determined to make her mark on every single inch of this room.

She did a damn good job at it.

Killian’s sure that she was planning on cleaning it up when she came back here tonight. They were going to celebrate her tonight. He had a whole dinner prepared that he was going to cook. All of the ingredients are in his fridge as well as Emma’s favorite whiskey and a chocolate and cherry cake that he baked because he knows that she loves those.

They never even got to talk about how it was for her today.

How could he have ruined a day that was so important to her?

And he knows that he’s ruined it. He does. He knows that she’s probably in her apartment right now fielding questions from everyone about what it was like, how she liked it, if she wants to do it again. And she’s fielding questions about how he is and why she’s not with him. He doesn’t know what she’ll say, if she’ll say anything at all, and for as many times as he’s hated himself, he doesn’t think he’s ever hated himself as much as he does right now for upsetting Emma.

This is not how things are supposed to be.

He doesn’t bother picking her clothes up, leaving all of them where they are. That’s something he’ll deal with later. He’s going to take a shower right now, and absolutely nothing is going to stop him.

Except for the yellow and blue sticky notes pressed in a line on his bathroom mirror over where Emma has left her curling iron.

I promise I’m going to clean up my things later. Don’t get all tense about it if you see it all before I do.

Thank you for being such a big supporter of me and “cheering me on.”

We’re both going to kick ass today.

I love you, Killian Jones.

Killian’s stomach twists at the last one, and he carefully pulls it off the mirror so that he can run his fingers over the words there as well as the lipstick mark that she left.

“I love you too, Emma,” he mutters to himself in the silence of the bathroom.

[vminity21]

Family

Written in: Second person / Kim Taehyung Imagine Featuring Kim Namjoon X Reader

Word Count: 2.7k

Involves: Slight angst, sibling rivalry, fluff, friendship

Frustration drips from your expression as you let out an exasperated sigh, “I just don’t understand.” Your voice slightly muffled from where you run your hands along your face. Taehyung’s soft, brown eyes stare at you as he remains silent, listening to you pour out your heart. “I’ve done so much for her, and she still treats me like I don’t mean anything at all.” Your voice breaks. Your bottom lip quivers as tears glisten in your eyes causing a slight burn in your nose that you attempt to sniff away. “My mom has tried to talk to her on multiple occasions, and now she’s given up. And, you and I both know my dad isn’t going to do anything about it.” Running your fingers underneath your eyes, Taehyung pulls you closer to him, and you let his warmth bring some comfort. “I get she’s young, but she’s old enough to know right from wrong.” You cry, resting your head on Tae’s shoulder. “Sometimes, I feel like I don’t have a family at all.”

You break into a fit of sobs; your heart is so broken you don’t know what else to do, but to let the tears escape into your cold palms. Taehyung presses his warm lips against your temple and gives you a gentle squeeze, “It’s okay [Y/N]. Let it out.”

Your sister, even though going through her puberty phase, has been nothing but disrespectful to you for the past few years, and you have finally reached the last straw. Especially after tonight. If it wasn’t for your best friend Kim Namjoon sticking up for you, who knows what you would have said or done.

 After long weeks of a busy schedule and hardly getting a chance to breathe, you decide to visit your mother and sister. Kim Namjoon, who has been your best friend since birth, tags along with you since it has been a while since he has seen your family, too. Your boyfriend Taehyung had to work this evening, otherwise, he would have been right by your side.

Once you and Namjoon are greeted by your mom at the door, the smell of your favorite food fills your nose. A conversation between Namjoon and your mom continues as he updates her on his college major switch and what he plans to do with his life. Your sister then walks into the kitchen, a messy bun piled on her head, reaching for a plate to fill with the dinner set out on the counter island.

Normally, she doesn’t act as mean when your friends are around, so nothing really prepared you for what was about to happen. As an hour or so passes by, you and Namjoon are about to head home when you remembered you needed to talk to your mom about the job promotion you were offered where you work. As you walk to the living room to speak to your mom, Namjoon not too far behind you, your sister turns and gives you a small eye roll in annoyance to your presence.

You pause, taken aback by the sudden glare, you can’t help but speak up, “What kind of look was that?” Although trying to play it off as if you’re joking, your sister turns to you, her wide eyes showing irritation.

“What look?” She plays dumb. “I didn’t give you a look.”

“Yes, you did.” You retort, “I was just coming in here to speak to mom, there was no need for you to do that.”

“Well, if you weren’t so annoying then I guess I wouldn’t feel the need to give you a look, now would I?”

“Whoa- whoa- What did you just say?” Surprise fills the room at Namjoon’s sudden outburst, his eyebrows furrowed with anger evident in his expression. The whole room is quiet, your eyes wide as you stare at him. Your mom, still cuddled on the couch next to you, cradles her coffee mug in her hands, sadness in her eyes. Your sister is speechless, her mouth ajar as her eyes widen even more beneath Namjoon’s furious scowl. He holds his palm out in front of him, “Really, what did you just say.”

“I-I” Your sister stutters, and Namjoon cuts her off.

“Since when has your sister ever deserved or has ever done anything to be annoying to you? Or, actually, when has she ever done anything to you at all?”  A tear of admiration slips onto your cheek as gratitude for your best friend fills your chest. “She is the hardest working, talented, and one of the kindest people I have ever known, and just the thought of anyone treating her any different is not okay. Not on my watch.”

Tears fall down your sister’s cheeks as she stares at her twiddling fingers.

“In fact, you telling her a while back that everything she does annoys you, but you don’t know why? That’s bullshit.”

You and your mother remain silent letting Namjoon continue saying what needs to be said. “You are lucky to have her as your sister. With all that she’s done for you, I’m surprised she’s put up with you for as long as she has.”

Namjoon turns to you, slipping his arm around yours. You don’t even look back. You let Namjoon lead you to his car. Once the both of you are settled inside, you whisper, “Thank you,” The both of you share a small smile before he pulls out of the driveway to take you home.

 “[Y/N], I am so sorry,” Guilt manifests in Taehyung’s eyes as he continues to hold you.

“No, no,” You say, “You had to be at work.”

“I know, but I wish I could have been there for you,” He whispers, his lips in a firm line. You did call Taehyung as soon as Namjoon dropped you off, and even though you assured Tae that he didn’t have to leave his job early, he did anyways and brought you home your favorite dessert to cheer you up. Thoughts swam in his head, his heart broken for you, but little do you know he has a surprise waiting for you soon, and his love for you is more than he can put into words. “I’m tired of her taking you for granted.” He murmurs.

Wiping at your face with your sleeve, you peer up at him, the smoothness of his skin shining in the light of the living room. His black bandana covers the top of his forehead as long, silver strands lay near his temples. Your heartbeat quickens, and you can’t help the love overwhelming you; even with a red, puffy face, swollen eyelids, and a snotty nose, you always feel surprised with how he still finds you the most beautiful person in the world.

It’s been two years since the two of you have been together. Fresh out of college making a decent living, Taehyung just happened to stumble in your life at the right time, the both of you stealing each other’s hearts in the blink of an eye. Other than Namjoon who has fought for you time and time again, you never really knew what a real man was, or at least what it was like to be in love with a real man, not until Kim Taehyung showed you.

Even after going through many different toxic situations in your lifetime, which your sister has seen you go through, you would think she would never treat you the way she has. Namjoon and Taehyung were and are the only two beside other than your mom who see the real you and have never made you doubt your character and who you are as a person. The two who have been with you every step of the way, through your happy and sad moments, they refuse to leave your side no matter what. Tears well in your eyes again as you squeeze Taehyung tighter reflecting on memories of what your two heroes have done for you.

