#it used to be niche but its not anymore fucking shut up

[cephalodon]

people literally know about and like takabikkan because of me its not a niche ship that only a couple of people ship anymore I fucking hate everyone

[neopuppy]

Do you ever feel that it's restricting to always put member x reader rather than creating your own oc because when you insert reader in the fics, you can't really use many descriptive styles for them. Even describing them as flushed cheeks seems to offend people. How do you deal with it and do you ever plan to make your ocs?

ofc, all of the fucking time lmfao. I’ve answered stuff like this before how I cannot even write abt MC blushing- even mentioning bruising is risqué😭

I read fics sometimes that get so detailed about body parts like rosebud dusty brown aerolas or really in depth about privates/holes etc, and as a reader it reallllllly does make it visually more appealing to read more description that way. not to mention other than physical aspects I cant give y/n too much personality- although I have recently changed my outlook on this. I do not care anymore lol.

I see so many of the same vanilla innocent too dumb to understand sex etc y/n constantly done and while thats good ONCE in awhile- it gets boring.

I dont think I’ll ever write OCs here, its still fanfic for a niche crowd who are here to read abt themselves getting railed by an idol so🤷🏻‍♀️ it is what it is, they’re going to yell at me regardless bc people who dont write have the loudest gaped asshole that can never shut up

[woundlingus]

Sabriel in the 70s conversation pit (my second most recent reblogged post)

In news I’m sure will horrify you as requester and everyone else who knows me for my horny niche, I actually made fluff with feelings- they get a fade to black tho so know in your heart that they fuck gross and nasty

Short sabriel fluff, misunderstandings and feelings under the cut ❤️

“Welp, this is me.”

Sam hovered just behind as Gabriel slipped a key into a lock that looked like it was just about ready to rust and fall apart, sure he was going to have to kick the door in and give the neighbours all something to call the cops about, but by some miracle the key still turned within and clicked the old thing open, sending the door creaking itself open on uneven hinges.

“Make yourself… comfortable, I guess,” Gabriel told him, hovering in the doorway as he watched a world he no longer lived in come to life with the flick of the lights.

Faded orange carpet, green walls, a fucking disco ball. Movie posters on the wall for some obscenely sexualised horror movie with the final girl splayed out in the monsters arms, and a boxy tv on one of those rounded tables.

It was seventies in a way Sam had never been old enough or rich enough to experience firsthand, his encounter with it was mostly floral wallpapers in motels, and the playboy magazine that used to be Dean’s that he’d stolen, which might have even been John’s that Dean had stolen first, which was… a lot grosser now that he was old enough to think about it.

The tables were red, the counter tops were red, the chair seats were red- none of it worked together, which in its own gauche way seemed to work. If Sam had to conjure an image of where the trickster might reside, he might very well conjure this very image. It was enough to make him want to laugh, at the predictability, at the cliche, at the almost vulgar way Gabriel had set up an apartment to look like a set he could picture tall and tan oiled men pushing over blonde babysitters in what looked like a ‘sex pit’ of a living space sunken into the floor, all to the tune of Girls On Film.

It would be very funny, if that person still existed.

This had been a home, and yet Gabriel wandered around the furniture as though he were a stranger, afraid to touch any of it too much. He stuck out like a sore thumb in a space he would have blended in just a few years ago, instead he cringed away from the performance of fun and sexuality. Despite being a man of small stature Gabriel had always taken up a lot of space with a big presence, but here among relics of things he didn’t want or need anymore he just seemed so much more impossibly small; perhaps it was the way he refused to look up from his shoes, like if he raised his head to look at the world he used to fit into he might fall apart and he’d just managed to get himself together after so long, he’d only just gotten brave enough to let Sam drive him here and open up a time capsule from a life pre-hell.

“Thanks for doing this, by the way,” he called back to Sam as he wandered around barstools to get to the kitchen. “There shouldn’t be much to pack.”

“You want me to get started anywhere in particular-“ Sam started, watching Gabriel swing the fridge door open and then immediately slam it shut with absolute disgust. “We’re not bringing the fridge, huh?”

“Absolutely not, don’t open that if you value your life.”

He wandered off down toward a hallway, presumably where he’d find the bedroom and most of Gabriel’s personal possessions that he’d care about keeping, but the guy appeared right in front of him to cut him off from going any further.

“You uh, don’t wanna go in the bedroom until I clear some stuff out first either.”

Sam, with the roll of his eyes, “Gabriel, I’m a grown up. I don’t care if you have sex toys, just tell me which drawer and I’ll leave it alone.”

“It’s cute you think it’s a drawer. Don’t go in there.”

He didn’t know if it was better or worse not to know, not knowing saved him the potential trauma of seeing something he was not prepared to know about his only very recently offical boyfriend, but the not knowing left his mind running rampant with ideas that were probably a lot more dramatic than the reality hidden behind the door- he just thought he deserved a heads up beforehand if Gabriel needed to put him in a little cage with a tail in his ass in order to get off.

“Well, is there anything I can touch?”

He hadn’t meant to, but it had been a long drive and he was tired, and it left an air of shortness to his question. He was tired, Gabriel had asked him to come all the way out here and now he wasn’t even allowed to touch- it almost always felt like Gabriel didn’t want to make space for him, and that wasn’t entirely fair to say when he knew this was hard, but it was hard too to be guarded away from bubble wrapping lava lamps like it was all sacred ground of a better life before he was stuck with Sam.

“Please don’t be mad at me.”

And it’s all over just like that, before it can even start. With the mighty archangel Gabriel, pulling at his fingers, lip wobbling like he was waiting to be yelled at. Punished. Put in his place.

Again, frustrating, especially when neither of them were wrong, and neither of them could help it.

He throws his hands up in defeat, and follows the stairs down into the sunken lounge space to find a seat to bide his time, “Fine. Let me know when you’re done.”

“I don’t know what I did,” Gabriel said, following him down like a little mouse. “If I did something wrong you have to tell me.”

It felt silly trying to find the words to lay it out so bare and plain, that surrounded by gaudy riches Sam felt insecure. Insecure about the kind of life he could provide someone like Gabriel- something like Gabriel. An archangel; a god; a playboy. What could a poor man who was too scared of loud noises and had a bad back provide for the likes of him when what Gabriel enjoyed most was luxury in excess and being the center of a party? How many others had passed through the door, how many lovers had he shared a bedspace Sam wasn’t allowed to enter? What kind of a life was it for a social butterfly to live buried under the earth with Sam and his only friends- his older brother, and Gabriel’s brother; who were basically obligated to be his friend based on principle. Sam wasn’t fun, his idea of fun was being left alone for a solid fifteen hours to get a really good sleep and maybe jerk off without having to wonder if Dean was going to kick in the motel door at any moment. That’s who Gabriel was saddling himself with, a man who was thirty seven and still needed to sleep with his big brother in the room lest he have bad dreams, he couldn’t even give him a motel room to fuck in.

But Gabriel could do all those things if he really wanted to now that he’d gained a little more strength back, and if it’s what made him happy then it’s what would make Sam happy, because what really made him happy was Gabriel! But hadn’t, not even once, tried to allow Sam into any part of his life. It was all grand tales of mighty conquests and high speed chases, and none of the actual living- at least, not with Sam. Maybe Gabriel had another boyfriend, a better one that he saw on weekends when Sam was away hunting with Dean. One that was cool, and funny, and liked all of the things Gabriel liked…

Okay… now he’s just spinning out, so he has to say something before he creates a whole pretend man to get angry at.

“Why don’t you want me involved in your life?”

Gabriel stared at him hard for a good long minute, long enough for Sam to flush a deep shade of red with embarrassment.

“Never mind-“

“You are my life.”

Gabriel says it so matter of factly that it’s now Sam’s turn to sit there gobsmacked and staring, and while it makes his heart swell a little he isn’t quite sure he believes fully that Gabriel wasn’t saying that just to shut him up.

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying-“ Sam stopped and gestured at all of Gabriel’s things, “-This. Your life. Who you are. You never let me be a part of it, you never let me in.”

“This isn’t my life,” Gabriel said, an echo of exhaustion to his tone and the way he slumped into the tacky printed pillows. “This was a thing I did. I don’t let you be a part of it because I’m embarrassed. For whatever reason you’ve decided that you see something of worth in me, and I don’t want you free roaming my past and remembering I’m some kind of scumbag.”

“I don’t care that you were… very… sexually active, Gabriel.”

“This is about more than just the sex- this isn’t me! This life isn’t something I want to associate with you!”

A line of tension forms in Sam’s jaw as he snaps his mouth shut, but before he can glare and storm out, Gabriel continues.

“I’m building something new, something better with you. All of this is buried under a mountain of shit with Loki and what happened that I don’t want to begin to unpack, I just want to go! I don’t want you in here becoming tangled up with everything that feels so bad when you’re the only good thing I’ve got!”

Well, now he just feels stupid.

The shame must be visible all over his face because Gabriel scoots across the lounge to drag him in close, closing the distance first for Sam to the be able to put his arm around him.

“Right… sorry.”

Gabriel shrugged, “I don’t know what there is to be insecure about, it’s not like any of this was ever real.”

“It was though, even if it’s all tainted and bad now this was your life, and I can- I want to help you pack what you still love and bring it home. Pretending it’s not real isn’t going to fix anything, let me help you do this right. Say goodbye.”

There was a deep sigh from under Sam’s arm as Gabriel relented, whether he believed Sam’s quack science or not was up in the air but he’d do it anyway.

“Fine. You want to say goodbye to the house? I feel like the only appropriate way to say goodbye is the same way I said hello. To bring it full circle.”

“Sure,” Sam agreed before he knew what that meant, because all he heard was what sounded like Gabriel making healthy choices, and it wasn’t until the angel had straddled his lap that he understood just how he’d christened the house. “How many people have you screwed on this couch?”

“I mean, they call it the conversation lounge for the great many guests you can have all at once… I don’t know that we were doing much talking though.”

“Oh god…” Sam sighed and scrunched his nose up, trying not to focus too hard on the couch and if he felt any stiff spots beneath where he was sitting.

“Oh no, Sam. God was definitely not in the room when that was happening.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sam groaned and leaned in to kiss Gabriel before he could open his mouth with another disgusting comment, grinning into Gabriel’s throat at the playful shriek out his mouth as Sam toppled them over into the pillows, to give Gabriel a touch of something sweet to remember a chunk of his life by.

[claudepie]

let me share with tumblr nation. behold. a true event that happened to me this week.

so, i was minding my own beeswax, playing with my cookie(cookie clicker), feelin sexy and chipper. then came a knock at my door.

me: who is it?

i think to myself: who could it possibly be this time. ugh! (there are always solicitors)

i think about my temu package: um maybe it’s that! i scamper towards my door with glee and delight….

then comes to mind… reddit nation yea we are together we can go very far…take down tiktok take down instagram…take down everything we don’t give a damn. nevermind. back to the story.

so anywho, i practically gallop to my front door, excited for what prizes await me. i approach the door, unlocking it and grabbing the knob(oh, lala). i swing open said door and i see…

nothing? no temu package! um… what.

i then frantically look around the general vicinity of my door. um…still no package! what a bummer!

i turn away from the door, making sure to close and lock it before i begin to walk away, just in case my solicitor was a homeless man who wanted to perform a pitch-perfect korean-style dance inside of my home. i walk to my room, my enthusiasm and excitement stripped away from me. i sit my ass down on my chair, examining the number of cookies i have now. 20 trillion?! nice! whoeeah?

i mean, what else can you expect when your bakery is named big chungus big big bi money?

anywho, i spend a few minutes chilling at my computer before i hear a second knock at my door.

me: ugh! really? who could it be this time!?! this pleb better turn himself in before i call the police!

reluctantly, i hop off my chair and make a run downstairs, hopefully catching this dweeb in the act. nobody messes with claude-pie!

as my hand makes its way to the doorknob, a beautiful smile crosses my face.

me: haha, open na noor.

is what i said out loud to myself. i think to myself about how epic and sus my remark was, but there is no time to dwell. i must fulfill my duty. as i continue to open the door, and i…um…WHAT! there is nothing at the door!

i let out a disgruntled sigh and stomp my foot. i slam the door shut and make my way back upstairs. a familar thought comes to mind.

i chuckle at it, not giving it too much mind, i mean, how often do you “open na noor” and there’s a big lump of knobs? that also has the juice?!

i sit back down at my chair, resuming my game. it is a nice couple of minutes, but then after when i hear yet another knock; it is not nice anymore. this time, i decide to not answer the door. this fucker will surely stop after a while, right? RIGHT????????

um…well major plot twist!! doesn’t happen!! just keeps knocking like a champ! i consider marching my way downstairs and giving this sucker a piece of my mind, but i figured that i could just block out the noise with some music. i put my earbuds in my ears and turned on my favorite song: ice safety by extraordinary rapper lilgomezz. as i was jamming out, you wouldn’t guess what i hear.

nononononononoNO!!!!!!!! it’s not knocking. i already drowned that out. it’s my FUCKING DOORBELL!!!!!!!! UM! who uses those anyway!

i turn up my niche, underground music and sigh, louder than ever. i manage to hold myself back from checking the door. many hours pass where i hear not a peep, but that is because of these sick ass beats being pumped into my ears(like your english teacher on a friday night?). yuh huh!!

soon: day becomes night, and the sun sets. and i think to myself: that pleb shouldn’t be at the door now!

so i decide to go have dinner. i make my way downstairs again, more careful this time. maybe this guy is sleeping on my porch? maybe he’s waiting for any semblance of noise. maybe that’s his cue to start assaulting my poor front door.

i manage to receive my dinner, and my stomach grumbles at the thought of it as of writing. damn you!

for the ones who were curious: my meal consists of corn, a huuuuuuuuge glizzy, and a grimace shake! oh lala!! i absolutely devour said meal, licking my fingers afterwards. the flavors are melting on my tongue!

suddenly, welcome to the black parade comes on. i unfortunately, was completely alone when this came on. and yes, there is still music blasting into my ears at this point. this is like simon says. no, this IS simon says. simon didn’t say simon says.

i couldn’t help but hold my breath at the G note at the beginning of the song, tearing up as the song went along. by the end, i was full on ugly sobbing on the floor, having forgotten about the fulfilling meal i had prior to this. suddenly, i hear a BANG, shocking me to my senses.

…what could be happening at my door at this hour?

i wipe the tears from my face and begin to stand.

me: sweet jegus, i swear if it’s that geek again! ill give that twink a piece of my mind!

i make a mad dash to the door, fumbling with the lock and the knob. i manage to wildly swing the damn thing open, and and and and AND AND AND AND!!!!!!!!

