#it makes zero sense. he is not second in command and has never been called first mate. joining the crew first doesn't make him first mate
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A tragic event when someone makes a mostly good post about Zoro but then says "Zoro does x because he's first mate!" BUT HE'S NOOOOOOOTTTTTT there is no first mate on the strawhat crew and it doesn't influence his actions because that's never been his role I need this misconception to die
#does this matter that much. no. but also it's a pet peeve of mine lmao#it makes zero sense. he is not second in command and has never been called first mate. joining the crew first doesn't make him first mate#the ONLY power structure within the strawhat crew is that luffy is captain. but depending on the situation and the strawhats expertise#one of the other strawhats might be in charge. sometimes that is zoro! often times it is not#he is the swordsman. and also the second strongest on the crew and knows this#thus he works to protect luffy and the other strawhats#maybe this is what people mean when they say first mate in that he steps up to watch the others backs more often. but it also implies#a higher level of command which he doesn't have#i WANT to read people's character analysis of zoro but calling him first mate and ascribing character motivations to it is wild because#it isn't real 😭😭😭#ok i'm done sorry alkfjsdljl
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Kaidan was attracted to Shepard from the very start.
I read that line in the wiki and now I want to talk more about it because it makes so much sense.
He has been alone for so long after jump zero. Rising through the ranks of the military quickly before he could establish a connection with anyone. He mostly kept to himself to stay in control, not risk scaring people off.
Then he meets Shepard, and a wrench is thrown into his plans. He is absolutely awe struck. Emotions he hasn't felt since he was a kid are quickly resurfacing back inside his 32 years old heart. He feels almost embarrassed at how smitten he is.
Eyes glancing at you while you walk around the ship. Kaidan coming with excuses on why he should be at the helm with Joker just because that happened to be where you spend most of your time at, listening to your banter with him and adding a comment every now and then himself, trying to pretend that the sound of your laughter isn't the sweetest music he has ever heard.
A fool in love, he tries so hard to hide it to no avail. So much that even captain Anderson orders you to stay off of the biotics wings unless absolutely necessary just so Kaidan can get his job done without being distracted by the way you're holding that gun handle, fingers delicately holding it as you test it for any imperfection, the way it fits perfectly into your fist and oh god he can't take it anymore.
You had him wrapped around your fingers and the two of you haven't even had a one on one chat yet, the only introduction he ever got from you was when captain Anderson brought him on board and started introducing him to the crew.
"Shepard, come here." Was all his new captain had to say for the most jawdropping gorgeous human that Kaidan has ever seen in his life to walk into the room, posture straight and mesmerising eyes glancing at him for a second before focusing back on the captain.
"This is Commander Shepard, your Commander for the upcoming missions, Lieutenant Alenko."
Kaidan almost fainted when he heard that. Why couldn't you be some cute medic on board or an engineer? At least he might have had a chance then, but now he can't even dream of it unless he disturbs the chain of command.
Although, the thought of calling you "Ma'am" or "Sir" stirs something inside him. A part he never realised about himself before and wow is that military uniform really working for you, he never thought they made them that tight, or is it your body that can make even a potato sack look this enticing?
"Lieutenant?" Your voice finally came out after Kaidan just stood there, dumbly staring, too in his mind to remember to introduce himself or at least give a salute.
He sutters out his name, trying to keep his cool and clearing his throat.
Your voice was the killshot in all of this, the deepness of it that he felt he could drown in. The way you spoke each word carefully, the hint of danger, the authority it resonated in everyone who heard it.
Kaidan was down bad, the idea of that same voice ordering him around has blood rushing to his face. Wasn't it for his immense self control, he wouldn't have been able to continue on.
#☆Kaidan#☆fluff#☆suggestive#mass effect#mass effect x reader#kaidan x shepard#kaidan x reader#kaidan alenko#☆shepard reader#nb!shepard#non binary shepard
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Seven Snippets | Seven People
Both @winterandwords & @words-after-midnight tagged me in this one so here we go! Thanks for tagging me and giving me something fun to do on my lunch break! I took all of these from Arc 1 for a change.
1.
[context: Hannah is currently invisible ] “Do you need to put some clothes on?” Gareth asked. “You can’t bring a weapon like that." She smiled even though she knew they couldn’t see it. “I got it covered.” She went through her clothes in a pile on the backseat and pulled out a small box of razor blades. She held one up, turning it to catch the light and then fit it in her mouth between her teeth and cheek. Once it was in her mouth it would be invisible like the rest of her. “I’m not gonna lie,” Gareth sighed, “that’s gonna stress me out.”
2.
Marek del Sol couldn’t shake the, frankly true, thought that he wouldn’t have had to deal with this if he were still working in the Chicago Office. It was a selfish thought and he knew it but if he were still heading up the Uranus department of SolCorp’s Chicago branch when this whole Venus missing babies crisis hit, he would have been floored by it emotionally, obviously, but it would have fallen to the folks at SolCorp’s shiny Los Angeles Headquarters to manage the details of the fallout. Now here he was in LAHQ, promoted to one of Uranus’ top five ranked officers, Second in command no less, and it was very much his problem.
3.
“You know that assignment in Tokyo you’ve been dreading because you have no appreciation for culture?” Grace narrowed her eyes at the playful teasing. “I like culture just fine--it’s just too friggin’ hot in Tokyo this time of year. Send me someplace cold and I’ll just add layers with zero complaints but it’s not like I can remove my skin.” “Well, it’s been canceled.” “Oh.” She sat back and cringed. “What’s the bad news?” “I’m going to need you to step up and take on a higher workload after I go under.” Grace’s eyes widened. “Ma'am, I’m sure I could figure out a way to remove my skin if you give me like fifteen minutes.”
4.
“Do you know what they call people who need to get drunk after a mission in Mars? Gone soggy. Because they’ve been in too long and they should probably retire from the field.” He flicked a bottle cap off the edge of the porch. “Mars is crazy. You know that, right? They’ve got a weird-ass little culture of their own.” “All the departments do.”
5.
“I noticed,” Rich muttered beside him, “that you canceled our meeting for tomorrow.” Here we go. “I’m not dealing with that until after this crisis is over,” he replied as firmly as he could. That tone of voice tended to end a conversation, but Rich didn’t feel the same sense of deferment that others did. Neptune was maybe the one department head that was more intimidating than Mercury, and Rich had held the position for a long time.
6.
“Do you have a scope?” Reeve asked her. One huge benefit to being invisible is that she didn’t need to school her face when someone said something as absolutely stupid as that. “Are you asking if the sniper has a scope?” “I mean a spotting scope.” “Does the sniper have a--whatever, yes, here.” She handed it off. She started to get her rifle out but thought better of it and went over to make sure Reeve didn’t break it.
7.
“Reeve talked about Sol’s big thing. What does Entropy do?” “I don’t know.” “What do you mean you don’t know?” “They never told me.” Alex gave him his least impressed look. “They never told you.” Gareth’s face tensed up. “You got a look at what it’s like there. Would you piss those people off by pestering them with questions?” “You obviously don’t know me yet, because hell yes I would.” He pointed the screwdriver at him. “I’m pestering you, aren’t I?”
Phew! Now I gotta tag 7 people so here we go: @hon3yquill @imbrisvastatio @lettiekorywrites @writerrelapse @thatndginger @kjscottwrites & @fictionalbullshitter - no pressure tagging of course. Not 100% sure if all you folks are into tag games but I tried to keep it to people who are down.
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It’s in the Blood, It’s in the Will
A/N: This takes place directly after my previous fic in this series After All is Said and Done but you shouldn't have to read that for this too make sense. I am loving all the headcanons that Ratchet is going to be super pissed that Bumblebee didn't check the Terran's energon levels till they were near zero! I really hope we get to see Ratchet properly in the show outside of the flashback! With Megatron having defected, I think it also make total sense for Drift to appear too! I tried something a little differently here with an almost outsiders POV with Robby so let me know what you guys think. Hope you enjoy!
Ao3
By the time Robby heard the car's engine it was too late.
He was struggling to hold back laughter as Mum tried to show Optimus how to change the wallpaper on his phone so that she could send him the picture she'd snapped of Bumblebee sleeping snuggled against his side. Robby had no idea how Bumblebee was able to sleep over the shouts of his siblings playing hot potato (or hot cube as the Cybertronians called it) in the cow field next door. Which was probably why he didn't hear the car coming until it was parked right outside the barn.
In the split second it took Robby to wonder why an ambulance was at their house when no humans had been hurt that badly during the battle with Mandroid, the vehicle had already transformed into a twenty foot tall robot.
It wasn't a Transformer Robby had met before, nor was it one he recognised from TV.
"Er hi?" Robby said but the robot didn't appear to have heard him. Instead it marched straight towards Megatron who was perched on the grass opposite the barn. At the sight of the ambulance heading his way, Megatron clutched the battered remains of his arm and turned to glare in Optimus' direction.
"You called Ratchet?" Megatron hissed.
Optimus ignored him, pretending to be too engrossed in his phone.
The bot, who was apparently called Ratchet, paid the interaction no mind and produced an oversized wrench from who knows where and whacked Megatron over the head with it.
"I know your helm is as thick as a dinobot's tail but can you at least try to think next time before you try to use your fusion canon when your arm is half fallen off! Now sit!" Ratchet shouted.
Robby waited with baited breath for Megatron to start blasting but despite his scowl, the former Deception followed the orders without question, which even after everything that happened, was probably the most surprising thing Robby had seen that day.
He'd never seen Megatron follow orders that quietly before. Even with Optimus he usually had a sparky remark or two.
Who was this Ratchet? Judging by the way he was currently fixing Megatron's arm, Robby assumed he was some kind of Cybertronian equivalent of a doctor. And with his Mum's non-repulsed eye roll and Dad's silent freak out, even if Robby didn't know who this bot was, he was fairly certain his parents did.
That was when the second car arrived.
It must've been following right behind Ratchet although with everything that had happened in the last minute, it felt longer to Robby.
It too transformed from a flashy race car to a giant robot. His armour was a pristine white with swirls of red and yellow. Two swords larger then Robby's entire body were strapped to his waist with another across his back. But they weren't half as terrifying as the Deception logo tattooed across their chest.
Before Robby could cry out, his Mum was already standing in front of him, blaster poised to strike.
"Stand down Mrs Malto." Optimus said, in that gentle but commanding tone Robby recognised from his speeches on TV. "This is Drift. He has now switched allegiances to the Autobots."
"Funny, because last time we met, he was a Deception assassin called Deadlock." Mum snarled.
Robby noticed that his Dad had taken up a similar protective stance in front of the Terrans who had abandoned their game to watch the unfolding scene.
"My allegiance was not the only thing I changed." Drift said, hands raised in the universal sign of surrender, although he didn't sound to be that bothered by his Mum's blaster.
"Well who are you then?" Mum demanded, reluctantly holstering her weapon under Optimus' watchful eye.
"I'm Ratchet's conjux." The Deception stated with a soft smile that didn't match the rest of the walking arsenal.
"What's a conjux?" Hashtag asked, taking the question from Robby's mouth.
"What do you mean what's a conjux?" Ratchet scoffed as he finished welding Megatron's arm back together. "What are you, a bunch of spark-"
Ratchet glanced away from Megatron's injury taking his first real look at the plainly armoured bots around him. His eyes widen before suddenly flashing white. "Sparklings? You found sparklings! AND YOU DIDN'T CALL ME?"
Ratchet's thunderous voice left Robby wobbling on his feet and woke Bumblebee up with a start.
The glare Optimus sent in Rachet's direction did little to deter to doctor's tirade. Megatron was the only one who appeared happy, relieved that the doctor's ire was no longer focused on him.
"Please tell me you at least gave them a routine check up!"
"Errr..." Bumblebee replied eloquently, still sounding half asleep.
Ratchet tssked, a sound Robby had no idea how a robot could make without any teeth.
"Why do I always have to do everything?" Ratchet grumbled to himself. A ray of blue light spread over the nearby Terrans, making them giggle as he presumably took a scan. Whatever he saw on the results made his eyebrows disappear beneath his helmet. "Their energon levels are all below ten percent! How are they even still alive?"
"It's okay they don't need energon." Bumblebee told him, sounding more awake now.
"And you know this how?"
"Because they might have nearly collapsed of it- but then it was okay because we discovered that they just need Earth water to survive!" Bumblebee replied quickly, leaning more into Optimus with every word as though he could hide under the Prime's armour.
"Oh and you know this in your expert medical opinion do you?" Ratchet retorted, his armour plating shaking to the point Robby was worried that the friction would set it on fire. It was a sight Robby suddenly recognised from his own parents when their anger at him doing something particularly stupid was an explosion of their terrified concern.
"Ratty, remember your fuel line pressure. Take deep vents." Drift said, gently squeezing the crook of Ratchet's elbow.
Robby heard the doctor grumble something about where his conjunx could shove his fuel line pressure, but he did take a reluctant deep breath. It rattled the plates of his armour like the brittles of a cats fur, seemingly settling Ratchet enough that he no longer looked liked he was about to spontaneously combust. Sighing, he produced what looked to Robby like sticks made out of rust from his seams, holding them out towards the Terrans.
"Here. These should get your energon levels up. But don't eat too many at once. My days of cleaning up sparkling vomit are long over."
For some reason those words only made Bumblebee sink against Optimus even further.
Robby watched as his metallic siblings take tentative bites of the rust sticks. He had to stifle a laugh as all too soon they were gobbling them up like kids with candy on Halloween.
"Yes well thank you for your assistance Ratchet." Optimus said diplomatically. "But it must be a longer drive back home for you and Drift, so we'd best let you get on your way."
"Oh you're not getting rid of me that easily Prime! I'm staying here to keep an optic on these sparklings." Ratchet stated.
"And where Ratchet goes, I go." Drift declared from his side. Robby almost missed the twitch of a smile Ratchet sent in his conjux's direction. But he was glad he didn't. As it showed that underneath the medic's sharp exterior, was a spark that cared about the bots around him. Even if he was willing to offend their feelings to protect their physical wellbeing.
"Can we keep them Mum, please?" Robby begged, utilising his best puppy dog eyes.
She shared a quick look with her husband with was pointless since Robby knew his Dad would be over the moon at the idea more transformers staying with them. Sure enough, his Dad was jumping up and down like an excitable puppy.
"We're going to need a bigger barn." His Mum sighed.
#earthspark#ratchet#dratchet#drift#deadlock#transformers#transformers earthspark#tfe#robby malto#megatron#optimus prime#bumblebee#mo malto#dot malto#dorothy malto#alex malto#hashtag#twitch#thrash#nightshade#jawbreaker#ratchet x drift#fanfiction#fanfic
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Something More (Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader)
pairing: aaron hotchner x fem!reader
summary: Written as a request for the loml, Abby! (@heliotropehotch!) "Could I have a hotch x reader request thats got a love confession- maybe a hurt comfort scene where the reader is maybe torn up about something like self deprecation or some cop makes an off-handed compliment and he cups her cheeks and wipes the tears away? Pretty please 🥺"
word count: 3.2k
includes: love confessions! hurt/comfort, protective!hotch, mutual pining!!!, kissing, a little teaser of sexytimes, work tension, BAU!reader, crying and other emotions, rude af deputies, fluff soooo much fluff
rating: 18+ (cursing, crude nicknames, suggestive sexual mentions, and brief explicit sexual content at the very end)
a/n: HELLO BESTIES! I hope you love this one! If you want a smutty part two, let me know. PLS (!!!!!) interact if you liked this fic; rb, comment, like and/or send me a request if you have ideas for future fics! i love y’all! - rivka💞
some pals tags: @arsonhotchner @laurensprentiss @mrsh0tchner @ssahotchie
“It’s time to give the profile,” Hotch announces.
Six words. One sentence. Zero hesitation.
“Go and gather everybody in the bullpen,” he directs Spencer, who nods and quietly exits the conference room to collect your team and the rest of the Sherrif’s department of this small, Wisconsin town.
You stand on the opposite side of the table from your boss, looking at him expectantly. Hotch meets your gaze. His tongue darts out from between his lips as he glares at you from beneath thick lashes. You wait for your instructions, but the instructions don’t come. Rather, you both stand there in a staring contest, unmoving.
You can’t help but feel bare under his scrutiny, but this feeling is nothing new. Every time Hotch looks at you, it feels as if every fibre of your being is on fire. It’s been this way since the very first day you started with the BAU, and, over time, the flame has only burned brighter.
You and Hotch have grown close over the two years you’ve been with the team: closer than he’s been with any of his other agents, even Rossi. It all started with one long night spent together in his office, sharing cold Chinese food, scribbling away at mountains of paperwork. It was then, sitting across the desk from him, laughing at his incredulous reaction when he dropped some Lo Mein on an After-Action Report, that you knew: you were in deep. From then on, your Chinese food office “dates” became a regular occurrence. And then, those regular occurrences transformed into other regular occurrences; to name a few: rides on the jet, side by side, sharing soft glances and tired smiles after hard cases… holding hands to comfort each other when emotionally vulnerable… and even bringing you your favourite coffee on mornings that you’ve needed an extra boost. All these little moments of kindness and care are what made you fall in love with him. You would cross the line from coworkers to more in a heartbeat if you knew for certain that he felt the same way about you. But you refuse to take a risk on losing what you currently have with Hotch for the chance at something more.
The way that Hotch looks at you now, tall and commanding, feels very much like something more… it’s incredibly intimate. He’s effectively stripped away all the layers of protection you’ve built up to do your job with one pointed glance. What you don’t know is that he too feeling the same way, and is toeing a line between being your boss, being your friend, and being your “something more.”
Hotch breathes out hard through his nose. You watch as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he does. His jaw ticks. He shifts on his feet.
“I want you to sit this one out,” he says.
“Hotch?” You question, puzzled. Nothing about this day has prepared you for him to say that. You start racking your brain, trying to figure out why he would give you such a ridiculous order. Did you piss him off somehow? Did you play-flirt with Morgan too much in the car? Overlook an important lead? Did he not like the coffee you made him this morning?
Looking over at him, you swear he almost looks conflicted… but it doesn’t last.
“This is not up for debate. Do you understand me? You’re sitting this one out.” He repeats, steadfast.
“I don’t understand, what did I do wrong?” You ask more defensively this time, wishing he would give you more information. Something, anything besides the “SSA Aaron Hotchner” routine he was pulling on you now.
“I never said you did anything wrong.” Hotch moves forward a step, finally breaking eye contact, opting to gather files and loose papers into his arms.
“So, then what it is?” You cross your arms, stepping forwards as well, challenging him with your posture.
He doesn’t respond, nor does he look at you. Instead, he lumps more files into his arms before rounding the table, moving swiftly toward the door.
You have never, ever disobeyed one of his orders because his orders have always made sense… until now.
“Hotch,” you say sternly, your stubborn feet moving to stand between him and the exit before your logical brain can stop you.
He’s practically up against you, cornering you between his solid body and the old wooden door. His height dominates your shorter frame, and the heat coming off his body is positively criminal. Your heart flutters in your chest as he stares you down, calculating his next move.
“Out of my way, Agent Y/L/N.” He breathes out, tensing his jaw.
“Fine,” you stutter, “just tell me why and then I’ll let you go.” Your confidence wavers as you’re a little taken aback by his official use of your title and last name.
You’re hurt, confused… and he knows this. No matter how hard you’re putting on your tough-girl FBI face, Hotch can see right through it. He knows this order is unjustified, but he has his own reasons: reasons that he can’t get into. Not now.
Hotch lets his eyes dart to the side, past your head, not daring to look you in the eyes. He wills himself to be gentle.
“I can’t tell you, but I need you to trust me. Sit this one out.” He verbalizes, looking at you a little softer now. His face relaxes a little more into the Hotchner you’ve come to know: the one who calls his son every night to read a bedtime story, the one who grins every time you beat him in chess.
You two stand there a moment longer, your heart racing from the heat of the quarrel and your current proximity to your Unit Chief.
Hotch opens his mouth to say something else, but a knock on the door behind you stops him in his tracks. You step aside and he whips open the door; a very apologetic Spencer stands behind it.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Spencer says, clearing his throat awkwardly, “but everyone is ready in the bullpen.”
“Thank you,” Hotch nods, stepping forward to leave, but you grab a hold of his arm.
“Hotch,” you begin, not entirely sure what you want to say.
“Later,” he answers, finishing the unspoken thought.
With that, he’s out the door and you’re left alone with only stale coffee and a bunch of disorganized files to keep you company.
You close the door behind them with a sigh, letting yourself rest against it again, closing your eyes for a moment in defeat. Three days on this case. Three days of hard work, interviews, and research just to get benched in the end zone. You wish that you didn’t love Hotch, because maybe if you didn’t, it would be easier to disobey him. Opening your eyes again, you scan the quiet room. Then, something in front of you catches your eye and you get an idea.
On the table rests one of the precinct’s phones. It is all too easy to use the conference feature to listen in on one of the other phone lines: specifically, one in the bullpen.
You grin and rush over to the device, feeling a little bit sheepish for not listening to Hotch, but you push the buttons anyway, and bring the receiver up to your ear.
At first, all you hear is the shuffling of papers and muffled voices. You take a seat, leaning back in your chair like the cat who caught the canary. Several more moments pass of bureaucratic white noise, but then, someone speaks.
“Where’s the slutty one?” A male voice whispers.
“Oh, Agent Y/N? Probably on her knees somewhere waiting for her boss to come back.” A second male voice snickers back, matching the volume of the first.
You gasp, the phone slipping out of your hand, landing on the table with a loud thunk.
Scrambling, you grab it again, your other hand coming to rest over your open mouth.
“Don’t know why he wouldn’t let us use her as bait. This whole case could’ve been wrapped up and done by now if we just stuck her in a skimpy dress and shoved her out on the street.” One of them muses.
“Obviously because he’s sleeping with her.” The other mutters. “Agent Hotchner looked like he was going to take your head off when you asked him about it. Thought he was going to deck you for suggesting disguising her as a hooker to lure this guy out.”
“Yeah, he did. She looks like the victims, though. Bet she’s a whore like them too.”
“Deputies, we’re starting.” You hear a third voice pipe up. This time it’s one you recognize: it’s Hotch. “This is your final warning. I don’t want to hear another word out of you for the rest of the day. Not only is this wildly inappropriate, but it is insulting and vile. If I hear either of you speak about, look at, or interact with Agent Y/N, I will make sure you are both charged with harassment and fired from this department. Is that clear?”
With that, your eyes nearly pop out of your head. The deputies mumble something back, but you can’t hear over the sound of papers rustling.
Stunned, you set the phone back in its holder and force air into your lungs.
Waves of thoughts come crashing down on you. You have so many questions and so many answers and it’s all just… too much.
Suddenly, you know that you need to be anywhere but here.
You stand, shoving the chair aside and burst out of the conference room, fuming. You power-walk down the hall, and past the bullpen, focused on getting yourself outside and into the fresh air. Understandably, you don’t look up as you pass the profile briefing, so you don’t see Hotch’s brow furrow at the sight of you. You also don’t see him hand his papers to JJ, excuse himself, and race to follow you out the front door.
Once you’re outside in the parking lot, you look up at the cloudy, grey sky, and the tears start to fall. You feel guilty and angry; part of you wants to run away and cry, but the other part of you wants to walk straight up to those men and kick them straight in the dick. They not only called you vile names, but they also called the victims – those poor, dead women – the same. You sniffle, thinking about how Hotch stepped in and protected you, stood up for you.
Hotch… the thought of him makes you cry a little harder.
You start to pace around, kicking gravel as you went.
Were you that obvious? Was your crush so rampant that two low-level deputies in the middle of nowheresville picked up that easily on how you really felt about your boss?
“Fuck you two,” you curse under your breath to nobody as you choke back sobs. You kick a large piece of gravel as hard and as far as you can, but it doesn’t help.
“Are you okay?” A voice prods from behind you, gently, hesitantly, as if not to spook you. It’s a curt baritone, laced with concern. It’s Hotch.
“Hotch,” you breathe, turning to face him, furiously wiping tears away from your eyes.
“What happened?” He frowns, stepping closer to you, a comforting hand reaching forward to take yours.
Any other day you would grasp it contently, letting him console you. Today? All you can hear are the deputy’s comments. Sleeping with her. Whore. On her knees. You’re embarrassed and ashamed, so, you involuntarily step back.
“It’s nothing,” you put your hands up, looking down at your feet.
“Y/N,” Hotch says, his heart pounding in his chest.