“Hey,” He whispers, his jaw cuddling the side of your forehead. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” You reach to wipe yet another tear. “I’m crying again.”

Taehyung pulls away to look you in the eyes, his face so close to yours, it takes you a second to catch your breath. He thumbs away your escaping tears as sadness hovers his eyes that are searching yours.

“I’m just- you- I just-” You stammer, wetting your lips. Taehyung’s hands still rest on your face, the tip of his nose meets yours as a loving smile forms on his lips. “I just love you so much, Kim Taehyung. I love you so so much.” Right then, he leans in and kisses you; the touch of his lips so gentle, you forget for a moment that you’re sad.

“I love you, too.” He says once he pulls away. You fall into his embrace, wrapping your arms around his neck as he lightly rubs your back. Taehyung cherishes every moment he has with you, and as you pull away, all he wants is to make you smile and make all your sadness disappear. And tomorrow night, he decides, whenever you return home from your evening shift, he’s going to have your surprise sooner than you expect. Excitement filling his soul, he quickly steals another kiss from you; meanwhile, you are clueless of what he’s thinking, all you are aware of is the dazed, silly grin you have planted on your face.

*

After what feels like forever, the excitement of finally getting to go home after a long evening of work never gets old as you clock out. Settling into the driver’s seat after saying goodbye to your co-workers, you pull out of the parking lot, letting the low volume of your favorite K-POP band fill the silent spaces of your car. All you know is you cannot wait to envelop yourself in the arms of your boyfriend, letting his warmth captivate you and make you forget about the miserable world outside.

The drive seems longer than usual; maybe it’s from the countless thoughts swirling in your mind? Remembering the time Namjoon beat your ex-boyfriend’s ass to smithereens when he witnessed him lay a hand on you; also, the time Taehyung filed a report on a manager that verbally abused you for putting in a two weeks’ notice; Or, the time Namjoon and Taehyung rescued you from when your car broke down in the middle of the night on the highway. Your favorite memory though, still to this day, is one time, you were casually scrolling through Instagram, when you happened to see a post by your sister with ten pictures of women who mean the world to her. With a sweet smile, you swiped through the pictures, unexpectantly discovering that there was not a single photo of you. It was either a picture of your mother, your other sibling and your youngest sister’s friends from her school. Your feelings were so hurt, and you didn’t know what else to do other than cry to your mother. Your mom, of course, fussed at your sister only causing her to delete the post in frustration instead of apologizing. When Taehyung found out about the incident through Namjoon, since you were too ashamed to tell Taehyung about it at first, you came home from work one evening to a ten photo Instagram post of pictures Taehyung had snagged of you throughout the couple years of dating. In the message he wrote about his endless adoration for you, and how he planned on loving you for the rest of his life. He did include one photo your mom took of you with Namjoon and him at a holiday event, the three of you stood with happy, wide smiles. The last picture of the post was the first picture you and Taehyung ever took together; although, you two joke about how awkward of a selfie it is, the two of you wouldn’t trade that photo for anything else in the world. You never thought you could love a man so much after you read the beautiful words he wrote just for you. His assurance always gave you strength and still does.

When you finally pull into the driveway, you smile in relief at seeing Tae’s car. Walking into the house, the smell of your favorite food greets your nose as well as the sight of your favorite flowers trailing the ground toward the dining room. “What?” You whisper in surprise as you slowly follow the path in the direction its leading. Large pieces of confetti in your favorite color decorate the table and the rest of the house as the sound of your favorite KPOP band plays softly in the background; steaming food along with your favorite cake are set on the table as well with glasses of you and Tae’s favorite drink.

Before you can take it all in, strong arms spin you around and pull you into a long hug. The smell of Tae’s cologne welcomes you as you bury your face into his neck, kissing his warm skin, basking in his love. When the two of you pull away, Tae holds your gaze.

“What is this?” You smile gesturing towards the decorated table behind you. “Is it my birthday?” You joke.

Taehyung chuckles, leaning in for a quick kiss. “No, not yet, but I do have something I want to ask you.” Confusion fills you as Taehyung takes a few steps backward, but still within arm’s reach. You watch him as he timidly looks down then returning his eyes to yours,

“I know,” Taehyung begins, “I know you’ve been sad about your sister and the things she has said to you. And,” He pauses, “I know that you feel like you’re not appreciated enough by them, and I know that sometimes, you feel like you don’t have a family at all.” You search Taehyung’s eyes as you listen to his words.

“Well,” He says, “I want to change that.” Realization slowly starts to make its way to you as tears brim your eyes and goosebumps rise along your arms. Taehyung wets his lips, “I want to be your family.” Your hand cups your mouth as you blink back tears. “I want to be your crying shoulder, your laughter, your protector, and your best friend.” Taehyung takes a step forward, his silver hair gleaming beneath the dining room light. “[Y/N], I love you more than anything in this world, and I promise that I will never take you for granted. The last thing I ever want is to see you hurt for any reason, and I will do everything I can to make sure your smile never fades.” Right then, Taehyung pulls out a small, black velvet box and bows on one knee, opening the box exposing a beautiful diamond ring shining back at you. You return your eyes to Tae’s, happiness so obvious in your expression you’re about to burst. “[Y/N?]” Taehyung smiles at you, “What do you say about becoming a family and marrying me?”

Joyful tears stream down your face as you choke out a very excited, “YES!!!!” Taehyung slips the beautiful ring on your left ring finger as you jump in his arms still screaming, “YES! YES! YES! YES!”

“YESSSSSSSSS!” A familiar voice yells as you break away from Tae’s arms in surprise. Namjoon, with a video camera in hand, is pumping a fist in the air in excitement.

“NAMJOON!?” You freak as he laughs loudly, pulling you into a quick hug. “YOU WERE HERE THE WHOLE TIME?” You lower your voice as the adrenaline starts to dim.

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” He smiles, as he continues filming. You turn to Taehyung and he shrugs,

“I remember when we first started dating that you would want whoever proposes to you to make sure someone captures the moment. So, I asked Namjoon to do it.”

That’s it. You cup your now fiancée’s face in your hands, planting a sweet kiss on his lips. Once you pull away, the two tightly pull you into a huge man hug, and there is no place you’d rather be. Right here in the arms of the two people who make you feel at home.

 The two people who have and always will be

 Your family.

[tnystrk-exe]

Home 3

Tony Stark x Reader

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 End

Ro woke up when she heard the loud noises outside. The rumbling of distant thunder wasn’t enough to wake you, but it was enough to scare Ro. It sounded like there were scary monsters outside. Her little nightlight wouldn’t be enough to scare them away.

She grabbed her bear and ran into the hallway. Magic lights turned on by themselves, her daddy said he fixed them so that she’d be safe at nighttime. Daddy was always doing magic. She thought it was really cool. The lights flickered briefly, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Magic lights weren’t so cool anymore.

Quickly, she ran to your room, already crying loudly. Now, that was enough to wake you up. Ro wasted no time throwing herself into your arms the second you sat up. Mommy and daddy always kept her safe. They felt safe.

“Hey, baby, what’s wrong?” You asked, sleepily pressing a kiss to her head.

Ro sobbed into your chest, “Mommy, monster ou’side.”

“There’s monsters outside?” You rubbed her back, trying to soothe her, “That can’t be right.”