[finsterhund]

My brain deciding to retreat into my research driven science autism to combat how my body has been actively shutting down and trying to die from the agony and retraumatizing it's been going through lately (thanks to subhumans that shouldn't be alive spreading their diseases all over good things on the internet) is a welcoming change in the fact that right at this moment I don't want to fucking die as bad and me having no outlet for how much I need to righteously kill people other than chewing and chewing and chewing is currently the slightest bit ignorable.

but man do I fucking hate how unfriendly academia information is online nowadays. I can't just have fun and explore scientific info anymore. I have to hope some fucking YouTuber is talking about the specific niche subtopics I'm focusing on or else find a paper if after digging through Wikipedia doesn't land me sources that aren't as fucking dry. These fuckers are so terrified of visually appealing illustrations and diagrams. Would it fucking hurt to show images when you are talking about VISUALLY DISTINCT PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES!!??? COME ON MAN. FUCK OFF. I DO NOT WANT JUST A WALL OF TEXT. We have fucking highly evolved frugivore special eyes and you fucking insufferable dipshits won't put in as many images as possible. Die.

And I'm not one who can't read anything other than grade 6 reading level layman's terms but come on can somebody have a authorial style that isn't fucking clinical ass wikipedia article? Bad enough I have to use those to start my search because the internet is a corporate nightmare but then any real fucking source I find talks like that too. Maybe I don't want to have to exclusively read research papers all the time. Bro why in the fuck does society hate education and knowledge. Unless you pay for it of course 🙄

The internet is supposed to be a big fucking library but it's all just spam and ads and shitheads and stupid fucking garbage. Andy want go library Andy want go library screaming crying throwing up

The fact that you have to like, actually do the damn research yourself because it's presented in such a currently inaccessible way.

I mean it's not like I'd just be able to go into a regular ass library because if I'm lucky there's like 1 relevant book and there's only 1 chapter that's relevant in that one book.

You stupid bastards shouldn't make it so that you have to owe some shitheads money for life as punishment for the crime of getting more education.

What do you mean I can't just get more science class for free I am going to fucking kill you and set everyone on fire. Life would be so much fucking better if I could just have an adult tell me more and more and more and more biology and astronomy and paleontologically and shit until I fucking throw up. Instead I have to fucking dig through garbage.

All of which doesn't really reflect on the absurd stupidity how this was only first brought on today by what essentially equates to me metaphorically chasing after a fictional animal and screaming, demanding to know what its skull looks like.

Because the fucking encyclopedic worldbuilding brainrot cannot be repressed. Because fucking of course it can't. Why can shitheads churn out awful fucking art but then my life sucks so bad that all I can do is make an encyclopedia related to the art I want to create. Everything I love and care about is dead or worse.

[imagining-in-the-margins]

The Birds & The Bees (S.R. | Pt. 4)

Summary: Reader has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, which her Professor is hellbent on making a little bit better. A/N: If y’all thought you hated Kyle (bathroom bitch boy), just wait until you meet the new antagonist (of the female variety) here... I hope you all enjoy! 😚 Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Slow Burn (NSFW, 18+) Content Warning: Sexual themes/fantasies Word Count: 6.3k

MASTERLIST | Series Masterlist

——————————————————

Einstein once attributed his genius to his childlike sense of humor. Studies performed since then have largely proven his point — funny people tend to have higher IQs, which makes sense when you consider the cognitive and emotional intelligence required to produce humor.

Spencer Reid was no exception. The only problem was that his humor was so remarkably niche and impossibly specific that barely anyone could understand the punchline. He insisted to me that he’d gotten better over the years, which I only barely believed… until he told me a joke that hadn’t left my mind since. A joke that he described as ‘just crude enough to make it palatable to the layman.’

"Caffeine and Viagra are both phosphodiesterase inhibitors,” he’d said — a slow start if there had ever been such a thing. But I held on to hope, hanging on the ecstatic, guileless smile he wore. And boy, was I glad I did, because what he’d said next broke me into a frankly embarrassing fit of giggles that returned with the memory every time.

“Which explains why both of these drugs keep you up all night."

The poor barista stuck working the busy early morning shift eyed me like I’d grown two heads when I once again devolved into laughter for no apparent reason. I almost felt embarrassed about it, but then I reassured myself that if she’d heard Dr. Spencer Reid tell a drug-induced-boner joke, she would also laugh about it forever.

I’d been thinking about him a lot lately. Not in a perverse way, either, despite his increasing comfort in breaching such topics in my presence. It was more like I’d started to infuse him into my every day, finding him in whatever way my brain would allow. While I made my way to his office, I breathed in the soothing scent drifting from the cups that were precariously perched in flimsy cardboard.

The smell took me back to quiet moments in his office. The kind of simple serenity that accompanied silence between two people who need not speak to share ideas. Where the second you looked away, you felt their eyes follow you, like the universe couldn’t maintain its structural integrity without one of you looking at the other.

It was intoxicating and alluring; so easy to lose myself in. Something I knew was dangerous for a number of reasons.

For example, when I am not paying the utmost attention to my surroundings, I have a tendency to lose track of where I am and what I’m doing. I also tend to… drop things. Especially hot and otherwise dangerous things.

Things like the two cups of coffee that finally became too much for shallow, defective cardboard.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screeched as I became acutely aware of every place where scorching hot, drenched clothing hung on angry skin. Normally, I would at least try to sound more dignified while on my way to work, but it hardly seemed like it mattered anymore.

I was too busy hurriedly tearing at my shirt and dropping everything else I was holding. I’d gotten three whole buttons on my shirt popped by the time I remembered it wasn’t technically necessary. I dropped my bag immediately at the thought, tugging on the hem of the shirt and trying to bring it over my head.

Unfortunately, I still hadn’t regained my grace, and in the muddled mess of fabric, I’d also grabbed hold of my undershirt. Which meant that whoever was walking through the empty halls of the early morning in academia would find me, with my stomach exposed and clothing dripping while unintelligible curses flowed freely from my lips.

I expected most people would probably just turn around and leave. I probably would’ve. The giant splatter of coffee and the absolute idiot slipping in it were beyond saving.

But there was at least one person who saw the mess and stayed.

I smelled his cologne before I felt his hand was pressed over the bare skin of my lower back. Despite the fact my skin was burning, it welcomed the warmth of his touch. My body stopped at his command, waiting for him to break me free of the paradoxically frozen state I was in.

He pulled the shirt back down, just enough that I could see him when he wrapped his cardigan around my shoulders and started guiding me into his office, which I’d somehow managed to almost walk straight past in my daze. I wished that I could go back there, to the imaginary world where he hadn’t just seen me half disrobed and cursing while covered in the coffee that I’d meant to give to him.

Spencer’s hands left me once the door was shut, probably trusting, or at least hoping, that I could figure out the mess on my own. Oddly enough, I didn’t notice any signs of him staring at me. Like he only felt comfortable looking when I was clothed.

I tried not to think about it. Once I did manage to free myself of one of the shirts — without further flashing my boss — the anxiety brewing inside of me burst out in the form of frantic shouting.

“Hi Professor! I’m so sorry, I spilled the coffee!”

“Yeah, I... saw the puddle,” he mumbled, throwing a cursory glance back at the hallway before his eyes met mine with a terrifying level of compassion, “Are you alright?”

“Besides the boiling liquid on my skin and the horrid embarrassment? I guess,” I mumbled back before shouting, “Shit! This is why that woman sued McDonald’s! Why do stores serve coffee like that?!”

Spencer didn’t really say anything. In fact, he kind of just stood as frozen as I had been, staring at everything around me rather than meeting my eyes again. But while he seemed somewhat cool and composed, I continued to tug at my clothes to try and avoid the friction. It was then that he cleared his throat, covering his face just like he’d done when he saw me in an arguably more provocative position the week before.

Arguably, I said. I should have known that Spencer would win any argument. I should have considered why he was making such a point of not looking at me while I clawed at the white undershirt turned beige. But I didn’t. Not until I looked down to inspect the state of my skin.

I realized then that Spencer had been trying to figure out a way to inform me that not only had the coffee turned my shirt a different shade — it had also eliminated the opacity.

He could see my bra. Spencer Reid, my boss, was trying not to stare at my very clearly visible bra.

“God, this is the worst Monday of all Mondays!” I whined between half-sobs, “and Mondays are already bad, Professor!”

There must have been something else in that cry, too. Something akin to permission. Enough for him to step closer, managing to avoid looking at my chest in the process. I’d entirely forgotten that he’d wrapped me in his cardigan until he pulled it tighter around my shoulders like his own version of an embrace.

“That they are, Bunny.”

If my skin had been heated before, it turned to flames at the use of the nickname. It was honestly a pure work of magic that the liquid on me didn’t turn vaporize the second I’d heard the word.

Bunny?

I pushed the thought away as quick as humanly possible, focusing instead on the way my clothes were going from uncomfortably hot to frigid as a result of the usually refreshing air conditioning. But when I was once again reminded of the obvious undergarment, I sighed.

“I can probably ask a friend to bring me a replacement shirt, or just go to class like this,” I thought aloud, “No one really looks at me, anyway...”

Spencer’s response came immediately, his hands flying up in protest as he shouted, “No!”

I wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, or even which part of the statement he was objecting to, so he was met with a wide-eyed, slow blinking stare.

“I-I mean, I have a shirt you can borrow. I don’t want to subject you to any further embarrassment,” he explained at a significantly more appropriate volume, “You can just wear my extra shirt.”

He turned away from me before I could respond, shuffling through something hidden beneath his desk that created more questions than answers for me.

“Why do you have an extra shirt?”

“Go bag,” he said in the most nondescript manner. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal, either. The question I’d asked didn’t spark any concerns in his mind, but it also wasn’t the question that I felt needed to be asked.

What I really wanted to say was caught in my throat. My hands clamped together in front of me tighter than my jaw that resisted opening to make way for the thoughts that felt more scandalous than they should’ve been.  

“U-Um, Professor don’t you think—��

“Here you go,” he offered with a smile. I took the large, plain black shirt with a hefty dose of caution, my hands shaking along with my broken voice that still couldn’t finish the sentence from before.

Spencer finally noticed the struggle on my face, and I watched his body move from comfortable to defensive in a matter of seconds. Like he was worried he’d done something wrong in trying to be kind.

He hadn’t, but I felt like I had.

“Won’t people... you know?” I mumbled, motioning a hand between the two of us, “I’m showing up to your class at 8AM wearing your clothes…”

I thought that the words alone would be enough. I thought that the gesture was overkill. But Spencer was still staring at me with his head cocked to the side and his eyes narrowed in thought.

I was going to have to say it.

Won’t they think we’re having sex?

There was no way I was going to be able to say it.

“Aren’t you concerned about people getting… the wrong idea?” I blurted out, instead.

The confusion on his face shifted to a clever little self-assured smirk so fast that I almost missed the transition. My stomach flipped from the sight, but then he spoke again, and what had felt like it was filled with butterflies turned to rocks.

“I’d much rather them gossip about something that’s not happening than watch the young boys ogle you instead of paying attention.”

It wasn’t the words, but the way that he’d said them. Like they were silly, like the idea of us being together was so preposterous it could only be entertained by people he perceived to be children.

I was foolish, too.

“Don’t worry about them,” he said with a wave, “Just worry about making this Monday a little bit better.”

“O-okay. Thanks,” I whispered, turning and running from the room only to be reminded of the mess I’d made. But the pool of tawny liquid on the floor wasn’t the most disastrous thing anymore. That honor was reserved for the state of my heart, begrudgingly continuing to beat despite being broken.

Scooping up my bag that I’d abandoned before, I tried to allow myself to be happy about the little things. For instance, the fact that the shirt Spencer had handed me was probably the softest thing I’d ever felt in my life. It made sense, considering the sensory issues he always described.

Still, I waited until I was in the safety of a bathroom stall before I buried my face in the fabric. It smelled just like him, a mixture of freshly done laundry and vanilla. Much better than the cheap, burnt coffee that covered me. Funny enough, that sort of smelled like him, too.

By the time I slipped into his clothes, I had almost forgotten his joke entirely. I was too lost in the joy of sweater paws from his cardigan and fabric that felt like a hug. Or at least, what I’d imagined a hug from him would be like.

The energy it provided me was a better pick-me-up than any cup of coffee had ever been. I kept my squealing as quietly as I could, bouncing in place just like the nickname he’d chosen to let stick. But before I returned to him, I felt something. A small, noticeable weight in one of the cardigan pockets.

If I’d thought about it for longer than five seconds, if I’d reminded myself that they were his clothes and not mine, I would’ve let it be. I wouldn’t have pulled the little object from its safe hiding spot. It would have stayed locked away, leaving me none the wiser of its presence.

But I didn’t think about it, and then there I was, holding onto the sobriety token I should’ve seen coming.

Not that it was a bad thing; I already knew Spencer had a history with drugs. He’d mentioned it in passing in class and was deeply involved with a number of volunteer programs around the area. At one point, I’d even taken it upon myself to research his history.

That research, while I regretted it now, feeling that it violated his privacy some way or another, led me to a second conclusion. As my thumb ghosted over the embossed number five, I realized that Spencer had been sober since he was released from prison.

My heart swelled with pride and relief that felt shameful. I didn’t want the token to have such a profound effect on the image of him I’d already crafted in my mind. Lord knew I didn’t need any more reasons to idolize him. And, at the end of the day, I’d only discovered this information by happenstance.

Part of respect, I decided, meant ignoring the way that fate seemed to push us together. If Spencer ever wanted my opinion on his sobriety or strength, surely, he would just ask. So, I slipped the chip back into the pocket and made my way back to him without worry for what it meant.

While I had no worries, Spencer was another story. I’d barely even made it through the door when he saw me. All of the papers he’d been holding immediately fell from his hands the same way the coffee had fallen from mine.

“Oh no! My clumsiness was contagious!” I laughed, bolting over to help him only to find his face an unhealthy shade of red. He chuckled back but said nothing else as he scrambled to pick up the loose-leaf that had splayed itself all over the floor.

Once we were back on our feet and as collected as we could be considering the circumstances of the morning thus far, his eyes met mine again. His cheeks were still flushed, unable to focus on anything specific and choosing to traverse my body the same way his hands had on Halloween.

“Sorry,” he mumbled in a way that made me wonder if he knew I could hear him, “I was distracted by how unfair it is that you look better in my clothes than I do.”

It was my turn to be flustered, but Spencer didn’t let the moment drag on. He tore himself away from me in every sense of the word, marching past me and halfway exiting the room before he found the courage to look at me again.

“Are you ready to head to class?” he asked as if it were an option.