You look back up, locking on his beautiful, angular face. You see every feature clouded in a haze of sorrow and concern.
You know you must swallow your pain and try to get it out. He wasn’t about to let you off easy.
“You… they… I…” you begin, but never finish your sentence. Instead, you start to cry again.
Wordlessly, Hotch moves to cup your face in his hands. They’re large and slightly calloused, encasing your cheeks as his thumbs gently swipe away the tears. His soft eyes search your watery ones; despite your better instinct, you bring your hands up to rest on his chest. You feel his breathing hitch. One of his hands moves from your face to cover your smaller hand against his chest. The two of you stay there, just like that, for another handful of heartbeats. You focus on his hands and how warm and safe they make you feel. Soon enough, you stop crying and gather the courage to speak.
“I heard them.” You whisper, not trusting yourself to say another word. You know that Hotch knows exactly who “them” is, and exactly what it is that you’ve heard.
His brow creases and his hand grips yours tighter. He cleans another tear off your cheek, and then lets that hand down to ball in a fist at his side.
“I’m going to kill them.” Hotch states, furious and heartbroken.
“Me first.” You sniffle.
Your boss sighs, giving you a heartfelt look. Leave it to you to make a joke at a time like this.
“I told them this morning that if I ever heard them say another thing about you, I was going to have their badges. I should’ve kicked them off this case hours ago.” He huffs, closing his eyes, letting his other hand, the one that was covering yours, drop down to his side.
You know this look all too well. You know he’s blaming himself.
“It’s not your fault,” you offer, smoothing your hands over his chest to settle on his upper arms. “Hotch, look at me.”
He doesn’t at first, but eventually, he opens his eyes. His hands open and close at his sides, as if he’s fighting them to be still.
“I’m sorry.” He breathes out. “For everything. For handling this how I did.”
“I’m not.” You chime in, feeling braver, calmer now that you’re here with him. Your comment earns a quizzical glance and a slight head tilt from Hotch, urging you to go on. “You stood up for me. You honoured me. You respected me. You protected me. You –“
With a fierce momentum, your next sentence is swallowed by Hotch’s lips pressing into yours. His hands come up to rest on your hips, and then circle around your waist to pull you closer. He’s warm and soft and intense; you whimper into the kiss, moving your hands to rest on the back of his neck and card in his hair. The kiss is over far too soon for your liking, both of you needing to pull back and inhale.
Hotch looks at you with heavy eyes, hands gripping your hips. He smells like coffee and pine, with a hint of something spicier. Everything about him is overwhelming yet grounding.
“Finally,” you whisper, hands clasped around his neck. “It’s about damn time.”
“It is,” is all he musters, still dazed by the audacity of his own actions.
“Aaron?” You lick your lips, feeling his hands squeeze you tight at your use of his first name.
“Yeah?” He can’t help but start to smile, showing off his adorable dimples and crinkled lines around his eyes.
“I love you; do you know that?” You say in earnest.
Aaron giggles, giggles at your confession, and then attacks your lips again, making you yelp at the surprise. His lips detach from yours only to pepper kisses on your tear-stained cheeks, jaw, and forehead.
“I love you too,” he breathes out, giddier than you’ve ever seen him. He looks like a kid in a candy shop, and it makes your heart leap into your throat.
Just then, a car beeps on the road, startling you two. You’re suddenly reminded where you are, and why you’re here. The thought of having to go back inside makes you groan, and you bury your head into his chest for a moment. He hums into your hair, planting a kiss on the top of your head.
Reluctantly, you pull yourself off his chest to look up at him.
“Forget about them,” you say, “go finish giving the profile so we can close this case and get the hell out of this town so you can take me home and show me how much you love me.” You smile at him, pulling him in for another, lighter kiss.
He grins against your lips, meeting you for another smooch.
“Yes ma’am,” Hotch replies, giving you a kiss on the tip of your nose.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three months later, you and Aaron are coming down from your highs, sweaty and blissed-out after an amazing lovemaking session. After the team wrapped up the case and made it back to Virginia in one piece, you and Hotch went out to dinner the next night. He took you to dine in at the Chinese restaurant that you both usually ordered from on those nights you both spent pining and yearning in his office. It was… perfect. He was perfect. Just as your friendship had blossomed, so did your relationship. One date led to another, one gesture turned into more, and you and Aaron settled into life as a couple with ease. You hadn’t brought up the incident with the deputies since it had happened the afternoon that Hotch had followed you out to the parking lot to wipe away your tears.
Now, as you lay in his arms, wrapped in his strong, loving, embrace, your mind wanders back to their words. However, you don’t feel animosity toward them, rather it makes you giggle.
“What’s so funny hot stuff?” Aaron cracks open an eye and smiles down at you. One arm is tucked underneath his head, and the other is tracing patterns on the bare skin of your shoulder.
“Oh, just that case we had in Wisconsin a few months back.” You nuzzle deeper into his chest with another laugh.
Hotch frowns, recalling the memory, thinking about the way those awful men spoke about you.
“How is that funny?” He asks, hesitantly.
“They called me a whore.” You say nonchalantly, peering innocently into his amber eyes. You bring your palm up to swipe across his cheek softly, feeling the light stubble of his jaw underneath your fingertips.
Both of his eyes are open now, and his hand motions cease their patterns on your skin. He’s confused, and the face he’s giving you is downright adorable. It makes you giggle again.
You detach yourself from his grasp and sit yourself up, carefully shimmying down the bed. Aaron’s eyes never leave you.
You nestle yourself between his legs and look up at him with a smirk.
“They were partially right.” You offer, studying the small changes in his face, watching as his eyes glaze over with lust for the second time that night.
“I am a whore.” You pout suggestively and flutter your eyelashes. “A whore for you, Hotch.”
He shakes his head at you in amusement and chuckles, but it quickly turns into a deep, throaty moan as you wrap your lips around the tip of him.
As you start to bob your head on his already hardening length, you think to yourself: as much as I hate to say it... someone should really give those two deputies a raise.
#aaron hotchner fanfiction#aaron hotch imagine#aaron hotchner#aaron hotchner x reader#hotch#aaron hotchner x female reader#aaron hotchner x you#criminal minds x reader#criminal minds#criminal minds fanfiction#hotch x reader#aaron hotchner fanfic#aaron hotch hotchner#criminal minds fandom#my fics#rb!!!!!! ily!!!!!!!!!#ivyheliotrope#abby!#aaron hotch
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Ohgi's insecurity and Lelouch's distrust explained through the enneagram.
I would like to one day produce a comprehensive and extensive analysis addressing the betrayal of the Black Knights since I manage a Code Geass Facebook page and have noticed that most of the Hispanic anime fans don’t understand why the Black Knights betrayed Lelouch . Even in the Anglo-Saxon fandom I have seen opinions from people who attribute this to an error within the narrative and it is not. The Black Knights' betrayal was a meticulously planned chain of events that led to that unique outcome. But what can we do? Most of the Code Geass fanbase are Lelouch fanboys who will automatically hate anyone who opposes him without first putting themselves in their shoes and analyzing the situation.
Although this publication won’t be the analysis that I have pending because I don’t have enough time to elaborate it and, in addition, I need to return to the anime to point out each of Lelouch's mistakes (I left it in chapter 10 of R1), I’m going to talk about two crucial issues that came together to give us the betrayal of episode 19 of R2 and that no one speaks or notices, not even those who did understand the movement of the Black Knights and those are the insecurity of Ohgi (who plays the role of Judas/Pedro) and the distrust of Lelouch (who would be our false Messiah). Don't worry if you think I'm being superficial. There is a lot of evidence throughout the episodes and this is something that I must return to when writing the analysis. This would be an appetizer that will help me when that time comes.
1. Ohgi
The first time I saw Code Geass, it caught my attention that Lelouch commanded other terrorists to confront his sister and the subsequent visits I still didn't understand. Until I rewatched Chapter 6 and caught a glimpse of a detail that had previously been overlooked.
Context: After Cornelia decimates numerous rebel strongholds, including a large one called Samurai Blood, in search of Zero, Ohgi contacts him to update him and express his concerns. Lelouch tells him to calm down and emphasizes that they would refrain from taking any action for now. Without further ado, he hangs up on her and thinks about what you can see in the image (”Maybe I should cut ties with them”). Lelouch finds Ohgi's attitude annoying and considers breaking ties with his resistance cell since he is realizing that they are depending a lot on him (and Lelouch prefers to distance himself). Hence, in the next episode, he establishes a connection with other terrorists.
With this brief scene, Ohgi's eneatype is more than confirmed: he is a Enneatype Six. What I mean by this? That his problem isn’t that he lacks the skills and qualities as his haters claim. Otherwise, then, it wouldn’t make sense for Zero to assign him as Vice Commander (which is the second in command) to an incompetent.
His problem is his great insecurity. I began to suspect that he was a Six when, after Tamaki tells him that things would have been better if he was in charge and leaves Ohgi alone, he wails with a photo of Kallen's brother telling him that he is not like him in the sense that he is a good leader. I mean, Ohgi is agreeing with Tamaki to a certain extent. (Of course, as if Tamaki knows what he's talking about, since he's an extremely competent guy in his field...)
Hence, he has no problem giving up the position to Lelouch, whom he judges to be a better leader (in fact, he himself reminds Lelouch in R1 episode 10 that he asked him to become his leader). And this is the essential problem of the Six. The emotional wound of Sixes is precisely their lack of self-confidence and, since they can’t trust themselves, they cling like ticks to people they consider more capable than themselves and for the same reason they can turn against those people, because they can't trust others either and Ohgi never fully trusted Zero, even when the Black Knights' suspicions were allayed with Taizo Kiririhara's approval, Ohgi kept trying to find out more of Zero's secrets. That's why he took Villetta in episode 14 of R1. Not only was it a Good Samaritan act, but because she mentioned Zero's name and he figured she knew something about him (in fact, you can see he doesn't trust her at first either because he watches her through a camera system he set up in his own house).
In my opinion, I find it funny that this is his enneatype since then it would be another literal case. Sixes are the most contradictory personality type in the Enneagram. They are the most loyal personality and in turn is the most treacherous (I think we can all tell Ohgi with those traits).
Character arcs typically revolve around overcoming their injuries in order to bring out the version of themselves, and Ohgi is no exception: he has to learn to trust himself in order to be the leader the Order of the Black Knights need and, by extension, to be able to restore their homeland to its freedom.
“Ohgi, don't you trust me?”
2. Lelouch
“Live with me or die with me.”
This image is taken from R1 episode 10 just like the one before that. What happened here? I will refresh your memory.
Diethard learns from Villetta and Jeremiah that Cornelia's squad and Cornelia herself are going on a hike in the Narita Mountains. Diethard, who is no fool, soon adds two plus two and understands that the purpose of the journey is to find the headquarters of the Japan Liberation Front and annihilate it (I remind you that the Japan Liberation Front is the resistance group largest area of Area 11 and Cornelia set herself the task of destroying all the rebel strongholds in this area). Diethard immediately passes this information to the Black Knights with a view to being recruited (since then the Black Knights were expanding their numbers). Lelouch, who is also very perceptive, interprets this as the opportunity he has been waiting for to question his sister about her mother's death. But does he tell the Black Knights that they are going to Narita to fight Cornelia's army? Absolutely! He literally tells them that they are going for a walk through Narita (Ohgi was able to get an idea of the purpose of that walk since he read the information from Diethard and Kallen, in the same way could guess since she heard what Ohgi communicated to Zero, however, Zero didn’t share his plans with them).
"Even messiahs have to perform miracles to be recognized as such"
I remind you that by this point in the plot, Zero and the Black Knights had faced terrorists, corrupt politicians, abusive soldiers, abusive corporations, and criminal syndicates. That is, they hadn’t faced Britannia. This was to be his first battle (with all its warlike implications). So the Black Knights, who thought they had gone to train, found out that they were going to face Cornelia's army right there, just a few minutes after the confrontation took place. For added finishing touch, Zero leads his troops to a point where they are surrounded by Cornelia's Sutherlands (this is to cut off all escape routes for the Japan Liberation Front). In other words, he deliberately dragged them into a blind alley, taking advantage of their ignorance.
Are you understanding the circumstances surrounding this battle? It's cloudy!
"Since you joined the Black Knights, you have two choices: live with me or die with me." This on the surface sounds epic, but, at the same time, it's pretty fucked up: Zero/Lelouch isn't giving the Black Knights a chance. Either they fight alongside him to survive, or they die together.
Now then, why was Zero not straight with the Black Knights from the start? What was the need to hide information from them? This is a specific situation. However, if we evaluate other situations a posteriori, Zero/Lelouch always handled all of his affairs with great secrecy. Let's go further, how much did it cost you to reveal his identity? Or why he didn't tell them about the Geass? (You don't have to answer me, just think about the questions). I understand that he would hide from the rest of the world, but why from his men? Was he afraid that they would mistrust his intentions? Did he think they would refuse to work with a Britannian prince who has a magic eye? Did he imagine they were going to desert?
“Weaks?”
The truth is that we could think of a lot of answers in an attempt to find a logic behind Lelouch/Zero's actions. But all the answers show a serious problem between the lines: Lelouch doesn’t trust the Black Knights.
Why? What reasons have the Black Knights given for Lelouch to distrust them? If it is the opposite case, we can list facts and concrete data that show why the Black Knights don’t trust Zero/Lelouch. Not so with Zero/Lelouch. He has no well-founded reasons. These people were transparent with Zero from minute one: they explained his discomfort and what he had to do to make them trust him. (Should the Black Knights be grateful to Zero/Lelouch? No, Larry, it is Lelouch who should be grateful to them because, despite his doubts and the little trust that Lelouch placed in them, the Black Knights followed him and believed in him).
So where does this suspicion come from? It’s an internal problem for Lelouch derived from his childhood traumas.
For those who don't know, the Enneagram is a complex system of personalities that divides them mainly into nine types, based on the theory that our personalities began as coping strategies that we acquired as children to feel safe in the face of trauma and avoid pain and stress, so that our personality can function as armor to protect us from outside threats and that even today said armor dictates how we should react to situations and even how we interact with our fellow men.
Lelouch is an enneatype 8. People who fit this personality type at some point in their childhood felt that they were unprotected by their parents. As a result of this traumatic event, these people have a terrible fear of being hurt, controlled and dominated by others; because they internalized that it wasn’t good to be weak and that they had to be tough and strong to fight and survive. Consequently, these people built a shell to face the injustices of the horrible world and protect themselves from others. Hence, these people have a tendency to want to dominate situations and people. I came to read that 8 people aren’t good teammates because they are naturally suspicious and feel more comfortable being in control of situations because they fear and hate being subject to the will of others. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me after reading that they would rather control and use people than trust them. Does this ring a bell?
Sounds like Lelouch's Geass to me. We literally have a scene from Charles and little Lelouch in which the father tells him that he and Nunnally are to blame for his misfortun because being weak and, from that point on, if he didn't consider it a problem before, now he does (commercial: I analyzed the roots of Lelouch's trauma together with Suzaku through the enneagram, if this goes well I can upload my analysis here)
For me (and any good understanding of the Enneagram and who has seen Code Geass): Lelouch's Geass is the manifestation of his ego's unconscious behavior patterns and his unconscious fear. Remember that Geass works differently for each person.
Although Lelouch rejects the Britannian ideology openly, he unconsciously assimilated it very well and in situations like these his cognitive bias comes to light (oh, the contradictions! Human beings wouldn’t be human beings without contradictions). I mean, other people can be vulnerable and that's okay. Instead, Lelouch can't allow himself to be vulnerable because that wouldn't be right. (It's somewhat curious.
(Code Geass is an apology for the Enneatype 8, since its protagonist is an average 8 who faces a system whose ideal model of citizen is an insane 8. This is because the healthy 8 understands that he must use his strength to protect the weak, which is what Lelouch says in his speech, while the insane 8 believes that he must crush the weak through force, which is what Charles says in his speech).
Trust is an act of vulnerability because you assume that the other person won’t hurt you and that you can be yourself. In this case, it is something literal since Lelouch would have to remove his mask. Therefore, it is an act of exposure (the people who managed to gain Lelouch's trust had to fight to earn it; C.C. only meddled in Lelouch's life and helped him with some things to show him that she was on his side, Kallen had to to find out the hard way that he was Zero and thus, only to Sayoko he willingly revealed that he was Zero).
In conclusion, Lelouch and Ohgi distrust each other for different reasons: Ohgi is insecure and Lelouch isn’t willing to trust others because for his unconscious it is a sign of vulnerability (deep down, he is afraid of being betrayed). And when there is no trust between two people, they act behind the other's back. There are lies, there are secrets, there are betrayals.
Lelouch paid dearly (and well deserved) for not having opened up to the Black Knights. If he had trusted them and been honest, he would have no reason to hide anything from them, he wouldn't make stupid mistakes and then chapter 19 would have been very different (Goldilocks' scheming would have had no effect), do you realize that? I feel like Lelouch learned from his mistakes because I think Lloyd, Cecile, Sayoko and Nina knew about the Zero Requiem (besides Suzaku, Jeremiah and C.C.).
How painful! 😭
Anyway, the fanboys would continue to insist that the Black Knights are the ones with the problem and they will defend the mistakes of their god Lelouch, even if you show them with irrefutable evidence that Lelouch is a human being who screwed up.
PS: just to limit. I don't like Ohgi and I love Lelouch. But that doesn't give me an excuse to blind myself to Lelouch's mistakes and understand Ohgi's motivations.
#code geass lelouch of the rebellion#code geass: hangyaku no lelouch#code geass#lelouch#lelouch vi britannia#lelouch lamperouge#ohgi
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I like your writing a lot (especially fire force).I have a request for Benimaru x reader who can’t speak, she can fight and her ability is good but everyone ignores her,Beni noticed that, how would he comfort her or maybe confess to her.
Hey thanks for the request! I really liked writing this and I got to include the only JSL sign I know which is for thank you 😊 I hope you like this!
Your neck hurt from where the blast hit you but you used the momentum to your advantage, turning it into a back handspring. You slide on your hands then when you land on your feet you’re pushed a little more from the force.
You don’t let the white clad pop off any more blasts, immediately pulling the heat from the atmosphere around you and adding it to your flames as you use your ignition ability. the rocks around your feet begin to float, making them glow then light on fire, burning bright and hot as you pour the heat and energy into them. You snap and they all fly towards the white clad “rocks? That’s your weapon?” the white clad begins to laugh but you just smirk. Using your ability to control the speed and precision of each one. you send them all to specific pressure points in the white clad’s body, one to the neck, one to the jaw, and one to each temple.
You watch as they strike them, the smirk on your lips growing into a look of satisfaction as the white clad falls to the ground, unaware of the man watching you from his place in the sky.
Waka hops down from his flaming broom to the tower beside Konro and he hums “who is that?” he asks and Konro sighs “ y/n l/n.” “Is she new?” Konro shakes his head “shes been here two years almost. She’s a mute, lost her voice when an infernal attacked her home, her parents died and the burning roof fell on her. She landed on the edge of a knocked over chair and the force of it destroyed her voice box.” Waka doesn't say anything, just watches as you pop your neck and stretch out your shoulders, making your way back to the guardhouse since he called the fight over.
You enter the guardhouse and like usual, no one really looks at you. You get one or two nods but this was normal, you couldn’t speak and so people didn’t want to even try to talk to you. Having to wait while you write down responses or trying to learn how to read your gestures or lips was just too hard for them, you guess. But you really didn’t mind. You liked to be on your own for the most part, used to it by now. Benimaru watched your interactions with your peers and scowled, why did they treat you like an outsider?
After your shower you decide to head on a walk to watch the stars before you go to bed, walking down the nearly empty streets as you cleared and relaxed your mind. .“Hey” his voice makes you jump and you clutch at your heart with a small smile and empty laugh. “Sorry, i didn't mean to scare you” you smile softly at him, a little confused as to why the captain is talking to you but he doesn’t seem commanding right now so you don't salute, which he doesn't mind.
You raise your hand to your throat and he nods “i know. Konro told me” you raise your eyebrows and he looks into your eyes for a moment, he didn’t know it was possible for someone to have such beautiful eyes. “Can i walk with you?” he asks and you stare, shocked, for a moment before smiling again and nodding.
“I saw you fight today” you feel butterflies enter your stomach, he watched you fight? He took time to watch ~you~ fight? You couldn’t believe it, you thought for sure there was someone better to watch, someone more powerful. “You’re strong” he says and you feel your cheeks warm, you bow your head in thanks and you flatten your hands, bringing the edge of your right hand against the back of your left wrist in the JSL sign for thank you. He watches you and understands your sign, already having looked up some basics before talking to you.
When you raise your head he gets a glimpse of your adorable blush and the corners of his mouth twitch, threatening a smile that he forces away.
You walk in comfortable silence for a while, stopping by the river for a moment to look up at the moon before your curiosity got the best of you. You turn towards him and lay your hand on his shoulder so he would look at you. You raise your eyebrows in question and mouth the word “why?” “why do i walk with you?” he asks and you nod, your hand falling from his shoulder
“i don't understand why you’re an outsider if you’ve been here for 2 years. I want to spend time with you and see if you’re a good or bad fit in the company. So far, your fighting is powerful, you are trained well and obviously know what you’re doing. I’ll be spending the next few days with you to test your skills as well as learn why you’re still an outsider and why you have no friends” his words were blunt and although you didnt mind not really having friends in your company, it still stung to have him say it so bluntly. It’s not like they dont like you or anything, they just dont want to spend the time getting to know you. You furrow your brows, hoping he doesnt make you leave the company because of that.
Sure enough, the morning comes and he’s there, watching you during breakfast and noticing how you interacted with team mates, noticing how they all just .. ignored you. He humphs, catching Konro’s attention. “She does her thing, and everyone just lets her. It’s like shes a ghost. I’m not sure if she minds though. We talk sometimes, she’ll write down responses or make signs she knows, sometimes she mouths words and i’ll read her lips”
The afternoon rolls around and after Benimaru is finished with his paperwork he walks the halls, asking any team member he runs into about you. “Shes just.. weird.” “It’s weird shes mute.” “it makes me uncomfortable to talk to her” and more things were said, but none of them were worse than that. Everyone just didnt want to try talking to you because they were uncomfortable with that way of communicating. It annoyed him how stupid his company was. He asked them if they trusted you in battle though, and all the answers were yes. They all knew how you fought and you were amazing and powerful. All of them would team up with you on the field in an instant.
He watches as you train, alone as usual, and studies your fighting style. It was a mess but he was impressed because it actually worked? Like you made your own style that was the opposite of every other style, he went through your style in his head, putting it against other styles he has seen from whte clad and you had the right angles and moves to completely work around them.
He throws off his sleeve and stands in front of you, wanting to put you to the real test. He represses a smile, he actually hopes you give him a good fight worth his time. You smirk, there was no way you could beat him but you’d give it your all.
He nods, signalling for you to go and you use your ignition powers, taking the rocks behind him on the ground to fly towards him with the same force as the ones with the white clad. As he was distracted turning his head to see, you use the same power, this time focusing it on the soles of your shoes and adding to the power and force to which you ran. He gasped softly as you surprised him, appearing right beside him as you went to jab but as he went to dodge you faked him out, kicking the back of his knees and making him fall flat on his back.
You gasp softly and raise your hand to your mouth, you didn't expect to actually land a hit on the Captain. You hold your hand down to him and he takes it with the smallest of smiles. “I didn’t expect that” he says “you surprised me, but know this, it won't happen again.” he dusts himself off and then gets back into position and makes eye contact “begin”
He was right, it was a fluke surprise thing. You never got another hit in but you fought so hard you kept him on his toes. It was like a dance as you sparred. you didn't hold back and neither did he, although he did withhold his ability. You almost thought at the end you would get him again but he twisted the last second and you ended up flat on your back as he crouched beside you. “You’re more powerful than I first thought” he said and you felt your cheeks flush.
At dinner, he moves from his usual spot at the head table and finds you outside on the back porch, leaning against one of the beams and tossing bits of your rice to the birds. “Is this.. Your normal?” he asks when he sits beside you and you straighten up, not expecting to see him again today. You nod twice quickly and he hums before sitting beside you. “The company, they trust you in fights but ignore you in person, it doesn't make sense.” you laugh, just a soft sound of air from your nose and he cursed the sake he had at dinner for making it harder to hide his smile.
“Do you care?” he asks and you shrug. You didnt really care now but at first it was hard. You used to be the center of attention, laughing and joking and making friends easy. But two years later you had zero real friends.