“They make lights off!” She jumped when the thunder struck again.

You hugged her tighter, “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you. I promise you’re safe. It’s not monsters because mommy and daddy made sure they all went to there houses far far away.”

Ro finally seemed to notice Tony’s absence, “Daddy take ‘em home?”

“Yes, he’s taking them home. They’re all very happy to go home. Wanna know what the sounds are?” She nodded and you explained thunderstorms to her.

“Sometime sky goes boom!” She said, still a bit shaken up, but noticeably tired. By this time the rain had noticeably slowed and the thunder stopped. “I don’ like it.”

Thirty minutes passed before you finally calmed her down enough to fall asleep. Her soft snoring filled the room and you couldn’t go back to sleep. Your mind drifted to Tony. Before he left, he told you about his recent test flight. He had said it was the greatest thrill he ever felt. There had been a small snag. The titanium steel plating was good, but it had the tendency to freeze at high altitudes.

“Hey, sweetheart, don’t go quiet on me. I’m good, we’re good. It’ll be okay next time,” he assured you in a calming tone, wrapping an arm around you, “I should have taken freezing into account but I didn’t. Gold titanium alloy won’t freeze. I already triple checked everything I looked over.” Tony looked over at Ro, who was fast asleep in her toddler’s flip sofa in front of the tv.

“Anything else happen during your flight?” You wondered, relaxed into him.

“Well, the baby probably shouldn’t pay a visit anytime soon. I kinda broke the house,” he admitted, feeling peaceful. This was one thing Tony couldn’t deny, knowing his kid was safe asleep for the night and having you in his arms was the most calming thing he had experienced.

You laughed, “Of course you did, how bad was it?”

“I managed to land myself on a weak structural point. There’s easy access from the living room to the lab, if you want me to install a pole instead of patching it all up,” he joked.

You rolled your eyes, “You gonna come home to me injured when you get your suit up and running. I can feel it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, sweet pea.”

“Just calling it how I see it, honey.”

He left shortly afterward. Tony wanted to work more, all he needed to do was install the plates and paint the model. Both you and Ro had convinced him to stop working for the day and hang out with the two of you. The work he was doing was important to him and the people he planned to help. Still, you didn’t enjoy the idea of him overworking himself. Anytime you’d called or visited him, he was hard at work and didn’t take many breaks. Whenever Ro asked to visit, you’d make sure to make food before or pick something up because more than likely Tony skipped out on meals in favor of building his suit.

It was coming together, but he didn’t have to fall apart for the machine.

You had no clue where his future was heading. Tony was a driven man who obsessively updated his weapons before the kidnapping. Who knows how far he would go with it all now. There was a small part of you that was scared. How couldn’t you? It was bad enough having to worry about Rhodey when he was called to action. Adding Tony and his secret project to the mix was frightening. He wouldn’t have someone to back him up when things got rough. Tony was going to be a one man army on his own.

Sighing you decided it was time to wake up for the day. If there was anyone that could stress you out while not being present, it was Stark. You turned on the tv and started flipping through the channels. For once you finally had back to back off days, so you weren’t too worried about a lack of sleep.

How did he manage to always be on tv? You tried to remember if he said anything about an event, but you were sure he told you he had to lay low for a while.

“..Stark has finally come back into the public eye since he came back from Afghanistan,” the reporters voice played over footage of Tony on the red carpet, “The billionaire was said to have been bed ridden due to severe post traumatic stress, but, it seems like he’s already back to his playboy tactics with his assistant Pepper Potts.” A couple of blurry pictures of the two of them showed on screen, before showing him alone again, “It seems the fun was cut short after his conversation with Obadiah Stane, leaving us all wondering what went wrong? Next on the chopping block, best dre-.”

You cut the tv off and reached over for your phone, deciding to call Tony to see what was happening.

The phone rang for a beat before he answered, “Something happened to Ro?” He asked quickly, it was still early for either of you to be up on a free day.

���No, she’s fine. Are you okay?” If you listened closely, you could hear the sound of wind rushing past in the background.

He sighed, you could basically see his fake smile. “You know I am, cupcake. I’m fine as can be.”

“Come on, Tony, talk to me. Please?”

“...I can practically hear the pout in your voice.” He took a minute before starting. “Obadiah...It’s all him. He’s trying to push me out, selling my weapons under the table, and who knows what else he’s done in the dark.” There was a strain in his voice as he spoke, he coughed to cover it up.

You didn’t know how to respond. All you knew was Obadiah was like a makeshift father figure to Tony with the way he talked about the man. The only time you had seen him in person was at the Stark’s funeral. “You’re doing something about it?”

“I’m doing something about it,” he confirmed, grateful not to linger on the betrayal. “Right now, in fact.”

Thoughts buzzed in your head. What if the arc reactor failed? It was powering the whole suit, but most importantly it was keeping Tony alive. If it failed... You shook the thoughts from your head. “What are you doing?”

“Heading to Gulmira. The Ten Rings is terrorizing the families there. It’s all my fault, YN.”

You frowned, “It’s not your fault, Tony.”

“Yes, it is,” he muttered, “I should have been on top of this. All of it. It never should have gotten this far. Instead I was being a fucking dumb ass. This is all my fault. What was I doing?”

“Well for the past two years, you were being an amazing father to our daughter. Tones, weren’t being a dumb ass. You trusted someone you knew since you were a kid. That’s hardly doing anything to be ashamed of.”

“It was my responsibility, YN. At the end of it all, I was supposed to make sure the company was running everything the right way. If I watched, if I was paying attention, none of this would have happened.”

The two of you were at a stalemate. Both of you knew the other was right in a way, but it wasn’t enough to be fully convincing.

“Sir, we are approximately ten minutes from our destination,” J.A.R.V.I.S. interrupted your silence.

“Thank you, J. That’s my cue to hang up, honey,” he said.

Your worry spiked, “Stay safe.”

Tony chuckled, mostly hoping to calm you, “What? No good luck kiss?”

“You can come back and get that from Pepper. Media is already on top of you with that by the way,” you told him teasingly.

“They think they’re on top of everything. I’m really closing in here, sweet pea.”

“I mean it, stay safe. I love you, Tony.”

“I love you. Tell Ro, I love her too.”

With that the line cut off.

It was hard to stay calm. He’d be okay. He had already came home once, he’ll do it again.

You watched Ro, sleeping calmly, no worries in the world. Laying back down, you pulled her into your arms. The thought of Ro during those three months was at the forefront of your mind. No way you could handle that again. All the tantrums and sadness were still fresh. She loved her father more than anything in the world.

Would Tony stop this when it was over? Probably not, you knew him. He’d probably find another way to use his new skills. You were proud of him, but this anxiety was something you’d have to become accustomed to if he continued.

A selfish part of you didn’t want him to keep going afterwards.

Each minute seemed to stretch out even longer. It didn’t feel possible to think of anything else other than Tony. Four hours passed. Since then Ro was already up and ready to play for the day. The rain had started again and she giggled watching raindrops race down a window pane before turning her attention back to her building blocks.

Your phone went off, blaring the similar rock track.

“It’s daddy! Daddy calling!” Ro sang, happily, ditching her toys and running over.

“Hello,” you answered, “How are you?”

“I’m okay. The Rings weren’t so bad, but the Air Force was a little rough.”

You did a double take, “Tony the Air Force?”

“Mommy, I talk to daddy please?” Ro asked, standing in her tiptoes, reaching for the phone.