I suppose to him, it was. For a second I imagined what the future would hold for us if I’d said no. What would he have done if I begged him to stay with me, instead? What if we rebelled against expectation and remained locked away in his office until we grew tired of one another? What if we never did?

My mind filled with fantasies of Spencer’s hands freely feeling my skin the way his clothes could. I could hear soft, breathy sounds of desire shaped like my name. For all of my inexperience, he would still find me intoxicating. He would grow drunk on me the same way a child finds endless joy in sweets that really ought to make them sick.

Then again, maybe he had grown used to the sugar. Maybe he wanted something more mature, a bitterness like molasses that was only earned from years I hadn’t had yet.

Regardless, I couldn’t really get into any of that. Instead, I just flashed a very awkward thumbs up to the man fifteen years my elder when I droned, “Sure am, Professor man.”

As stupid as it felt to do something so juvenile, the smile he gave was worth it.

“Alright then, Bunny,” he answered with his own little peace sign, “Let’s hop along.”

——————————————————

It hadn’t even been a week since I saw her, scantily clad in the plush, socially acceptable equivalent of lingerie. It’d been even less time since I admitted my own weakness to her. I’d replayed the memories of her visceral responses to my touch enough times that I should be sick of it. But there was no tiring of her.

I considered deleting the photos she’d sent me, convinced that it was cruel to keep them when she’d only sent them while inebriated and undoubtedly exhausted beyond belief.

But when I woke up in the morning, my stomach still reeling from the knowledge of what I’d done, all that she’d sent was a curious collection of emotes and a very brief note.

“Oops!” she’d written, “Bad bunny?”

I put that phrase out of my mind immediately, unable to handle the way it incited the desire for destruction in my veins.

“I’m always glad to hear that you are safe.”

That was the end of the conversation, and I was grateful for that much. Even the few words we’d exchanged would haunt me until I saw her again. Of course, the torture ended there, but only for a few seconds before it was replaced with other images and words.

It’d been hours since I’d found her flailing about half-naked in the hall while uttering rushed curses that sounded too crude for her lips. It’d been hours since I felt the soft skin of her lower back and became lost in an entirely different set of fantasies.

It’d been even less time since I saw her standing at my door, pulling on the sleeves of my sweater and staring at me with nervous, shifty glances. Completely unaware of just how beautiful she was in her simplicity. How much more torturous it was to see her wearing my clothes than any lustful suffering that lingerie or nudity could elicit.

I thought that it would get better throughout the day, but it didn’t. It only got worse.

I’d stepped out of my office for barely half an hour, but I returned to find her curled up on the plush chair. Her shoes were slipped off, revealing colorful socks that clashed with every other neutral color she wore. It somehow made me want her even more.

I stayed stuck for a few seconds longer, watching her with bated breath and shameless admiration. She was so caught up in the papers on her lap that she didn’t even notice my presence until the door clicked shut. It was then that she turned to see me, allowing a smile to blossom across her face despite eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“What’s all of this?” she asked, gesturing to the collection of bags hanging from my wrists.  

“Did you know…” I started before my heart stopped at how she always leaned forward with excitement whenever I started a sentence that way, “that food is one of the best ways to solve a terrible Monday?”

“Which scientific study did you get that from?”

I paused again, debating telling her the many studies that would support such a theory, but then decided against it. Instead, I sought out her laughter and childlike joy that always brought out the best of her.

“Garfield,” I answered.

Sure enough, the office filled with the melodious sound of her happiness. I moved as quietly as I could, thinking back to when I was younger and thought of how powerful bottled laughter would be if I could capture it. Hers would surely right so many wrongs.

“You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to, but I figure it’s the least I could do.”

She approached me to assist before I’d even made it to my desk, and although I thought her hands were far too soft to be bothered with something like this, I allowed her to help.

“You could do nothing, you know. It was my own fault.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to.”

She laughed again, shier and shrinking into the sweater as she tried to find her place in such a domestic activity as sharing a meal with me in private. I thought of how it was a taste of my dreams.

Because as often as I did fantasize about her, undone, bare-skinned, and defenseless to my desires, I just as often envisioned her just like this. In fact, I found those fantasies more dangerous. They couldn’t be written off as mere lust. They were another, scarier thing.

“Well, lucky you I am an exhausted, broke grad student, so free food will always win me over,” she muttered, half-sarcastically but just sad enough to bother me.  

“Duly noted,” I said.

I hid away the promises I wanted to make. That if she were mine, she would want for nothing. That I would give her everything she needed to bloom. That I would prune away any neighboring flower that dared get in her way or block the sunlight. There would be no need to worry of predators or pollinators intruding, because she would belong to me and only me.

I would be her earth, her rain, and her sun. I would be surely and shamelessly selfish.

Her shoulders rose with a cheeky, excited little giggle once she had collected her food. I wanted nothing more than to let her enjoy it to her heart’s content… but there was a problem.

“Nuh-uh, no way,” I chuckled before she had a chance to return to the chair with her precarious paper plate, “Get in the other chair.”

Her face scrunched up, bouncing back and forth between the two seats in the room like she’d heard something so strange that it must have been a mistake.

“Wh— your chair?”

“I will not have you ruining another shirt today,” I explained. It caused the confusion to quickly shift to an embarrassed frustration within seconds. Just as she opened her mouth to protest my teasing, I continued with something I knew would tie her tongue until she could no longer argue.

“If you’re so worried about what they’ll say when you show up in my shirt, just think of how they’ll talk if they catch you wearing nothing.”

That stubborn little thing still tried. Her mouth floundered, strange sounds of protest starting but never finishing until she gave up. She sulked over to the seat with an odd amount of self-satisfaction. She settled into my space as comfortably as she always did. With an ease that was almost unsettling to my tired, tortured heart.

Swapping places with her for that little bit of time was a good idea. I hadn’t expected that it would bring me as much serenity as it did. My usually busy lips kept their focus on the food, opting to listen to her ramble about any and everything that came to mind.

It wasn’t until she was fifteen minutes into an explanation on her paper that I realized how little I’d tried to learn about her life outside of me. Whether it was self-preservation or narcissism, I’d never decided. But what I was certain of was that it had been a brutal form of self-sabotage.

Because as I sat there, watching her clumsily, excitedly swinging her fork and proving my point that it had been a good decision to give her the desk, I saw her for in a different light than before.

She was not just a beautiful, mysterious flower peeking through the concrete. She was the trembling giant, the clonal colony of thousands of quaking aspen trees. An extravagant network of roots that flowed far beyond the seed that started them.

This sprout might be new, but her soul was ancient and celestial, wise and immortal.

“Who knows?” she sighed, coming to a natural conclusion of a story I had almost missed while lost in daydreams and metaphors, “Maybe one day I’ll be a professor, too.”

“You’d be good at it.”

For once, it felt like she accepted the compliment without a fight. I considered it progress all the way up until she shot back a thinly veiled taunt.

“Thanks. Means a lot from someone who has 4 stars on rate my professor!”

“Don’t forget the chili pepper,” I jokingly returned.

“Not sure I’d get one of those.”

I knew that my disagreement wouldn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things, so I opted for a slightly-self-centered flattery instead.

“Just show up in that outfit,” I said with a nod that barely hid my actual intention of focusing my eyes on the rest of her, “you’ll be golden.”

“You gonna let me borrow it in ten years?” she hummed.

It was a dangerous proposition, an implication that made the pitter-pattering in my chest unbearable. Rather than chasing her down the rabbit hole of fantasies, I just chuckled before I answered, “You know how to find me.”

Then it happened again. Her face slowly changed, growing from a cautious optimism to a yearning. A subtle hint of words left unsaid. And although she wet her lips and set down her fork, the words never came out. They stayed stalled in her throat, and there was no discernible way for me to drag them out of her without hurting the both of us.

When a loud knock resounded through the room, the thought ended altogether.

“Come in,” I grimly announced, recognizing the intrusive sound as the death rattle for whatever might have been said.

As the door opened, I realized the same time (y/n) did that we had forgotten that the rest of the outside world wasn’t familiar with our dynamic. They didn’t have the backstory of how she’d perched herself on my chair with her shoes off and wearing my clothes.

Torn between scrambling to take more socially acceptable positions and the knowledge that our hurry would make us look even more suspicious, we both opted to remain frozen in place like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming train.

When the door opened, however, I was somewhat relieved to see someone I found completely unthreatening. My closest colleague, a woman that should really terrify me all things considered, seemed mostly perplexed when she found a young girl in my seat.

She quickly turned to me, drawing out her words as she asked, “Oh. I’m sorry, am I... interrupting something?”

“No, what can I help you with, Candy?”

“I was hoping we could talk about my current paper proposal.”

She paused, and I took the moment to follow her glower to the flower still stationary behind my desk. (Y/n) stared back, seemingly frightened by the presence of the other Professor.  

“If you’re busy with... office hours…” Candy muttered before turning back to me, “we can always set up a meeting for a better time.”

Before I could address the possible tension or implication, the girl at my desk sprung to action, clearing off any sign of her presence as she spoke.

“You know, I actually need to get going.”

“Are you sure?”

She didn’t look at me when she answered, “Yeah, I’m sure your papers are more important.”

If I’d turned back to Candy, I might have seen the condescending scowl that was driving her away. If I’ve had any inclination or desire to look at Candy, I would have realized that (y/n) wasn’t trying to escape from her connection to me. She was just trying to get out of my way.

It didn’t make it any harder to watch her leave. I took solace in the fact that she held tighter to my cardigan, trusting me to keep her warm by proxy as she ventured back into the real world. The world where we couldn’t be in peace.

“Thanks for the advice, Professor,” she said before she left, “You were right. As usual.”

One last smile was shared, somber but sobering. A necessary break from the intimacy of the moment.

“See you in class.”

The office felt so much duller without her radiance, but my disappointment would have to wait. As much as I actually didn’t mind the world knowing how my heart hurt from her absence, I knew that it was best I didn’t let it impact her academic career.

“Sorry again for the intrusion,” my colleague said in a much happier voice.  

“It’s not a problem at all.”

She must have noticed the way it sounded like a lie, because her tone quickly shifted back to a slightly disgruntled confusion.

“I didn’t realize she was your student, too. What class is she in?”

It was juvenile, really, the way my heart fluttered so ridiculously at the mere mention of her existence. The excuse to discuss her again.

“Oh, did she not tell you?”

Candy just shook her head with a blatantly false smile.

“Unsurprisingly modest,” I laughed, making my way back over to my seat and running my fingers over the wooden armrests like it would be the same as touching her ghost, “She’s my TA.”

“Oh… I see.”

“She was the only one who would put up with me,” I offered with a chuckle. Self-deprecating humor was the only reliable personality trait I had. It was also, unfortunately, one that most women in my life despised and refused to let sit.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

It sounded less sweet coming from her. I wrote it off as a product of the differences in their species. While the hummingbird of a girl who’d just flittered away was used to only drinking the sweetest, purest nectar, the bird of prey who’d entered relied on the work of others to gather the sweetness before they were devoured.

That wasn’t to say she was cruel; hawks are as much a miracle of nature as hummingbirds. I simply related to one more than the other. I understood one while the other remained a mystery. And I loved mysteries more than myself.

“So, you wanted to talk about your paper?”

“Oh! Yes,” she chirped, passing the packet over to me now that I’d found my way back to what she probably deemed my rightful place. “The conference is coming up so much faster than I anticipated, and I would love to hear your opinions on my first draft.”

I’d already started to read the first page when she spoke again, uncharacteristically bashful and anxious, “Since we’ll be presenting together, I figured...”

“Yeah, no problem at all,” I interrupted, not wanting her to dwell nor expand on the thought of us doing anything together any more than necessary, “I can send you mine.”

It felt curt, blunt, and off putting when I said it, but she didn’t take it as such.

“Wonderful. You have such a unique voice when you’re writing. It’s very refreshing.”

Immediately, a memory appeared at the forefront of my mind and led to a laugh that I couldn’t contain. Candy seemed pleased at the sound, and I felt the need to explain.

“Thanks. (Y/n) likened it to Ray Bradbury at one point, although in different and less flattering words.”

I could hear her clear as day, quoting my words with an overdramatized effect before laughing, ‘Pack it up, Bradbury, you’ve got more science stuff to explain.’

Of course, we both found her laughter-ridden explanation of the ‘meme’ far funnier than the original joke. She was probably the only person in the world who never seemed bothered by explaining everything to me ad nauseam.

“She is... certainly a choice as a TA,” Candy strained upon scrutinizing the smile that had returned to my face for the first time since (y/n)’s departure, “Will she be joining us at the conference?”

But then the guilt returned, wiping the smile from my face and replacing happy memories with deviant thoughts and fears.

“Oh... you know, I haven’t asked her.”

“That’s perfectly alright! I think we’ll do just fine without her.”

“Right...” I whispered, glancing back down at the stack of papers in my hand before setting it in the tray designated for (y/n). “I’ll have her look at your paper just in case.”

A lull in the conversation stretched past the point of comfort for both of us, and I glanced up at the woman I actually felt guilty for ignoring in place of fantasies that would probably never come to be. She hadn’t even done anything to warrant my disregard. She was an attractive woman — as beautiful as she was brilliant, really — she had worked very hard to garner my trust and academic collaboration. At one point, I had considered her one of the few potential candidates for something more than a purely academic partner.

But there was something about the way she looked at the honeyed girl that made my hair stand on end. A defensiveness and instinct that couldn’t be ignored.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“No, that was all,” she said as she broke from what I presumed to be her own daydream, “I hope your semester keeps going well.”

“Thanks, I hope yours does, too.”

I meant it, despite the aforementioned concern. I wished her well in the semester for both selfless and selfish reasons. I wished her well because she deserved it, certainly. But the other reason, the larger one, was that I hoped she would remain distracted. I hoped that she didn’t notice the way I would slip away from her affections to chase those from a more interesting challenge. One that remained mysterious, with hair covered in pollen and lips sweet with ambrosia.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Dr. Reid.”

I failed to respond to her again before the door shut because my hands were already busy with rekindling contact with another.

“I have a proposition for you, Bunny.”

“Sounds ominous. I’m in.”  

The fact that the response came before I could even shut off the display was so characteristic of her that I had to laugh.

“You haven’t even heard it yet,” I observed, to which she once again immediately responded, “Your point being?”

“I’m afraid this is an obligation that does require some expansion before agreement.”

Her response was slower, then, and I could almost see her with a slight panic and overwhelming curiosity that grew stronger by the second.

“Ominous and vaguely unsettling,” she said.  

I considered drawing it out further, letting her imagination truly run wild with the possibilities. But then I realized that if she thought hard enough about it, she might reach the same place that had immediately come to my mind.