“cause i could make them treat you better” he says and you look at him with wide eyes and mouth “Dont.” while you shake your head. He laughs a little and the sound makes you feel warm despite the cool night breeze. You mouth you next words slowly so he could read your lips “not a big deal” he nods “i envy you. Sometimes i wish people wouldn't talk to me” you give him a soft look with another airy laugh from your nose that says “i guess we envy each other”
Since then, even if you didn’t see him all day or communicate with him, he would eat dinner beside you outside every night. He decided that since he couldn't make anyone be your friend, he would be your friend. He would ask you simple questions at first, yes or no, before he got more comfortable with your responses and knew what you were saying with your eyes and facial expressions. Sometimes you didn't even have to mouth anything at him if it was an easy night.
He got back late tonight tho and missed dinner. You sat on the porch and felt like your heart wasn’t in your chest as you picked at your meal, feeding most of it to the birds and the stray dog that came around sometimes. You could tell you were developing feelings for your captain and it felt so cliche. You knew nothing could come of this so you just forced those feelings down, convincing yourself that your empty heart was just heartburn and it’ll go away eventually.
The next day you had off, so you spent it like you usually do any other off day. You took your sketchbook and pencils and went to the top of one of the guard towers.
You sit in the sun and enjoy the cool afternoon, the sounds of the city and pencils softly dragging across paper filling your senses. “You're pretty good” he says and you don't even flinch, you just smirk, used to his silent ways by now. You look up at him and roll your eyes before smiling softly and waiting for him to tell you what he’s doing. He sits beside you and you turn your body so you could look at him.
“is this how you spend your day off?” you nod and he hums “it’s nice up here, I can see why you like it” he holds his hand out for your pad and you hesitate for a moment before handing it to him. He raises an eyebrow at your hesitation but understands when he flips through the pages. It’s pages were filled with drawings of your company, team mates, the guardhouse, Konro had a few pages, you had to admit it was fun to sketch his hair and large stature. What impressed him the most thought, were the pages that had pictures of him.
Two or three pages had multiple different angles of his face but his favorite was the one where you drew him sitting beside you at dinner. You caught the feelings in his eyes and his body language, he looked like just a peaceful man. You titled it, the captain’s peace. And he felt his cheeks flush just slightly.
He holds his hand out for a pencil as he flips to a clean page and you set it gently against his palm, your soft fingers grazing his calluses send tingles up his arm.
He turns so you can't see the sketch pad, leaning it against his knee that he brought up and tucking his other foot behind that leg. You bring your knees up and lean your head against them, watching him as he sketches what you assume was the city. Your eyes focus on the clouds that roll by behind him as you just enjoy the soft sounds of pencil against paper. When the paper tears you gasp and look back to him, reaching out for it, wanting to see his work. “Not this time” he says with a chuckle and folds the drawing, tucking it inside his shirt. You pout and he about gives in, it was the cutest thing he’s ever seen.
He hands you back your pad and your pencil and you furrow your brows as you roll your eyes, taking the pad with a huff. You quickly sketch out a rough drawing of the city below surrounding the guard tower, then you draw more details on the tower before you add in him holding your pad and drawing and you sitting beside him. You title it, keep you secrets then, and then tear it out carefully and hand it to him. He laughs when he reads your title and folds it as well, placing it beside his other.
That night, in the middle of dinner, the alarm rings. Your bowls are forgotten about as you drop everything you’re doing. You run alongside Benimaru before you grin and salute him before running down a side road to fulfill your duty of getting the people to safety before helping out if you are needed, which you most likely would be needed with the multiple infernals. Beni does what he does best, gets brooms and goes straight to the largest infernal.
When you both get back, you sit beside him on the porch, your food cold and your bodies exhausted. You lay back on the hardwood at the same time, making you both smile softly at the ceiling. “You did well.” he said and you felt a sense of pride enter your heart. You reach out to pat the back of his hand, a way of returning the compliment, but you gasp when as you try to move your hand, he hooks his pinky around yours and holds your hand there beside his. You feel your cheeks warm because of this action, your heart racing.
Sure, the company saw your growing friendship, and as weird as they thought it was, they wouldn’t say anything. They would pretend they saw and heard nothing, too nervous of what their captain would do if they started anything.
You couldnt sleep, your face still felt warm from the small contact you had with him. You get up and walk down to the river, watching the moon hanging low as the morning approached. You sighed as you looked down into the water, looking at the reflection as you leaned against the railing and set your head against your arms.
You see his reflection, he’s looking at you in the reflection of the calm water. He smiles softly and sets a hand on your shoulder “it’s a nice night” he says softly, like his voice was only for your ears. You turn and look up at him with a small nod before smiling at him. His eyes looked tired, like he hadn't slept either. You reach your hand up, wanting to touch him but your hand freezes in the air and you frown. You dont really know if this is okay, you dont want to make him uncomfortable or anything by touching him. You almost drop your hand but he takes it, bringing it to his own face “it’s okay” he whispers and you feel your stomach flood with butterflies.
You reach your other hand up, cupping both sides of his face as your thumbs brush across his skin. You looked at him like you really saw him, not like he was some spectacle of power to behold. You looked at him like he was just benimaru, nothing more nothing less. That’s why he fell for you.
“If those bastards,”he brushes your hair from your forehead and smiles, truly smiles down at you, you’d think he was drinking but his breath smells like mint toothpaste. “can't see your worth, as a friend and comrade outside of battle. And since you don't want me to make them... “ he cups your cheeks as your hands move to his shoulders “Maybe, you'd allow me to stay by your side” he says as his face draws nearer to yours.
Your hands move around his middle as you close the distance between him, gripping the back of his shirt in your fists as you stand on your tiptoes to brush your nose against his, making him gasp softly before chuckling. “I take that as a yes” he says and you nod, your heart hammering in your chest as tingles run across your skin.
He looks deep in your eyes for a moment, and you try to put your soul in them. Try to tell him how you feel about him with just a look. He smiles and presses forehead to yours with a soft sigh “I can see everything in your eyes” he whispers before pressing his lips to yours.
(Bonus bc the story flowed different than I imagined in that moment and I want it to stay relevant)
He leads you by the hand to his bedroom, nothing in mind, just the desire to sleep. Once in his room he lets go of your hand to take off his shirt and you walk further in, looking round at his things. You smile when you spot the drawing on his dresser, the one you made for him. You gasp softly, gaining his attention as you take a step forward. “I uh” he swallows hard, a little embarrassed as you pick up the paper
The drawing he made, was of you. And it was beautiful. Your hair in the wind and your gaze far away as you reasted your head against your knees. It was titled ‘silent, strong, beautiful.’
#benimaru x you#benimaru shinmon fire force#benimaru fluff#enen no shouboutai benimaru#benimaru x fem!reader#benimaru x y/n#benimaru x reader#benimaru fanfiction#fire force fluff#fire force fanfiction
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Get up and get out
Summary: Sort of part two to Unwanted. A year after fighting in Germany, y/n has to deal with the insufferable Peter Parker being around the house all the time.
Pairings: Peter Parker x stark!reader, tony stark x daughter!reader, Natasha Romanoff x daughter!reader.
Warnings: swearing, angst? i guess? mentions of blood. mentions of panic nightmares
A/N: Again, I want to make it very clear so there isn’t any confusion: Y/n is Tony’s biological child, however, being raised also by Natasha, Steve and Pepper, she calls them Muma, Pops and Mom. Hopefully that makes sense LOL oh and also i’ve never written like...kiss scenes before so just go with it okay?
He was here again. Third time this week that he has come barging into my home and taken over my training center. Okay, to be fair, it was not my training center but still. Peter Parker will never stop being a pain in my ass. Ever since that stupid trip to Germany, he has been coming over and training for hours, or working with Dad. Three times just this week I’ve had to endure listening to Peter talk with his stupid little voice and walk around my house like he owns the place. Who does he think he is? And every time I have to sit through another dinner of Dad blabbing on and on about what a miraculous boy he is.
“Really y/n, I think you two would be great friends,” I rolled my eyes as I picked at my dinner. The rest of the family ate in silence around the table. The last thing I wanted to do is spend more time with stupid Spider-boy. On the afternoons when he was here, I tried my best to stay out of his way. I would stay on my floor and he stays on his. Simple. I don’t need a new friend.
“…And he’s coming by again tomorrow, so I was thinking of showing him A.P.R.I.L. if you wanted to join us-” Dad continued.
What the hell? I thought. “No!” I snapped. “No way. A.P.R.I.L. is mine, I don’t want him messing with her.” Dad frowned at me. The rest of the table looked up in my direction. My shoulders tensed up as I faced my father. A.P.R.I.L. is my baby and I was ready to go toe to toe with him if I needed too.
“What do you mean no? I thought you’d be excited to share that with him,” he started.
“Well I’m not, so back off,” I sneered. The shift in his expression made me want to bite my own tongue. “Please.”
“I seriously do not understand what your problem is. You’ve been complaining for years how there’s only adults but the second a kid your age comes by you’re all “oooh no don’t talk to me Peter!””
I scoffed. “Sorry, I guess I just don’t want to bother you and your new best friend.”
“There it is. Why are you so jealous of him? He’s not that cool. He hasn’t made a fully functioning A.I at the age of 15. He just spits sticky stuff out of his fingers. Honestly y/n, you’re making zero sense right now.”
“Whatever, I’m over this,” I said, pushing my chair back from the table. I grabbed my untouched dinner plate and headed towards the kitchen. “I’m not hungry. And don’t show him A.P.R.I.L., I mean it!” I dumped my plate in the sink and marched right down the hall towards the elevators. My dad was right. I wasn’t making any sense. Ever since I made A.P.R.I.L I’ve used every excuse I could find to shove her down people’s throats. Anyone who would listen to me, I would tell them. Tell them all about how I programmed her to have realistic personality. How she’s running through the walls of this place, through my room, even inside the bracelet I never take off. All I knew is that I didn’t want Peter Parker anywhere near her.
I shut the door to my hard, and flopped onto my bed. A.P.R.I.L. reminded me that slamming the doors usually results in a punishment. I acknowledged her with a half-hearted grunt. I started programming A.P.R.I.L. when I was thirteen. Or rather, reprogrammed. A.P.R.I.L. was made from an older prototype version of F.R.I.D.A.Y. The base stuff was already there, I just moved some things here, recoded there until she was perfect. I don’t know why I got so defensive about Peter meeting her. Or why I had to pick another fight with my dad.
It was easier these days. To fight him, I mean. I suppose I never got over the whole “Peter is better, I choose him over you, blah, blah” thing as much as I thought I did. So, I would pick fights. Fighting over Peter was the simplest way to go, considering he was the reason I was so angry in the first place. Sometimes we would fight over him, other times we would fight over silly things. Like how I keep forgetting not to put my coffee grounds in the garbage disposal. Most of the time it was all just bickering that would blow over in thirty minutes, give or take. Sometimes it was explosive, like today. I took in a shaky breath and sprawled out across my sheets. Sometimes this family is a fucking nightmare.
Dad didn’t come by this time. It threw me off for a second because he always comes by. Even if it’s six hours later and neither of us should be awake, he still comes by with a box of milk duds that we share in silence before one of us apologizes first. That’s how we work. When it finally sunk in that he was not planning on coming, I put A.P.R.I.L. on the job. I figured perhaps he left the compound, maybe took Mom for a nighttime stroll.
“Your father is on floor B, Miss Stark,” A.P.R.I.L. informed me.
“Jesus A.P.R.I.L., how many times have I said to cut the formalities,” I muttered.
“My apologies, y/n.”
Floor B. What the hell is he doing on floor B at…12:00 in the morning? Floor B is strictly for members of household and other Avengers. There are a billion different training rooms down there. Weight rooms, boxing, a huge pool, stuff like that. Not to taint his image, but I can safely say the last time my father willingly worked out for fun was probably before I was even born. Why was he down there? Unless…
“A.P.R.I.L. who else is on floor B right now?” I asked. “Throw it on the hologram, would you dear?
The sounds of the hologram starting filled the room. A.P.R.I.L. pulled up the security map of floor B, like I’d asked. There was my dad, floor B in the boxing room of all places. Pops and Sam looked to be going at it in another one of the combat training rooms. My confusion only rose when another nametag popped up on the screen. My brows furrowed.
Peter Parker
What was he doing here? Why was he boxing? Why was he not in his own home at midnight on a Thursday? My mind was spinning with questions. A knock at my door startled me.
“Come in…”
Natasha popped her head through the doorway. “Hey there…whatcha doing kid?”
I swiftly swiped away the hologram screen and sat up straight. “Nothing. What’s up?”
“Well, we’re getting a little worried about you,” she said. We being everyone else at the table who had to witness my brawl with Dad. She sat down beside me. “You haven’t fought back like that in a long time and I’ve noticed you’re fighting with him a lot recently. You want to tell me what that’s all about?”
I wanted too. God, I wanted too. I hadn’t told anyone what my father said to me that day after the airport, not even my mom. But it didn’t matter. I’d get over it sooner or later, so there was no point troubling anyone else with my problems…right? My eyes started to well up but I blinked away the tears. “No. Everything’s fine,” I put on a smile.
Natasha tucked me in under her arm. “Okay then. Maybe tomorrow.” That was Muma for you. She never pushed me to talk but knew I would come around at some point. In the meantime, she just held me. I cried into her embrace. She let me cry into her shoulder for a long while, until I was empty. After a time, I let go and she got up, giving me a kiss on the head before wishing me a good night.
I rubbed my hands over my face, brushing off any remaining tears. “A.P.R.I.L. bring the hologram back up please.”
“Are you sure y/n?”
…
“Yeah.”
Peter was still in the boxing room but my father was not. Upon further digging, I found the nametag reading Tony Stark on my floor. He’d gone to bed. I pondered to myself as to whether or not I should venture downstairs. What is the worst thing that could happen? Peter is secretly a Hydra spy and kills me? No, I shook my head. Don’t be ridiculous. Another minute passed and I’d made up my mind.
“A.P.R.I.L. engage “I am definitely here”,” I commanded.
“”I am definitely here” protocol engaged. Volume minimized to 5% and your tracking tag will be pinned to this room,” A.P.R.I.L. responded. “Good luck on your mission small agent.”
“Oh shut up,” I chided. I closed the door to my room as softly as I could. It was nearly one in the morning, most of the hall would be asleep. Or at least they should be. The hallway was silent, except for the soft noise of my socks padding along the floor. I cursed myself for looking so ridiculous. If anyone caught me, I could easily say that I was just getting a midnight snack. Not sneaking down to spy on Spider-bitch. Boy. Whatever. Sneaking added to the excitement.
I made it downstairs all in one piece. Steve and Sam nearly passed me in one of the halls, but I had ducked into a briefing room. I could totally be a spy. Maybe I’m a Hydra spy. I thought. And they sent me here as a baby to take down the Avengers from the inside. What was I going on about? This was why I should really be in bed, I was clearly delirious. Once again, distracting myself in my thoughts led to me getting startled. I hadn’t even realized I was outside the boxing room. I would have walked right in if not for the handy wall that I smacked into.
Peter was in the ring, practicing his punches. He’d lowered down one of the punching bags from the ceiling and it was close to ripping at the seams. He was really going ham on it. The questions piled on. So, he came over to my house at midnight to…train? Something he had all afternoon today to do? God, he was weird. I suppose I didn’t quite know what I was going to get myself into when I finally walked in to confront him.
“What are you doing?” I asked, arms folded tightly across my chest.
Peter started and looked down at me. Sweat was dripping down his face. He looked exhausted. “Training,” he said bluntly. He returned to treating the punching bag like it had run over his dog.
“At one in the morning? And after you spent like six hours today doing just that?” I was not letting him off that easy. Peter ignored me and continued punching. “Your form is shit.” I mocked.
That made him stop. “Funny coming from the girl who never leaves her room. When have you ever trained? Like ever?”
“I still beat your ass.”
“Yeah like, a year ago when I was barely an avenger.”
I rolled my eyes. “You still aren’t.”
“What do you want?” Peter spat.
I shrugged. “Dunno.” I stared him down with a smug look on my face.
“You are always such a bitch, you know that?”
I faked a pout. “Aw…bite me.”
Peter was chewing the inside of his cheek in anger. “If you’re going to stay here and pester me, you might as well get a few punches in.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Consider it a rematch.”
I studied his physique for a moment. He’d grown a lot since Germany. He’d also trained a lot since then as well. I had done little of either. I knew that entering that ring would probably end up with me losing my dignity and maybe even a tooth. But I was not going to let him stand there with his stupid, sweaty face and get away with it. This is not a good idea, I thought as I took off my socks. I moved the ropes and stepped into the ring, standing a foot in front of the boy.
“I’ll still win.”
“No powers either.”
“Deal.” Not like I’ve touched my powers since…since the incident.
Peter took his stance and I did my best to mirror him. I realized in that moment that I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know the first thing about boxing. Or sparring. I didn’t know how to fight without my powers. Oh, sweet Jesus.
We kept our distance at first, fists up. He threw a few punches and missed. I followed in suit. I finally got the first hit, a nice throw to his chest. He took it like a champ and didn’t flinch. Or rather, I couldn’t hit for shit and it didn’t hurt. He threw a punch to my left, only to miss on purpose and punched me square across my jaw. Ow. I chuckled lowly. The taste of blood filled my mouth from the fresh cut on my lip. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. All I could see was white rage.
Forget form, forget rules, forget everything. I lunged at him with everything I had. Lunged at him for all the bullshit he had brought into my life. For all the bitter things I had to hear my father say that weren’t even Peter’s fault. He was clearly not expecting my attack because we both fell to the ground. We fought tirelessly on the mat. He was physically stronger than me, so by default he was winning. He wrestled me until I was pinned under him. One hand was pinning my hand above my head, the other arm pinning down my body. In any other circumstances I would be amused to find myself in such a scandal. I looked in his eyes briefly and I could already tell he thought that he was winning. If there’s one thing I learned from Nat, it’s to always step on their moment. I hooked my leg around his knee and used all my force to flip us over. I had him pinned down now, my hair falling around my face. We were both breathing heavily.
“Told you,” I taunted. I was mentally preparing him to punch back but he didn’t. He snapped his arms out from under me and shoved me off him, hard. I fell back against the mat. He rose to his feet, brushing his hands off on his pants. “What the hell?” I exclaimed. I jumped to my feet while his back was turned to me and gave him a taste of his own medicine. He stumbled a few steps after I pushed him. Slowly, he stretched back up to reach his full height.
“You’re right,” he turned to face me and extended a hand. “Shake on the truce?” I took his hand, accepting his surrender. Only, he was not really surrendering. The moment my hand touched his, he yanked me towards him. I tripped over my feet and fell into him. My chest crashed onto his. The world was a blur as he grabbed me with force and spun us around, so he could push me up against the ropes of the ring.
“Stop, Peter get off me you bitch!” I fought back. I flailed my whole body around, trying to break loose. One hand reached up to grab the back of my head, pulling my hair and forcing my head back. I froze. His face was dangerously close to my exposed neck. His shift let my opposite arm break free. I took a breathe and reeled it back, ready to smack him in the across the face. He caught my wrist in time without taking his eyes off mine.
He lowered his head to whisper in my ear, “I win.” His breathe trickled down my neck. He had won, but he wasn’t moving. One hand was still in my hair, the other was pinning me against the ropes. His chest breathed heavily against my own. His grip on my head loosened slightly and I was able to look him straight on. He had that same smug look pasted across his face. His eyes moved from mine, trailing down my face, my neck, my body, before they settled on my lips. I momentarily lost the ability to breathe.
He kissed me hard. I tensed up slightly before giving into him completely. It tasted like blood and sweat and I felt like I was losing my mind. He pulled me closer, if that was even possible and claimed my mouth with his until my knees gave out. A newfound wave of warm washed through me. The hand in my hair gave a slight tug and my lips parted while that same hand moved to cup my jaw. For all I knew, the entire compound was wide awake and watching but I did not care. I brought my fingers to his hair, tugging at the ends. I smiled cunningly when he groaned into my mouth. He kissed me greedily and fully. Like he hated me. And I hated him.
We broke apart, limbs numb and chests heaving. The moment had passed, and our actions sunk in. What. The. Fuck. He lifted the ropes for me, and I climbed out of the ring. My head was still spinning from that kiss and my lip stung. Consequences I suppose, for kissing someone with a busted lip. I silently pulled my socks back on and Peter handed me a towel. Neither of us said another word. I left the room and didn’t look back. I could hear him behind me, but I was in no rush to have to look him in the eye ever again. What just happened?
I woke the next morning to A.P.R.I.L. alerting me that “Father Dearest” was outside my door. He came in and sat on the edge of the bed. We both stayed quiet for a while.
I spoke first. “Where were you last night? You didn’t come by after…” I let my words trail off.
“I was going to, I swear. But then something came up with Peter and I had to go take care of that,” Dad answered.
I frowned. “Typical. Peter over your own flesh and blood, right?”
Dad inhaled sharply like he was going to bite back, but changed his mind. “That’s not true and you know it. Peter is…he’s going through something and I knew how to help him. Not everything is about you, you narcissist,” He said, joking at the end.
I had to push down my own smile. “Yeah well where do you think I got it from?” I sat up and leaned into my father. He brushed a hand down my back. “So, what’s wrong with Peter then?”
“I really shouldn’t tell you, it’s personal.” I looked up at him with my doe eyes. He rolled his eyes and sighed, nodding a silent defeat. I felt like I was nine again and he was gossiping with me about the latest secretary. Like every fight had been forgotten in this moment. “He’s been having some nightmares ever since DC. You remember the ones we used to get after Loki?” I nodded. “Now you, you always amazed me at how you handled those. But for me and Peter, we needed a different outlet. So, I let him come over in the middle of the night. I didn’t think anyone would notice.” I hummed in response, not sure what to make of that information. I mean, I kind of felt bad for the guy. He was still a bitch, but those dreams suck. No one should have to deal with them. “He really isn’t as bad as you think, you know.”
“Yeah,” I hummed. “I think you’re right.”
tag list:
@runawayolives @ creation-magician @ eridanuswave @ markhyucksmells @ beep-beep-losersclub
#peter parker#peter parker x reader#peter parker enemies to lovers#enemies to lovers#tom holland x reader#peter parker x stark!reader#tony stark x stark!reader#natasha romanoff#natasha romanoff x stark!reader#!starkreader#marvel cinematic universe#avengers x reader#marvel fanfiction#y/n#peter x y/n#mcu imagine#robert downey jr#scarlett johanson#captain america x reader#steve rogers x stark!reader#chris evans#spiderman#spiderman fanfction#spiderman x reader#ironman#ironman x reader
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Nasty
Summary: August is going to hell and he is dragging you down with him. Pairing: August Walker x Reader (2nd person Pov)
Word count: 2.3K
Warnings: Serious smut, GRAPHIC depictions of sexual intercourse, auto-voyeurism (Is that a thing?)
A/N: @luclittlepond made this request! I obliged. Honestly, I feel like it’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever written and I want to thank @agniavateira for being my beta and @wondersofdreaming for giving me feedback since it was not an easy write for some reason.
Please leave feedback 💖🥺 and more importantly, enjoy.
Title: Nasty
“Unlock the door, my balls are freezing,” August urges while his hands survey the plains of your body possessively. A sharp, languid hiss caresses the sensitive skin of your neck, his deep voice chanting sweet profanities as he grinds himself against you for the sake of heat and lust-filled friction.
The temperature at the narrow corridor must be 10 degrees below zero, quite ordinary for January at St. Petersburg, Russia. Another successful mission came to end; the target was eliminated and sweep-up had been ordered. Now, all August wants to do after a triumphant assassination is to fuck like a deranged animal.
You never doubted the idea that murder gets him hard.
Breathing in fumes, you try to twist the key inside the lock, motoric functions reduced to jitters and tremors as August shoves a finger between your legs, rough and invasive, he journeys from your mound to your ass and presses it crudely. His rock-hard erection nudges at your lower back, reducing your concentration to scattered specks of dust.
“Don’t make me fuck you right here in the hallway,” he warns and slides down to his knees with his talons lifting both your heavy coat and skirt, exposing the round curve of your behind. Teeth as sharp as blades pierce the ample flesh of your cheek and you give out a high-pitched yip of pain which echoes through the entire hallway.
Crying for him to stop would do no good. August doesn’t give an inch. The cold man lacks any sense of tenderness and he has a thing for leaving his marks all over your body, just the way he would brand his livestock. The agent stretches to stand up, shoving himself against your ass while his hands hike the thick hem of your skirt all the way up to your torso.