“We’ll talk about it later. Let me talk with the kid for now.”

You handed over the phone, “Daddy! You took away all the monsters? Were they nice?”

“Yeah, monsters. Tell me again about the monsters. Dad’s feeling a little bit sleepy right now.”

“Silly, daddy,” Ro giggled, “Mommy said you took all the monsters to their home to be happy.”

“Yeah! I did, didn’t I?” He agreed quickly, “Sorry daddy’s a bit of a dunce. They’re very happy now. All of them are home safe and sound.”

“Were they scary?”

“No honey, they aren’t so scary. They’re actually very nice. How’s my little monster?” He asked, “Did you eat a good breakfast?”

“Mommy gave me a yummy banana muffin and a smoothie,” she answered, happily playing with her bear on the counter, “‘Ony Bear eat with me. Come home and play blocks with me, please daddy?”

“Ro, that sounds beautiful, but I can’t right now. I’m a little bit busy.”

“Don’t like you being busy,” Ro pouted, “You busy a lot.”

Tony felt guilty, “I promise I’ll make all the time in the world for you. Right now I’m just too far away.”

They talked a while longer before Ro handed you back the phone. She happily returned back to her toys.

“You really went up against the Air Force?”

“Yeah, I broke one of Rhodey’s toy planes. He says I owe him, but they shot at me. What do you think?” He spoke quickly, hoping to push past your fears.

You sighed, accepting what had happened. He was safe. What more could you ask? “I think you’re going to buy him another one. It’s Rhodey, how are you going to say no to him? There’s at least three people I know of that can get you to do whatever they want.”

“You’re probably right, but just for that I’m gonna take extra long before I replace it. Blame yourself.”

“Hey, that’s no fair to the Colonel,” you chided him, “Just don’t do what I want you to do for a week and we’ll call it even.”

“Make it three.”

“Two,” you negotiated.

“Hmm,” he playfully thought it over, “You got yourself a deal.”

“How did your first run at things go?”

“I think it went pretty well, besides the run in with Rhodey’s boys. I destroyed all the weapons I could find. Let the people have a go at the guy I saw the most. There’s still loose ends to tie up.”

You nodded, “You’re going to do great, Tony. Though I do want you over here as soon as possible so I can give you a once over.”

“Sure thing, beautiful,” he chuckled. “Give me a couple of hours, won’t you?”

-

Tony made good on his promise to see you, it wasn’t right away, but you weren’t complaining. Life was busy for the both of you. While J.A.R.V.I.S. was tasked with repairs and Pepper was getting somethings from Stark Industries, he found time to come over. Ro played doctor while you checked over him. Soon enough various parts of him were covered in Captain America and Hello Kitty bandaids. You laughed softly, watching him pull her onto his lap and press a kiss to the top of her head.

“Rugrat, you’re already taking care of me so well,” he praised the little girl, “I was really hurt.”

She smiled proudly and pressed her toy stethoscope to his mouth. “Daddy ahhh!”

“Ahhh!” He humored her, “So docs? What’s the diagnosis?”

“You’re fine and primed to annoy me for a long time,” you answered, packing up your supplies.

“You think I’m fine?” He asked, smirking at you.

You rolled your eyes, unable to keep a small smile at bay, “What do you think Doctor Ro? Is daddy healthy or sick?”

“Daddy, um, he really sick and needs to play with me,” she responded seriously.

He feigned fear, “Is that the only cure?”

Ro nodded, “...Yes.”

With that the two of them ended up on the floor. Building blocks scattered around as they started making a castle for ‘Ony Bear. While they were busy, you got ready for the night shift and packed Ro an over night bag. The sound of Ro’s laughter echoed through the home. It was nice when the three of you got to play family. Everything about it felt right.

That was something you probably shouldn’t even think about. As much as you had wanted to, there was a big risk. If you and Tony were together it wasn’t just the two of you that would be hurt anymore. The track record was proof that things never went well. She couldn’t lose Tony. There was no was you were going to screw that up for her. You couldn’t.

“What’s got you thinking so much?” Tony asked, stepping over and taking packing her bag from you.

“Hmm?” You were pulled out of your thoughts, “Nothing, I was thinking about a surgery I have to handle today.”

He looked at you, before stuffing some random toys into the bag. “Is it a tough one?”

“Yeah, kind of, it’s a hard call to make.”

“In my experience, and I’ll never say this again, you’re usually right. Go with whatever it is you’re thinking. More than likely it’s the right way to go. Someone doesn’t like it, fuck ‘em,” he pressed a kiss to your cheek, “Why don’t you go say bye to Ro and I’ll take her to Mrs. Herrera’s? Get that kid of ours out of your hair for a bit. It will give you some time to rest before work.”

“Yeah, Tones. That would be nice.” You gave him a tired smile.

“Don’t be so worried, YN. You always make the right calls,” he said, following you into the living room. “Rugrat, time to go. Say bye to mom.”

Ro ran over to give you a hug, “Bye bye mommy. I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart. Be good for me okay?” You kissed her cheek.

“Yes, mommy.” She walked over to Tony, lifting her arms up.

He picked her up, “Do I have to be good for you too?”

“Even more than Ro. I don’t wanna hear anything about billionaire geniuses on the news tomorrow morning.”

“I think, I can manage that.”

You watched them leave. Tony had, unbeknownst signed off on throwing away a future. He was right, going with your gut was usually the way to go. Overthinking usually resulted in the worst case scenario. You were torn, but the possibility and risks of failure outweighed the success.

Besides, that picture of Tony and Pepper came up in your mind. They looked...cute? There was a small bout of jealousy in your chest, you were adult enough to admit it. These feelings had to be remnants from days past and seeing him interact with your daughter. Anyone could have been swept off their feet with those two components. Time had past, he and pepper had grown close. They were good for one another. She definitely knew how to handle him. You needed to make more of an effort to get to know Pepper. If Tony did take that step, she’d be apart of your and Ro’s lives a lot more often.

You needed to get your mind off of Tony. The hospital was the easiest way to do just that. Getting there early you got a head start on your rounds. Soon enough time came for your patient’s surgery. Helping people was easy as breathing, it cleared out your head. Fortunately, as long as the surgery took it had been a success.

“How does it feel being the doctor with the highest success rate here?” Sebastian asked, while the two of you rested for a minute.

You raised a brow, “You and I are always partnered up. Our success rate is the same.”

“Take the compliment,” he groaned, throwing one of his chips at you.

“We should start planning out the next one.”

“Sounds good,” you said, tossing him a file, “I handled the last one, what should we do this time?”

The two of you went through procedures. It was a cycle of approving ideas and giving the other a look that asked “Are you an idiot?”

“Hey,” Gabe popped his head in the door, “Everyone is on duty. Some freak accident happened near Stark Industries. Something about two robots fighting on a highway and a building exploded. We’ve got a couple of people needing surgeries coming in. Boss assigned you two to a guy that was thrown off a motorcycle into traffic.” Gabe gave the run down before popping back out.

“YN, call him,” Sebastian knew Tony was a close friend, “Then I need you to be a robot for a little while. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can. Just let me process.” You pulled out your phone and dialed Tony. The line was dead each time you called. “You know I asked him to make no news headlines.”

“And you can scream at him when you see him, first thing,” Sebastian put a hand on your shoulder, leading you to where you needed to be, “Getting yelled by you is worth it. Come on, we need to get prepared.”