“Would you like to attend the upcoming conference with me?” I relented, almost stopping there but then frantically tagging on the conditions I knew would be most likely to cause hesitation. “You’d have your own room, of course. The department and I will help with funds.”

But, as it turned out, I didn’t need to be worried.

“A cheap weekend away from school where I get to be a nerd with you?” she sent with another set of small, smiling faces I was only just starting to understand, “Of course I’m going to say yes, Professor!”

“Perfect. I’ll arrange it.”

“I can’t wait!”

Although I felt the same, I forced myself to end contact again. I put my phone out of reach to prevent myself from spoiling any more of my fantasies than I already had. I didn’t need her to second-guess the possibilities of a weekend away together now that she’d already agreed to it.

The thought alone sparked guilt anew. Through the entire interaction, I’d infused each word with a charge that shouldn’t have been. Each line was far more provocative than it needed to be.

It was just an academic conference. Most people found them terribly dull, not to mention physically exhausting. It would not be a time away like most couples dreamed of because we were not a couple in any sense of the word.

Yet… I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps there weren’t as many differences as one might think. Because while yes, most people would be bored, I didn’t think Bunny would be. Clandestine meetings made between conference meetings sounded exactly like the kind of dreams we would share.

I believed it so strongly that my mind had already drafted several narratives that would suit her. I pictured her and I sharing company in public, unafraid of public displays of affection — innocent, childish kinds, of course — because we were miles away from those who might care.

That drunken, lust-inducing, half-lidded gaze from the week before would return. Except this time, I would taste the wine on her tongue, my hands sliding not over fluffy fabric, but the same skin that I’d felt for the first time that morning.

Behind our door, I would teach her so many things. Things that she would have begged me for. Things that others would see written on her skin in the shape of my fingers and mouth. Things that she would carry with a straighter back and dripping down her legs.

I didn’t just want to destroy her. I wanted to break her so that I could build her back with gold-laced lacquer. She would be my kintsugi creation full of sugar and honey, just imperfect enough that the sticky residue of her sweetness would slip through the cracks to coat everything she touched.

And then she would touch me, and I might finally feel like I deserved anything at all.

——————————————————

| Part Five |

[unbridgeabledistances]

whipped up this little gallavich father’s day one-shot bc i woke up and had feelings!

(to everyone who has a complicated relationship to father’s day—know that i love u 💗)

tw for mention of dead parents / abuse (terry 🙄🙄)

***

It was quiet when they woke— it had been months, and Mickey could finally admit that he had gotten a little bit used to waking up to the silence and blinding sunshine, the light reflecting off of the shiny glass exterior of their neighbors’ apartment complex windows and the soft chatter of people sitting down below at the pool as the slow summer mornings turned into lazy afternoons.

He turned to face Ian, shifting under the plush duvet they were wrapped in tightly; usually summer heat meant sleeping in underwear and a pool of your own fucking sweat in the South Side, but this boujee-ass place had fucking air conditioning that blasted all night long— Mickey nearly wore a fucking sweats and a hoodie to bed the first hot summer day when they’d started blasting it in the place. Ian had just grinned, making fun of him for being dressed like he was about to climb Mount Everest, and had pulled him closer under the sheets to wrap him in warmth.

Mickey rubbed at his eyes, reaching for his phone and clicking it to see the time. 7:52, the asscrack of dawn on a Sunday morning as far as he was concerned. No wonder Ian was still sleeping.

He had a couple of notifications— a few texts from Sandy, livetweeting when she was out last night and probably drunk out of her mind at some gay bar she’d started going to on the West Side at Ian’s recommendation; while Mickey had resisted those expensive-ass hipster beers at every fucking turn, Sandy had been coming by his and Ian’s place a lot more these days, and Ian had kept convincing them to all go out at the boujee queer spots along the block. Whatever— so what if he blew $9 on a fucking IPA that tasted like fucking battery acid? Ian loved it, Sandy loved it more, and he could afford to spend a few nights at some hipster-ass bar with his cousin and his husband hanging off his hip. He could do that shit now.

He scrolled through some emails, trying desperately to tune out the work bullshit and ignore the unread emails in his inbox— he and Ian had been making bank lately, the business growing more than ever especially now that COVID restrictions were all but nonexistent and people were ready to fucking party. He and Ian definitely spent more hours than not attached to their fucking Gmail app, scrolling through new requests and niche demands from growers; but they’d agreed that weekends were off-time, and talking about work was strictly forbidden. “Weekends are husband time, not co-worker time, Mick.”

Even so, Ian was still sleeping, and Mickey didn’t know what else the fuck to do until he woke up— he filtered idly through the inbox, then opened Instagram and started scrolling mindlessly, through pictures of his few dipshit cousins and their new gun purchases and questionable tattoo choices.

It was then when he saw the picture that V had just posted: a black-and-white photo of Kev and the girls, sitting at some sidewalk restaurant in Louisville.

To the papa bear of my amazing girls. Happy Father’s Day.

Fucking Father’s Day.

It’s not like Mickey didn’t know when Father’s Day was— it was more that its occurrence was knowledge that he passively avoided. The only time he remembered knowing when the fuck it was was in elementary school, when they’d been forced to draw colorful cards for their dads on thick sheets of construction paper. He’d drawn a fucking cool one for Terry, with scribbles of skulls and snakes and a picture of him and Mandy. He remembered clutching it tight between his fingers the walk home from school that Friday, and immediately shoving it deep into his backpack when he returned home and it was one of the bad days, the days filled with screaming and sobbing and him and Mandy huddled together in his bed.

“Hey, you okay?” Ian’s arm was snaking around Mickey’s waist under the blankets—a heavy weight, welcoming the air back into Mickey’s lungs.

Mickey reached over to ruffle Ian’s hair. “G’morning, sleepyface.”

Ian’s eyes searched Mickey’s face, then squeezed tightly shut as he yawned. He leaned to rest his head on Mickey’s shoulder, a dull weight on his chest.

“You know it’s Father’s Day?”

Ian craned his neck back again to meet Mickey’s eyes. “Huh.”

From his pensive gaze, Mickey could tell that the realization stunned Ian in the same way it had hit him. “Yup.”

They were silent. Ian reached his arm aimlessly under the covers, searching for Mickey’s hand— intertwining their fingers.

“It’s fucking weird, man.”

Ian breathed out a silent laugh of relief, a gust of air through his nose. “Was just thinking the same fucking thing. I could hate Frank on Father’s Day when he was alive, talk all the shit I wanted— seems kind of hard to do now that’s he’s gone.”

Mickey pressed his lips together. “Yeah.” The heavy feeling—the loss, the dread, was still heavy in his chest, beating next to where Ian’s head was resting. “Homophobic that this shit is during pride month, anyways. Don’t they know all the gays have fucking daddy issues?”

Ian snorted—and they laid there, breathing. Ian’s thumb started to trace a pattern on Mickey’s inner palm— soft, slow. “What d’you wanna do today?”

“I don’t know, man. A distraction would be nice. Can’t fucking scroll through Instagram without thinking about my dead dad, kind of a fucking mood kill.”

Ian laughed. “Yeah.” He took in a breath. And then:

“I know I keep talking about the kid shit. But I can’t stop thinking about when today will be, like. Exciting for us. Someday. Y’know?”

Mickey felt something lurch in his chest—he didn’t really know what it was. He and Ian had been talking about the kid thing— Ian dropping hints here and there, Mickey giving his wary consent that he’d tell Ian when he was ready. And now—this.

There was gonna be a day, some day—when Father’s Day didn’t feel like the hardest goddamn thing in the world anymore. Even after a lifetime of bad ones.  

Mickey felt the beginning of tears pricking in his eyes—stupid, stupid.

“Yeah, man. Guess so.”

[bnha-almost-a-hero]

ૢ✧∘*━━𝐀𝐃𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍,

a;n: ʰⁱ, ʰᵉˡˡᵒ. ᵉⁿʲᵒʸ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵖⁱᵉᶜᵉ ˡᵒᵒˢᵉˡʸ ⁱⁿˢᵖⁱʳᵉᵈ ᵇʸ 'ᴸᵃ ᶜᵃˢᵃ ᴰᵉ ᴾᵃᵖᵉˡ'. ⁿᵒ ˢᵖᵒⁱˡᵉʳˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ˢʰᵒʷ ᵒʳ ᵐʸ ʰᵉʳᵒ ᵃᶜᵃᵈᵉᵐⁱᵃ ⁱⁿᶜˡᵘᵈᵉᵈ. ᵃˡˢᵒ ⁿᵉʷ ᵇᵃʳᵒqᵘᵉ ˡᵃʸᵒᵘᵗ ᵒⁿ ᵃᶜᶜᵒᵘⁿᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵐʸ ᶠʳⁱᵉⁿᵈ'ˢ ʳᵉᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵈᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿ.

𝐀𝐃𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍, 

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬; yandere! shigaraki tomura, a blabbermouth! reader, dabi, toga himiko

𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲; le casa de papel ⁽ᵗʰᵉ ᵒⁿˡʸ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵍ ᵏᵉᵉᵖⁱⁿᵍ ᵐᵉ ˢᵃⁿᵉ, ˡᵐᵃᵒ⁻⁾

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬; bank robbery, hostages, guns ⁽ᶜᵃⁿ ʸᵒᵘ ᶦᵐᵃᵍᶦⁿᵉ ˢʰᶦᵍᵍʸ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵃ ᵍᵘⁿˀ⁾, stockholm syndrome, post apocalypse, a brief, shitty rant on evolution and socio-economics because...? i should have made a graphic, fuck—

The first thing a person does when the world ends is adapt.

It’s an animal’s first instinct to every major event in life. How can I survive this? How can I live to preserve my future? It takes a while, sure, but you learn to find a niche in the system—something left behind by the species before you. And you take that niche and you exploit it.

When the League of Villains had raided the bank you were in, you couldn’t help but wonder why no-one had done so sooner as your skin prickled and your body trembled. Banks were amongst the first buildings ransacked when the government body collapsed and a power vacuum emerged. 

After all, society had practically hammered in the idea that money was something one should strive to obtain since one entered schooling and learnt of jobs. And, Blu-Tacked to the walls of many a primary school, was a clip-art of a bank—representing both the letter ‘B’ and the far-off concept of money.

A civilisation's head was often the person with the most influence or possessions: both of which could be bought with money which was most concentrated in a bank. That’s why you had come here, you told the head of the operation, Shigaraki Tomura as he rounded up the hostages with the nozzle of a rifle.

“Shut up,” He muttered from behind the hand clinging to his face. You stared up at it for a moment as you knelt down and pressed your hands behind your head in surrender. Your eyes traced the knuckles, the notches, the imprints surrounding the fingernails. So lifelike, you think as you watch him turn and walk away, I wonder who sculpted it. 

The other hostages whimper beside you, heads meek in their disparity, but you can only smile. 

The world had truly and honestly went to shit.

“Don’t you find it odd?” You asked the man, Shigaraki, when he came to transfer you to the western atrium of the bank. Four of his fingers curled around your arm, cold to the frigid bone and with a grip that could crush ice. Still, you did nothing to stop him as he dragged you along, even taking a few steps of your own accord. You spoke once more, “Don’t you find it odd how banks make money out of thin air? How all they do is print paper and say, ‘Hey, this is worth something,’ and we all just go along with it?”

 Silence.

“I guess that kinda constitutes cult behaviour, right? I mean, what’s stopping someone from refusing to acknowledge the value of money?” You make a ponderous ‘hmm’ with your lips as Shigaraki stops. “On that thought, why is gold so valuable? It’s just a metal; it’s not even that useful. Then again some people eat it, so—”

Shigaraki’s thumb presses down hard onto your skin, followed by the nail of his index, “You talk too much,” He mutters. You look at the hand clinging to his face, wondering what adhesive he must have on it. Do adhesives even work on clay, you wonder, or maybe it’s a clouded plastic? He reaches his other hand up to scratch at his neck, the third time today that he’s done so. “It pisses me off.”

“Where’d you get that hand from?” You ask, feeling like an idiot when his red eyes flit towards yours. A part of your mind asks if maybe you’ve poked this bear a little too much, but you shake your head, it’s just a fake hand. “Like, does it have a sculptor tag on that brass thing at the bottom?”

Your hand reaches out to grab at the golden lining at the bottom of the hand, but Shigaraki veers back suddenly and swats your hand away.

“Don’t touch Father!” His voice is almost a shriek in its highness, yet there still is a brash rasp to it that you recognise. With a brief movement, you snatch your hand back to rest it against your chest—crestfallen. Shigaraki straightens up at once, eyes narrowing to a flash of red before he turns and stomps off.

Your lips part, but the wheeze that escapes it betrays your total bewilderment at the situation. You stand there, watching as his gaunt form disappears through the door at the end of the hallway, eyes wide and fingers twitching as the last of your adrenaline dissipates.

“Another tantrum?” A voice says behind you, you jump. “I’m not surprised anymore. Never thought he’d snap after you, though.”

You twist around, eyes remarking the tall, willowy figure behind you. Dabi, his name is, the one who’s been half-assedly threatening the hostages since the heist started. 

“What are you talking about?” You ask, an eyebrow raised.

Dabi chuckles and pushes past you, then turns so you can see one frighteningly blue eye beneath the expanse of black hair. “You’ll see, doll.”

“You shouldn’t be talking to them so much,” Izumi murmurs to you when all of the hostages are rounded up in the morning. Your poor ‘hostage-buddy’ had gone pale ever since the League had crashed through the door, their eyes glassy and red. “They’re—” They pause, looks around for a second. “They’re villains.”

You nod along to them, though your eyes are trained to Shigaraki who’s going about overseeing the sorting of hostages. Your belly still simmered with uneasy guilt when you thought back to the incident three days ago. He was obviously attached to the hand—you knew that—and yet you had reached out to touch it without permission like an—

“Idiot,” You murmured, kicking the marble flooring with the tip of your shoe. 

“What?” Izumi whispered, although they stiffened as Himiko Toga came skipping along.

“Noth—,” You yourself stiffened when Toga came at a standstill before you, slitted eyes peering into your soul. 

She smiled a wicked smile, then spoke, “I need to have a talk with you!”

You gulped. Beside you, Izumi shivered and stepped forward, about to speak but upon glancing the blade settled at Toga’s hip, fell stiff and silent. You couldn’t blame them, though, you would’ve done the same thing.

“Sure,” You stated, attempting to put a smile on your face, if only to settle Izumi’s nerves. 

Oddly, Toga reached out to grab your hand, tugging you along to the eastern corridor. You passed Shigaraki on your way, who turned his head to regard you and Toga. Was that anger you caught in his eyes as he looked over at Toga? You thought nothing of it. 