“If you keep doing that I won’t be able to get it open!” You complain angrily and then finally manage to twist the key inside. The moment the rusty cylinder spins, August whirls the both of you into the apartment and kicks the door shut with his foot.
The small rental smells like wet newspaper and mould. The dusty air becomes saturated with the humidity of sweat and heated pants. Stumbling further inside, you kiss furiously and claw at each other’s throats like two hungry vultures. Your coats fall to the floor, the tight skirt gathers around your abdomen and August’s hand reaches to cup the heat between your legs with the elegance of a raging bull.
Pathetic puny whimpers disappear into the hot cavern of his mouth, impassioned, you writhe against his almost-aggressive intrusion, letting his thumb graze over your covered clit. August Walker’s treatment is borderline degrading, making you feel dirty, baptized in the black bathwater of sin.
You would never let any other manhandle you like this; a tender woman such as yourself requires a gentle hand, not whatever twisted games August wants to play with your body. And still, he brings you closer to heaven than you’d ever wish to admit and those little moments of rapture are worth every bit of shame.
Taking your shoulders in his grip, August pulls you down, knees hitting the stone-cold floor. He follows below, his tongue violating your mouth within moments, low hums singing into your throat while his fingers make quick work at the buttons of your blouse. His breath still tastes of the wine he had earlier, inhaling him is enough to reach intoxication. Tugging his shirt from his trousers, you try to undress him. Buttons fly everywhere as you rip it open with extreme force.
August breaks the kiss with a quick bite on your lip, enough to cause a sharp sting at the soft plush of flesh. Wringing your shoulder, he turns you around and rests a hand on the snake of your spine to bend you over at his will.
“Bitch,” he grunts, shuffling to stand on his knees and fumbling with his belt. Tendrils of shivers coarse through your nerves spiralling cold and eclectic as the distinguished click of metal and husky brush of leather rustle from behind.
“That was my favourite shirt.”
“They all look the same,” you mock him and turn your head back, staring at the focused expression on his face. His brows knit together, a deep scowl forming long creases on his forehead. August gawks at the wet patch in your underwear with dark fascination, his tongue flaking over his lips before his hand reaches to peel them down and collect the arousal that drips between your thighs with long ardent fingers.
A desperate moan escapes the trenches of your throat. His fingers ascending to pry between your folds, pushing inside to test the mysteries of your heat. The callous pads of his fingers stroke the damp, plump flesh, making room for his odious inspection.
“Look at you,” he mocks, corrupting and stretching your desire, pumping in and out until his knuckles glisten with the juices of arousal. “You want my cock badly, don’t you sweetheart?” He murmurs, snapping his fingers to engulf at his thick, endowed erection.
Short spasms of tremoring delights shudder through every cell as he grabs his shaft and slaps it against your swollen lips, grinding rough and vulgar while you buck with harrowing need against the ridges of his cock. He paints himself in your sweet nectar, teasing both your womanhood and the puckered hole that clenches in fear from his monstrous girth.
This fearful reaction never ceases to make him laugh with malice. “Don’t worry, pet, I'm not going in there tonight unless you really want to...”
“Fuck you, Walker,” you spit out, squirming back and forth as August tames your body into submission.
“Oh I’m about to…” he murmurs, dipping the tip of his erection inside you, eliciting powerless mewls as a violent throb gushes through your centre. “I wish you could see how beautiful your pussy looks with my cock entering you.”
Bracing yourself on your arms and knees, you take a deep breath. August indulges what he sees in front of him, taking his time, teasing, torturing and savouring the small hisses that kick out of your chest with every single provoking touch.
“Jesus August, take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
Letting out a guttural growl, August pauses his ministrations and you hear a soft ruffle behind you as he seeks for something in his coat which are thrown next to him on the floor. Peering over your shoulder, you indeed see him holding his phone in his hand.
“Are you really taking pictures again?! Walker, just fuck me already!”
“Take your phone and answer,” he commands, ignoring your demand.
Naturally, they mean nothing to him.
You glare at him puzzled when the soft hum of your phone buzzing cuts into your attention. The pale blue light dances on the wooden floor beneath the wool jacket and you reach a hand for it.
Incoming video call from August.
“August wha….?”
“Answer, so I can fuck you already,” he chides, hovering his phone right above your behind with eyes that sparkle with a dark impulse.
Holding the device in front of you, you accept the call. A shiver ticks at your muscles, your limbs shake at the sight of your dripping cunt as it appears on the bright screen. The sensation is vaguely obscene yet August growls with pure excitement, holding his heavy cock in front of the glassy lense. He lines himself against your wanting entrance, making you see through his eyes how he pushes inside, inch by inch, slowly spreading your petals with the width of his velvet pistol and claiming what belongs to him.
The luscious symphony of your moans unearths melodically into the musty atmosphere as the wet friction of your union strikes madness through your bodies. The oxygen gradually drains from your squeezing lungs, mouth agape at the spectacle of August driving large and long through your narrow crevice with an unusually sluggish pace.
Your memories wander for a split second, falling back to the first time you have discovered porn as a teenager and had the same fury burn between your thighs. Only that you didn’t have August to fill that needy void inside your body.
And damn if he doesn’t fill you just right, plunging into your warm lake of Eden, his girth suffocating between your lush cavern, forcing your walls to expand and make room for his huge, pulsating cock.
“See how tight you are?” August asks breathlessly and gives your ass a sharp smack while he bursts into cold, arrogant laughter, amused at the way your cheeks ripple from the might of his slap. “Look at yourself, so small yet taking me like a needy little slut.”
You swallow a gasp, the device dropping from your sweaty palm and landing flat on the ground. Leaning on your elbows you watch with sick fascination at the way August sinks deeper and deeper, delving through your taut cave until his balls press against your clit with an appeased hum that losses from his lips. Your entire body is attacked by spasms of ecstasy, the heights of your desire brought to unearthly plains as August plays with each of your senses.
“Arch your back,” he demands, razing a hand over your spine to force you to a position which serves him a better path. Obediently, you stick your ass higher, head falling between your shoulder-blades with eyes that never dare to shut, too mesmerized by the forbidden image of him sheathed in your depth.
Enthralled by the vision on the screen, you lean with fist clenched tightly, unable to sustain the pathetic little whimpers. Greedy fingers dig into your hip, leaving a parade of purple bruises for August to later be proud, his possessive legacy. He positions your ass on display, his nimble fingers running over the curve with appreciation, squeezing roughly and groaning. Something inside you clicks, as if playing a role in a film, you stir for him, swaying yourself to the eye of the camera and watching the succulent honeyed flower between your legs as it’s pierced raw by August’s hefty cock. It glistens with filth as it exits your body at an agonizing speed.
“August…. Please,” the moans that roll on your tongue are downright pathetic, making August croon at you patronizingly and tick his tongue as if you’ve been misbehaving. Gripping your waist, he restrains you and pulls himself out until nothing but the arrowhead of his cock rests between your folds, he lingers, breath heavy and firm, chest puffing with power as he sinks all the way in with an alarming change of pace until his balls slap rigid against your wetness.
“Do you like watching yourself, being fucked?” he demands to know, beginning to rails you, snarling at the way you are clenching around his shaft, your silken walls welcome him, calling to his body like a siren drawing a sailor to the abyss. And with vamping passion he complies, finding that hidden spot that no one has ever sought inside you, the one that makes you howl out in ecstasy.
“Yes!!! Fuck!” You cry out with shock, knowing you will definitely not last having to witness every dirty act and details in the vista of your eyes. This is August’s doing, forcing pleasure on you in the vilest way possible, overstimulating both body and mind. He is a man free of boundaries, unchained, but he sure as hell shackles you to the darkness that thrives inside him.
He pushes into you raw and steady, grunting low, as he moves with long-lasting thrusts that serve a point of showing you just how fucked you are. Every now and then he pulls nearly completely out and slams painfully back in, just for the sake of entertainment.
Lewd squelching and blunt sounds of skin slapping against skin take over the acoustic of the room, accompanied by the clattering sound of his belt that dangles from his trousers. His pace turns into punishing rhythm, his testicles brushing briefly with your clit, causing you to haul against him with desperate screams. Begging, a whimpering mess, your muscles give in, shuddering and convulsing until your cunt finally tightens around him firmly and the fire engulfs you from within, spreading through you like a burning field as you climax with astonishment.
“Keep your eyes open,” August rasps, watching how you collapse in front of him, trembling and jolting on your knees meekly with tears blurring your eyes while you sob. He ignores your body’s defiance, grunting like a bull as he jackhammers you, going at an impossible speed.
His cock is but a quick smudge as he rails in yet the swelling of his erection and the thick tendons that runs from the base through his length are undoubtfully clear. You see him and feel his thickness between your convulsing walls, your womb welcoming the hot surge that sprouts inside you while August cries out with divine ecstasy.
He continues to pound inside you even after he comes, letting his thick, white juice coat his length and trickle milky drops from your seam down your inner thigh until he is completely drained.
Panting heavily, he collapses on top of your spine, the stubble of his cheek grazing your supple skin while basking in the afterglow of his orgasm. His mobile device drops from his hand, landing with a soft thud as August fights to catch his breath.
“Enjoyed the show, pet?” He asks, kissing the salty sweat off your skin.
You answer with a deep sigh, too ashamed to admit you just had the most intense orgasm you ever experienced.
Lazy fingers trail up to grasp your neck, squeezing it lightly and kneading the strained muscles. He gathers your hair to one side and leans to nibble at your ear with a devious hum.
“So, are you willing to reconsider making a sex tape now?”
___________________________________________
Disclaimer: I don’t own August Walker or Mission Impossible.
DM me if you want to be removed or add <3
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We already talked about this in dms but like👀 Keigo and a female reader that he thinks is just all cute and shit. But nah she’s actually one of the best dancers in japan and specializes in badass and sexy dances
I went down such a rabbit hole picking out the choreo for this for zero reason 💀💀💀 but man am I here for it. For those curious what I pictured writing this it’s this dance at time code 7:27 choreography is by Jojo Gomez
It’s an 18+ one y’all, minors dni. Warnings for dom/sub dynamics, mention of reader having a vagina, fingering, hand jobs, light edging, light nipple play, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, minor praise kink
“So when are you finally gonna seal the deal with (y/n)?” Mirko asks Hawks one day as they walk their usual patrol route. It’s a quiet day and quiet days always made Mirko more likely to pry. “Seal the deal?” Hawks asks. “Y’know... Do the devil’s tango? Make the beast of two backs? Teach her the birds and the bees?” Mirko teases, wiggling her eyebrows and crowding into his personal space. Hawks rolls his eyes hard and shoves her out of his space, not that it deters her. “It’s not like that,” he tells his nosy friend but she just scoffs in response. “Don’t play like you don’t want to get all up on her, Hawks. You go to that cafe she works at every night after your shift and I’m pretty sure you don’t even like coffee,” Mirko points out. “I like coffee,” Hawks retorts mulishly. “No you don’t.” “Drop it Mirko.” “Oh c’mon! It’ll be easier if you just admit it.” “Fine! She’s adorable, you happy?” Hawks finally huffs, red tinting his cheeks. There’s a beat of silence before Mirko responds but it’s not quite the response Hawks is expecting. “Wait you think (y/n)... is adorable?” Mirko asks. “What do you mean? She is!” Hawks replies defensively. “Relax tough guy, adorable just isn’t the word I’d use to describe her,” Mirko shrugs. “How else would you describe her? She always seems kinda sleepy on her shift and she wears those big oversized sweatshirts,” Hawks elaborates but Mirko continues to look confused by his assessment of you. “Have you never seen her dance before?” Mirko finally asks. “She dances?” Hawks responds.
In Hawks’ personal opinion, Mirko’s reaction is over dramatic. She had stopped in her tracks and stared at him as if he’d sprouted a third head or announced an early retirement. “What?” he asks, even more defensive than before. Mirko heaves a sigh as if Hawks’ ignorance is her greatest source of disappointment. “I forget sometimes you live under a rock, Jesus Christ. We really do need to talk about you getting out more for things other than work and creeping on the sexy dancer barista you have a crush on. Why do you think she’s so tired every shift?” Mirko asks in disbelief. “She’s a student isn’t she? I assumed school stuff!” “You really are hopeless.” “Hey!” “She has rehearsal before her shift dummy, she’s tired from practicing.” “How do you know so much about it huh?” “Well for starters her group has literally won competitions so jot that down. And two we follow each other on Twitter.” “Why do I even ask you things?” Hawks laments. “Shut up, I have an idea,” Mirko suddenly grins. “Oh god, what the fuck are you planning now?” Hawks groans. “I think we should pay (y/n) a little visit during rehearsal, don’t you?”
Hawks follows Mirko through the halls of the university rec center with a growing sense of dread. She looks mischievous and that’s usually a sign that Hawks is going to regret whatever he just signed up for. After they round a final corner, Hawks can clearly hear music coming out of a room down the hall labeled rehearsal room B. Hawks and Mirko push through the door right as the song stops and immediately Hawks realizes that this was a mistake. Gone is your oversized hoodie, instead you’re in just a pair of sweats and a sports bra, covered in sweat and chest still heaving from whatever dance you and the two other girls with you had just done. Hawks should’ve just ignored Mirko and waited to look up one of your dances on YouTube in the privacy of his own apartment. “Hey (y/n)!” Mirko calls out cheerily even as Hawks mentally curses her out for dragging him here. Your gaze snaps over to the two of them and immediately you break out into a wide grin, the same one Hawks had been fawning over as cute and precious for the past several weeks. “What are you two doing here?” you ask as your friends grab water. “We were in the neighborhood and I remember you mentioning you rehearse around this time so I figured why not swing by?” Mirko replies and god does Hawks hate her right now. “You guys have perfect timing actually, we’re working on something to the song ‘Ride’ by Ciara and it would be really great to get an outside opinion on it. Would you guys mind sticking around to check it out? I promise it’ll be quick the other girls have something right after this,” you ask the two pros, giving your best puppy dog eyes. Hawks wants to politely decline, he’s having enough trouble keeping himself in check as it is thank you very much, but before he can Mirko is already agreeing and he doesn’t have the heart to shut things down when you look so excited. “Ah amazing!! Ok! Just sit at the front of the room and be our audience!” you beam and Hawks is helpless but to comply.
Hawks’ eyes trace over every inch of your body as you start the music and then get into the starting formation of the dance. Hawks can tell the moment you’ve focused in on performing your choreography because your whole demeanor and energy shifts. It’s commanding and confident and very, very sexy. He’s starting to understand Mirko’s reaction to his earlier description of you because the woman he sees before him now? Well adorable doesn’t quite fit the bill anymore. He’s already half hard in his work pants, much to his chagrin. What would the tabloids say if they knew he was getting this aroused in public? It’s not exactly befitting of the number two hero considering he’s supposed to be a role model for future generations. But could anyone blame him? The way you move your body and swing your hips is mesmerizing. At one point you slowly roll your body down to grind your hips to the floor and it’s impossible for Hawks not to imagine you using that same precise control to grind down onto his dick. He tries to focus on the music instead in hopes it will help him calm down but it only takes a second for him to realize the song is painting the very same image he’s trying desperately to clear from his head. He’s almost positive Mirko is smirking beside him but he can’t focus on her, you’ve captured the entirety of his attention.
Then the chorus hits and Hawks is really in trouble. You’re singing along. You’re singing “they love the way I ride it” and making direct fucking eye contact with him while you swing your hips in a slow, sensual grind and how can he not react to that? His wings flare and puff out instinctively, his cheeks going red, and his dick is now fully erect and leaking precum into his boxers. It would be mortifying if he weren’t too focused on your every move to truly remember his surroundings. Eventually the song ends and even though Mirko stands to go compliment you and your friends on a job well done, Hawks stays rooted in place. He doesn’t dare move as his painfully hard cock twitches in his pants. Sweat drips down your neck and god he wants to lick it off you so goddamn bad he barely even notices you saying bye to Mirko and your friends until the door is shutting behind them.
Hawks hasn’t even fully registered that the two of you are now alone in the room before he’s coming up behind you and wrapping an arm around your bare torso. You open your mouth to ask what’s up with him when you suddenly feel his erection against your backside. “Tell me you don’t want this or I won’t be able to stop,” he all but growls against the shell of your ear. “What if I do want it though?” you ask breathlessly as you shamelessly grind your ass back against his throbbing dick. The moan that crawls its way out of his throat in response is guttural, he genuinely can’t think of a time he’s ever been more turned on in his life as he wastes no time spinning you around to face him and pressing you up against the wall. “You knew what you were doing didn’t you?” he asks before dropping his nose down to run along your jaw. You shudder as he licks a long stripe up your neck, delighting in the salty taste of your sweat. “Maybe?” you hedge at first but then he bites the column of your throat hard enough you’re sure it’ll leave a mark and you can’t help but whimper. He draws back to look you in the eye, his pupils blown so wide they’ve almost completely consumed his golden irises. “Don’t lie to me little dove,” he warns. “I may have gone a little harder than usual because you were watching me,” you admit and it’s apparently the right answer as Hawks all but chirps his satisfaction before leaning down to press a bruising kiss to your lips that has you melting. One of his hands slides up to grasp and squeeze one of your breasts but even that is not enough for him and in the next moment one of his feathers glides in to swiftly cut your sports bra off entirely. You’re about to protest but the words die in your throat as Hawks starts pinching and twisting one of your nipples. “Does that feel good little dove?” he asks and all you can do is let your head fall back against the wall and nod your approval.
Hawks takes advantage of your head’s position to resume leaving marks on your exposed neck as his free hand snakes its way into your sweatpants and panties. As his fingers finally reach your dripping sex you feel him moan against the sensitive skin of your throat. “You’re so wet for me already,” he notes as he slowly slides a finger inside of you. “Want you, need you,” is all you can keen as he drags his one finger torturously slowly inside of you. “Want me that bad love?” Hawks teases and your answering nod is almost frantic as he inserts another finger and takes careful note of the way you squirm. “Use your words,” he commands. “I want you so bad Hawks please,” you beg but even as he uses his thumb to lightly brush against your sensitive clit he still doesn’t budge. “I don’t know, you were so naughty teasing me so much in front of Mirko and your friends. Do you understand how turned on I was?” he asks but you can only whimper in response. You jerk your hips forward in desperate search of more friction or movement or something but all that accomplishes is Hawks using the hand not currently buried inside you to hold your hips still. “I want you to feel how turned on your little show made me little dove. Can you do that?” he asks. “Y-yes,” you moan before obediently reaching one hand out to feel his hardened length through his pants. God he’s so big, and it only emphasizes to you how much you want him inside you. “Not gonna get much done from there, little dove, don’t be shy. I want you to feel me, feel the cock you’re so fucking desperate for,” he growls, slowly dragging his fingers in and out of you to emphasize his point. It’s so good but it’s not nearly enough so you fumble with the belt and button of his pants until finally, finally you can slip your hand past the waistband and into his boxers to grasp firm hold of his weeping cock.
It doesn’t take long for the two of you to find a devastating rhythm, your hands moving in sync to drive both of you towards your respective climaxes. Your moans echo around the small practice room and it’s music to Hawks’ ears. You’re close, so close, right on the precipice of orgasm when suddenly Hawks is leaning in to whisper into your ear a simple command: “Stop.” His hand stops moving and then he slowly extracts his fingers from inside you. You whine at the loss, pussy desperately clenching around nothing but you obediently stop your hand's movement. "Don't look so disappointed, I thought you wanted my dick," Hawks teases. "I do, fuck, I do," you groan. "Be specific. What do you want?" "I want your dick inside me, please Hawks I'm begging, I want it so bad," you whine. What a pretty sight you make squirming and whining for him. Hawks thinks he could watch you like this forever but even he is starting to get impatient so he decides to finally give you what you want. He shoves his own pants and boxers down low enough for his dick to spring out of its confines, the head flushed red and glistening with precum. Meanwhile his feathers push down your own sweatpants and panties as you watch him with half-lidded eyes, eager to finally feel his hardened length inside you. He has you wrap your arms around his shoulders and places his hands on your waist. "Hop up pretty girl," he commands and you eagerly obey, allowing him to lift you and then wrapping your legs around his waist to further support you weight. "Ready?" he asks. "God, yes Hawks please," you groan as he lines himself up with your waiting entrance. Hawks complies with an almost feral grin, wasting no time in shoving himself fully inside you. You groan as his thick length stretches you open but the slight burn feels so good as he fills you up. "You're doing so good for me, baby. So good," he praises and you practically purr your satisfaction. "P-please. Move," you moan and Hawks doesn't need to be told twice as he begins fucking into you in earnest. All words are lost between the two of you, the only language you need being the moans, groans, whimpers, and whines the two of you pull out of each other. As he drills into you harder and harder you rapidly feel yourself once again approaching climax. "Hawks I'm gonna-" you start but he cuts you off. "Me too baby, hold out a little longer and we'll cum together ok?" he ask. "Ok," you whimper, trying so hard to be good for him. Just a few long deep strokes later he finally gives you permission to cum and almost immediately you cry out his name, clenching and squeezing around him as he tumbles into his own climax. His groan is long and low as he spills his seed inside you and you relish each and every moment of it.
As the two of you finally come down from your highs Hawks carefully sets you back down on the ground. "Shit," he swears. "You can say that again," you laugh breathlessly. "Maybe I should invite you to more rehearsals from now on," you joke. "I'd much rather you give me a private show at my place," he replies easily. "I think I can make that work." "Good." "When would you like your first performance?" "How about now? You were just bragging about how much 'they' like it when you ride it. Time to put your money where your mouth is." "I'd like nothing more."
#ahh this took me so long to write and it ended up so long lmao#this probably could've been a one shot in retrospect but oh well#it's here now lmao#complete and utter filth I hope you enjoy#hhrequests#hawks smut#hawks x reader#hawks x y/n#hawks x fem!reader#hopeless.olivia#hopeless.thirst
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WHAT IF MAUL KIDNAPPED ANAKIN RIGHT OFF OF TATOOINE
(I started writing this and then it got out of hand and now it’s 3:30 in the morning, rest of it’s under the break so i don’t monopolize your dash)
So for whatever combination of reasons, Maul spits out the kool-aid and gets really disenchanted with Sidious a lot earlier than in canon. He starts wondering things like “why is he not telling me his master plan if i’m so important to it?” and “why do i get nothing more than vague promises of power sometime in the future, when i should be guaranteed a position as his second-in-command, after all I’ve done for this guy?” and “why does he treat me like i’m disposable, and then constantly tell me i’m crucial for his plans?”
and he starts thinking things like “hey wait a minute, none of that childhood torture made me better at anything sith-related, it just gave me crippling trauma that actually impairs my capacity for self-control and incredible violence” and (possibly due to his experiences at Orsis Academy) “oh whack looks like kids learn a lot better and faster when they’re, like, having fun? Whatever ‘fun’ is?”
and anyway by the time he gets to tatooine with orders to “find that stoner jedi and kick his ass”, Maul is pretty annoyed at his master. And when he senses not one, not two, but THREE powerful force-presences on Tatooine, one of which vastly eclipses any other force presence he’s ever felt, and belongs to a nine-year-old slave boy, Maul gets an idea. You know, (he thinks), his master sure would love to get his hands on a force-baby like that. Master Sidious sure would be evilly thrilled to have an extremely powerful nine-year-old delivered directly to his doorstep on coruscant, with the jedi having to do all the heavy lifting of training the kid. Master Sidious would probably want nothing more than to have this kid be taken in by the Jedi, so he can start grooming a new apprentice.
And Maul, full of spite and an as-yet-undiscovered need to adopt every force-sensitive in sight, decides to deprive Sidious of a potential apprentice. He follows Anakin to Naboo (in this universe, Anakin still wins the podrace, still wins his own freedom), and, after the fighting is over, sees a prime window of opportunity, and kidnaps Anakin right out from under the Jedi’s nose.
(In this universe, Obi-Wan does not cut Darth Maul in half and dump him down the garbage chute- Maul, unwilling to do his master’s bidding any longer, doesn’t go full out against Qui-Gon, doesn’t kill him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t get that grief-and-rage filled boost that helped him dismember Maul last time. The fight ends, the Jedi are convinced that Maul is dead, and Naboo is freed).
Once Maul has the kid, since he’s a pragmatic guy, he also returns to Tatooine and takes the kid’s mom. Maul doesn’t know how to cook, do laundry, tie shoes, or any of that shit. He doesn’t want to have to PARENT the kid, he just wants to train him.