This surgery wasn’t as smooth sailing as the one prior. No planning time, your head wasn’t as clear as you’d like, and there were so many things going wrong. Seven hours in, doctors scattering like ants in and out to help in there specific fields throughout the surgery. It took a while longer before you and Sebastian were sure all that could have been done was. Sebastian stitched him up.

“You shouldn’t drive right now, YN. You’re running on low charge and worried,” Sebastian glanced at you.

You shook your head, “I need to pick up the baby and I need to talk to Tony. I’ll be fine, Seb.”

“What are the odds of me convincing you to take a nap?”

“Slim to none.”

“Just call me when you get home. So I know you’re safe.”

“That I can do.”

Picking up Ro didn’t take so long. She was just  hardly awake and fell back asleep in her car seat. You took a chance and called Tony’s phone again.

“Hey, Cupcake. How was the surgery?”

“God, you’re a dick,” you breathed out a sigh of relief, “It went fine. Are you okay?”

“I’m the same annoyance to you as ever, just slightly bruised. I’ll pass by later and you can fret over me then, right now I have a press conference and a cover story to handle. See you soon.”

After a quick call to Sebastian, you and Ro fell back asleep quickly in your room. It wasn’t until you felt the bed dip that you woke back up, pressing your sleeping daughter against you protectively.

“Calm, Mama Bear, it’s just me,” Tony assured you, quietly, “How’d you get her to sleep so long?”

“Herrera keeps her up late during my night shifts,” you mumbled sleepily. “What happened?”

Tony laid down, his hands behind his head. “It’s not important right now, get some rest.”

“Sleeping isn’t important. You are. Tell me what happened, Tones.”

He sighed, getting his thoughts together. “Obie, managed to get a hold of Mark 1, but he was missing a key component,” he tapped his arc reactor, “So, he took mine...I could feel the shrapnel digging it’s way deeper. YN, I looked up to him, he was like a father to me. There were times where I wished he was instead of..” he cleared his throat, “I managed to crawl down to the lab. Don’t let me be mean to Dum-E for a month, by the way. Rhodey got there soon enough, but Pepper was in trouble. We fought. I had Pepper overload the giant arc. Obie’s dead.”

“Tony...” You didn’t know what to say.

“I’m okay, YN,” he sighed, looking up at the ceiling, “Got a new name now, a not so secret identity.”

“The people know you’re in the suit?” You asked, he nodded, “Who are you?”

“I am Iron Man.”

You pondered it for a moment before nodding, “It’s catchy.”

“Guess it’s true what dad said, Stark men are made of iron.”

“I think you’re made of something else entirely, Tones.”

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[roxywashere]

Neon

Sequel to “Eighth Wonder”

Rey Walker recuperates after an intense battle.

Rey Walker’s first fight as a member of the most prestigious superhero group in the world had been a hard-fought victory. Though there had been considerable civilian loss of life, the death toll had been a mere fraction of that of the last time the group, much younger and unprepared then, had faced this same villain. Once the Demon King had been hauled off by the Archangel to be imprisoned somewhere beyond the bounds of this world, Astra’s League had immediately transitioned to providing disaster aid to the people of New York.

Rey wasn’t very good at this part. Her plasma-manipulation based superspeed had no real use outside of a fight. Her friends Hilda and Shailene, on the other hand, were very useful. Hilda, who could duplicate herself and anything she holds effectively infinitely, and Shay, who had an almost unparalleled telekinetic strength and skill, were very easily proving their utility to the League, by shifting debris and caring for injured survivors. Even Elle, with her fulgurkinesis, found use stop-gapping broken electrical lines and keeping the power on in the area.

Rey sat on top of a building and watched as the rest of the 42-person Superteam did their work.

One of Hilda sat next to her, futily trying to comfort her friend. “Look, Aradia tells me that her father was never of much use during the clean-ups either, and everybody still loved him anyway.”

“Aradia’s father? Isn’t he the one who mysteriously disappeared and everyone assumes died?”

“Uhhh...” Hilda stalled while one of her other bodies asked Aradia. “Yeah...?”

“Shows how great he was.” Rey sighed. “I’m gonna head home.”

“What, you’re just gonna fucking walk all the way back to Danesville? You’ve never even gone a fifth that in one go before, you’re gonna completely wipe yourself out.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stop to catch my breath when I need to, maybe grab a drink somewhere.”

“Well, be careful. Call me if you don’t think you can make the whole trip, I’ll ask Aradia to swing by and take you home.”

“You’re not my mom.” Rey activated her plasma-propelled superspeed, and ran down the wall to what remained of Times Square. She looked around, tried to orient herself, and then ran south a couple blocks, and then west until she hit the Lincoln Tunnel. She followed the highway west for fifteen minutes, and by then she was well into Pennsylvania.

She was also, as expected, exhausted. She pulled off to the side of the road, panting. She looked around at nearby signs, illuminating the late night with her rapidly depleting collected plasma, and saw one advertising a quaint roadside dive a few miles down the road. Rey shook off the sluggishness, and slogged the short few seconds it took to get there. It was still open, fortunately, a flickering neon sign advertising this fact.

Rey pushed through the front door of Baby’s Diner and saw a retro-styled red-and-white tiled interior, and for a second wondered if she had stepped 140 years into the past, to the 1950’s. She slumped into a booth, the neon sign hung up in the window next to it, and picked up a menu. She stared at it idly for a minute, before looking around the restaurant, wondering where the staff were. She spotted an old-fashioned plasma screen TV in a far corner, showing a news report of the fight back in New York, and spotted glimpses of herself in the footage they were showing on loop.

She realised something, and then then patted herself down looking for her phone. She pulled it out of one of her pockets, and quickly scrolled through her contacts. When she found the one labelled “Mom”, she double tapped it.

Rey silently cursed when the call went straight to answering machine.

“Hey, this is Trip’s phone, I’m obviously not here right now, but if you wait a while I might pick up before you’re done leaving a message.” Beep.

“Hey, ma. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news yet, but in case you did and saw me I just wanted to make sure you knew I was fine. Um... speaking of news, I’ve got some pretty big to break to you. I was inducted into Astra’s League, about an hour ago, and I’ve already helped save the world. So, that’s pretty cool. And it wasn’t just me. Hilda, Shay, and Elle were inducted too. Aradia Furst called me to her tower, and all of the League was there when I got there. I...”

Rey was interrupted by her mother picking up. Without even saying hello, she immediately asked “The Archangel, did she see you?”

“The- wait, what? How do you even know about her?”

“Did she see your face, Rey?!” Trip demanded.

“Well, I mean, yeah.”

“Goddess be damned...”

“Mom, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Now she knows we’re here, Rey. I risked my neck escaping her wretched clutches and you went and handed yourself to her on a golden platter!”

“Mom, what the fuck are you talking-” Rey was interrupted by her mother hanging up on her. She stared at her phone in confusion and incredulity. “What the hell was that all about?” She put her phone down on the table, frowning. She looked around some more. “Where the hell is the waitress?” She sighed, and glanced towards the neon “Open” sign, which was still flickering. She briefly activated her power, and traced her finger along the tube that was flickering, until it returned to a strong, stable glow, though in doing so she drained herself of the last of her plasma, making her powerless until she could restock. She quietly smiled to herself.

A woman wearing a disheveled uniform walked out from the back of the diner. “Well I am so sorry,” the woman, whose name tag read Debbie, apologized. “We didn't hear your car pull up. How long have you been sitting out here?”