Toga hummed a hymn as she lead you further and further into the bank until you were just in front of the printing room. This is where money is made, you thought, staring dumbly at the steel, vault door. This is the heart of the world.

Toga giggled at the look you gave the door, “Tomura had the same face when he saw it. He was less happy when he found out that he couldn’t get it open.” Toga pressed a palm flat against the door. “It has a Quirk-cancelling force field around it, so we’re stuck here until we can get the door off.”

“That’s why you’re still keeping hostages,” The remark is a rouge thought vocalised.

Toga nods, “Yeah, there were some pesky heroes outside looking for you guys, but Spinner’s got rid of them.” She makes a gun motion with her hands, you gulp. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I came here to talk about boys!”

“Boys?” You ask, a little confused and a little indignant. “We’re in a hostage situation!”

“Yeah, I know, but I noticed that Tomura’s taken a liking to you.” She boops you on the nose. “Well, he’s liked you for a long, long time, but he’s finally got to be close to you. I wish it was like that with my Izuku.”

The identity of Izuku is the least puzzling thing about that sentence.

“For a long time, what?” You blurt out. 

“He was in love with you before the End happened,” Toga smiled, stepping closer to you. “He was so sad because he thought you died, imagine how happy he was to find you here!” Toga babbled on, “He’s not too happy about that Izumi guy that’s always following you around, though. If I were him I would’ve have gotten rid of them, but—”

Your mind leapt. Izumi, you’d left them alone with a bunch of villains. You turn your gaze toward Toga, who seems lost in her own conversation before looking behind you. The door leading out of the hallways seemed so far, although if you were fast enough, it would be easy to just run there. 

With a final glance to Toga, you turn and get ready to start running. A hand against your arm and a blade against your back stops you, however.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

[whump-town]

Breathe In Breathe Out

Delayed Drowningc • Chemical Pneumonia • Oxygen Mask

He’s slept roughly four hours in the last two days. It occurs to him that today is Saturday and he’s got the weekend to catch up on that sleep. The thought washes over him like a calming wave and then a tight knot of shame forms in the back of his mind, a nasty voice sneering that he shouldn’t be so happy. His son is going to be gone the whole weekend. Jack’s going to enjoy being away from him. 

The apartment is going to be empty. 

Trudging through the living room, leaving the lights off, he manages to catch his shin on the stupid coffee table, knocking the remote onto the floor. “Fuck,” he curses, bending over to grab at his throbbing shin. His other hand rubs over the carpet, failing to find the remote where he’d managed to lose it onto the floor. With a roll of his eyes, he abandons the mission. 

Finding that damn thing can wait to tell he’s had some sleep. 

Standing, his knees give audible protest and he grunts at the pain spiking up his back. He’s old. Shaking his head, he rubs at his lower back, heading back to his room. He just needs to get some sleep. 

Nose diving into the duvet, he doesn’t so much as kick his shoes off. Getting to sleep is easy, he’s out the second he curls into his side. He’ll have to remember to thank Jessica for turning on the heat. The dropping September temperature hadn’t been on his mind when he’d stumbled out the door four days previously. 

But he comes home to a toasty apartment, a nice contrast to the fall chill in the air just outside his bedroom’s window. 

Groggily, stomach aching with a strange vengeance, he wakes some hour or so later. Time is a concept his fuzzy mind can’t grasp. With hands that feel twice their size and a body that feels too heavy to be his own, he pushes himself upright. Fumbling, he tears off his clothes. Simply letting his suit jacket and pants land in a heap on the floor. The buttons make his head throb but it’s muscle memory to work them apart. By the time the final one snaps out of place, he lands back on the bed. Too tired to hold himself upright but at least his clothes aren’t trapping him in anymore.

It feels like he’s just closed his eyes when he wakes with a startle, his entire body trembling. 

He rolls over onto his back, sweating lightly. He’s still bone-tired and when he turns his head to see the alarm clock on the nightstand he finds he can’t really see the numbers. Somewhere, on the floor, maybe, his phone vibrates where it’d fallen. His chest is tight, painfully so— his father had died of a heart attack not much older than he is now.

Is this how he’ll go?

Not with a bang?

He’d always expected to find himself looking down the barrel of a gun, as he had some many times before, and been unable to walk away. To crumble where he stood. Leaving his son and ex-sister-in-law to bury him in a closed casket. Forcing his team to carry him through the graveyard one last time. 

But…

He’d always hoped someone would be there. So his last thought would be of his family and not… not this painful coil of fear. 

Against his will, a tear falls down his face. He feels miserable. The back of his throat feels tight with nausea but he’s not sure he can stand. He wants so desperately for someone to come. He doesn’t care if it’s Dave with his frustrating muttered Italian or even JJ, who he knows would wrap the blanket at the end of his bed around his shoulders.

He misses them. Shivering and crying softly in his confusion, he wants so desperately for comfort. Eyes sliding shut against his will, the darkness and his anxiety overtaking him, he knows something is so desperately wrong but… he doesn’t know what.

Monday comes around without a hitch for the others.

In fact, for once, Emily Prentiss is ahead of schedule. She’s set to arrive at the office before JJ, not to toot her own horn or anything. When the elevator comes to a stop on the floor, she frowns. She’s used to the soft wafting smell of coffee greeting her and the lights up and down the hall being turned on. 

But it’s seven in the morning and she supposes maybe Hotch isn’t here yet. He always makes coffee in the morning. By the time she normally gets there, he’s got all three coffee pots going and the bullpen slowly coming to life under his nurturing hand. The man’s got the green thumb equivalent of whatever paperwork and federal agents are to plants.

This morning, it seems he’s slacking in his watering of the plants. 

JJ comes in ten minutes later, a bagel in one hand and a newspaper in the other. She’s scowling at the later, too busy to observe the too-quiet office and lack of Hotch going on. She does manage to stop her brisk walk the second time Emily calls out for her. “Yeah?” she shakes her head, she hasn’t had any coffee yet. “Emily,” she says shocked. “You’re here early.”

Emily nods her head, “I am.” Pointing up to Hotch’s dark office she deduces, “but Hotch isn’t.”

JJ glances up at the office and tries to stifle the immediate worry that consumes her. “Uh,” she shakes it away. “Jack gives Hotch some trouble on Monday mornings,” she rationalizes. Hotch had said something once about it but she’s just hoping, clinging to that idea. “Besides,” she adds, recalling this detail. “Sometimes they stop for a muffin or donuts. That’s probably just taking some time this morning.” 

Right, both women think as they go their separate ways, that has to be it. 

For esteemed members of the A team of the BAU, Reid and Morgan don’t notice Hotch’s absence until around lunchtime. Morgan realizes Hotch hasn’t been down to the bullpen for his second and third cup of coffee. Which he customary drinks leaning against one of their desks and arguing with Reid about whatever niche subject he’s devoted his time to this week. Morgan didn’t think that was something his day needed until…  

“I forgot Hotch isn’t here to make any more coffee,” Reid complains. He’s standing in front of Emily’s desk, his mug in his hands. She gives him only a second of her time, looking him up and down and shaking her head. He’ll grumble all day about how she and Morgan treat him like a baby and then he’ll stand here and pout because Hotch didn’t make coffee. 

Hotch has no personal obligation to make the coffee. They’re all adults who can make coffee. 

Reid shuffles his weight between his left and right foot. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

Yeah, she feels like snapping, the thought has occurred to her. First of all, Dave can preach all day about how it’s good Hotch has taken the day off, but in the years she’s known Aaron Hotchner he’s done that once. Once. And even then he’d left them an objective— a damn warning! 

“He’s fine, kid,” Morgan speaks up but he doesn’t look up from his file. A dead give away. He’d joked when he’d first noticed Hotch’s lights off but the light of his tone never met his eyes. It doesn’t help that he hasn’t said much of anything to any of them. Just sat and did his paperwork.

Derek Morgan never does paperwork.

Reid nods, glancing at Emily, but she’s lowered her head to her own paperwork. Okay, he thinks understands. With a nod, he goes back to the break room and makes his own coffee. Hotch will be back tomorrow, he convinces himself. It’ll all be fine… tomorrow. Hotch will make them coffee. Hotch will be here...

Tuesday comes with a southern downpour. The temperature drops dramatically and that chill follows it’s way into the building. 

“He’s not here,” Reid greets Emily. 

She’s running her fingers through her wet hair, glad that no one’s around to hear her cursing up a storm worse than the one blowing outside--- and by anyone, she means Hotch and his disappointed but not surprised frown. “What do you mean,” she grumbles, resigning herself to the fact that she wasted an hour in front of the mirror this morning getting her hair straight. 

Reid watches her with a mix of awe and curiosity but answers none-the-less. “Hotch,” he says, motioning behind them to the dark office. 

Emily’s fingers are caught in her hair, her arms twisting her damp hair back into a bun. “What,” she asks, having heard him but too surprised to say anything else. With the ease that comes from muscle memory, she snaps the hair tie around her messy excuse of a bun and discards her belongings on the floor. Headed for Hotch’s office.

Reid already knows what she’s going to find. 

He’d come bearing the book he’d been telling Hotch about last week. The plan was to surprise Hotch with the hand translated version. Reid had read both the version in its original Russian and the translated English version. After finding it less than adequate, he’d translated it himself. Today, he was going to give it to Hotch.

Only Reid had thrown his boss’s office door open and taken the cold chill of the empty room like a punch to the gut. Anxiety bubbling its ugly head up at the familiar, usually comforting, scent of Hotch’s cologne but his general absence being… terrifying. 

Seeing Emily react to the same anomaly, he’s glad this isn’t just some demonstration of his tendency to establish unhealthy attachments (it still kind of is but that’s not the point). The twist to her lips makes his heart rise to his throat and he shakily points to Hotch’s desk and the absence of any proof that Hotch might simply be elsewhere in the building. 

“What are we doing, my loves?”

Garcia’s on her own mission. 

It’s Tuesday, bright and early, and Hotch promised to revise and look into her eco-friendly idea about the jet and the paperwork. She’d given him an entire week to review it--- he could do it in a day but she knows he’s busy and stressed and she hates the idea of adding unnecessarily to that. 

She’s been looking forward to today since last week. It seems as if she never really gets to hang out with her boss anymore and the thought has made her so sad. Contrary to what he might convince himself, her love for that grumpy man knows no bounds. Just because he’s not as darkly striking as Emily or whimsical like Dave doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring his own things to the table. She’s really excited to hear him grumble about Strauss in that humorous, sarcasm so dry it cracks way only he manages.

Seeing his empty office upsets her beyond words. He’s the dependable person she knows. He wouldn’t just… “He promised,” she says, not even attempting to hide the fear. “Hotch doesn’t break promises.”

Yeah, that’s what they were afraid of.

Hotch could never see the similarities within himself reflecting into his son. Even now, as they stare so blankly back at him, he doesn’t recognize it. That eerie calm— Haley had always said he was like still water. A danger you never know is there until it’s too late. He could never wrap his mind around figuring out if that was a compliment or not. 

“I’ll come back after school,” Jack promises, the shaky undertone of his soft voice making Hotch’s chest tight. He’s afraid. Reasonably so. The poor kid goes away for a weekend with his cousins. He sets up a campfire with his grandparents. Listens to Aunt Jessica tell him about how his parents fell in love--- leaving out the bits about Aaron’s father and the way the entire town hated the idea of sweet little Haley Brookes getting with that troublemaker Aaron Hotchner.

He has so much fun and comes home to this...

Thinking about his father so young and his mother… for a moment he felt no different than the other kids. 

But he’s always been too much like his father for that.

Jack thinks the world will fall apart if he’s not there to catch it. Just as it had this weekend.

Jessica prays she can teach Jack the lesson Haley could never convince Aaron of, he doesn’t have to save the world. “Come on, baby.” Jessica pats Jack’s shoulder, it’s breaking her heart to have to tear father and son apart. “We’ll be here around three, Aaron,” she promises. 

Her words are lost to him. He’s watching them behind heavily lidded eyes. A nurse had said something about him not sleeping but Jessica had discouraged the idea of sedation. Aaron’s not sleeping for a reason and whatever that reason is, whatever he’s afraid of seeing, is worse than what’s going to happen if he keeps himself awake. They’d rejected her idea of intravenously giving him the medication he’d been prescribed to take as needed for his anxiety— so they have this unhappy medium. 

Where Aaron doesn’t sleep but he’s not losing it either. 

She presses a kiss to his sweaty forehead, “get some sleep, Aaron.” Pushing back some of his unruly hair from his face she can better see the sleepy eyes looking back at her. “I love you.”

Jack squirms uncomfortably. They’re pushing it for school. Another habit picked up of his fathers: the obsessive need to be places earlier than the required time. Jessica can forgive him easily for this but the teachers and the school have already expressed their understanding if Jack is late a few days. 

Not that Jack can extend himself that same courtesy— yet, another habit of his father’s.

She squeezes Aaron’s hand one final time in goodbye and takes Jack’s, leading him from the room. There’s no benefit in sending him to school right now. He’s not paying attention in class, anxious to get back here and make sure Aaron hasn’t died without someone here to constantly remind him what he’s fighting for.

They share a similar fear that in that room by himself Aaron will allow the world to consume him and he’ll just stop fighting. He’ll just die and leave them both. And Jessica had hated him once upon a time but he’s really the only family she has too. She loves Jack to pieces but she has no desire to raise her sister and brother’s son. 

She has no desire to bury Aaron. Not today, not tomorrow--- she’s done burying family. 

All she can hope is that Aaron understands that.

He watches them leave. Jack glances back only once, today he doesn’t silently sob as they make their exit. Hotch’s heart thanks the small boy for that, he can’t handle his son’s tears. It hurts so much more to know that he’s the reason his little boy is so sad. That fear of losing Hotch hasn’t gone away in the years since his mother’s death. It won’t ever really go away. 

Tuesday passes as slowly as Monday. 

He doesn’t eat the breakfast they bring him. Just as he hadn’t eaten the dinner or the lunch they brought him yesterday. While most of the symptoms have died down, like the headache and vertigo, but the trouble breathing and nausea have not abated. Giving him a nasty aversion to the food that already looks unappealing.

He can’t remember much of what happened. After falling asleep to the sound of his phone frantically buzzing he hadn’t woken back up for hours. He has a distant memory of a man in grey—a firefighter— pulling him upright. His legs and body limp and the whole world shifting as he’s lifted and carried out of his bedroom. 