Maul has zero money, and also zero subtlety, so he stomps into Watto’s shop, grabs him by the neck, and says “The boy's mother is coming with me. You will disable her slave chip and let her leave unharmed, or I will squeeze your head off.” Watto complies. For Anakin, this is his first real impression of Maul- storming the junk shop and threatening his former master for the freedom of Anakin’s mother.
Maul is determined to do a better job training Anakin than Sidious did training Maul. Because FUCK Sidious. Maul can be a WAY better Sith than Sidious ever allowed him to be. And since Maul is slowly realizing how... unhelpful... the way he was raised was, he’s determined to figure out how to do it better.
So he reads. He reads training manuals, child psychology books, teaching books, studies on motivation and performance, anything he can get his nerdy little hands on. He learns that frightened children don’t perform well. He learns about “trauma”, and how “trauma” makes it hard to control your emotions sometimes. Well, you can’t have THAT in your ultimate sith apprentice. Okay, so no scaring Anakin and no traumatizing him. Maul quickly realizes that literally everything he does frightens Anakin or his mom, and frightening Anakin’s mom also frightens Anakin (cut him some slack, he’s literally never been in a positive relationship, Maul has no model for any behavior other than “evil abuser” and “subservient slave”).
Maul is not an idiot. He knows he’s not doing it right. He’s reluctant to start teaching Anakin ANYTHING until he knows he won’t accidentally damage his precious spite-apprentice. So he mostly ignores the kid while he reads and learns.
He also observes. Specifically, he observes Shmi Skywalker. Somehow, she seems to be able to interact with Anakin without scaring him. She can even tell him what to do without scaring him. She can teach and correct him without scaring him. And she never physically hurts him at all. Maul is kind of blown away- he didn’t even know it was possible to interact with people like that? HOW does she DO it???
So Maul watches and learns. He practices. Shmi helps, guides him, tells him when he messes up and tells him how to do it better. Maul gets a lot better at restraining his murderous urges. Turns out, if you immediately kill everyone who annoys you, it’s hard to ask them for advice after. The other person Maul gets pointers from is C3PO, the protocol droid the kid dragged along. Maul understands 3PO better than he understands Shmi and Anakin. 3PO is a droid. Maul was raised by a droid. Maul knows how to talk with 3PO, whereas talking with Shmi or Anakin feels like wandering around in a fog full of landmines.
So anyway, Maul and 3PO become unlikely friends, and, as Maul, determined to out-parent Sidious in every conceivable way, learns more and more social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills, he truly comprehends how fucked up his own childhood was. There’s rage. There’s grief. There’s murderous desire for vengeance. But there’s also Anakin. Who would be scared if Maul smashed the ship or killed random people to vent his anger. Anakin, who needs something called a “positive role model”, who needs to be taught how to use the Force, and who needs the adults around him to have their shit together. There’s also Shmi, who makes him soup and hot chocolate when he’s feeling bad, and tells him off for breaking things, and who helps him get better at being a real person, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from him other than a general expectation of not hurting her or her son. So Maul deals. He grows. He heals, slowly. There’s setbacks, and gains. And somewhere in there, he starts teaching Anakin how to use the Force.
The problem is, Maul learned to access the Force first through fear and anger. Turns out, it’s really hard to teach someone fundamentals of force usage via fear and anger without first having to traumatize them. So right away, Maul hits a barrier. He doesn’t have any clue how to teach Anakin a different way though. He needs help.
But also, FUCK the jedi. NO WAY is Maul asking the Jedi for help, he hates the Jedi. Maul is still a Sith, he’s just a new, better kind of Sith, the kind that trains apprentices who are gonna kick WAY MORE ASS and be HEALTHY WELL-ADJUSTED PEOPLE while doing it (let him dream, ok?). So Maul starts hauling Shmi and Anakin around the galaxy, seeking out any non-Jedi Force-users they can, to learn Force techniques that the Sith didn’t teach Maul.
They spend time with the Guardians on Jedha, with those weird duck-people from that one episode with Jar-Jar’s girlfriend, with some wacky monks on a tiny island in the ass-end of nowhere, and even some time with a long-lost sith cult in a box system in the middle of the Unknown Regions. Maul learns. Anakin learns. Maul uses what he learns from the other force-users, combines it with what he knows, and teaches Anakin even more. The Jedi and the Sith are really the only two groups who really use the force for Big Impressive Things, like telekinesis and lightning and whatnot, so while the other force groups would have a lot to teach them both, they wouldn’t really be able to teach Anakin how to levitate something. And you can’t be the kick-assiest, bestest Sith Apprentice Ever if you can’t levitate shit. So Maul takes takes all these new techniques, like “being calm and chill when you meditate instead of super pissed off” and “using the Force while not being filled with incredible rage” and “mindfulness techniques” and “who knew you could do cool stuff like floating rocks without having to exhaust yourself by hating everything in existence, including yourself” and applies them to the skills and methods he already has. He and Anakin have to do a lot of fumbling and exploring and mistake-making, but they figure it out. And Anakin learns. And he kicks ass.
When Anakin is 11, Maul hauls him off to Ach-To to dig a crystal out of the roots of an ancient tree. He tells Anakin to hold it and meditate, to let his emotions rise around him, to feed them, to pull them through the crystal, let it resonate, let it take on the shape of his strongest feelings. After all, that is how Maul was trained to bleed his crystals. Maul’s pain and fear and anger yielded him red crystals.
Anakin comes out with yellow. Determination, fierce protectiveness, drive, hunger for justice, righteous fury. That is Anakin’s lightsaber.
Anakin grows up, planet-hopping with his Mom and Uncle Maul in a beat-up freighter with under-the-hood enhancements out the ass (Maul ditched the Scimitar right after Tatooine so his master couldn’t instantly track him down, and Maul and Anakin are both huge mechanics nerds and bond over things like “but what if you put ANOTHER PLASMA CORE IN THE ENGINE”, so this ship is, uh, certainly some sort of thing). Anakin grows up learning a hundred different Force traditions- just about every major Force tradition in the Galaxy (except for Jedi), and more than a few obscure ones. He grows up, tinkering with his droid, learning Juyo from Maul and how to sew a button from his mom. He grows up, beholden to two destinies only: “Help me take down Sidious, because he’s an asshole and a shitty Sith Lord” and “do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a Sith and no one gets to tell you what to do” (”except me.” Shmi interrupts. “Sith Lords still have a bedtime.” “Sith Lords still have a bedtime,” Maul amends, having no desire to repeat what happened when he encouraged a ten-year-old Anakin to ignore all the rules on purpose).
And what Anakin wants to do is what he’s always wanted to do- go back to Tatooine and free the slaves. Maul thinks that a big project like that would be an excellent learning opportunity for Anakin. He also wants Anakin to succeed, so he sits him down and talks logistics. How do you free the slaves without hundreds of slave owners detonating their chips when they hear what is happening? How do you keep them free once you do that? How do you get them jobs, clothes, food, houses? What about the ones who want to leave Tatooine? What about the ones who want to stay? And what about the economic upheaval that will happen when you deprive a whole planet of its cheapest source of labor? When Anakin is fourteen, they start planning.
When Anakin is eighteen, they make their move. Anakin, coordinating with Shmi, who returned to Tatooine three years earlier to organize things on the ground (living with a woman named Beru Whitesun, who is a gateway to the Freedom Path network), activates several massive orbital EMP devices, frying every electrical device on the planet, including slave chips. (The EMPs came from a pirate friend of his mom’s, who seems to do whatever she wants as long as she makes him hot chocolate). All over the planet, lights go out, slave chips fry, and radios go silent. And Shmi’s agents get to work. Ordinary citizens all over tatooine grab their rifles and head out. They meet up with others in their settlement, and the teams sweep the area, following a plan devised by Skywalker and Whitesun. They systematically visit every house in every settlement, city, spaceport, and town that is known to house slaves, and tell the slaves to grab their families and most treasured possessions and follow them.
(Tatooine is a sparsely populated planet- you can count the major settlements on two hands. If it weren’t, this would never have worked.)
Not many slaveowners put up much of a resistance- fifty angry masked people pointing guns in your face tend to make you compliant. The only slaveowner who puts up more than a token resistance is Jabba the Hutt. His resistance, however, lasts about thirty seconds, before Anakin cuts off his head.
Maul meets Anakin at Jabba’s palace, where he’s rounding up the last of Jabba’s cronies.
“No trouble?” Maul asks.
“Nope,” Anakin replies. “You?”
“None.” Maul said. Turns out, it’s like, super easy to take down an entire criminal organization when you can turn up to a meeting of the Hutt family heads, kill them all, and waltz out past all their security forces without breaking a sweat. (Seriously, it’s kind of hilarious how Maul is literally just that good).
“The slaves here are freed?”
“Yep,” says Anakin. Then frowns. “Hold on...” He senses a presence. Big, hulking, simple, and starving. He can sense that, whatever it is, it hasn’t seen the sunlight or been able to move freely in years.
So anyway, that’s how Anakin turns up at Mos Espa at first sunrise, riding on the back of Jabba the Hutt’s pet rancor. “Who’s a good girl,” Anakin says, scratching behind her ear nubs. “You are!” And she is a good girl. Padme (”I just think it sounds like a nice name, you know?”) is very good at dispersing angry slaveowners who look like they might start rioting.
The slaves freed overnight have been gathered together at pre-designated safe zones-mostly warehouses or large buildings that Shmi has been buying up over the years for exactly this purpose.
(The slaves living in remote settlements, at moisture farms and homesteads, didn’t get a visit from the freedom teams. However, Shmi had a plan for them too. She has made overtures to the Tusken tribes. Once she managed to negotiate her way into speaking to one of the leaders without getting killed, she sold them a story, a dream. A revolution. Free the slaves. Transform Tatooine. She doesn’t promise the Tuskens to expel humans from the planet entirely. She promises them equal rights under the law (she also promises the existence of laws in the first place). She promises them the right to raise Banthas, the right to traverse their ancestral lands and the return of sacred sites taken from them, the right to trade, the right to control who passes over their lands. She promises them the right to water and shade. And, she promises them half the seats on the ruling council she plans to set up. And so, on the night the EMPs blow, Tusken raiders visit every homestead on Tatooine (again, there’s only a few hundred, a thousand at most), and kidnap the slaves. Perhaps not the most reassuring experience for enslaved peoples who have been taught their entire lives to fear the Tuskens, and not without reason, but, nevertheless, it is freedom).
As the new day dawns- Tatooine’s first dawn as a free planet- Anakin, Maul, and Shmi know that the easy part is over. Now, they have to house tens of thousands of people currently cooped up in warehouses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They have to establish and keep iron-tight control over the planet and its settlements, and quash any violent reprisals before they gain momentum. They also have to completely rebuild an economy completely upended by the overnight emancipation.
However, Shmi’s not the only one who’s been busy for the past few years. While Shmi was on Tatooine, planning a revolution, Anakin and Maul were traversing the galaxy, gathering resources, using the Patented Maul Method (TM)- breaking into the headquarters of powerful organizations and threatening to kill everybody in charge unless they did what they said.
As the second sun rises, ships begin arriving in Tatooine’s orbit. Pop-up housing is dropped onto the outskirts of Tattooine’s settlements, the kind that mining companies use to set up new bases on mineral-rich asteroids. The accommodations are small and sparse, but each family has a kitchen, bathroom, beds, and private space. Huge generators are hooked up to cool the new housing. Anakin knows that the already-existing slave quarters, made of stone with no windows and mostly underground- are already built to keep the occupants cool, but he refuses to make the former slave population live in slave quarters. Some of the freed people are moved into Jabba’s old palace, some into buildings abandoned by rich business owners who fled the planet when they saw what was happening. Food, water, medicine, clothes, books, toys, tools, and shoes are deposited. (the Republic’s equivalent of the FBI had been utterly baffled when Galaxy’s three biggest criminal organizations started moving cargo that looked less like a drug trade and more like a disaster relief mission).
Anakin walks among the newly freed slaves, reassuring them- yes, you are free. Yes, you will be fed and housed and clothed as long as you need it. Yes, we will try to find your child/husband/wife/mother who was sold years ago. Yes, you can go home, you can do whatever you want.
He also asks for volunteers. And he gets them. Hardly anyone would say no to the chance to work with the Skywalker, who once was a slave like them, but freed himself and returned, who freed the slaves in one night of glory, and appeared at sunrise riding a rancor.
Anakin sends out messengers, all across the planet. “Tatooine is a free world,” they say. “All slaves are hereby freed, by order of the He who Walks in the Sky. Any slaveowners who, by their own free will, turn over their detonators will not be harmed. Any who resist, will be.” Not many resist.
At the end of that first day, as the suns are setting, once the freed peoples of Tatooine are fed, and given water, and sheltered, Maul comes to Anakin.
“I am proud of you.” He says. “You have come into your power, you have mastered yourself, and so have mastered the Force. You have the freedom and the power to do anything you choose. You are no longer my apprentice. Lord Skywalker, you are a true Sith Master.” Anakin pulls him into a hug. He maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe also feels mildly annoyed that Anakin is a full head taller than him now.
(Sidious would be truly, utterly offended at Maul’s criteria for Sith-Lord-ness. “THAT’S NOT SITH” he would have said. “THAT’S BARELY EVEN DARK SIDE ADJACENT, YOU ARE DILUTING OUR THOUSAND YEAR HERITAGE-” but Maul wouldn’t care about Sidious’ stupid opinions, anyway).
And Anakin and Shmi get to work. They employ the newly freed people of Tatooine, constructing permanent houses, tearing down slave markets, building critical infrastructure. Anakin pays them more than a living wage, thanks to the extremely deep pockets of Crimson Dawn. He brings in doctors and teachers, and guarantees healthcare and education for all who want it (whenever one of Crimson Dawn’s higher-ups says “wait, why are we dumping massive amounts of money into this one random-ass planet?” Darth Maul just casually sidles up behind them with his lightsaber until they remember that he can literally just show up anywhere, at anytime, and kill them unless they do what he says. If Maul’s busy, he sends 3PO instead- 3PO’s been outfitted with about ten times as much weaponry as is legal, and can be very convincing when he wants to be).
While Anakin works on infrastructure and supporting the freed peoples of Tatooine, and unfucking the economic trainwreck they caused, Shmi and Beru work on the government. They write down a few, very basic rules-Tatooine is to be ruled by a council of people, half of whom will come from the Tusken tribes, all of which shall be selected by fair and free election. All citizens of Tatooine shall have the right to vote in these elections, and the right to vote shall be guaranteed to all- except for those who have ever owned or sold a sentient being. (it was a huge debate in the Lars-Whitesun-Skywalker household, this matter of restricting voting rights. In the end, it was decided that slaveowners, and ONLY slaveowners, were to be the sole exception for universal suffrage). Every citizen of Tatooine is guaranteed access to food, medicine, and water, and has the right to have their grievances addressed by the council.
Shmi works quickly to gather her council- she knows she has to do it fast, to prove to the Tuskens that she is as good as her word. The first elections are chaotic, and perhaps not completely non-violent, but in the end, there is a council of twenty representatives, with Shmi Skywalker representing Mos Espa.
The Council proceeds to have raging- and occasionally violent- debates about the structure of their future government. What rights to guarantee citizens. Should they have a court system? What about a financial system? How are they to guarantee water, food, and medicine to everyone? What even are taxes?
The Rebuilding of Tatooine is long, and hard, and contentious. There are arguments and rage and fighting- the repatriation of traditional Tusken lands is especially fraught. But Shmi promised, and so she makes it happen (Anakin and Padme may have helped too). Maul, for his part, keeps training Anakin, and keeps managing the criminal underworld with a careful balance of death threats and actual death, but mostly stays out of the way of Anakin’s Senior Project.
Soon, Anakin is able to re-purpose the pop-up housing, since most people have moved into traditional Tatooine-built homes, suited to the environment. The newly restructured economy is tentatively taking its first steps, and Tatooine’s baby government is becoming less and less dependent on intergalactic criminal funding (partially thanks to Anakin confiscating the entirety of Jabba’s personal fortune). He spends a lot of time in Council meetings, trying not to scream at people while also trying to stop Padme from eating them. The Council debates what is next for Tatooine, and eventually, they vote to petition the Republic for membership. Tatooinians, as a people, including the Tuskens, are fiercely independant, but, as Shmi points out, joining the Republic would guarantee them to certain things like humanitarian aid, a voice in decisions affecting interplanetary trade routes and taxation, legal legitimacy and the right to call on the Republic for aid should their sovereignty ever be threatened. Most importantly, slavery is illegal on all Republic planets, which means that if any slave-owning organizations ever pushed in on Tatooine, there would be another (much better funded) organization to call on to help quash it.
The Republic requires that a petitioning planet’s head of state visit the Senate on Coruscant to ask the Senate for entry into the Republic. The Council, grumbling, re-jiggers their constitution to allow for a “chief councilor”, and promptly elect Anakin to the position (”Fuck me,”) Anakin says. Maul laughs at him, then sobers and tells him to be careful on Coruscant (”My former master lives there.” he says. “Mind your shields, and do not let him know your true nature. You are not yet ready to take him on, and you have your planet and your people to think of.” “Yes, Uncle Maul.” Anakin says. “I will be careful.”).
Anakin shows up in the Galactic Senate, sandy robes, uncombed hair, and half smirk on his face. “I am Anakin Skywalker, free person of Tatooine,” he says. He presents the case for Tatooine’s admittance to the Republic in a booming, confident voice, drawing on his inner strength- his righteous anger and determination to ensure his people’s future- to keep his voice from wavering.
There are grumbles. Muttering. No Senator wants to be the one to blatantly say “no”- it’s a sort of miracle story, Tatooine, the little planet that rose up and threw of the shackles of slavery and now wants to join the Republic- the exact sort of mythos that the Republic itself is built on. It’s bad PR to vote against that little planet. But at the same time, Tatooine is a sandy, useless dustball that’ll need fiscal support from the Senate, with nothing to offer in terms of economic value. Many Senators are debating with themselves, not whether or not to say “no”, but how to vote “no” without losing ten points in approval ratings.
Until the Senator from Naboo, a diminutive woman who somehow reminds Anakin of his rancor, stands up. She gives an impassioned, off-the-cuff speech, reminding the Senate of how her own planet had thrown off the shackles of oppression not ten years ago, how the Republic was founded by planets like Tatooine, and how, most importantly, they had no legal basis to deny them entry, and if the Senate voted no, Naboo’s lawyers would litigate the issue six ways from taungsday- which, due to a clause in the Senate’s constitution that forbade them from passing legislation while the issue of a planet’s admittance to the Republic was on the floor, would effectively paralyze the Senate until the courts made a ruling. And, as Padme made sure to emphasize, if the court’s decision was not favorable, she would appeal. She could feasibly stop the Senate from doing anything for years, if necessary.
Tatooine is admitted to the Republic.
“Two Senators,” Anakin demands. “In order for my people to be fairly represented, my planet requires two Senators.” When complaints are made, Jar-Jar Binks threatens to explain the complicated dynamics of a planet attempting to grapple with a colonial past. He doesn’t have to. Tatooine gets its two Senators.
Anakin meets with Senator Amidala in her office, to thank her.
“Of course,” she said. “I remember a little boy who helped free my planet- how could I not help you when you needed it?”
“Uhh, thanks, yeah, that’s, really nice of you. Like your hair. Which is nice. In an objective sort of way,” Anakin says, because there is no universe in which Anakin is not a complete idiot in front of Padme. “I named my rancor after you,” he blurts.
Before Anakin is scheduled to leave Coruscant, the Jedi send a knight to scope out the new planetary leader. Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up at Anakin’s hotel room, and goes “Oh. It’s.... you.”
“Obi-Wan!” Anakin grins. He only knew him for about two days when he was nine, but he still greets him like an old friend, like a brother. They fall into easy, teasing conversation. “I thought you were dead, I confess, after you disappeared from Naboo,” Obi-Wan admits. “I am truly sorry that I was unable to fulfill Qui-Gon’s promise to train you as a Jedi Knight.”
“That’s ok,” Anakin waves his hand dismissively. “I got trained as a Sith instead.” Then he freezes. Oops. He was not supposed to say that. Maul would be so disappointed in him.
“Beg pardon?” Obi-Wan says.
“I, uhh, got trained, as a, uh, sift...er? Instead? A sand sifter? I sift sand for a living?”
“You said Sith.”
“No I didn’t, I definitely said sift.”
“No, you said Sith.”
“I definitely did not.”
Anakin changes the subject, and Obi-Wan lets it drop. He’ll tell the Council, of course, but he honestly cannot fathom the concept of this kid being a Sith. He senses nothing Dark about him- well, at least no more dark than is present in any sentient. Besides, it’s not like there are any Sith Lords around anymore, ever since he killed Maul (luckily, Obi-Wan doesn’t see the picture in Anakin’s wallet, a candid shot 3PO took in the cockpit of their family’s ship. Fifteen-year-old Anakin, at the controls, hyperbrake still on with his hands on the hyperdrive lever, Maul, standing behind him, hands gripping Anakin’s seat and face distorted half-way through a panic-induced rant about flight safety, and Shmi, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, laughter on her face and knitting needles in her hands).
Anakin contacts his mother, tells her the good news. The Council, moving with alacrity, elects Tatooine’s first Senators. And four days later, one year after the Dawn of Freedom, Senator Shmi Skywalker and Senator Ooutrigh (a Tusken warrior) of Tatooine arrive on Coruscant and address the Senate for the first time.
Of course, while Anakin has been growing up, planning for Tatooine’s future, and annoying the shit out of Maul, Palpatine’s own plans have continued apace. Barely four months after Tatooine is admitted to the Republic, Obi-Wan finds himself in an arena on Geonosis. The battle goes much differently this time, partially due to the fact that Anakin has retrofitted the cargo bay of his family’s ship to house Padme (the rancor, not the Senator), and descends onto the Arena sands just as Yoda and the Clone Troops arrive, and deposits both Padme’s (the rancor, and the Senator) into the melee.
“Hi, Obi-Wan!” Anakin calls, whipping out his lightsaber to deflect the hail of blaster bolts (Maul would disapprove, but Maul isn’t here, he’s ten clicks away, chasing down the Jedi dropout Sidious replaced him with).
“Anakin, what the FUCK” Obi-Wan says, staring at Chief Councilor Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, riding a rancor and swinging an honest-to-Force yellow lightsaber.
“Master Yoda, what the FUCK” Anakin says, later, after the battle is over, when he finally gets Yoda to answer his questions about the clone troopers. “You found out about an entire-ass army of slave child soldiers commissioned AND PAID FOR by one of your own council members, and your reaction is ‘oh thank goodness, now we have an army?’ What the FUCK is WRONG with you?!” Yoda tries to explain to Councilor Skywalker that the situation was dire, they’d had no choice, but Councilor Skywalker just keeps repeating “AN ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS” at him. “No choice, we had,” Yoda says yet again.
“BULLSHIT, you had no choice!” Anakin yells. “You could have chosen to not use the entire army of slave child soldiers that you legally own!”
“Let Kenobi and the others die, you would have? Hmm?”
“PROBABLY, YEAH!” Anakin hollers (”Thanks,” mutters Obi-Wan). “Sometimes the choices you have all really suck, but you still have to make them! You can’t just pretend you didn’t have any options, you HAD OPTIONS, and you chose the one that involved using a SLAVE ARMY OF CHILD SOLDIERS.” He gestures behind him to the battlefield, where clone troopers and medics are moving amongst the bodies, white and red stark against the sand, tallying their dead brothers.
Yoda shakes his head. “emotional, you are, young Skywalker.” he said. “Cloud your judgement, your feelings do.”
“Yeah, I’m fucking emotional!” Anakin practically screams. “I have personal beef with slavery, so excuse me if I feel emotions about it. Your problem is that you’re able to use an ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS and not feel bad about it! Your lack of emotions is clouding YOUR judgement!” He stomps off. Yoda shakes his head. Skywalker is young, and too close to the issue of slavery to really have perspective on it. He does not understand. It was a great loss to the Jedi Order when the Council rejected him, all those years ago- if he had been trained as a Jedi, he would have learned to put aside his emotions about slavery, and he would have understood why it was necessary now. If Anakin could have heard what Yoda was thinking, he would have turned right back around, picked Yoda up, and punted him like a limmie ball.