Rey peaked past her into the kitchen and saw another woman with a pocket mirror cleaning up her noticeably smeared lipstick. “Just a couple minutes. Did I interrupt something?”

“Hm?” While Debbie merely feigned ignorance, the woman in the kitchen scowled at Rey. “Would you like something to drink?” Debbie asked, forcing the conversation forward.

“A Sprite’ll be fine.”

Debbie turned to the other woman, and motioned her towards the soda fountain.

The other woman grumbled and stopped fixing her make-up, and then went to pour a glass of Sprite.

“Would ya like anything to eat?” Debbie asked Rey.

“A burger will be fine. Just cheese, I like them plain.”

“Comin’ right up.”

Debbie went back into the kitchen to start making the burger, and the other woman walked up to the booth with Rey’s Sprite. Her nametag read Felicia. “I was gonna get laid tonight,” she whispered. “I hope you’re happy.”

Rey pulled out her wallet and counted out a $10 advance tip in ones. Felicia raised an eyebrow. Rey counted out $10 more. Felicia subtly nodded. Rey handed over the wad of ones and took her Sprite in return. She had also slipped in a scrap of paper with her name and phone number on it, one of many she kept in her wallet so she could hand them out like business cards.

When Felicia double checked how much she had been tipped, she scoffed at the forwardness of the gesture.

“Just, keep it in mind,” Rey explained. Felicia shook her head and walked back into the kitchen. Rey’s phone started ringing, and she answered. 

“Great, you're still alive,” Hilda said.

“Did you expect me to have died walking home?”

“Honestly, I never know with you, Rey. You're always pushing yourself harder and harder and I always gotta be there to carry your unconscious ass home. Anyway, Aradia said she's going to be holding a press conference in Danesville right after the new year ticks over there, which, need I remind you, is in like ten minutes.” 

“Shit, really? I'm definitely not going to make it back by then.”

“Ya don't say. Where are you, Aradia is just gonna cast a portal and pick you up.” 

“I don't know, somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania, just off of Interstate 80, called Baby's Diner.”

“Alright, she's casting the spell, she'll be right there.”

Rey glanced out the window, and saw the glowing sigils indicating an incoming portal appear in the air in the middle of the parking lot. They were shortly followed by the portal itself, a circular rip in space outlined by a dark violet glow. Aradia stepped through it as soon as it opened, and it closed as soon as she did, only having been open for a second total.

She walked up to the diner and silently pushed open the door, and smiled warmly at the old-fashioned stylings of the place. “So,” she said to Rey, “You ran out of plasma, didn’t you?”

“I used the last of it to make the open sign stop flickering,” Rey told her, indicating said sign.

Aradia took her seat in the booth with Rey. “How kind of you. How far does a ‘full charge’, for lack of a better term, get you?”

“I don’t know, actually. I’ve never been able to reach ‘full charge’. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hard for me to get my hands on large quantities of high-quality ionized plasma. Cheap stuff, sure. I got a supplier that just just ships me tanks of gases that I can pump through electrodes and ionize myself, but it’s real low-quality.”

“Well, that’s where I think I can be of great use to you. Because, in fact, I do have a source of high energy plasma. The Archangel is a divine craftswoman of the highest order, and she has built for me fusion reactors that consume no fuel and are small enough that they can be carried in a backpack. If you were to have such a device, I believe your capacity would become effectively infinite.”

“I want to say such a thing is impossible,” Rey started, “But that’s a dumb thing to say in this day and age, so I’m not gonna. But I will ask: What’s the catch?”

“All that I ask of you is that you keep in close contact with me. Keep me updated with the goings on of the street-level crime, and keep fighting it.”

Rey considered the offer for a moment, and then held out her hand to shake on it. “Alright. Let’s make this happen.”

Aradia shook Rey’s hand, and at the same time Felicia walked out from the back with Rey’s burger.

“Oh, my, god,” Felicia exclaimed. “Deb, get out here, Aradia Furst is in our diner!”

“What?” Debbie replied. She poked her head out of the kitchen and likewise exclaimed “Oh, my god.”

“Would you either of you like a photo?” Aradia asked. “Or an autograph perhaps? Both, even.”

“Yes!” Felicia said. “Could you sign my phone? I know it’s not the latest model, but you make them so reliable I haven’t needed a replacement in like 7 years.”

Aradia, summoning a gold sharpie from seemingly nowhere, replied “Never a finer endorsement than one from somebody who hasn’t needed to buy everything I sell. What's your name?”

“Felicia Kyle.”

Aradia took Felicia’s phone and signed it with one of the most ornate and complicated signatures Rey had ever seen. “Now, don’t worry about it wiping off, this ink is specially formulated to bond perfectly with the material of the phone. The only way it’s coming off is by belt-sanding the entire back of the phone off.”

Debbie then stepped in with her own (non-FursTech manufactured) phone, and took a quick selfie with herself, Felicia, and Aradia, with Rey in the background.

“Now, I believe Rey and I have a press conference to attend,” Aradia said.

While Aradia started casting another portal, Rey dug in her wallet to pay for the burger, pulling out $7 and slapping it down in Debbie’s hand, and then taking the burger from Felicia and slamming the rest of the Sprite.

“You two,” Rey told Debbie and Felicia, “Keep an eye on the news.” Aradia finished casting, and a portal into a dark room appeared. Aradia stepped through it, and beckoned Rey in after her.

Rey stepped through, and the portal shut. Rey heard only a low rumbling, and then Aradia snapped her fingers. Holograms started appearing across dozens of workstations, showing gauges and binary status lights, and then a spotlight illuminated a metallic orb bristling with copper pipes, sitting on a pedestal.

“This,” Aradia explained, “Is a recreation of the first Holy Device the Archangel ever built. She called it The Heart. Unfortunately, I cannot give this to you, because it is too delicate in its ancient state to function. However...”

Aradia turned to a human-sized flat disk of gold embedded in the wall. With her finger she traced upon it a wide circle with a pentagram inside it, and inside the pentagram traced the Kabbalah Tree of Life. The disc on the wall split into seven fragments that irised into the surrounding wall. Within this vault was shelf upon shelf of stacks upon stacks of large golden coins, and in the middle of the room was another pedestal with another orb on it, except this one was a plain sphere glowing from within with a powerful white light.

“This Heart is sturdy enough to be worn, even by a superspeedster.”

Aradia then used her metallokinesis to draw from the golden coins, and constructed a backpack around the Heart, and a coil of flexible metal pipe.

“Go ahead, put it on.”

Rey hesitantly walked into the vault, and up to the backpack, and slowly slid it on. Aradia walked up behind her, and slid the pipe under her collar and down her right sleeve, coming out just below her palm.

“Do you feel the plasma, writhing within its containment?”

Rey shut her eyes, and focused, and felt the dense mass of energy on her back. She tried to draw from it, and she felt it snaking its way through the pipe, until she felt the bare heat of it in her palm. She opened her eyes and saw the bright white sphere of plasma, and then absorbed it into her veins.

She had never felt so energized in her life, and struggled to keep her superspeed from activating on it’s own, her fingers twitching and the rest of her body vibrating slightly. She clenched her fist, and stilled herself, halting the overcharge from overtaking her.

“I think I found my practical full charge level,” Rey confided. “It’s not a hard limit, and I’m sure it will go up as I gain mastery, but I think that’s it for now.”