He’d been one of the more severe cases. Exhausted from working for so long, he hadn’t so much as left the building for hours. Meaning while the rest of the building occupants went on about their days-- leaving for church or groceries or dinner plans-- he’d been left to succumb to the symptoms of carbon monoxide alone. 

A boiler in the basement had some malfunction, one of the nurses had told him. Hotch didn’t really care how it happened or why, he just knew he was glad Jack was nowhere near any of this. Even if Jack being home meant things not escalating to this point. Hotch can take the tight feeling in his chest and the difficulty breathing over anything if it means keeping Jack safe… Jack’s all he has.

At least, Jack is all he thinks he has.

The nurse’s face spreads into the softest, happiest smile David Rossi thinks he’s seen in days. The woman, hardly twenty-five, beams and clasps her hands together in her excitement. “You’re here for Aaron?” She motions for them to follow her. “He’s a sweetheart,” she tells them. He really is. Aside from giving her a hard time about his pain level and eating, he’s been her best patient. Never once rude or anything but the picture of calm. 

Well, he’s almost always the picture of calm…

“He’s had a bad day,” she explains simply, stopping in the doorway. She’d come in for what she was quickly learning to be her daily ritual of fighting with the man to eat something and found him sobbing. From there, the nerves he couldn’t control, lack of sleep, and anxiety going unchecked had bubbled into an anxiety attack. The end result—

Dave clears his throat, “is he okay?”

The nurse nods her head, “I stayed with him for a while. He’s just a little groggy. The doctor ordered some sedatives.” He hadn’t lasted long under their heavy influence and she’d checked in on him as many times as she could but he still wasn’t up yet. 

Maybe with his friends here though…

“Thank you,” JJ says, reaching out and squeezing the other woman’s hand. There’s a sad smile on her lips as she says, “we can’t thank you enough for taking care of him.” JJ has to look away before the tears pooling in her eyes spill over. “He’s a very stubborn man but--but we love him dearly.”

The nurse nods her head, sympathetic tears threatening to fall. “He talked about you guys,” so much so she’s fairly certain she knows each of them far more than she should. JJ is the soft blonde, stronger than she knows and still gentle. There’s Dave whose hardened scowl had thrown her off but now she sees the curious brow Aaron had told her about. The stick and bones genius Doctor Reid hadn’t been a hard one to figure out, just like the bright and dazzlingly beautiful Penelope Garcia. Leaving only Emily Prentiss, dark and serious. 

His family. 

“But really,” she says, excusing herself with one last glance at her friend in the room. “He’ll be very pleased you’re here. He never said it but he missed you.” 

Yeah, JJ smiles, that sounds about right.

They enter the room with a soft knock, as to not disturb him if he is sleeping. 

“Good morning, sunshine.” 

It takes hours. By the time that Aaron wakes up, Dave has already called and got the rest of them today and tomorrow off. Derek’s made two trips out for food-- lunch and then the snack that Reid was getting antsy about. Reid’s consumed three Poptarts and if not for Hotch’s eyes cracking open he’d be making for a fourth. However, Reid knows Hotch’s mood will flip like a switch and the last thing he needs is Hotch’s frustration being taken out on him. 

“Ach,” Dave swats at Hotch’s hand. His fingers failing to form a strong enough grasp around the flimsy plastic fo the mask to pull it away from his face. However, the idea is in his head and Dave doesn’t want him to just find that strength. “Something tells me that’s not there for decorations,” Dave says, pulling Hotch’s hand down to his chest. 

Hotch grumbles something, pale lips cashing in words that his lungs can’t check-out. Whatever is lost to his rasps or drowning by the mask is made up for by the eye-roll of angst he sends Dave. Which also loses it’s flavor when he starts hacking up a lung.

“Easy--”

Dave’s soft soothes go unheard and Morgan steps in, pulling Hotch up by his shoulders. There’s a split second where Hotch gags, the sudden movement causing intense nausea, but nothing comes up and he’s left coughing painfully into Morgan’s side. Needing the other man to keep him upright.

“You good,” Morgan asks. He’d picked up a soothing rub of Hotch’s back, moving his large palm in circles until the coughing died down. Until now, as Hotch just leans limply into his side. 

Hotch nods, “thanks.”

Morgan doesn’t go far, he stays close enough to help Hotch lay back down. His dark brows furrowed as his eyes move over Hotch’s strained face. He’s in obvious discomfort and it bothers Morgan to see him like this. “How are you feeling,” Morgan pushes, fidgeting with the blankets bunched up around Hotch’s waist. “You cold?”

Hotch turns his head into the pillows, nodding.

Morgan pulls the blankets up and fixes the mask half pushed off Hotch’s face. He smiles when Hotch just scowls but submits to the movement. Morgan bites back whatever comment he might make about Hotch being particularly grumpy today. It’s hard to believe that you could miss something as simple as someone’s grumpy mumbling but at the thought of losing Hotch… 

“You good,” Morgan asks, one of his hands on Hotch’s shoulder. “You need anything?”

Hotch’s glazed over eyes move over Morgan as if he’s uncertain if he’s really there. Hotch is still fairly under the influence of the sedative working its way through his system. So, his lazy, uncoordinated movement to dislodge the oxygen mask over his face is futile. “Itches,” he slurs, under his breath. 

It’s easier than it should be for Dave to pin Hotch’s hands to his chest once again, just pushing his wrist down. Hotch grunts a little, giving only a little resistance to hold. “Aaron,” Dave chides. “The carbon monoxide in your blood is still elevated so you have to leave the mask alone.” 

The doctor had told them that when Aaron was emitted he’d stopped breathing on his own. The percentage of carbon monoxide in his blood a 48%— one of the highest out of the patients brought in from the incident at the apartment complex. High enough to kill him, as it should have. As it still could.

They’d been assured, upon arrival, that he’s doing exceptionally well considering. But it will take time for his blood to return to normal as it will take time for him to recover. Which he will, recovery that is. He has to. 

He always does.

[phantomato]

Uber

Nottmort (Tom Riddle/Nott Sr.), Modern Muggle AU, ~2k words

Thanks to @yletylyf for kicking around this idea! Tom drives an Uber in the Bay Area. Thoros & co need a ride.

—

Abraxas and Orion are bickering over luggage in the background when your Uber pulls up. Black, of course, so it’s a Mercedes that will smell a little too much like leather cleaner when you get in, but none of you have ever ridden in an UberX or, god forbid, an Uber Pool, and you’re not about to start.

Your colleagues—never forget, you are not friends, no matter how much time you spend with them—slide into the back seat before you can even begin to help load bags into the trunk. You’re left alone with the driver, and though he offers to help, you haven’t let yourself sink that low as to make this man pile all of your shit in his car while you sit around and watch. And anyway, it feels like the polite thing to do. More than Abraxas or Orion, you’ve been raised to be polite.

So you fold yourself into the front passenger seat, too kind to push the seat all the way back and give yourself the leg room you need even if Orion, behind you, is just 5’8 to your 6’3, and smile at the driver as he confirms your destination.

He’s pretty. You’ve been in a lot of Ubers and you’ve never seen a driver this pretty. Is that classist?, you wonder to yourself, remembering something you read in Vox the other day. Probably. Nevertheless, you’re taken by the curve of his mouth, the sweep of his dark hair, and you throw a smirk over your shoulder at Abraxas who you know must have also noticed.

“Traffic to SFO will be busy,” he says regretfully, and you roll your eyes. Orion refuses to take the early morning flights, unwilling to wake at 3 AM, and you’re always stuck with these long, miserable Uber rides down from the city to the airport. “And Terminal 2—right in the middle of it. There’s construction around those doors, if you haven’t been there—”

“We know,” Orion butts in rudely, shutting up your driver for the few minutes it takes to get out of your neighborhood.

You use those few minutes to swipe through your phone. Email—nothing important. Messages—you clear the notifications. Your Instagram is alight with people reposting the same infographic about voting rights and you make a mental note to kick some money to that non-profit that’s been all over Twitter lately. You close out apps and end up back at Uber, watching your car’s laggy progress through the San Francisco streets. Your driver’s name is Tom, the app informs you. It’s a nice name.

You clear the side streets and Tom offers amenities. “If you want any water, there are bottles in the cooler between the seats,” he calls back to Abraxas and Orion, “and mints in the cup holder. You can adjust the air conditioning if you like, and there’s a charging cable attached to the back of my seat if you need it. Would you like to choose any music?”

“No,” Abraxas says, and whether he means the music or the entire spiel doesn’t really matter, given his withering tone. You look back at him, trying to convey ‘Be nice’ with just your eyebrows, but Abraxas is fussing with his hair and ignoring you.

Tom’s one of the chipper ones, it turns out, because he takes the rejection in stride and shifts to the dreaded personal conversation. “What do you all do for a living?”

“Ah, we invest in companies, mostly start-ups,” you say, trying to avoid—

“Venture capitalists!” Tom guesses, and he’s right but you hate the term and its connotations. So what if you are all white men whose family money has bankrolled tech speculation? It’s what anyone with half a brain would do. You donate, you read the liberal news—at least, you think that’s true for all of you, though Orion was friends with that Republican mayoral candidate and Abraxas’ father sponsors that conservative think-tank and…

Ah, fuck. “Yeah, pretty much,” you agree, hating yourself.

Behind you, Orion digs his AirPods out of his pocket. You hear the snap of the magnetic lid as he closes himself off to the world. Abraxas is slouching, the hem of his third-favorite cashmere cardigan catching on the seat behind him, and you realize that you’re alone in this conversation.

Well, fuck it. If those two pricks are going to make you call the Uber, deal with the reimbursement paperwork, and sit in the front seat, you’re going to talk to the driver and make this car conversation as painful as possible for them.

As if reading your thoughts, Tom does the one thing that guarantees a terrible ride: he pitches his app idea.

“You know, I’m also a software developer,” he says, which is at least more promising than when someone isn’t, “and if I had the kind of funding that companies like yours provide, I would absolutely make this app.” He proceeds to describe something completely inane, the type of exclusive, niche social networking app that hasn’t had legs since before the Trump presidency and you would be content to let him drone on, to let Abraxas keep melting into his own seat and to let Orion channel his anger through a knee driven into the back of yours, but—

But for all that Tom’s idea is stupid, he has the energy of the best pitches you see. His energy is infectious. His eyes light up, he gestures with one hand, and when he stops to take a drink (one of those water bottles with a built-in straw, which you associate with joggers and your lamest employees but which does very different things to you when it’s Tom’s mouth wrapped around the top) you’re transfixed by the wet sheen over his chapped lips.

And so, yes, maybe it’s mostly lust, and maybe this is a sign that you need to download Grindr again, even if only to jerk off to the dick pics you’ll get, but you start to actually talk to him.

“There’s no future in niche social networks,” you say, halting Tom in his tracks. “There will always be new ones, don’t misunderstand me, but the broader landscape is saturated by the top names, and they’ll buy out their competitors if they need to. Perhaps you can topple Tumblr, but that’s not a path to profit. If you want to impact the social market, you need to pinpoint the novel interaction model that you want to offer and make yourself buyable.”

“Buyable,” Tom repeats, like he’s never been interrupted before. He probably hasn’t. The first rule of Ubering around the Bay Area or the Valley is to never engage the app pitches, and Orion has started kicking your seat for your transgression.

“Yes,” you enunciate. “You want to be bought out and brought in at a high level. The giant that eats you may or may not use your idea, but you’ll make a comfortable sum as a consolation prize.” You’ve helped companies through this before. You’re flying out to New York this week in part because one of your investments is considering purchase offers and you want to strategize in-person. The founder is dallying, sending emails about independence and integrity, and Orion will bully him into selling while you and Abraxas negotiate the best terms for the contract.

You can feel Tom’s eyes on you. Abraxas might be calling “Thoros…” from the back seat, and Orion might be attempting to annihilate you with his gaze alone, but you’re smiling at that handsome face behind the wheel and hoping for an accident on the 101.

Unfortunately, you make it through San Bruno without running into more than the usual level of traffic, and Tom’s pulling up to your terminal much sooner than you would like. Abraxas and Orion jump out of the car with uncharacteristic speed when it stops, Orion even moving to stand by the trunk in readiness to take his bags. You delay.

“Do you have a business card?” you ask, when it’s clear Tom’s waiting on you.

He fumbles to pull a wallet from his jeans. You can’t quite get a view of his ass as he does, but that doesn’t stop you from looking.

His card is bent at the corner, printed cheaply, and probably from his last job. You’re pretty sure that company doesn’t exist anymore. Tom taps the phone number. “I can be reached here,” he says smoothly, but his professionalism cracks when he adds, “by call or by… text.”

You know what sort of texts you’d like to receive from him.

Pulling out your own card case, you hand him your card. “Text me,” you say, your voice just this side of appropriate, “any time.”

Tom visibly swallows and jumps out of the car. You take your time getting up, and if your cashmere sweater—Margaret Howell, not that Elder Statesman piece of shit Abraxas is wearing—ends up in the footwell of Tom’s passenger seat, well, you’ll be back in SF next week, won’t you?

“Thanks for the ride, Tom,” you tell him as you take the handle of your luggage, letting your fingers brush his. “I enjoyed our conversation.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you don’t care that Abraxas is snorting behind you, he’s been judging you this whole trip and he lost out on a hot guy’s number as a result. “It was…”

“Thoros,” you interrupt him before he can ramble and psych himself out. “My name is Thoros, and I really would like to hear from you.”

Tom looks at you then, and you see him pull together the same sureness that drew you into his initial pitch. “I’ll text you about the app.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you say, meaning it.

—

Bonus:

“You know,” Abraxas drawls as you sit in the United club lounge, gesturing lazily with his overpriced airport Fiji water, “if you tip him too much it’s like you’re paying him for sex.”

Orion looks up from his phone then, removing one earbud for the first time since he put them in. “I’ve paid more for sex with less attractive men.”

“Welcome back,” you say, “I didn’t realize you had paid any attention.”

“Someone would need to not have eyes in order to miss how hot that Uber driver was,” he bites back, returning to his phone.

“Well, I’m tipping him extra anyway,” you announce, confirming Tom’s five-star rating. Should you write a review? Is that too much?

Abraxas, with a grumble, declares, “I’m telling Alecto not to approve this expense.”

—

Bonus bonus:

Your phone buzzes at the end of dinner, the celebratory affair to close the sale which someone had insisted must be at Lilia, even though Abraxas doesn’t eat carbs and you would have preferred to grab a slice at Scarr’s rather than haul out to Williamsburg, anyway.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom—you’ve been texting all week, and between a few late-night flirtations and one very bald statement of interest, you’ve got a date set for when you’re back home. You’re going to Mensho Tokyo, since he lives in the Tenderloin and you live… vaguely around the Tenderloin, at least, you tell people you live there when you want to seem cooler, and Tom is the type of guy that makes you excited to stand in line for hours to get seats. You’re already thinking about whether you might put your arm around him while you’re waiting, and you unlock your phone to see what he’s saying now.