Anakin and Maul return to Tatooine. Maul offers to assassinate the entire Jedi Council, but Anakin says no. He’s still fuming about his conversation with Yoda. He knows he gets emotional. He knows that Yoda isn’t entirely wrong- he knows he lets his emotions cloud his judgement sometimes. It’s something he’s worked hard on, over the years, him and Maul. How to take a step back from the emotions howling in your head, and how to view the situation without them getting in the way. And what kinds of situations you should let your emotions guide you. Anakin thinks he’s damn well entitled to strong emotions about slavery.
Short of declaring war on the entire Jedi Order, Anakin doesn’t know what to do about the Republic’s slave army. The Tatooine Council releases a public condemnation of it, explicitly calling it slavery and calling for the clones to be freed. The Council seriously debates joining the Separatists, until Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor) and Shmi look in-depth at the Separatist Council, which is buried deep in the pockets of corporate interests. Shmi files a lawsuit, under the Republic’s anti-slavery legislation, suing for the freedom of the clones. It’s a battle of miserable inches, and meanwhile, the war rages.
With Dooku gone, Sidious’s only means of controlling the Separatists is through Grievous and Ventress, both of whom are loose cannons whose loyalty (and competence) he seriously doubts. It’s frustrating for him, and not necessarily better for the Jedi and their army (of slave child soldiers). Sidious needs to keep the war in careful balance, neither side gaining too much ground, to draw it out and grind the Jedi down and manipulate their public image until he can heap all the blame on them. Without Dooku to pass down his orders, he has no way of keeping a firm check on the Separatist Council, and the Seps are in serious danger of completely overrunning the Republic. The droid army is fifty times as many as the clones, and the Separatists have the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and all of the major military tech corporations on their side. Honestly, it’s a testament to the Jedi and the Clone Army that they haven’t lost the war in the first month.
Speaking of that first month, Anakin doesn’t spend long on uninvolved in the war. Scant weeks after Geonosis, the Separatist Army threatens to roll right over Tatooine on their way to gaining control of the Outer Rim Hyperlanes. Tatooine has no army, doesn’t even have a police force. It has no fleet, no orbital defenses, and the droid army headed their way has ten times more droids than there are guns on the planet. The Council faces a choice. Ask the Republic to send in the GAR to defend them- ask for an army of slaves to be sent to die on Tatooine, to stain the sand with enslaved blood so soon after Tatooine clawed her way to freedom, or do nothing, and almost certainly ensure the annihilation of Tatooine and her people. To die, or to live by the blood of slaves who died for you. It’s not a pretty choice.
In the end, the choice is taken away from them (and perhaps it’s a kindness, that they weren’t forced to choose, perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but it is what it is). A GAR cruiser shows up in orbit, and the Council is hailed by a man identifying himself as Captain Rex, commanding officer of the 501st legion of the GAR.
“The Republic sent you here?” Anakin asks, incredulously.
“Well, not exactly.” Captain Rex hedges. “The 501st is due for leave on Kamino, but the hyperdrive was making funny noises, so we decided to stop off in the nearest Republic system to check it out.” Rex shrugs. “If a bunch of tinnies just so happen to show up, it’s not like we’ll just sit back and watch.”
“Why are you doing this?” Anakin asks the clone captain, once they’ve got him on planet and in the council room. He’s got a lump in his throat, and his eyes are stinging. The 501st has no Jedi on board, no natborn officers, and no orders to go to Tatooine. Rex and the 501st showed up here of their own free will. Because they wanted to. To defend Tatooine.
“Geonosis.” Rex says. “On Geonosis, you saved the lives of over two hundred of us. Including me. We couldn’t stand by and let your planet fall to the Separatists, Councilor Skywalker.”
After the battle, during the cleanup, when Tatooinians are passing through the rows of injured, giving out water- giving out life- Rex tells Anakin the other reason.
“We all know about Tatooine, sir.” He says, quietly. “A bunch of slaves who stood up and said “no,” and took their freedom.” He shrugs. “Stories like that, it gives us hope. For the future.” He fixes Anakin with a stare. “If we let that hope die, we die too. Tatooine cannot fall.”
That is the first time Anakin and Rex fight together. Somehow, when the 501st leaves Tatooine, Anakin goes with them- officially, as a consultant/observer, appointed at the request of Senator Skywalker to observe the GAR and monitor the health and wellbeing of the troopers. Unofficially, Anakin and Rex become a lethal team, making the 501st one of the most effective legions in the Galaxy. Anakin isn’t dumb. He knows he’s being a massive hypocrite, running around with an army of slave child soldiers. Rex, however, insists that it’s different.
“First of all, we asked you to come with us.” he says. “Second of all, it’s not like you staying behind would have made any difference in our situation. And besides, scrapping clankers isn’t the only reason I asked you to come with us.” Anakin raises an eyebrow.
And Rex introduces Anakin to his older brother, Cody, commander of the 212th (Anakin is happy to see Obi-Wan again, but appalled to meet Obi-Wan’s fourteen-year-old togruta padawan, because why would you put a CHILD in a warzone, in a COMMAND POSITION). And Cody brings Anakin in on The Plan. The clones will not remain slaves forever, and they will not wait for some elusive promise of gratitude after the war is over. They will take their freedom, and they will defend their own, and they’re asking Anakin, who freed the slaves of Tatooine, to help them do it.
“So basically, you want me on as a consultant.”
“Basically, yeah.” Cody says. “And also as a guy with a lightsaber who can leap fifty feet into the air and dodge blaster bolts. Those are always handy to have around.”
So Anakin and Rex and Cody, and Cody’s small circle of commanders, lay their plans. And in the meantime, there’s a war to fight. Shmi’s still on Tatooine, but Maul comes with Anakin and the 501st. He and Rex get along like a house on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them- they do nothing but argue and needle each other. Rex sarcastically calls Maul “Commander Maul” because it pisses him off so much, and it catches on with the whole legion. Maul constantly mutters about murdering and/or poisoning Rex.
But after Ventress almost chokes Rex to death, and breaks into his mind to make him do her bidding, Maul doesn’t leave Rex alone for a week, and clutches his hand tightly in the medbay. Rex doesn’t mention it, so neither does Anakin.
Padme, on the other hand, makes no secret of how much she loves Rex (the Rancor, not the Senator, though she likes him too). Padme seems to have concluded that Rex is some sort of long-lost hatchling, and can be seen chasing Rex down the hangar bay, trying to corral him into the nest she’s constructed in the corner reserved for her. Rex gets used to surprise cuddles from a massive predator.
The Jedi Council are at their wit’s end with Skywalker, but their hands are full and honestly, he’s a benefit to the war effort, so they assign Obi-Wan to “supervise” the legion, and leave them to it. Obi-Wan and Anakin strike up a deep friendship, unfettered by the baggage that comes with being master and padawan. Obi-Wan finds himself having serious questions about the Jedi’s role in the war, since Anakin is not at all shy about challenging him on the whole “slave army of child soldiers” thing. Obi-Wan is also, quite frankly, too busy to effectively teach a padawan, and by this point, he knows that Anakin’s had some sort of Force training. He’s fought beside him enough to be confident in his skills, and often sends Ahsoka on extended missions with the 501st, and explicitly begs Anakin to help him fill in the gaps in her training. Anakin obliges enthusiastically.
Of course, Maul helps train her too. Obi-Wan shows up on the Resolute one day to pick her up, and asks how her training’s going.
“Great!” She says. “Skyguy’s weird uncle is teaching me jar’kai-”
“Anakin has an uncle?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised. “Who knows jar’kai?”
And so Obi-Wan and Maul meet once again. And Obi-Wan is just absolutely pole-axed.
“Darth Maul?” He splutters. “Is your uncle?”
“Not biologically,” Anakin shrugs. “He practically raised me, along with my mom. He taught me everything I know about lightsabers and the Force.”
“...”
“...you did say Sith, Anakin, you bastard, sand-sifting MY ASS-”
“Oh, it’s you.” Maul says. “I won’t kill you, but only because Anakin likes you.” Obi-Wan throws up his hands.
Somehow, Obi-Wan and Maul come to an understanding. Somehow, Obi-Wan doesn’t turn him over to the council.
At one point, a giant of a zabrak, easily eight feet tall, with skin a poisonous yellow, shows up, claiming that Maul is his brother, and that he’s here to bring him home to Dathomir. Maul takes one look at Savage and goes “Fuck that”. “I will train you in the ways of the Force,” he says. “I can show you power like you’ve never wielded before.” he says. “You shall be a great and feared Sith Lord,” he says. “Have some hot chocolate, you look cold,” he says. “Put on a sweater.” Savage, slightly bemused, comes to terms with the fact that he’s just been adopted.
It’s Maul who figures it out, of course. How could he not? He was raised by Sidious. He knows how devious he is, how his plans have layers upon layers, backups upon backups, contingencies stacked from here to the Outer Rim. Once Sidious moves, you can be sure that any reasonable outcome will be in his favor, because he has completely engineered the situation before you were even aware it existed.
The Sith caused the war and are playing both sides. The Sith caused the clones to be commissioned (these things are trivially easy to figure out, if you’re paying attention). The Sith want the Jedi dead.
“Contingencies,” Maul mutters. “It’s always a trap, and there’s always contingencies.”
When he finds the chip in Rex’s head, he shakes with rage and refuses to talk to anyone, fearing, for the first time in years, that he will lose control and hurt someone he loves. It is Rex who talks him down, who manages to get close to him, who embraces him and lets him cry on his shoulder, then scream and rage and punch the walls. When Maul is able to explain, Rex has to choke back his own terrified, horrified sobs. He holds them back, and calmly looks at Maul and says “What are you going to do about it?”
The surgery, they discover, is simple enough. An astromech can do it in two minutes (C2PO can do it in seventy seconds, and Artoo can’t stand it). When Anakin is told, he goes quiet for a minute, and when he looks back up, it is not Anakin, Rex’s friend, Maul’s kid, who is sitting at the table in the briefing room. It is He Who Walks in the Sky, Huttslayer, Breaker of Chains, who looks back at them. Anakin Skywalker has always wanted nothing more than to free all the slaves. And Anakin Skywalker’s destiny has always been to do what he wanted.
They tell Cody. They modify their plans. They quietly contact medics throughout the GAR, and Artoo quietly sends the details to every military astromech he trusts. When the army is safe from Sidious’ control, Anakin, Rex, and Maul conspire to lure him off of Coruscant. Maul takes over Mandalore, exiling the duchess and announcing a New Sith Empire. Sidious shows up, declaring that Maul has become a rival, disowning his former apprentice and attacking him, with intent to kill. Savage loses an arm. Maul almost loses his life. But as he lies on the ground at Sidious’s feet, arms trembling with the effort of holding the parry keeping Sidious’ saber from his throat, he hears “We’ve got the face shot! Go, go go!” in his earpiece. Gunfire, real slugthrowers, difficult to block with a saber, erupts around him. C3PO and his arsenal, along with Fives, Jesse, and Echo, the 501st’s best ARC troopers, open fire on Sidious. The Sith is forced to back away, raising a hand to stop the bullets in midair. Maul leaps to his feet, and Anakin joins him, lightsaber drawn.
The fight is quick, but brutal. Maul’s hands threaten to tremble with terror, facing down the horror of his childhood, the monster whose treatment of him is woven fundamentally into his psyche, whose shadow has haunted Maul all his life, and still invades his dreams. But he reaches out to his family, to Rex, beside him, steady, full of faith in him, to Anakin, a blazing sun of love and anger, a shield of raw power, and to Shmi, all the way in her Senate offices on Coruscant, cool and calm and soothing like a desert spring as ever-present as the stars. His hands do not tremble. He raises his lightsaber against his master, beside the blade of his son. Together, they beat the Sith Lord back. Anakin binds the Sith’s blade, knees him in the ribs, and while Sidious is thus occupied, Maul cuts his head off.
“You were a terrible parent,” he pants, and spits on the corpse. Then, he collapses, and Rex is there to catch him, and Maul clings to him and shakes, and cries. Anakin reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, and Rex pulls him in with a look, and together, they surround Maul, a bulwark against the rest of the world, a safe circle for him to fall apart for a little bit. At some point, one of them unstraps the small camera that Maul had been wearing on his chest. Ahsoka has, at that point, already sent the footage to every major news office on Coruscant.
That evening, plastered all over the galactic news, is a video of the Chancellor himself, showing up on a neutral world and attacking its sovereign leader, wielding red lightsabers of all things. And it’s obviously the Chancellor; there’s a clear shot of his face when he knocks Mandalore’s ruler to the ground and the camera gets a good view right up into his hood.
It’s a massive scandal. One tabloid shows the footage with a little counter in the corner, counting up every treaty and galactic law that Palpatine violates onscreen. The only thing that saves Palpatine from impeachment and arrest is the fact that he’s already dead. Inquiries are launched, investigators are sanctioned, documents and hard drives and testimony are subpoena’ed. Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor), spearheads the investigative committee, and within a month, they’ve uncovered decades worth of bribes, backroom deals, contracts with droid manufacturers, clear evidence of Palpatine authorizing Republic funds for weaponry that went straight to the Separatists, and even communication records between the Chancellor and the two military leaders of the Separatists. Grievous and Ventress go into hiding (the Tales of Grievous and Ventress, unlikely buddies forced on an intergalactic road trip on the run from the cops, is a story for a different absurdly long post at 3am). The Separatists break down in chaos, and the war grinds to a halt. In the middle of all the political hurricane, Cody enacts his plan, and the entire GAR simultaneously deserts, and fucks directly off to Tatooine. This ignites another scandal, with Senators calling for Tatooine’s expulsion from the Republic. Shmi stands in her Senate Pod, hands tucked into her roughspun sleeves, listening attentively while Senator Burtoni of Kamino accuses her of theft.
“If Tatooine does not return the stolen military assets, the Senate may sanction the use of force!” the Senator from Ryloth threatens.
“Pardon me,” Shmi says, “May I ask what army the Senate is planning sending to invade Tatooine? I was under the impression that the only Republic army was already there.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence.
In the middle of the shitstorm, before Shmi is arrested and Anakin declared an enemy of the state, Shmi’s lawsuit finally receives a ruling. And just like that, the clones are legally free. And the judge orders the Senate to pay reparations. Anakin cackles with glee when he hears.
Rex and Cody, with the full support of the people of Tatooine, begin the long, hard, work of resettling their brothers and building a life for the vod’e. Shmi files a lawsuit against the Zygerrian Empire. Savage receives a new arm, courtesy of Anakin, who may or may not have added a few extra utilities to it. Ahsoka is knighted, and controversially invites Anakin to be present at the ceremony, along with Obi-Wan. Maul admits, very quietly and where only Rex can hear, that he doesn’t actually want to poison him. “I know,” Rex says, smiling at him. Anakin, meanwhile, finally marries Padme, the love of his life (the Senator, not the Rancor).
And in Mos Eisly, there is a stone slab, pulled from a crumbled wall and stuck upright in the ground in the middle of the square. No one knows who put it there, but someone carved fifty-seven names into the stone. The fifty-seven names of the clone troopers who died defending Tatooine from the Separatist army, at the beginning of the war. The last slaves to spill their blood on the sands of Tatooine.
#maul adopts anakin#and invents a new kind of sith#which is almost nothing like the old kind of sith#just co-opts the name really#rex/maul#kinda? it wasn't on purpose it just happened#my writing#maulusque's writing#might slap this up on ao3 later#we'll see
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Could I pretty pretty please get some more on the time travel crack au? Maybe when it gets out that Steve, Bruce, andThor are technically from the future?
As much as I’d love to jump to that part, I think it’s funnier necessary to cover a few other tidbits first. For example:
Tony misses whatever discussion follows Thor’s -- hah, got it right in one, he hasn’t lost his touch completely yet -- arrival before the god carries his brother off towards a containment cell with the sort of cheer that causes Tony to carefully keep at least two people between himself and Thor, lest the asshole tries to hug him again.
Not that it can be that big a loss considering they all -- sans Loki -- end up back in the command center of the helicarrier, where Fury glares balefully at the most recent invader of his precious aircraft that clearly isn’t meant to stand in the way of gods.
A glare Thor aggressively doesn’t notice. Likely because he’s too busy partaking in the on-going discussion on what to do next.
And by ‘what to do next’ Tony doesn’t mean the expected we-were-invaded-by-a-mindcontrolled-alien-nutbag-and-there’s-probably-more-out-there-seems-like-the-kind-of-oh-shit-situation-we-should-plan-for. No. That would be reasonable and expected and Tony’s spent all of three hours in the company of the esteemed Captain America and already he can tell you that Rogers is none of that.
[Which, not cool, Capsicle. Dazzling and befuddling people with crazily brilliant ideas is his job.]
[continues under the cut]
So far, Tony’s been paying attention for ten minutes. In that time, Rogers and Thor have gotten into an argument over how to handle Loki -- which holy shit, that went from a calm, rational discussion to a battle to the death between two superhumans on a sugar high in zero point four seconds -- that Tony is so not gonna touch. [Nope. Let some other fool [i.e. Rogers] throw himself head-first into norse god family drama, Tony’s own feelings concerning his family are complicated enough.] That conversation devolved into a not-openly-fighting-while-totally-fighting stand-off between Rogers and Banner over a way too bitter comment from the latter [something about ‘you’d know all about choosing one brother over the other, wouldn’t you’ which what?], which in turn gets derailed by Banner needling Thor about the merits of beheading over stabbing.
Romanoff had the good sense to disappear -- probably to interrogate Loki while his apparently protective big brother is distracted, now that Tony thinks about it.
Unfortunately that still leaves Tony stuck here, having to play the role of the mature adult because no one else fucking will. Tony hates being responsible. It’s like being back in high school and being left to do all the work on your own in group project.
[Tony failed that project. Got a straight up zero on purpose because spite is a wonderful motivator. Which, now that Tony thinks about it, doesn’t say anything promising about the current situation.]
Tony leans even further back in his seat, only balancing on the backlegs of the chair, to give Fury a very sharp, very judgemental look.
These are the people you’re betting Earth’s survival on, that look says.
Fury’s already pissed off expression darkens further, which brightens Tony mood substantially. That one of the suit’s sensors flashes green twice in quick succession less than a minute later really just makes for a delicious cherry on the top. Or more precisely a good excuse to ditch this trainwreck of a match-making attempt.
“Whoops,” Tony says, clearly audible but not too loud to draw real attention from the three [still arguing-while-pretending-not-to] stooges on the other end of the room. “Looks like I gotta take this call.”
He jiggles his fingers at Fury. The guy rolls his eyes -- probably jealous that he doesn’t have an excuse himself, that bitch face doesn’t fool Tony -- but no one tries to stop him.
“Alright, J, what do you have for me?”
*
Tony pretends not to notice the shuffling footsteps. Glances at the disturbingly normal clock on the wall that is so not up-to-date with the rest of the technology in the room, it must be an inside joke. Tony would love to meet the SHIELD agent behind it -- it can’t be easy, being the only person with a sense of humor in an entire agency.
30 minutes.
Well. That’s longer than Tony thought he’d get. JARVIS still hasn’t cracked the last layer on SHIELD’s really fucked up dirt -- and given what he’s already found, that says a lot -- but it’s only a matter of time now. Besides, Tony’s got a job to do.
“To- Stark.”
“Rogers.”
Tony doesn’t turn. Neither does he stop typing.
“What are you doing?”
Tony scoffs. He’s not in the mood to pander to inferior minds -- not when they’re so fucking frustrating, don’t make any sense and worst of all make him do all the work.
“He’s tracking the Tesseract, using the scepter as a point of reference,” Banner says after taking one look at the screen over Tony’s shoulder.
Tony raises his eyebrows, impressed despite himself. Banner’s credentials clearly don’t do him justice -- and they were pretty damn good to begin with.
“Huh,” says Rogers.
Thanks for playing. Now buckle down and make yourself useful or fuck off, Tony wants to snipe but doesn’t get the chance to because the gods -- this god at least -- just aren’t on his side.
“Even without my brother’s help, a weapon of the tesseract’s might should not be underestimated,” Thor speaks up. “Should we not make haste and collect it?”
"Great idea.” Tony’s voice is dryer than the sand dune he crash-landed in back during his fun little trip to Afghanistan. “If only I’d thought of that instead of inventing fifteen new algorithms to try and get a read on SHIELD’s precious magic eight ball while you were busy defending your brother’s honor. Speaking of, I’m pretty sure Romanoff is a greater danger to his virtue than Captain Shockfreeze over there, so why are you still here?”
Okay, maybe poking the hornet nest that is godly family isn’t his smartest move [didn’t he just say he wasn’t gonna touch that?!] but damn if Tony isn’t curious. And also too annoyed to care about unimportant, subjective things like good manners and tact.
He sort of regrets his cavalier attitute a little when Thor sobers. At least there are no tears in sight. Tony is the last person on Earth who should be left unsupervised around crying people. It just never ends well.
“Ah.” Thor sighs heavily, stems his body against an unfortunate table that creaks dangerously. "I’m afraid I can’t afford to see my brother right now.”
It’s the way he says those words, the weight they carry more than anything that tells Tony he needs to drop this issue right now. Talk about one huge trigger button.
Must be inconvenient to have siblings. Tony totally can’t relate.
“Well, in that case, unless you have a magic trick with which you can pull the Tesseract’s position out of your sleeve, how about you sit as far away from these delicate instruments as possible and don’t touch anything while I work my magic, hm?”
Tony doesn’t let his gaze linger on the crushed edge of the table. Thor hasn’t even seemed to notice. He’s too busy lighting up at Tony’s snappish response. Which is surprising. Tony’s aware he’s a bit of an asshole right now. In his defence, he’s an asshole most of the time.
Rogers leaps across the room -- almost crashing into the previously mentioned delicate sensors as he does so -- to slap his palm over Thor’s mouth.
Tony stares. [How quickly can you develop a new habit again? Because this starts to feel like a new habit.]
“That sounds like a great plan!” Rogers beams at him, so wide and fake it must be physically painful for the epitome of all that is good and holy. At least Tony hopes it is. The supersoldier his father worshipped is still clinging to their resident god of thunder’s face.
It’s.
Tony resolutely turns his back on both of them because their madness doesn’t seem to come with a refund-ticket and if Tony doesn’t finish this program, no one will.
Not even Banner -- whom Tony had been kind of hoping for. Speaking of, the man’s been awfully quiet for a while now.
“You alright there, Brucie-Bear?” Tony turns around -- a little because it’s polite to face people when you talk with them and mostly to have an excuse not to watch the ongoing doomed wrestle-match between Blonde 1 and Blonde 2. His awesome nicknaming skill doesn’t get so much as a twitch.
To be fair, Banner is so busy staring straight ahead with the most epic rendition of the World’s Most Thoughtful Expression™ Tony has seen in a while that it doesn’t seem like the man heard him. At all.
Until he suddenly speaks up.
“I think we’ve forgotten something.” Behind Tony the impromptu wrestling comes to a sudden halt.
Probably something negligible like how to focus on a mission, the sarcastic voice in the back of Tony’s mind drawls. Though it should be noted that Tony’s consciousness only comes in sarcastic or not at all. Sorry, everyone, all the other flavors are out.
Banner’s frown deepens. “Something- Something important.”
Right on cue an explosion rocks the aircraft.
*
There’s a bit more tension in this part than the previous ones. On Tony’s side it’s because he’s smart enough to pick up on Something Is Seriously Wrong, both consciously and subconsciously and also because he feels the pressure what with everyone else apparently not taking this whole thing very seriously.
[Excluding Natasha who, believe me, takes Clint’s fate very serious indeed.]
On our time travellers’ side, they experience the frustration of being unable to talk openly, surrounded by people they don’t trust, trying to play along to the script of a movie they watched like 12 years ago and never revisited. Needless to say they’re failing horrenduously.
#ReRe answers#archangel-of-peace#if you know the future why are you such an idiot 'verse#Tony Stark#Steve Rogers#Bruce Banner#Thor Odinson#Loki#Thor's and Loki's complicated relationship#Tony is done with this shit#Steve continuous to fail at being subtle#Thor continuous to out-do him#fic#shit this got long#me: i'm gonna write a three line text post on a hilarious time travel au#also me: *what feels like 2k later but is hopefully an exaggeration* fuck#ReRe writes#time travel shenanigans#lovely people
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Could you elaborate on the parallels between the Scorpion and his dad and WKX and Purple Danger? I find that thought really interesting! <3
Oh my god you're asking me for meta? No one asks me for meta!!! Getting this made me so happy, thank you! And yes, I'd be delighted to!