Aradia summoned a small hologram of a clock, which indicated that it was a handful of seconds from passing midnight in Danesville. When the New Year ticked over, Aradia quietly said “Happy New Year yet again, Neon. Now, we must be getting to that press conference.”

Aradia cast yet another portal, and the pair stepped into the front lobby of one of the four FursTech buildings across America. But Rey noticed that they weren’t in the Danesville FursTech building.

“Why are we in New York again? I thought you said the press conference was in Danesville?” Rey looked back at Aradia, who had silently cast one last portal and stepped through it.

Aradia turned to Rey, and said “I did indeed. I’ll be introducing you in about five minutes. I hope to see you there!” Before Rey could snap out of her bewilderment, Aradia gave a small wave goodbye, and closed the portal.

Rey, half seething and half laughing, shook her head. “Well, let’s see what a full charge of top-quality plasma does for me.” Rey activated her superspeed and bolted through the city, feeling a rush of speed that she hadn’t felt since she first started experimenting with her power.

[miss-oscurita]

Typical this would be my twelve thousand five hundredth post on this hellsite haha!

GAH! I am so fuckin’ mad right now I have to write this out. This fuckin’ bitch at work is killing me. We’re trying to sort out this case which I’m obviously not getting into because it’s sensitive info and shit, but basically she’s been dragging her ass on helping to resolve it for fuckin’ weeks. On Friday I spoke to her on the phone (thank merciful fuck that we’re not in the same office) and she offered to email me a copy of the document I needed to progress things on my side....but fuck all arrived! My inbox remained devoid of any contact from her until I’ve just logged into my work email to print something off to find she’d emailed me at like 6pm tonight, two hours after I left fuckin’ work and an hour after the telephone lines to her office close, so I couldn’t have contacted her anyways! In this email from her there’s still no Goddamn attachment that I need or any mention of her promise to send it over to me, instead she’s written to me basically telling me how to do my job and insisting that I have to write to the courts to access some different information that I’m pretty sure she already has, and asking me again for information that I sent her fuckin’ copies of last week, but apparently she’s too dumb or fuckin’ fussy to accept the info as correct! For fuck sake! Like, bitch! Are you deliberately fuckin’ stalling on this shit or what? She’s being so Goddamn pedantic and she’s a nasty piece of work too. I’ve been dealing with her about this case since the end of April and spoken to her on the phone about six times. She’s got the smarmiest voice you’ve ever fuckin’ heard -like straight up baby talk- until you dare to question her and it’s hilarious how her tone drops like three octaves and she gets pissy as fuck. It’s like you can literally hear her chest swelling as she tries to act like tough shit. She does not like me at all, because unlike everyone else in my department, I question her on all the bullshit she tries to sneak past everyone else and raise some issues that she doesn’t know how to respond to. Like the other day, she asking me to tell her the budget report from this family the case relates too, and this is how it went.... Me: ......They spend, four and ten on rent, thirty pounds on gas, electric and water, forty on the telephone bill...and so on” Her: Okay...lemme add this up *puts me on hold forever* So they have 'three hundred quid more than they actually do’ remaining at the end of the month? Me: no....I’ve calculated they’re running into a negative budget which is why they need help...Read me back what figures you have because I don’t know how we’re not agreeing on this. Her: *reads me back inflated figures that I DID NOT GIVE HER* Me: That’s not what I just told you.... Her: Well, our guidelines say we have to costs this much for X, Y, and Z Me: So why did you make me go out and visit this family, spend an hour going through their bills and bank statements with them to get a picture of how bad they’re doing, to then waste fifteen minutes giving you a budget that you’ve completely ignored? Her: Our guidelines say we have to take the national average, the guidelines, the guidelines the guidelines... Me: But the guidelines are telling you a poor family are better off than they are, how is that fair? Her: It’s the guidelines. AAAAAAARGH! FUCK YOU!!!!! *head pops off* Anyway, I’m so fuckin’ mad and frustrated now. Rather than being able to get this sorted on Friday last week, or even yesterday, I’ve now gotta sit on my fuckin’ hands all night and half of the day tomorrow (because I’m out on contact most of the day) before I can get anything done about contacting the people I need to contact to get this ball rolling and on course for the fuckin’ goal posts to FINALLY help this family escape the shit situation they’re caught in. GAH!!! I could strangle this bitch. I need to get this shit put to bed before the end of next week too because I’m leaving to go work at the Deaflympics in fuckin’ Turkey and I’m not going to be spending the time I’m supposed to be working there emailing/calling back to England chasing up shit that should have been resolved fuckin’ weeks ago because of this bitch! Ugh, I need a fuckin’ drink man!

[ealdwic]

At the Top of the Fall | Part I

Pairing - Eventual Dean/Cas (Destiel)

Genre/Warnings - Angst, fluff, songfic-like. Potential smut, but this is so UST that it’s gonna be at the end.

A/N: WIP. Started off as a one-shot, and just got away from me. Featuring drunk TFW, graced-up Cas, and singer-songwriting Cas. Totally canon divergent, but relatively canon-verse. Post-season 11, alternate season 12 shenanigans. Part I It's half past ten at night, and Dean slams the thick volume shut with a sense of finality, dust that’s still long-trapped in the pages flying about before it settles. He yawns so wide that his jaw clicks, and downs his fifth glass of some decent foreign beer that Sam had grabbed them, earlier on in the day. He stands and stretches, catching Sam's eye from across the war-room table in the middle of the room. His back is aching from stiffness, and he needs to give up on reading through their research before his eyes start crossing and stay that way. He doesn’t know how Sam sits for so long. He feels like his joints are made of metal. "Anything good? ‘Cuz I'm about done." Sam gives a hum of disappointment at his lack of progress and shrugs, but he closes his laptop with finality. They're not really getting anywhere fast, so they’ll probably decide to call it a night. They haven't been able to find particularly anything to advance the case towards a resolution, but they'll be traveling to the scene tomorrow, with or without a plan. It’s not a tough job, but there are little facts to go from without seeing the crime scene to fit the reports, so it’s only as much as they can surmise beforehand. It’s oddly unsettling after being on a somewhat extended hiatus from hunting – destroying The Darkness can do that to a person – but they’ve cracked tougher jobs. They all needed the break, but nothing stops the world from spinning; there will always be a job to do, and people to save, and Dean has never been one to sit on the sidelines for long.

 Dean and Sam have both respectively had more than a handful of beers between the two of them, and Dean would much rather just let himself enjoy the short, slow interlude, and the chaos that’s still settling from the last few weeks. Dean is considering grabbing another six pack from the kitchen and suggesting they move to the library. At least there’s couches and comfier spots there if they should continue spilling over annoying research. Cas was indulging alongside them, and it’s been a pleasant surprise considering he’s back to his restored state. With the return of his grace, strengthening slowly over the last month they've had him here and living full-time in the bunker, he’s got an unwavering sobriety that remains, no matter how many beers he has, and it’s a notable contrast to where the two of them are soon to reach half-cut status if they keep going. Dean finds he sort of misses the times when Cas was more human than angel, when he could get nice and sloppy alongside them if they had a drinking night. Dean doesn't know why he keeps eyeing the old, dusty piano that’s nestled just off to the right, tucked away a few feet from the bottom of the bunker’s stairway. Even though it’s a bit of an eyesore and it offends him by throwing off the macho vibe of the whole place, he hadn’t had a say in the decision to make off with the old beast of an instrument. After clearing a particularly nasty curse from the object, the family it had been with for years really didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, and surprisingly, it was Castiel who stole the damn thing, flapping off with it when they were gathering up the last of their weapons and gear, and giving it a new place to rest. It was dusty and decrepit but Cas ended up putting some serious restoration into it over the last few weeks.