It’s a picture message.

A picture of Tom, wearing your Howell sweater and no pants and oh god oh fuck—

“Was that Uber driver’s dick?” Abraxas whispers, next to you, and you curse your luck. “Remind me to call the next Uber, Jesus Christ.”

[rametarin]

And further thoughts about the yaoi paddles.

If you’re under 20, and just now learning that fandom seniors in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, even low 50s, used to run around slapping eachother on the ass with yaoi paddles in anime and comic conventions after anime became a household media staple, you probably have.. questions.

You’re probably thinking, “Wow!! It was really lawless and anarchistic back then, wasn’t it! They never heard about personal space or sexual harassment laws! SOCIETY must have been SO different, back then!”

NO. I cannot stress enough, the Yaoi Paddle phenomenon was borne PURELY because the demographic MOST LIKELY to protest and be wet blankets about everything fun and sexual and admittedly VERY SKETCHY sometimes in fiction, and ALWAYS bad in reality.. turned off and said virtually nothing. Wokesters that’d protest about the environment and sexual assault against women would take off their Problem Glasses by night and act like paddling was harmless, contextually acceptable behavior.

Yaoi Paddle shit appeared because something absolutely magical happened in scifi and fantasy fandoms. It survived purely because boys didn’t complain, or their complaints were not taken seriously. I promise you, I assure you, if you grew up in the late 80s, your night time TV was INUNDATED with heavy handed messages about how sexual harassment (always male-on-woman flavored) was wrong, even proxy or indirect violence to women (tossing rubber gloves in their lap) was wrong, and to never, ever, ever do that thing or they’d rub your nose in it and consider you mentally diseased until the day you died.

Fandom was always niche, with sci-fi and fantasy stuff being off in its own little corner. Conventions, before the internet was king, was one of few places where more rural, disparate suburban and city-definition isolated geeks, nerds and dreamers could get together and just cut loose. Comic books, novels, video games. All that GOOD shit. But if you knew a girl in the 80s and 90s, you knew a girl that knew a girl that was getting them to be less tolerant and “more conscious and aware” (80s and 90s parlance for Woke) and when that happened, a new persona was created. A new bunch of dialogue options, created.

Suddenly they didn’t say stuff like, “Ew. Why is this character dressed like a SLUT? Typical male writers. Like we’d ever draw ourselves in this or put ourselves in this.” Because that’d be a personal, subjective opinion. Instead, the option to say, “It’s endemic in our western culture that male chauvinist authors and writers in a patriarchal system exploit femininity in media and reproduce misogynistic culture.”

And so assured this was true by mob mentality AND the idea that learned, educated, acredited and tenured academics had this opinion, they were scientists, and so they were right, permeated. Suddenly girl-fans had outlets to have justified apprehension for everything they saw and didn’t like or, if they actually liked it, STILL interpreted it through their lenses to be on, “the right side of history.”

It made fandom miserable and a sausage fest for a while, if only out of fear of driving away female friends. You couldn’t share that shit unless you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your female peers and friends wouldn’t disregard you like a “typical misogynistic western male” for enjoying that stuff.

Sentiments and peer pressure thoughts emerged. Like, “The comic industry is hostile and cruel to women that try and enter it, and they exploit the image of women for cheap dollars.” So they simply weren’t interested in comics- mostly- unless the comics were written by women and sold with that virtue in mind. In which case, you had boys glowingly mentioning just how much they liked this authentically written adventure by this female comic author. Isn’t that just so special? Not like those horrid anti-woman cigar smoking old man stories, right?

There was always something to nag and get vitriolic about with the media. That’s part of why the Whedon brand of feminist writing got so popular in the 90s. it was low hanging fruit of peppy “sassy” girl characters doing girly things. They weren’t like “other” girls written in comics and cartoons. They were actually girly. Not idealized infantalized children, like those horrible white men write, you know.

Well. Things were looking really bleak for the forseeable future. Lots of boys just felt like comics and cartoons were lost to girls that weren’t specifically into them, and that meant more sausage fest conventions or hobbies, and signing off hope on those things being respected and accepted on the merits of what they are and were. The girls had embraced serials-filed-off radfem rhetoric and lenses, sometimes without even knowing the origins of where those truisms like the Male Gaze even came from, just assuming it was true and indisputable. And it complimented their insecurities, so they’d embrace that shit until they couldn’t anymore.

And then.. something absolutely miraculous and amazing happened that blindsided this whole vitriolic culture.

Anime.

And amazingly, every complaint that a lot of nerdy girls had about the very much sanitized, policed and made PG writing and characterization of characters in western comics and cartoons, just... fucking up and vanished. Seemingly within a fucking YEAR, the entire social culture of Problem Finders, finding everything wrong about these stories, the characters, the writer and the company that produced them being misogynistic male chauvinism, dried up. Those voices quieted, or were shut out of the groups.

Media from Japan was some of the most infantilizing, sexist, tittelating shit compared to mainstream American comics and cartoons and video games, and girls fluttered to it like flies to shit. We had Buffy basically subverting boogymen that a bunch of girls had been taught were still relevant after the 1950s by fighting crime in melee combat with men, and winning, while wearing jogging pants and cracking sassy, like Lola Bunny being a “tough girl.”

Japan had doe eyed, waif bodied ballet dancers that basically farted iridescent glitter, hearts and all the symbols and shapes of the Lucky Charms, riding unicorns and fighting evil in cute outfits. Being childish and not at all mature or professional to show how womanly and competent they were, basically being overgrown 11 year old girls fresh off the playground swing set.

And the fangirls loved it. Those nagging voices that would speak up and remind them about misogynistic, male chauvinistic “societies” and culture? Just.. they fucking VANISHED from the mind for AN ENTIRE GENERATION. I’m not exaggerating. Tolerance and fun and innocence was back again. The problem-glasses felt too ostracized and alienated, or didn’t even want to wear them anymore for personal reasons, and the Radfem Baby Wokes just seemed to grow out of that collective hysteria and pretend it never happened and never existed.

That’s why the very EXISTENCE of Yaoi Paddles at conventions was just so fucking bizarre to those of us that lived up to that point. After, “Stay in your own personal space, boy. DON’T even TOUCH a GIRL unless she VERBALLY AND PUBLICLY CONSENTS or it’s proof you’re just living up to this misogynistic, objectifying society’s evil history!” was drilled into us, day on the playground by day on the playground, by women with axes to grind and good-boy sycophants performing sharing those sentiments for brownie points, it was so fucking surreal to IMAGINE girls just running around sexually assaulting and physically assaulting random strangers because they thought they looked like cute, gay men.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know any better beforehand, it’s that they COMPLETELY put those sentiments away and up and decided, as girls, it was okay to violate male autonomy because they weren’t women, and “it’s okay to paddle a yaoi boy ^.^!” With NO self-awareness whatsoever.

The very fact it existed is testament to how attention starved boys were for girls approving gaze and playful interaction, that they’d tolerate some pocky fingered little cow stranger smacking them on the ass with a plank of wood because it was a socially acceptable way to just interact with girls in their lonely assed fandom and interest. It was an acceptable way to meet girls and positively interact. That’s the degrading bullshit boys said virtually nothing about at the hayday of yaoi paddles, purely to be welcoming to girls in anime and hentai approving spaces.

WE GREW UP hearing and watching horror stories and boogymen stories about true crime and sitcoms and crime shows about evil evil men violating the personal space of women for lewd and lecherous reasons. We had it drilled into our heads that the tolerance for boys and men doing that was negatives, and the general sentiment was men caught doing that (to women, or children of any sex) were effectively free game for any violence you personally felt like unloading on them, confident that in such outraged rape and sexual assault hating times, juries would excuse that passion as a defense.

So if you look back on the era of Yaoi Paddles and think. “WOW. That must be like driving cars before they invented seat belts and cough medicine before they invented the drug safety and scheduling legal system!”.. NO.

It was not like the 50s-70s, where many of the rules hadn’t been written yet so it was anarchy and chaos. Yaoi Paddles existed almost PURELY because girls HAD no rules if they didn’t want to respect them. The Yaoi Paddle phenomenon flew in direct opposition to how interactions were supposed to go, and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE would tolerate the reverse; no cis straight man could walk around randomly smacking women on the ass with a plank of even foam in pantomime, or ‘floating hand’ pretending to be a perverted character. The double standard was GLARING. The Double Standard was a fucking bugbear that had grown from a tiny screaming goblin and was now hanging upside down from the ceiling, roaring.

But because it was GIRLS inflicting it on BOYS, absolutely no party cared enough to raise a stink about it. The Radfems kept their mouths shut, because boys were the recipients. The Radfem Sympathizers really wanted to spank boys, so suddenly they couldn’t find their problem glasses and instead put on their neko ears. The boys were either stoic and amused by it or really wanted to be seen as cool and not buzzkills, so they tolerated to reveled in it.

Many times when you hear about things that happened either when you were a child just too young to really personally experience a thing, or before you were born, we’re quick to assume it’s a medieval place and the people were so uncultured as to have never pondered the social problems of spanking one another on the ass unprovoked. Violation of personal space, personal sovereignty- all that. That was NOT okay at the time. It happened because fujoshi decided it was okay and nobody argued with them to not do hat, or they were told to stop and did it anyway.

And as I’ve laid it out, that is the most bizarre and surreal element to the whole thing. They DID know better, but felt it didn’t apply to THEM because they were girls, and a girl slapping a boy on the ass “as a joke” didn’t mean anything- because it wasn’t happening TO them, FROM a man.

And irony of ironies, it was NEVER okay, EVER, throughout that entire era, for the reverse to be a thing. It was very specifically and exclusively not. As a man if you ran around slapping cute looking girls with the Yuri Paddle, you goin’ to either juvy hall, or prison, boi. Both sexes knew it. And yet, yaoi paddles STILL became a thing.

[unicyclehippo]

beaujester star wars au..... beau is a cocky rebellion pilot that’s a little Too good at dodging and firing shots, and jester is a princess-turned-junior senator-turned rebellion supporter. they are both force sensitive and kiss

The star base has been overrun by decorations and muted music, louder toward the centre of the hanger and half-volume at the edges, where a few hand-picked individuals - volunteers, probably - are keeping an eye on the alerts still. Colourful lights spin over the ceiling in programmed patterns that put Beau in mind of the star maps she reads on a daily basis, and the longer she looks, the more she starts to think they actually are star maps. Blown out to make ‘em look all pretty, though. That’s what decorating on a tight budget looks like, though. 

She’s leaning against the landing gear of her fighter, largely hidden by the shadows of her wings, and doing her utmost to strike a balance between looking incredibly cool but incredibly unapproachable whenever anyone looks her way. It’s hard, and she’s pretty sure she just looks injured, but no one has come over to talk to her and that’s a win in her book. No one, that is, save for Fjord.

Fjord Tusktooth - tall, green, surprisingly lean for an orc, tusked as the name suggests and a damn good pilot, her Captain actually - sidles over, arms raised over his head as he steps through the dancing crowd. He tries his best not to let the drinks spill but he’s licking what looks like jet oil off his hand when he reaches her. 

‘That better not be mine, Cap.’

He rolls his eyes. ‘Can humans drink strick-oil?’

‘No.’

‘Then it’s not yours, is it? What’s wrong with your face?’

‘What? Nothing! Give me that.’ 

It doesn’t smell like a drink; it smells like it’ll strip her innards of anything and everything useful and replace them with alcohol. Luckily, that’s exactly how she likes her drinks. Taking it from him, she flings it back, feels it burn all the way down. It hits her system like a punch to the face from a nydak. 

‘Good?’

‘Fuckin’ awful,’ she rasps. ‘Cheers.’

He laughs. Settles into place beside her, sipping at the thick oil drink. ‘So. Any reason you’re all the way over here instead of letting all of these lov-erly ladies lavish you with attention?’ He waggles his brows as he asks and grins, very much aware that he’s the only one who can get away with asking her these kinds of questions as baldly as he does. Mostly because he manages to ask in a way that doesn’t make her wanna use him for shooting practice. And a little because he’s her superior officer. ‘I’ve turned down two proposals on your behalf - you’re welcome.’

‘Huh? What? Who?’

He points them out subtly - one a dusty pink alien clad in white and gold, with about a half dozen tentacles drifting around her head like a mane, the other a waist-high, bearded lady who winks right at Beau when she sees her watching. 

‘That’s kinda my call, isn’t it?’

‘They offered two nerfs for you -’

‘Like, both of them together? That’s hot.’

‘What? No - Beau,’ he laughs. ‘The point is that you should know your worth.’ His face goes carefully blank as he tries, very obviously, not to smile. ‘Three nerfs.’

Beau snorts. ‘Shut up. I’m going to get another drink. See if you can get them to bid higher for my hand, yeah? Remind them that I lead Team Two today. Integral to the battle. Integral.’ He salutes and she pushes off the wall, walks toward the party just long enough for his eyes to slide away from her. She steps sideways into the corridor and ducks out of sight, breath coming out in a gust.

Tyr-Mannou Star Base is built deep in the asteroid that orbits the planet, hidden from prying eyes and ears by the layered rock. Beau hadn’t been listening a hundred per cent when it was explained but something about the metals in the area, and in this planet, seemed to provide a buffer - mild, temporary - to long-distance scanning and surveillance. And at this point - haggard, hurting - the rebels will take any buffer at all. 

It’s good for the rebellion, to be buried in the asteroid. 

It’s hard to find fresh air, though, and Beau pulls at the collar of her jumpsuit, unzipping it until she doesn’t feel like she’s being strangled. 

Moving farther from the party, down the corridor and just away, Beau lets her feet carry her aimlessly at first - listening to the sound of her boots on the metal, echoing in the tin-can corridors, hiding briefly from the passing technicians who don’t seem to notice her in the various shadowed niches she finds. And then less aimlessly, until she realises she is headed directly for the command station. 

The room isn’t dark, not ever, but it is running on a skeleton crew who look up suspiciously at her entry, relaxing when they recognise her face - or, more likely, the badge affixed to her shoulder. 

‘Lionette.’

‘Commander.’

‘Shouldn’t you be at the party? I heard your squad was receiving a commendation.’

‘We are. Did, Commander.’

Commander Dairon - a hard-ass and a legend in the fighter crews for the Battle of Sotheirrik in which they led the harrying of a military convoy for two fucking weeks - looks her over with a cool eye before nodding. ‘Made an appearance at least, I hope?’