Lemme preface this by saying: I have not read the book, and I've only seen episodes 1 through 27, and while I do know some spoilers for past what I've seen, I don't know everything, and I obviously can't speak to changes in dynamics that may happen past what I've watched.
So, I noted in this post that I felt like I'd just gotten slapped in the face by the parallels between Zhao Jing, and his relationship with Xie-er, and Wen Kexing, and his relationship and Gu Xiang. Specifically, the lines in episode 26 that caught me were these:
And the contrasts and similarities that they drew to these scene from Episode 24, which I watched yesterday:
(all screen caps are by me - I won’t have more screen caps just cause I really don’t have time to hunt them all down, I’m sorry, but the first two were easy to grab, and the second two I’d already taken cause that scene really got to me yesterday).
These lines, coming only two episodes apart, seemed like a really stark and deliberate effort to show a connection in the attitudes of Zhao Jing and Wen Kexing. They've also got some similarities in the childhood/history that got them to this point: Zhao Jing's family was fallen from grace, as was Wen Kexing's. Both are noted as seeming different from the "regular" people around them - Wen Kexing, it's explicit; with Zhao Jing, it's more how others seem to behave around him. It's harder to get a sense of Zhao Jing, since his own self-report is so dubious and the flashbacks we get to the Rong Xuan era are all given from the perspective of different unreliable narrators, whereas Wen Kexing's memories seem fairly intact (well, water of forgetfulness aside) and match the other remembrances we get of the same scenes.
With those similar, dubious foundations, they both resolve from a young age to take revenge for the perceived slights committed against them - and both have decided that regardless of who the specific instigators are for their suffering, they have no compunction about involving innocents as a whole. Zhao Jing wants the power he feels has been denied to him, and sets about conspiring to get that power. To achieve that, he sets about on a course that involves lying and using literally everyone who can help him. Likewise, while I'm still definitely missing some damn important of Wen Kexing's backstory (starting with, who protected the dog for him, and how he went from "kid getting regularly beaten by the previous ghost king" to "adult who is said to have literally eaten the previous ghost king"), he also clearly sets out to gain power through whatever means he can, and to survive, though from the get-go, his goal is essentially the inverse of Zhao Jing's: Zhao Jing wants to lift himself up, and sees nothing but virtue in doing so; Wen Kexing wants to bring everyone else down, and knows he's damned through-and-through for it.
(They're parallels, not matches, just to be clear! It's not that I'm saying everything is the same - on the contrary, it's the differences that makes it so intriguing).
Now, then, at some point relatively early in this entire process, each of these young men found a child. Given that Xie’er and Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishou are of the same generation, presumably they’re all around the same age - 27 or so - and also presumably, the previous generation were all in their late teens to early twenties when they had their own disastrous round of adventuring. So, if Xie’er is, say, 25, and Zhao Jing was probably around 20 (since he was one of the younger folks in the flashbacks), and 20 years have passed, and Xie’er was probably around the same age as child Wen Kexing when he was found? (I don’t know, and I don’t know if that’s ever established, sorry) So around 7? Then we’ve Xie’er being adopted by Zhao Jing and Wen Kexing being adopted by the Ghost King, each almost exactly 20 years ago. Presumably, also, Zhao Jing marries...drat, I can’t remember her name...was it Li Yao or something???...right around the same time - hence why Xie’er would think of her as a mother. Anyway, sorry, I’m really tired and I just lost the thread slightly, but the point is: a 20-or-so-year-old Zhao Jing finds a young Xie’er; and a few years later, a likely-early-teens-aged Wen Kexing finds a toddler Gu Xiang (because Wen Kexing is 27 now, and Gu Xiang is I’m guessing around 18, and she’s likely 3ish when Wen Kexing finds her, so that’d make her 3 or 4, and him 12 or 13).
And here’s where the parallels really show the essential differences between these men, despite the areas of commonality in the hate they hold toward the world and their desire to see the world brought low.
Because, given a small child, Wen Kexing’s immediate, clear thought is: I will never let this child experience what I have been through. Now, he’s busted, and he’s crazy, so from that point of view, he still does her harm: she thinks of murder as nothing (as does Xie’er) for example. But even in that, the motivations are different. Gu Xiang says it herself after she kills the beggar and Cao Weining confronts her about it: if a person is out to harm her, if a person even might harm her, isn’t she justified in killing him? If that isn’t the quintessential Wen Kexing lesson right there, I don’t know what is: “Gu Xiang, you don’t kill because I tell you to, and you don’t kill for fun, and you don’t kill for no reason - but the moment, the very instant, you have a reason? Don’t hesitate, because if you do, you’ll be the corpse, not them.” Everything Wen Kexing teachers Gu Xiang is with the aim of helping her survive in the cruelest environment in the world, one that has flayed him and raked him over the coals over and over and over again. Further, despite the hints I’ve seen so far that he has early allies at Mount Qingya (Tragicomic Ghost has been shown to at minimum pity him, and find him an odd curiosity), Wen Kexing entrusts no one else with the most vulnerable creature who has ever come into his life (well, aside from that adorable puppy, which I have the bad feeling is going to be shown to be horribly murdered before his eyes, possibly by his own hand to prove a point...that would be thematically appropriate...). He gives Gu Xiang the tools to survive and fight for herself, even against him, and when she even begins to suggest she might prefer to be somewhere else - when he sees evidence of her finding happiness - he does everything he can to encourage her joy, support her happy ending, and free her. Wen Kexing is Gu Xiang’s father, in every useful interpretation of the term - she may call him master, and others might call her his maid, but their relationship is tender, encouraging, mutually supportive, and loving. Wen Kexing wants what is best for Gu Xiang, even at the expense of his own comfort and happiness, because he cares for her that essentially and deeply - and she likewise goes out of her way to protect him more than once.
MEANWHILE.
Given a small child, though I haven’t yet seen any flashbacks to when Xie’er was little and I don’t even know if there are any, it’s really obvious that Zhao Jing instantly goes, “how can I best use this to my advantage?” Instead of setting about to build this child up to be a functional adult who can stand up to the challenges that threatened to crush Zhao Jing’s life, Zhao Jing deliberately sabotages Xie’er’s ability to function as an independent unit. He teachers Xie’er to kill, not to protect himself, but on command - to kill because Zhao Jing says so, who Zhao Jing says, on even the merest whim, and is so successful at doing so that Xie’er has even less respect for life than Zhao Jing does (which was never much to begin with). Further, while we know that Wen Kexing will kill to protect Gu Xiang, Zhao Jing never so much as lifts a finger to do his own dirty work, and has zero compunction about throwing Xie’er under the bus when he suits his ends. In 27, he flat out says - “if you keep acting like this, and kill the Gentle Wind Sect, you’ll ruin me - which means I can never let you stand next to me in public.” He says this when he knows that Xie’er craves his approval and that one of Xie’er’s most cherished objects in all he’s done is to reach a point where he can stand at Zhao Jing’s shoulder as an acknowledged heir and successor and proudly say, “yes, I did all those things to help my father, because I’m a good son.” Further, Zhao Jing is constantly abusive and manipulative. When Xie’er does what Zhao Jing has trained him to do, on command (like a dog? more parallels??), Zhao Jing praises him, touches him kindly (and when else do you think Xie’er is ever getting touched kindly? Nothing like the casual and appropriate physical intimacy with which Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang shoulder bump and interact) and tells him how precious he is. The instant Xie’er steps a toe out of line, Zhao Jing denigrates him, threatens to take away that which Xie’er most wants (acknowledgement), scolds him, calls him a fool, says he doesn’t understand. Zhao Jing calls Xie’er his son, and insists that Xie’er call him yifu, and the world may even see that way - though they hardly can, since Zhao Jing refuses to be publicly associated with Xie’er - but they couldn’t be less related when compared to Wen Kexing, who allows all to see him call Gu Xiang his servant even as he flagrantly, publicly, repeatedly treats her as his child - culminating in the speech he gives Cao Weining when he gives permission for them to wed.
Everything Wen Kexing does, as fucked up as some of it is, is done with the aim of building Gu Xiang up into a strong, independent, functional adult who is less stained than himself and capable of pursuing happiness in the world.
And everything Zhao Jing does, all of which is equally if not more fucked up than what Wen Kexing does, is done with the aim of tearing Xie’er down, making him a powerful tool - a trained dog, if you will - and a dependent person who can be deployed on an enemy and must be kept permanently off-balance so that he never ever is an independent, functional adult - and, to help ensure that, he deliberately orders Xie’er to commit depraved acts that guarantee that Xie’er is more stained than himself, and therefore incapable of finding happiness in the world.
Anyway, I could probably go on, but I gotta leave to drive my kid to school and run a couple errands, but, in conclusion: when Zhao Jing said, “the world has failed me, and I shall do the same to the world,” and it became clear to me that he and Wen Kexing essentially share (or at least shared) the same core goal, I was struck by a lightning bolt about the parallels and contrasts between them as people, and them as father’s, and here you go.
Hope this is coherent, I’m really sleepy and in a rush. :D And I hope it answers your question!
(Also dear everyone: if you reply to this or add to it in reblogs I ask that you please respect that I’ve only seen to episode 27, and not rip me apart for things I haven’t seen yet, and try to avoid giving me spoilers? I know a few - or at least I think I do - like I know all the Major Character Death stuff - but I’m sure if you’ve seen the whole series you can spot places where you, dear reader, know things I don’t, and I’d ask that you not ruin those places for me, because I’m watching as fast as I can - about one episode a day - and I’d rather find out for myself. Thank you!)
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A Close Shave
Fic Summary: After being picked up by the Urania and brought back to the Hephaestus station, Communications Officer Doug Eiffel tries to come to terms with his new look. It doesn’t go well. Luckily, Jacobi comes along to save the day.
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Words in this fic: 2082 Pairings: Doug Eiffel/Daniel Jacobi Warnings for this fic: Brief mentions of abuse
Notes: I got into Wolf 359 at the start of this year, and after relistening to it recently I decided to start writing some fics. I was pretty nervous about posting this, but I couldn't keep it in my drafts forever, so here it is! There’s also a link to this fic over on A O 3 as the source of this post! Click it to go read it over there, or you can search up the title or ‘everamazingfe’ on the site.
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There was something about him, Eiffel had decided within the first few seconds of seeing him for the first time. His face was mostly blank unless he had some sly comment to say, some sarcastic remark, and then that stony expression was replaced by something cockier, more smug. Sometimes there was a flash of softness to it, usually when Maxwell was speaking. But even when his face was at its blankest, there was a mischievous gleam in those bright green eyes of his.
Eiffel had never really noticed anyone’s eyes before. He didn’t know Minkowski’s eye color, or Lovelace’s for that matter. Hell, Eiffel didn’t even know if he knew his own eye color at this point, he avoided looking in mirrors at all costs. But for some reason, he’d noticed Jacobi’s. Not only had he noticed it, but he had committed it to memory as well.
For a moment, he was convinced he could picture them clearly as he stared out the window above his comms panel, making eye contact with them in the reflection of the glass. Somehow, he was able to picture his face with perfect clarity too, despite only seeing it a handful of times while he was in sound mind.
“Feel good to be home?” The Jacobi that Eiffel thought he was picturing in his mind so clearly spoke, startling him out of his trance and making him jump because it wasn’t his imagination, it was the real deal. It made sense, he’d never had a very visual imagination anyway, but there was always hope for a change of mind. “Wow, I didn’t think I was all that scary, Officer Eiffel.”
“You’re not,” he grumbled with a huff of indignation, grabbing the edge of his station and pulling himself back to it, hooking his knees beneath it to keep himself there. “I just… Got lost in thought.”
“You? Capable of thought? Now that’s something that wasn’t included in your file.” There it was, that stupid sly grin that Jacobi always had when he thought he was being oh-so-clever. Usually, he was. But that joke had become played out within the first month on the station.
Eiffel responded with mock laughter, trying to ignore the way that comment made an invisible knife twist in his chest. After all he’d done, no one thought he was good at anything. What a surprise. But he didn’t have time to unpack all of that right then. “Get some new material, I’ve heard it all before,” he drawled, hoping he looked as bored as he sounded. “I’m a slacker, I’m an idiot, I’m a motormouth. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Your shoe’s untied.”
Maybe there was some truth to one of those three things, because like the idiot he was, Eiffel had that brief moment of panic everyone had when someone told them that their shoe was untied, or their fly was down, or there was something on their shirt. And because of that panic, he looked down. It had completely slipped his mind that he hadn’t even worn shoes in the two (Three? Did those hundred days hurtling through space count? He didn’t know.) years he had been on the Hephaestus. “Oh, goddammit!” He groaned as he stared down at his socked feet in dismay, trying to tune out the cackling laughter Jacobi let out behind him that sent him halfway across the room.
“You’re also gullible, apparently!” He let himself continue his path across the room so he could push off the back wall, still in a fit of giggles as he sailed back to the console. “You actually fell for it! I can’t believe it! I’ve never gotten anyone with that before.” Jacobi’s grin was bigger than it had ever been, and he wiped the tears from his eyes before they wreaked havoc on the station’s internal systems. Maxwell was too smart to fall for a simple trick like that, and Kepler… Well, Kepler didn’t like being pranked.
Eiffel grumbled something incoherently, waiting patiently for Jacobi to get over himself before he spoke again. “Was there a real reason you came down here?”
“No, not really. Kepler’s giving Minkowski an orientation for her new role and then he needed to discuss… something with Hilbert, I don’t even wanna know. And Ala- Maxwell’s busy with Hera. So, I was bored.”
“What about Lovelace?”
“Dunno. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care.”
“Right… So you came to interrupt my very important work?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Lucky me.”
“Lucky you.” Jacobi made himself comfortable, lounging in the free-floating bliss that was zero-g as Eiffel pretended to look busy, though his eyes were fixed on the reflection of the man in the glass. The bright light of Wolf 359 backlit him beautifully, and the color in the star seemed to desaturate everything else in the reflection, except for those damn eyes.
Eiffel let out a sigh, bringing a hand up to run it through his hair, his fingers brushing through the empty space where his long curls used to be. He let out a frustrated growl, moving his hand up to his scalp. The little hair that was left was scraggly and damaged as hell. It was coarse and patchy, and it scratched his hand uncomfortably when he ran his hand over it. “Actually. I have an idea of something we can do.” He turned around to look at the real Jacobi, who arched an eyebrow in silent encouragement for him to go on. “Come with me.”
He’d had his head shaved a handful of times, and it was usually under duress. The first time was as a punishment for getting gum stuck in it, even though he hadn’t been the one to put gum there, and it would’ve been much easier to just cut the chunk out rather than shave his whole head. The second time had been when he’d joined the military. This would make number three, but this time it was necessary, despite the fact that his goal had really been to never cut his hair again. All that length had meant a lot to him, it meant that he had control over something in his life, finally, but the cryofreeze had, apparently, had other plans for it.
Additionally, most of the shaving kits, particularly their razors, had been dismantled for Minkowski’s crusade against Blessie. God only knew where all of those had ended up, or if they were still even on the station, but he knew there was one that was still safely tucked away.
“Wow, Eiffel. I thought you would’ve liked to wine and dine your dates before bringing them home. You always struck me as more of a gentleman than that.”
“Shut up.” He rooted around in his locker, letting various pieces of uniform and whatever else had been shoved in there float freely around them as he did so. Most of it was contraband that he should’ve been more careful about getting seen, but he was too focused. Once he found the kit, he let out a soft, ‘a ha!’ And underhand tossed it to Jacobi. “You’re shaving my head.”
For once, Jacobi didn’t have some sort of sarcastic remark to make in response. He was just confused. “Sorry?”
“I can’t… I can’t stand it being like this. I can’t. And it’ll never grow back right with the ends this damaged, and I don’t really feel like cutting myself a thousand times in the process. So you’re doing it for me.” He tried to make his voice sound commanding, authoritative, but instead he just sounded desperate, irritated, upset. His hair meant so much to him, but he could stand to be without it for a little bit. He’d done it before, he could do it again. What he couldn’t stand was the sorry excuse for hair that he’d been left with.
“You don’t think I’d use the razor to kill you? It’d be the perfect opportunity.”
“If you wanted to kill me, you could’ve done it back on the Urania when I was half dead.”
“You hadn’t annoyed me as much back then.”
“I mean, if you really want to, I guess you can, but… I’d really just like my head shaved, please.”
A dramatic sigh filled the silence, and then: “Ugh, fine. But you owe me.”
That was good enough for Eiffel, and he trailed along behind Jacobi to the Hephaestus’ bathroom. Gravity was a little different in there, as in it was actually present in order to make showering and other general acts of hygiene (that Eiffel didn’t really partake in) a little easier. So he was able to sit on the counter and stare their reflections down as Jacobi stood behind him, setting the kit beside him on the counter.
Jacobi wasn’t a friend, not by a longshot. In Minkowski’s book, he was part of ‘the enemy.’ But they’d spent a decent amount of time together after he’d been picked up by the Urania, and even a little bit of time before that over the comms. Someone had to keep in touch with him and keep up-to-date on his coordinates so the ship could get a lock on his location, and Kepler had felt like that work was beneath the highly intellectual minds of himself and Maxwell, so it had fallen to Jacobi. And Eiffel hadn’t minded, because beneath all the smart remarks, the guy was alright to talk to. A little stilted, maybe, but that wasn’t anything he couldn’t work with. It was better on the Urania. Easier, at least, because Jacobi’s body language did a lot of the talking for him. Once again, helping Eiffel was deemed grunt work, so Jacobi had been the one stuck tending to his wounds, helping him get around when he was too weak to even keep his eyes open, and adjust to eating again after not doing it for a hundred days (though with all of the substitutes for rations Hilbert dared to call food, one could argue it had been even longer since he’d really eaten).
Long story short, Eiffel liked Jacobi to some degree. The guy was alright in his book, and he was sure the feeling was mutual, because he could’ve easily said no, or done a hackjob of it, or killed him. But instead, he took his time and made sure that he didn’t miss any spots, his other hand resting gently on Eiffel’s head to keep it steady despite all the fidgeting.
After the first pass, Eiffel moved to get off the counter, to turn around and thank Jacobi, but a firm hand on his shoulder pushed him back down.
“I gotta go again, make sure I didn’t miss a spot. It looked awful before, but it’ll look even worse if there’s just a tiny patch with a few hairs left.”
Eiffel furrowed his eyebrows together, but nodded and got comfortable again. As comfortable as he could, at least. His ass was already numb and the feeling was starting to spread down to his legs, but hopefully the second pass would go quicker.
And it did, kind of. Jacobi didn’t need to clean the hair from the razor as often because there was barely any left, but he still took that same slow and gentle care as he had the first time. When he was done, he wiped off the leftover shaving cream with a nearby towel, smiling genuinely as Eiffel lifted a hand to feel over his scalp. “Well? How does it feel?”
“It feels great,” he answered earnestly, laughing in relief. He didn’t hate the way his reflection looked anymore, and now he could actually believe everyone when they told him to pull it together because it would grow back eventually. Hopefully this made the process easier. His eyes drifted to Jacobi’s in the mirror, mirroring that same smile. “Thank you... I really do owe you.”
“Yeah, you do.” The genuine smile faded to his usual cocky grin, and Eiffel threw the towel at him. It hit him square in the face, but it didn’t wipe away that look. “But… You’re welcome.” He offered him a hand to help him off the counter, steadying him with a chuckle when he nearly lost his balance. “Gravity that hard on you, Doug?”
“No! It’s just… That counter was not very comfortable to sit for that long on. And yeah, I guess gravity’s pretty hard to adjust to too.”
“Well then we’d better get you back to the lazy embrace of zero-g.”
#wolf 359#w359#daniel jacobi#doug eiffel#jacoffel#fic#my fic#my writing#everamazingfe#mini episode#oneshot
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501st and 212th Workout
(I wanted to write a story with the clones with more realistic military things. So here's what a PT day looks like in the military.)
It was 0400 by the time Rex made it out to the grinder. It was a brisk morning with dew settled on every surface making goosebumps appear across Rex’s exposed arms and legs. Today was PT for the 501st and the 212th. They usually worked out in the mornings together at minimum three times a week when not on deployment. Rex stands towards the front of the grinder in his PT uniform which entailed a white shirt where Ahsoka had drawn his jaig eyes on his back and blue shorts. He began to rub his arms wishing he had worn the long-sleeved shirt and workout pants.
“Morning!” Cody calls walking onto the grinder in his white shirt and yellow shorts per the 212th PT uniform.
“Fucking cold!” Rex yells back. Cody was one of those anomalies who loved early workouts. Didn’t matter the weather or what type of workout he was always gearing to go. The man hasn’t even had any caf yet, but he wears a big eager smile on his face when he approaches Rex. They’re the first ones out there which is no surprise to either of them. Rex results to hopping up and down to generate some warmth by the time the men start showing up. Kix being the reasonable and smart man he is wears his long-sleeved shirt and long pants while Jesse winces the second he steps outside the way Rex did. Hardcase always wears the long-sleeved shirt and the shorts no matter the weather. They approach Rex and Cody looking more eager to go back to bed then to stand in the grinder waiting to start a workout.
“Morning.” Kix says softly. Jesse says nothing with his shoulders hunched and teeth chattering.
“Morning.” Rex and Cody say chuckling at Hardcase who can barely keep his eyes open. After those three arrive the rest of the men begin pouring out onto the grinder. When Fives and Echo approach Rex, Fives has his hands up rubbing his nipples through his shirt.
“First round at 79’s is on me if the first words out of that boy’s mouth aren’t ridiculously stupid.” Cody mutters to Rex.
“Fuck Cody I don’t want to play this game.” Rex mumbles back already knowing Cody will win. Echo opens his mouth to speak but Fives beats him to it.
“My nipples are hard boys.” Fives says still rubbing them and looking around to see if anyone else was doing the same. Rex lets out a long and disappointing sigh through his nose with a small shake of his head. Cody turns facing behind Rex with his hand rubbing his chin in an attempt to hide his laughing. Echo closes his eyes to possibly stop himself from smacking Fives.
“Good morning Captain.” Echo says opening his eyes again.
“Morning Echo.” Rex sighs before Echo elbows Fives in the ribs.
“Fuck Kix switch shirts with me!” Jesse finally pleads before they start forming up with the other men.
“I’m not rewarding you for being unprepared.” Kix says as they take their spots. The 501st form up on the right while the 212th form up on the left.
“Okay first, it is cold and even mynipples are hard, so I don’t know if that really constitutes as something ridiculously stupid!” Rex hisses to Cody when his men are out of ear shot. Cody just throws his head back laughing. Ahsoka slowly emerges from the crowds of men with a deep frown on her face.
“I’m offended by how cold it is this morning.” She mumbles standing beside them. Rex grins crossing his arms.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Cold? Commander Cody is it cold to you?” Rex asks. Cody tilts his head as if thinking.
“No, not familiar with that word.” He says. They both grin while Ahsoka rolls her eyes.
“Its to early for you two.” She groans rubbing her face.
“I’m cold!” Jesse calls from the ranks. Rex shakes his head as they wait for the last few stragglers to form up. Boil walks up from the 212th with a datapad.
“Here’s the roster.” He says with a yawn. Cody takes it and scrolls through the names. Appo finally makes it to the front with the datapad for Rex.
“Cutting it late there you think?” Rex says taking the datapad from him.
“Had to make sure the new guys had PT gear.” Appo shrugs. Rex frowns while scrolling through the roster. That’s right. Clone Force Zero. Rex watches as they walk around the rows of men to stand in front. They all wear 501st PT gear looking uncomfortable. X stands bored. Side-eye can’t stop yawning. Stitch and Flex can’t stop looking around the grinder while rubbing their arms from the cold. Ghost looks like he had just walked out naked and pushes himself against Side-eye with arms hugged tightly to his sides.
“How was your first night?” Rex asks trying to pull a smile on his face. X gives a shrug.
“It was like sleeping on a bunk bed in a warehouse full of snoring men.” X says crossing his arms. Rex keeps the forced smile on.
“Oh good.” He says through gritted teeth. “You can just fall in with the 501st.”
When they’re walking towards the back Rex lets out a sigh and shakes his head.
“Was that the clones Master told me about?” Ahsoka asks staring after them.
“Yeah, odd bunch that one.” Rex says trying to focus on the roster. Appo turns and waves into the crowd for someone to come up front. Rex watches two clones slowly walk forward.