 Dean knows Cas has been toying with playing the old thing. He's even heard the trilling notes, here and there, mostly well into the late hours of the last few nights he's taken this sudden, undivided interest in learning it. It’s a foreign concept to hear any type of live music fill somewhere they actively call home, but like all weird quirks that accompany having an angel of the Lord as a piece of your family, it’s just another addition to Cas’ time on the planet. "Can you play that thing yet?" he directs at Cas, and leans back to stretch his back out using the curved chair. "I've heard him plunking away on it. Think you even tuned it, right?" Sam adds. It’s a half-assed way to goad him into action, but it’s also friendly conversation between the three men. It's almost like before, when the three of them could joke and poke fun, Castiel's understanding - or even lack thereof - bringing the moment into a sense of familiarity. It’s a good distraction. Really, they've come full circle, after everything. Either way, Cas is more than used to their sometimes-drunken, probably annoying ways by now, and even if he’s not, Dean’s less than worried over what the guy thinks of him. Considering how many years Cas has been around, it doesn’t seem too easy to shake him off or deter his presence. Dean watches Castiel from across the room as his friend rolls his eyes (a sassy move he’s no doubt picked up from being around them for too long) and wanders over to the quaint white upright instrument, his slender fingers dragging almost hesitantly, carefully across the swell of the keys. It's already uncovered, not that the piano seems to have come with a strip of fabric for protection. It's more of a decoration, at least in Dean's mind, but the piano obviously works, and that’s confirmed as Castiel presses a finger down, compressing the closest key, the soft note trilling out. It's a low sound that resonates through the body of the piano, and Dean can at least attest that the acoustics in the bunker are decent. It carries on a while before fading. "I've learned a little," Cas responds, his voice somewhat contemplative, but he doesn't continue to hover beside it. There’s a moment when something like an idea flickers across his features, but instead, he’s shrugging off the obvious attempt to get him to do something with it. "Not really enough to play." Dean snorts, feeling like there’s more to it, but drops the topic and turns to watch Sam fiddle with his laptop as he opens some movie and hits play. It's a comedy, but Dean's pretty much out of it at this point, riding the high from the alcohol, right on the edge of seriously getting drunk. It's been a long time since they all unwound, even longer since it was together, in the same room, nobody secretly possessed or dying or hiding something, and Dean’s got to wonder what that says about them all. Even Cas has a decent scattering of amber bottles, empty and lined up across the table from where Dean’s still sitting. "I’m burnt. Seriously. Can we get out of here?" Yeah, Dean can see that being fun. He feels like they're entitled to a little downtime, these days. Now that the world isn't ending, for the umpteenth time, what's the harm? Why rush the case? They're going to solve it once the sun comes up anyhow. Dean’s confident about that. "As in, go out?" Sam asks, raising an eyebrow. He doesn’t really look too keen on the idea, but really, neither of them have been outside since they returned to home base after the whole mess with the almost-end-of-the-world stuff that they always seem to be preventing last minute. It’s like they never really want to leave again, all things considered – but Dean is getting a little cabin feverish, and they’ve all been less than admirable company the last two days. "Yeah, you shut-in. Stretch our legs." "Dean, you're drunk. You can't really drive, and I’m not that sober either." Dean just rolls his eyes, as though the answer should be obvious.
"Cas can just mojo us somewhere, dumb-ass. Really, you think I'd drink and drive?" Sam mutters ‘idiot’ under his breath, but it's half hearted, a total force of habit by now. He lifts his gaze, looking at Cas and watching him come to stand beside Dean. He’s quiet, seeming to give it some thought, and Sam can feel a little swell of concern inside as Cas hesitates, even through the hazy screen of beer that has settled over him. Sam pictures Cas wrapped in a ratty, too-thin blanket, his shoulders hunched and his cheeks and eyes hollow, and thinks of Lucifer… thinks of the obvious trauma that oozed from every footstep and every flighty, closed-in look on Cas’ face. It wasn’t so long ago that he had been Lucifer’s puppet, and for Sam, the whole thing is still a messy scab. He can imagine exactly what it’s like for Castiel - what he’s thinking, and he effectively slams the door on that train of thought. "We don't have to. Dean's just pretty much spewing ideas out." Before Dean can smack Sam upside the head or complain about Sam adding in his two cents, Cas is nodding, a slow gesture of approval, and he answers with a hint of defiance in his voice. Sam knows that Cas is fully angel again, and he’s healed up fine – but mentally, well… nobody currently inhabiting this room, including him, has really expressed much desire to go anywhere unless there’s a case that drags them away from the bunker. He notices these things, even if Dean’s too emotionally constipated to talk about any of it at all, Cas easily following suit so he doesn’t set Dean on edge. 
"I’m fine. And it’s doable."

 Dean can't tell whether Cas really wants to do it or not, but he agrees easily enough after mulling it over. It’s something, at least, and he grabs at the opportunity to get outside with a sudden fervor that hasn’t taken him over since before the Amara and Chuck thing came to a head. "Well then, let's go," he says, surprised he’s really feeling up to it. Dean slaps his hands together, sloppy and loud in the war room, and he stumbles a bit as he rises, his boot colliding when he shifts around the table's end. He pops a couple joints in his knuckles, cracking them as he gets the blood flow finally moving, and turns to Cas. "Gimme five minutes." Dean heads to the bathroom to presumably freshen up, at least to change into cleaner clothes and brush his teeth, because they feel fuzzy from the liquor. Sam wanders off to do the same. Waiting for them, Cas replaces Dean in the chair, all the while quietly aware of the warmth Dean has left behind. It's not really something Cas normally notices, but it's been increasingly obvious that, although he's an angel again, there are some aspects of being human he won’t be without ever again. His body is always on the borderline between physical and mental over-stimulation and a buzzing, hyper alertness. He can still catalogue every physical sensation and feeling in an alarmingly acute sense, no longer like before when he was just a soldier (a hammer, he recalls Dean saying once), back before he knew what it was to fall – what it means to feel things on a human level. Some things don't return to the normalcy of that time prior to losing his grace, even the very first time, and he accepts this, feels certain he has made a sort of peace with it. He has spent days and months as a human, even though his many millennia as an angel overtakes the whole time he's been alive, earth time or heavenly time counted. He has noticed that the humanity in him stays at the forefront of his grace, a swirling, ebbing feeling that has become a piece of his soul, much like breathing or sleeping has felt like. Dean and Sam return, and Cas stands up as they approach him. They both look a little less buzzed, and Sam looks awake enough to seem like he truly does want to venture off with them. In contrast to how Castiel used to fly them by placing his fingers to the both of their foreheads, he folds a palm over each of their shoulders as they come to stand on either side. It’s a firm, friendly grip that truly speaks about the history there. They’ve become a personal, maybe even essential component to him, and it’s no longer just a means to transport them out of danger or somewhere necessary. Before they take off, he catches a soft, nervous smile spreading across Dean's face, perhaps amped up by Dean’s excitement at the idea of leaving the bunker and the research behind for a while. Castiel finds he easily returns it.

 He already has a set destination for them in mind, and he focuses on the location, feeling it speed by his senses as he carries them through the vastness of the skies, and down into a controlled trajectory toward the Earth. -- -- -- -- -- --