“Captain, these are the two new members that got in last night.” Appo says with the two clones standing at full attention. Some men in the ranks laugh at their stiffness.
“At ease men,” Rex chuckles. They loosen up but in a stiff way. “What’s your names?”
“CT-5385 Sir!” The clone with a bun says snapping back to attention. Rex holds up a hand to try and calm the seriousness from these two.
“No, not the CT numbers,” Rex says hearing Cody chuckle beside him. “I’m Captain Rex, this is Commander Cody. And your names are…?”
“Ah I’m—I’m called Tup Sir.” The one with the bun says. The other one who Rex stopped before spouting CT numbers has a V tattooed across his left eye.
“I’m Dogma Sir.” Dogma says. Rex gives them a smile.
“Welcome to the 501st,” Rex says. “Fall back in so we can start the warmup.”
Appo leads them back into the ranks of 501st. Rex signals Fives to fall out. He hands him the datapad.
“You get to take muster.” Rex says. Cody hands the datapad back to Boil before they both stand in front of their men.
“Atten-tion!” Rex calls making both the 501st and 212th pop to attention. He steps back letting Boil and Fives walk forward.
“501ST attention to muster. When you hear your name sound off!” Fives starts. Boil does the same for the 212th. While they give muster, Rex has to fight the urge to spill everything about Clone Force Zero but not wanting to disclose anything to Commander Tano to soon. He peaks down at Ahsoka who rolls her shoulders slowly waking herself up.
“I don’t know how you talk me into these things Ani…” a voice sighs to the side. Rex smiles at Senator Amidala and General Skywalker walking across the grinder. It wasn’t odd for the Senator to join their morning workouts.
“Good morning Senator. Working out with us today?” Rex greets her. She gives him a warm smile and then an eye roll at General Skywalker.
“Yes, I was talked into it somehow.” She says eyeing the General. The General just grins with his hands on his hips more energetic in the morning then normal.
“It’s good for you,” The General starts. “Besides, the boys always seem more motivated when you’re around.”
He gestures out at the men who have perked up since seeing the Senator. Rex and Cody exchange a look before General Kenobi walks through the ranks.
“Blast this morning chill,” He says standing next to Cody. Both General’s wear the same PT gear as the clones except with a brown shirt instead of white. Ahsoka does the same except Rex and Fives tried drawing her face markings on her back. It doesn’t really look like them, but they tried. Many of the men have decided to make even their workout uniform unique. Hardcase scribbled GET THESE GAINS on the back of his. Kix had #MEDIC. Jesse proudly wears I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE on the back of his. Jesse’s wasn’t Rex’s favorite. Fives has IF FOUND RETURN TO ECHO while Echo has, I’M ECHO on the back of his. Echo still insists to have a blue handprint stamped over the right side of his chest. Rex got a kick out of all the messages his men wrote on their shirts. It started somewhat of a trend with the other clones. He’s been noticing more and more clones have been writing or even drawing things on their workout uniforms. “Well don’t delay on my behalf. Let’s get this over with.”
When muster is over, they start the warmup. It’s a series of basic exercises with ten four counts. The 501stand 212th try and outdo the other by who can count the loudest. Rex always felt sorry for the nobles living near the Jedi Temple. They probably never imagined they’d be woken up at 0500 to a clone army warming up. when the warmups done, they decide to do a Temple run.
“Alright, fast runners will be in group A with General Kenobi while slow runners will be in group B with General Skywalker.” Cody explains with the men breaking up into two groups. Ahsoka starts towards group B.
“Uh-uh come on kid.” Rex says leading her back to group A. she lets out a groan but doesn’t argue further. Cody stretches at the front of group A with General Kenobi. Normally General Kenobi would lead group B but with the Senator here General Skywalker volunteered to lead the slow group. All of Clone Force Zero stands in group A with mixed emotions of boredom or eagerness to get started. X turns his head meeting Rex’s eyes as if he could sense him staring. Rex looks away feeling a chill run up his spine. His thoughts are interrupted with Fives shouting towards the back of group A. Rex walks towards the back raising an eyebrow.
“Curse you and your slow running speeds!” He yells back to group B where Echo holds a hand up shielding his face as if it could hide him from Fives dramatics.
“Fuck sakes Fives its just a run.” Kix says in group A. Jesse leans on Kix’s shoulder.
“Yeah, Hardcase is a slow runner too but you don’t see us crying over it.” Jesse laughs giving a little wave to Hardcase in group B. Hardcase shoots Jesse the bird.
“Well since you’ve abandoned me, I’ll have to find a new running partner,” Fives says before grabbing the first clone he sees. He wraps his arm around Tup’s shoulders. “I’ll just run with… what’s your name again?”
“Tup.” Tup says uneasily.
“Tup!” Fives yells. Echo rolls his eyes while Jesse and Kix laugh. Rex walks back to the front where General Kenobi and Cody raise an eyebrow at him. He just shakes his head and waves them away in a you don’t want to know manner. With everyone in their groups they begin.
Group A always takes the lead in a steady pace with group B not far behind. Clones weren’t slow but some definitely were better runners then others. Rex had always struggled with running in the past. He never had that natural speed that others like Ahsoka or Cody had. He had to work for it and he still has to maintain a decent running schedule to keep his pace. Once they hit the one mile mark the groups begin to fizzle into everyone’s own speed. Group A and group B have now turned into a long line of runners around the Temple. Rex was impressed to see Tup near the front with General Kenobi, Ahsoka, Cody, and Rex. Fives struggled to keep the pace with his new running partner.
“Why don’t you fall back to Echo? He probably misses his running buddy?” Rex calls to Fives.
“Yeah… Echo… probably… does miss me!” Fives pants before slowing his speed. Rex gives Tup a grin before slowing his own speed. Cody gives him a look before slowing his own speed so they could run beside each other. With everyone a mile and a half in they were focused on their breathing and running speed.
“What’s going on?” Cody asks calmly. Rex peaks back at X and his men. They aren’t far behind them, but they also look like they haven’t even broken a sweat. They aren’t even trying. They could probably blow right past Rex and the other leading runners. Rex tells Cody everything he heard from X’s little meeting. Cody doesn’t answer at first as they take a turn.
“I mean… who gave them their orders? It wasn’t the Jedi that’s for sure.” Rex says with a small shake of his head.
“I keep thinking back to the first time we saw them fight. I’ve never seen any clone fight that way and I’m guilty of going hand to hand with droids all the time.” Cody says. Cody glances at Rex. “You don’t think they could be with the Seppies do you?”
“I’m not sure… If they are then how did the Seppies get ahold of five clones? Did they desert and make a deal with them like Slick?” Rex thought out loud. When they hit the two-mile mark, he was having a harder time thinking. Cody looked unfazed with only the sweat dripping down his forehead as sign of struggle.
“And another question is where did they get those weapons? I know they aren’t from Kamino.” Cody nods. “I have a bad feeling about this Rex ol’ boy.”
“Me too. But we can’t just start making accusations without proof. We’ll have to keep an eye on them until we have something we can bring to the Jedi.” Rex says. Cody opens his mouth to say something when someone runs past them so fast it nearly caused Rex to trip. X and Side-eye run ahead passing General Kenobi and Ahsoka. Rex frowns feeling his speed pick up.
“Hey!” Ahsoka yells before chasing after them. Rex and Cody reach General Kenobi who frowns after X. Ahsoka catches up to him. He smiles and says something they can’t hear. Ahsoka says something back before laughing and running beside them the rest of the way. Something stirred in Rex that made his blood hot. Rex can’t keep his eyes off X and Ahsoka. He didn’t think X would actually try and hurt her out in the open with two clone battalions running behind him. And even if he did Ahsoka was more than capable of handling herself but he still felt protective over her. She was just a kid after all.
When they finally reach five miles they come to a panting stop in the grinder. There was a small victory in seeing X and his men panting as much as Rex. When General Skywalker and Senator Amidala reach the grinder, she bends over to put her hands on her knees panting. Running at her speed was no challenge for the General who looked less worn compared to everyone else. Hardcase rolls on his back when he reaches the grinder and pants loudly while complaining.
“He lives!” Kix calls before walking over to Hardcase. Jesse places a foot on Hardcase’s stomach who makes a gaging noise.
“He pukes, you two clean it up!” Rex says snaping his fingers at them. Echo and Fives roll in with Echo placing his hands on his knees while Fives walks around with his hands over his head. They watch as all their men reach the grinder and slowly crawl back into formation. Not wanting to waste any time Rex and Cody stand in front of their men leading them in stretches. When the cooldown is down, they let their men go.
“501ST, we have duty tomorrow! Stand by for the watch bill!” Rex calls out before being answered with groans and moans. He looks over at Ahsoka and X still talking and sharing laughs. General Skywalker walks up to them when Rex does.
“Nah, I beat you!” Ahsoka says putting her hands on her hips.
“You must have used the Force or something because I was in the lead.” X says placing a hand on his chest.
“Master, tell X I’m faster then him!” Ahsoka says looking to the General.
“No way. I’m staying out of this.” He says with a chuckle and putting a hand on his hips.
“Fine, you won. But I want a rematch Commander.” X says crossing his arms.
“Oh, you���re on.” She says with a grin before walking back towards the temple.
“Settling in nicely I see.” The General says to X. X pulls a smile on and nods at the General.
“Everyone’s been very hospitable.” He says eyeing Rex who shifts his weight beside the General.
“Glad to hear,” The General says before looking back at the Senator as she approaches them. “If you’ll excuse me boys, I have to make sure the Senator makes it home safe.”
“I’m more then capable of doing that on my own.” The Senator raises an eyebrow at him with a smile.
“I know but it’s my duty as a Jedi ensure your safety!” The General says as they start walking away. When the General is out of ear shot X’s smile fades.
“Well,” X starts when Rex faces him. “This was a nice little jog. Me and the boys are going to shower. See you around Rex ol’ boy.”
The hair on the back of Rex’s neck stands on end. He watches X walk back towards the temple with his men. Cody and General Kenobi walk over to stand next to Rex.
“I don’t like that bunch.” Rex says narrowing his eyes at him.
“Patience Captain,” General Kenobi sighs. “They will reveal their true intentions in time.”
With nothing else to do Rex makes his way towards the Temple with Cody and the General. They change the subject to past tactics, but Rex couldn’t keep X out of his head. There was something off about him and it wasn’t just his armor or his weapons. It’s how he carries himself. How he acts. Everything about him was so familiar but Rex couldn’t pinpoint from where. Rex shakes his head. Maybe he was just paranoid. He decided he wouldn’t think about them for now. Now he has to prepare a watch bill for tomorrow and keep the 501st out of trouble while they awaited their next deployment. That alone was hard enough.
Click HERE to read full story on AO3.
#star wars#star wars prequals#the clone wars#tcw#rex#captain rex#commander cody#cody#clone trooper jesse#jesse#kix#clone trooper kix#clone trooper hardcase#hard case crime#arc trooper echo#echo#echoes#arc trooper fives#tup#dogma#oc clones#anakin skywalker#padme#padme amidala#obi wan kenobi#ahsoka tano#ao3#fanfic#fanfiction#writers on tumblr
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For the meet uglies, 41, Sternclay, NSFW?
Here you go! And if you're a fan on "Let me be good to you" this has very similar vibes.
41: I’m at the 24/7 gym at 2 in the morning and I thought I was alone so I’m singing in the showers, but when you start singing with me, I’m startled and slip so the first time we meet, we’re both wet and naked
Stern blames the playlist he had on at work for the fact his morning devolves into chaos. He works better to the blues (or 2000s pop hits, but those don’t feel right when going over files on suspicious incidents in Appalachia). So he hums as he rinses the remnants of his workout down the drain. He’d never sing where someone can hear, but since no one is here.
I want a little steam on my clothes
Maybe I could fix things up so they'll go
What's the matter daddy, come on, save my soul
He goes to rinse his hair and realizes the song is still going.
I need some sugar in my bowl, I ain't foolin'
I want some sugar in my bowl
His lizard brain yells two separate messages; “baritone voice very hot” and “oh god who’s there.”
The second message leaps into the driver seat and, in his attempt to turn, peer out of the stall, and be sure it’s just another patron, his foot finds the traces of soap on the floor.
“Shit” He falls backwards out of the stall, thudding to the floor.
“Oh fuck.” A man emerges two stalls to his left, soaking wet and flailing for a towel, “I’m so fucking sorry, I’m so used to singing along with the radio. Are you okay?”
Joseph scans his body, finds nothing broken, “Yes.”
“Thank god.” The other man flicks shaggy hair from his face. In the split second before he gets the towel around his waist, Joseph’s gym manners fail him and he glances down. At least he’s getting several weeks worth of masturbation fodder from this humiliating moment.
“Here man, lemme help you up.”
Joseph takes the offered hand, then grits his teeth and swiftly turns to grab his own towel from where he hung it. He’d rather not show a stranger his ass, but this is how his night is going. As he turns back, he spots the other man quickly redirecting his stare from his ass to the floor.
Once both showers are off, Joseph changes and packs his bag. The stranger is at the mirror, tying his hair back and combing his beard.
“I’m sorry, my singing probably startled you too.”
A shrug of broad shoulders, “I work in kitchens, I’m so used to background noise some of it barely registers. And I always have the radio on when it’s just me in the mornings.”
“Hence the singing along?”
“Yeah, and why I’m here so early. I try to get my exercise in before work. Gotta admit, when I joined this gym I didn’t expect anyone else would be in for a 2 a.m workout.”
“My hours are all over the place. I’m with the FBI and when I’m on a case I tend to, um, lose track of time. Or work way later than I should.” He shoulders his bag, raises his hand in a wave, “it was nice meeting you. Even it was alarming at first.”
“Same to you” the man smiles at him over his shoulders, “and if you’re ever here at zero dark thirty again and want a gym buddy, I’m happy to keep you company.”
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It’s a month before Joseph runs into him again. He swipes his card at the gym, finds the clank of a weight rack in place of the usual silence. The man from the showers smiles at him as he puts his bag near medicine balls, and when he’s done with his set he crosses the 80s-colored carpet to join him.
“It’s much nicer to see you when I can see you coming.” Joseph smiles politely, not catching his own subtext until the other man blushes.
“No kidding. I, uh, this may sound weird, but could I work-out with you? I’ve been doing the same routine for years because it’s what I know, but it gets so fucking boring.”
“I wouldn’t mind the company, though be warned that I do a lot of core and don’t use the machines all that much.”
“Totally fine. I’m, uh, I’m Barclay, by the way.” He holds out his hand and Joseph pictures twisting it behind his back while pinning him over one of the benches.
Instead, he shakes it, “Joseph.”
-----------------------------------------
“I’m serious about skipping this if you need to” Joseph starts up the treadmill as Barclay jogs on the one beside him, “if you’re on your feet all day at work this could make that really uncomfortable.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine.”
It’s the truth; he may not be as in-shape as Joseph, but he’s still pretty fit, and they only do thirty minutes of running. But it’s equally true that he’d rather suffer some extra-sore legs than lose out on a half-hour of his limited time with his friend.
He’d been hoping for someone to spot him and maybe teach him some new lower body exercises, with the added bonus of having some basic things (like music taste and bonkers work schedules) in common. What he’s gotten is someone with a dorky sense of humor, and extensive knowledge of cryptozoology and mystery novels, and the stamina to make engaging conversation about those things while running or working a rowing machine.
It helps that Joseph is so hot that he could caramelize sugar just by looking at it. The glimpses he caught of him when they met were tantalizing; the way his dark hair gradually loosens from it’s gelled state, the way his cheeks turn pink when flushed and sweating, the few times his voice turns truly breathless? Barclay is ready to get on his knees and beg for him to do obscene things in the locker rooms.
What makes this desire impossible to shake is the suspicion that it’s shared. He’s caught Joseph looking at him in a way that isn’t just about his form, and when he shows Barclay a new exercise he stands closer and lingers longer than strictly necessary. And his Freudian slips are so frequent and obvious they may as well be Freudian nightgowns.
Just when he thinks Joseph can’t get any hotter, the agent texts him around their three month mark of working out together warning that he’ll be late. When he arrives, Barclay drops the five pound plate he was moving.
Joseph hasn’t changed clothes. He’s in a full, black suit, shined shoes, and a silver and blue tie that Joseph wants him to take off and loop around Barclays throat instead. The agent smiles with a promise to be right back, seems bemused when he returns to find Barclay in the exact spot and position he left him.
“You okay, big guy?” The nickname is one of the many ways he built a home for himself in Barclays daydreams.
“Uh. Uh, yeah, sorry, got lost in thought. I haven’t started on the full workout, did some extra stretching since I’m kinda tight from yesterday. You wanna do weights first?”
“Sure.”
Their routine lasts about an hour. It’s an act of god that Barclay gets through it unscathed. Joseph is even more hands-on than usual, and his cologne (bergamot and citrus, if Barclay has his scents right) hasn’t had a chance to fade. The most distracting element of the whole morning is his friend’s voice; there’s an edge to it, like a knife in a velvet sheath, and Joseph gives fewer suggestions and more orders.
Barclay wants him to sound like this forever. But only if he can rearrange his life so that he can follow every command.
After a very cold shower, he falls in next to Joseph as they push through the double doors into the warm night. When he reaches his car, the other man touches his cheek.
“Drive safe, big guy.”
He wonders if Joseph can feel him blush in the dark, “I will, agent. I promise.”
-----------------------------------------
“I told them to get those dark spots checked” Joseph shakes his head at the notice on the door informing them the gym will be closed for the next two weeks to repair massive water damage in the ceiling.
“I’m just bummed I won��t get to work out with you. It’s not as fun alone in my apartment.”
“You could come over to mine, if we can find a time where it works.”
“I’d love to.”
Barclay double checks that the address on the apartment in front of him matches the one Joseph sent, while trying not to fixate on the text that came with it.
Joseph: Be ready, big guy, I’m going to work you hard
He knocks on the designated door, pushes it open when Joseph calls for him to come in. There’s a yoga mat on the floor and a stationary bike in the corner, and far too little space for two grown men to work out together.
“Do you want me to help move the couch? That might give us...more...room.”
Joseph, in his full suit and dress shoes, leans against the kitchen doorway with a confident smile.
“Y-you’re not working out with me, are you?” Barclay’s hopes hurry to the front of his brain, tripping up his tongue.
“No. I did mine earlier today.” He runs a finger along Barclay’s chest, “I designed a special one, just for you. If you get through it all, you get a reward.”
“What kind?”
Joseph leans in to kiss him softly and swiftly, “I’ll let you fuck me.”
Barclay’s hands fly out to grips his shoulders as he groans, “fuck, babe, really?”
“Really. But first, you have to pick two things from this list.” He hands Barclay a sheet of memo paper with a neatly written list of the lewdest exercises he’s ever seen. He’d offer to do all of them, but then he might not have enough energy to enjoy his reward.
“The, uh, the push ups and the crunches.”
Joseph raises an eyebrow expectantly.
“Please?”
“Okay, big guy, we’ll do those. Get on the mat, push up position.”
Barclay hurriedly obeys. Freshly shined shoes step onto the top edge of the mat.
“We’ll just do thirty today. I’ll count. Ready?”
He nods.
“Good boy. Down, one”
Barclay bends his elbows, only stopping when his lips touch the top of Joseph’s shoes. He holds there a two-count, then rises.
“Down, two.”
He repeats the motion, keeps time with Joseph’s count as a hint of polish curls into his nose. It should be boring, maybe even degrading, but fuck him if it isn’t the hottest fucking thing he’s done in years. Joseph is so put together, so poised, Barclay feels like an unkempt beast next to him in his gym clothes. Yet he’s letting him kiss his lovingly shined shoes, telling him he’s a good boy as he works up a sweat.
“Down, thirty.” Joseph joins him on the floor as Barclay sits back on his heels, “well done. Now, on your back please.”
Barclay lays down. Joseph grabs a silver item from the side table and holds it in front of him. It takes his lust-glazed brain a second to grasp it’s a cock cage.
“Can I put this on you? You’ll have to wear it the rest of the workout.”
“Ohfuckplease.”
Joseph leans forward enough to kiss his chest, then shifts his shorts down to his thighs and locks the cage into place.
“If you need to stop, just say red. Okay?”
He nods frantically.
“Okay?” Joseph repeats with a stern look.
“Okay.”
“Good boy.” Joseph lifts his legs and sets them over his left shoulder. Barclay whimpers as there’s a snap of a latex glove and a pop of lube. Joseph smirks as Barclay whines at his teasing touches.
“Two sets, forty each. Go ahead and count in your head.”
“Okay” He curls his body, only gets through two more crunches before a finger presses in. “fuck!”
“Focus, big guy.” Joseph kisses his knee.
“I am, I’m focusing on the fact you’re a fucking genius.”
“If you lose count, you’ll have to start over” he presses in the second finger, “and that means longer until your reward.”
“I’m, I’m on twenty!”
A kiss to his calf, “Keep going.”
By the time he hits the second “forty” his legs are burning and Joseph is stretching his ass open with three fingers. He pulls them free but keeps Barclays legs in place, tugs the glove off and removes a blue, silicone plug from his jacket pocket . It slides in comfortably, but Barclay whimpers his name all the same.
“You’re doing so well Barclay. Are you ready to keep being my good boy?”
“Yes, please yes.”
Joseph sets his legs on the floor, guides him to his knees so he can pull his shorts up, and then helps him to his feet, pausing to kiss him sweetly and run his lips along his neck.
“Twenty minutes on the bike. Whatever speed you like.”
Barclay eases himself onto the seat, starts pedaling and watches longingly as Joseph heads into the kitchen saying he'll be back in a minute. The plug isn’t too uncomfortable to sit on, so this should be a breeze.
He hunches forward with a moan as it starts vibrating. Joseph strides back into the room, remote control in hand, only stopping to give Barclay another kiss and run his fingers through his hair before dropping onto the couch.
“Let me know when you’re done.” He picks up a copy of Empire and starts reading, heedless of Barclay’s increasingly loud moans.
The vibrator starts and stops, sometimes a gentle buzz and sometimes a furious pulse, and Barclay fights to keep the pedals going under the onslaught, desperate not to lose time and eager to please the man stealing tender, hungry glances at him from the couch.
“Time” He gasps, pulling his feet free from the pedals. Joseph is up and to him before his legs have a chance to wobble. Once he’s on the couch, shirt soaked with sweat, Joseph straddles him and kisses him demandingly, mouth moving from lips to cheek to neck without a care for sweat.
“Will you be a good boy and let me get off on you?”
“You know I fuckin will, fuck, babe, wanna be so fuckin good for youAH, ohgod” He throws his arms around Joseph, clinging and groping as he grinds on the cage and the aching cock within it.
“You look so good like this big guy, exhausted and obedient for me.”
“Yes, yesyes all for you, Joseph, please cum on me.”
“I will baby, don’t worry.” He brushes their lips together, “do you want some more kisses while I do.”
“Uhhuh” He whines, the noise only growing as Joseph kisses him and works his hips recklessly, his hands slipping up Barclays shirt to squeeze his pecs and toy with his nipples. When the tempo of his jerking hips changes, Barclay holds him tighter, needing to feel the way his body tenses and shudders as he cums more than he’s needed anything in his life.
“There” Joseph grins, panting, and pulls the key to the cage from his breast pocket, “now you can have your reward.” He slides to the floor, yanking Barclays shorts with him on the way. The cock cage hits the carpet and then a wet, enthusiastic mouth swallows him almost to the root.
“Ohfuck, Joseph, babe I’m gonna cum in like two seconds you, you might wanna-”
The agent pulls off, lazily licking the head, “I don’t want cum on the carpet, big guy. So be a good boy and cum down my throat.”
He gets exactly three and a half ecstatic thrusts into Joseph’s mouth before his orgasm knocks the breath from him and he cums, moaning out thanks as he does. When he’s spilled the last of it, Joseph sits back, breathing deep and wiping his lips.
“J-joseph? Will you, uh, will you kiss me again?”
The other man clambers into his lap, bitter taste on his tongue when Barclay glides his own against it. When he finally stops to breathe, Joseph pets his beard.
“Was all that okay?”
“So fucking okay. It was incredible. I, I feel so fucking good. Sweaty, but good.”
A kiss on the cheek, “Shower is just down that hall. Go get clean while I order dinner.”
“Okay.” Barclay looks at him with dreamy hope, “do you, uh, wanna do this again sometime?”
“Often. If, um, if that’s okay with you?”
Barclay nods, “as long as we can still work out together? I like doing that with you.”
“Of course, big guy.”
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