‘Sure did.’

‘Good. Get some rest, Lionette. There will be plenty of work come morning.’ The Commander reaches out a gloved hand. Rests it on Beau’s shoulder for a moment, squeezes. ‘Enjoy these moments when you can,’ they tell her quietly, and it has a tinge of an order to it. But just a tinge. 

‘Yessir.’

‘Good. Now,’ they say, eyes glittering, ‘Fuck off.’

Beau barks a laugh. Salutes her Commander lazily and continues on, onwards toward the view that had been calling her. 

The command station sits closest to the surface of the asteroid and it is here, only here, that one can see the view that they are risking everything to protect. The field of stars and asteroids, glinting as they catch the light of Tyr-Mannou’s sun. The purple-blue of Tyr-Mannou’s surface, the deep deep green almost black of its seas. The layer of clouds that cloak portions of the landmasses and oceans alike, drifting. Beau leans up against the window, hands curling over the rail, and watches a storm brew.

She feels Jester’s presence before she sees her. A flicker of something at the edge of her awareness, far beyond that which her awareness should rightfully cover. She hears the hiss of the gas as the doors slide open and turning, beau watches a green-cloaked figure step down from the corridor. Jester exchanges a few words with Commander Dairon but Beau can feel it - the focus of her attention like a taut string between them, and she already knows Jester is about to look up, feeling her intent like a thrum, a plucked note on that string. 

Jester looks up. Dark, dark eyes in a smiling face. 

‘Ambassador Lavorre, this is one of our finest pilots.’

‘Beauregard,’ Jester interrupts Dairon’s introduction. 

Beau tries not to shiver. No one says her name the way this girl does, like they’re sharing a private joke. 

‘Princess,’ Beau returns, and she’s aiming for calm and cool, something to suit her new title of the best fucking pilot of the rebellion, but damn if it doesn’t come out reverent. 

Commander Dairon’s brows are at their hairline now and out of the corner of her eye Beau sees them mouth, ‘Okay,’ and they take their seat, turning away. 

‘How are you?’ Jester asks. It’s as nice to hear as it is weird. ‘I was told that you and your squad took on the main fleet today?’

Beau snorts. ‘Fuck no. I mean - uh,’

‘I’m not a Princess anymore,’ Jester teases, though her smile flickers at the reminder. ‘You don’t have to not swear around me.’

‘Oh, you’ll regret saying that. I swear every second word now. Habit. Us pilots are a rough and rowdy lot.’ 

Jester just laughs. ‘May I join you?’

‘Join - yeah, sure. Of course.’

Beau presses back until her back hits the rail, her spine and shoulders the cool glass. She grips the rail. Gulps. The weight of Jester’s attention, the force of her presence, feels like a real and tangible thing and Beau is finding it hard to concentrate the closer she comes - until she is right at her side and then the weight of it, the distraction, all falls away and Beau feels like the headache that has been pressing at her for the last few hours has lifted and she is seeing entirely clearly again. 

Jester holds out her hand, straight out as if to shake Beau’s. 

Beau slides her bare hand into Jester’s, tries not to shiver at the chill of her skin. Turns it and lifts it to her lips, brushes a kiss over sharp knuckles. 

//

‘Introducing the First Madrick of Kar-Marodah, Thoreau Lionette, and the First Madrise,’

The Hall is as large as four grav-barret courts, Beau is sure of that. And it’s all made of grand, sweeping lines that she can’t quite follow. She cranes her head to try and follow one to its end but it meets with another three lines and Beau is dizzy with it; a large hand sets heavy on the top of her skull and stops her turning and twisting and Beau, nine years old and well acquainted with her fathers displeasure, falls still. 

‘Be still, Beauregard. We are here to make a good impression on the Laveesh Embassy and that won’t happen,’ he reminds her, ‘if you are swinging all over the place like some common nerf-herder.’ His flat green eyes narrow. ‘Understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I’d prefer Captain,’ she dares tell him, sure that he won’t reprimand her too terribly in front of an audience, and the chance to see his eye twitch is too good to pass up. She doesn’t press too far, feeling the first flutters of her danger sense. ‘Yes sir.’

‘Come along. They’re waiting.’

His fingers are clawed into her shoulder as he moves them strategically around the room. Smiling and making small talk with the various important boring folk in the chamber, and Beau is waist-height to most of them so it’s not her fault that she’s more interested in what they’re wearing on their feet and if they have anything on their belts. 

She finds two strange cards that have no writing on them that she recognises, which she returns, disappointed, and a ring on the floor, which she pockets. It feels cold and warm all at once, and as she drags her finger around the inside whorl of the ring, she feels very strange all of a sudden. As if she had done that exact thing a hundred, a thousand times over with this very ring. 

‘Ah, Madrick Lionette, how wonderful,’ comes a voice, finally, that drags Beau’s eyes from the mosaic floor. The woman - the alien - the alien woman in front of Beau is beautiful in a way she has never seen before, all vibrant red skin and curves and gold gold gold and Beau feels her jaw drop. She didn’t know that women could look like this. 

She’s still staring when she hears her own name, and feels her father shake her shoulder. 

‘Beauregard,’ she blurts out. ‘Hello.’ The sigh from above tells her that she did that all wrong. Face flushing, ears burning, Beau trawls through her memory and tries again. ‘I’m - It’s a pleasure to meet you, Queen Lavorre. I am Beauregard Lionette, scion of the Madrick Lionette.’

‘Oh!’ The Queen laughs, not meanly at all but seemingly delighted. ‘How polite! It is my pleasure to meet you, Young Beauregard.’ She laughs again when Beau stammers through a thank you. ‘Have you had a chance to meet my daughter? You’re about the same age and she’s force sensitive too -’

‘Beauregard is not,’ her father tells the Queen flatly. ‘We had high hopes, but...it was not to be.’ He coats the words with the displeasure Beauregard hates; feels it pressing into her skin like his clawed fingers. It’s her fault she’s not force sensitive. She’s known that for a long time now. For as long as she can remember. 

There is a moment of silence, then, ‘Well. Jester? Where have you gone, my darling?’

Like a flicker of fish in the pool back home, and with the same warmth of the sun-soaked tiles against Beau’s chest and belly as she lays at the side, hand plunged into the waters to try and catch one of those crafty fish, Beau sees her. A girl, around her own age as promised, and dressed all in pretty robes. She is muddy to the knees, the dress heavy around her feet and dripping the purpled soil in a thick trail behind her. 

‘Jester? What have you gotten into?’

‘The mud. Obviously,’ the girl adds, though the Obviously was already clear from her tone. Her curls are riotous about her face, and she wears a great big smile, though it slips momentarily as she twists something between her fingers. 

‘Are you alright?’ Beau blurts. 

‘Beauregard,’

‘Oh yes,’ Jester tells her, and smiles with all the brilliance she can muster in her round, round cheeks and dark eyes. It’s... a lot. 

Beau still feels an undercurrent. Cold water around her fingers. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Beauregard! Don’t be a pest!’

Jester stares for a moment, then laughs. Shoves her hand toward Beau. ‘Hello, pest. I’m Jester.’

Beau takes it. Blanks for a moment over what is proper and finally bows, kissing it clumsily. As she stands upright, she notes the rings - one on each finger. Except for, 

‘Are you missing a ring?’

‘Oh, Jester,’

‘It was an accident,’ Jester tells her mother immediately, complete with trembling lip and abject sorrow. Though, Beau notes, no seeming anxiety for her mother’s reaction. 

She reaches down into her pocket. Rubs her thumb over the heavy ring. Is struck, momentarily, by the urge to keep it. It’s beautiful, she found it. 

It’s Jester’s. 

She didn’t see a name on it, but she knows it as certainly as she knows she’ll have blisters in the morning from these awful shiny boots. 

‘Come along, Beauregard,’ her father says, and begins to draw away from the Queen and her daughter. 

Beau shakes out from his hold and steps forward, holds out both her closed hands toward Jester. If she can guess which one the ring is in, Beau decides in nine-year old logic, then she can have it back. If not, Beau will get to keep it. 

//

They’re seventeen and the Madrick has called the meeting this time. The Queen - The Planetless Queen, Beau has heard her called behind her back, and she owns several bruises and one cracked knuckle for putting upstarts back in their places by force. The Queen has disappeared into the war room and Beau isn’t surprised to find that Jester has found her, even hidden away in the engineering core as she is. 

‘Still on with this plan, then?’ Jester asks her, peering up from beneath the suspended chassis to where Beau is hanging, fixing the wiring. ‘Becoming a pilot?’

‘Why? You think I can’t hack it?’

‘What? No. Of course you can!’

‘Then why wouldn’t I be?’

Jester is quiet for a long time, long enough for Beau to almost forget the question. She winches herself down from her position and before she can fully reclaim her feet, Jester is in front of her and her hands press against Beau’s cheeks and she’s kissing her. Kissing her, with the engineering teams buzzing around outside, and the smell of jet-oil and soldering thick in the air. 

‘I’ll miss you,’ she says. Simple words, but the feelings that slam hard into Beau’s stomach are far from simple. 

‘Jes - ‘

‘I’m sorry,’

‘You can’t -’ Beau scrambles up onto her feet. Hooks a grease-stained hand onto the perfect sleeve of the newly minted Junior Ambassador, pulling her deeper into the corner. ‘My father -’

‘He’s busy, he didn’t see,’

‘He owns these people,’ Beau hisses, glances back over her shoulder. But no one seems to have seen. ‘If I’m going to get into the Academy, he can’t - he can’t know that I’m - with you,’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with me?’

‘Nothing! Everything!’

‘Oh, how very flattering,’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it, Jes,’

‘Well you do one thing and then say a lot of other nonsense, Beau, so forgive me if I’m a little confused!’ Jester is a sight and a half, eyes flashing with unbridled fury. She’s a good inch or two shorter than Beau but with them both straining to hiss-yell at one another, their noses are almost touching. 

‘You’re hot when you’re angry.’

‘Oh shut up.’

Beau grins. The grin fades into something softer, something adoring. She reaches up. Is careful that, when she brushes a curl back, the grease-stained finger doesn’t touch Jester’s cheek. ‘Did you come here to ask me that? If I still wanna be a pilot, all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was five?’ 

Jester’s eyes drop.

Beau wipes her hand off on her jumpsuit. Crooks a finger under her chin. ‘Or did you come to ask me not to go?’

For a little while, Beau thinks Jester won’t answer. Then her eyes shift, harden, and Beau is reminded of those months after the destruction of her planet. When the pain had threatened to overflow and so Jester had locked it down, hard and tight enough to become coal, something that would let her burn and burn and burn with fury for ages to come. 

‘What you want to do, it’s important. More important than me.’

Beau can’t disagree. The simple fact is that the war is more important than everything. Any one person. She opens her mouth to argue anyway, because - because this is Jester. 

‘I came to tell you to be safe.’ And then Jester is reaching into her pocket and she removes something from it. Small and round and familiar, the golden band with the touch of emerald studded along it. The ring they have passed to one another at every meeting. A keep-safe. A talisman. ‘I want this back,’ she tells Beau, and presses it into her palm. Beau closes her hand around it, and Jester’s hand. Kisses the back of it. 

‘Be safe. Please - I don’t want - I can’t lose you as well.’

‘As you command,’ Beau whispers. ‘Princess.’

//

The fight is coming quickly into its sixth hour. Beau’s jumpsuit is slick with sweat, her hands are basically swimming in her gloves, and she can barely fucking see with the sweat dripping, stinging in her eyes. There’s nothing she can do about that right now, though, and she yanks hard on her controls as another volley of bolts burst into the space where she just was.

‘Blue-XP, what’s your status?’

‘Got a bruiser on my tail, Cap,’ she gasps, and pulls hard, swivelling overhead of the TIE fighter, letting it zoom ahead. ‘Coming in hot on the zero.’

Whatever reply Fjord might have for her is lost in a crackle of energy and a blur as Beau reacts to something she feels before she sees - another TIE, bursting out from fucking nowhere to pinch her between the two of them. 

Beau swears and books it, zipping in and out of the carcass of the long-dead transporter, her small fighter tackling the corners like a champ and her memory of the interior bursting into sharp relief as adrenaline and luck slam hard into her. She doesn’t let herself think, just slams into the controls in a way that might have made her wince if she had time to feel anything at all over the fear and fury. 

One TIE bursts into flame, utterly silent in the vacuum. The other is hot on her tail still - the hunter becomes the hunted, piece of motherfucking shit Empire dogs - and then Beau is lifting a prayer to old, dead planets and touching a finger to the ring of heavy metal that hands around her neck and spinning her fighter around to face the TIE dead on. Spins around the bolts that come her way and - between one breath and the next she fires. Bolts away without even needing to look back. 

It hit. She knew it before she saw the impact. 

//

They stand in front of the star field now, in a quiet command station far from a party celebrating a truly minor battle. The war rages on all around them, in every direction, and will for years to come. But for now, there are drinks and lights and dancing, and everyone will pretend that it is enough. 

With distant stars as their lights, and the beep of alerts and reminders as their music, Beauregard and Jester dance like they have been dancing together for decades. Like it hasn’t been almost five years since they’ve seen one another. 

‘Most daring pilot in the ninth sector,’ Jester murmurs, cheek resting on Beau’s shoulder. Her words rumble up through her chest to the top of her head, where Beau’s cheek rests in turn against soft curls. ‘That’s what I’ve heard. You’re fast becoming a legend.’

‘Me? Maybe. But you faced down a legion of Kryn soldiers and got them to turn tail - yes or no?’ From the flush on Jester’s face, Beau knows her answer. She whistles, low and quiet. ‘Damn, Jes.’

‘That won’t be remembered. No one remembers the ambassadors - you’re not supposed to remember us. The fighters are the cool ones.’

‘I’ll remember you,’ Beau shrugs.

They sway together, a slow side-to-side. 

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ Beau tells her. Jester’s smile is warm against her skin, even through the jumpsuit. 

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It wouldn’t happen to be a ring, would it?’

‘What - how did you know?’

Jester hums, trying to hide a laugh. The laugh actually does fade when Beau lets her go - just for a moment, just long enough to unclasp the chain - and tugs the ring off from around her neck. She clasps it in her hand and Beau is close enough to feel the ripple of it - the energy that swirls around this shared ring, no doubt full of the fear and thrilling adrenaline of the fight, hopefully filled with the memory of all those nights she spent in her cabin, missing Jester. 

Jester’s breath hitches. She blinks a few times, blinking open dark eyes, and then turns in the cradle of Beau’s arms. Lifts her hair, as she offers the chain to Beau. ‘Do it up for me?’

‘Y-yeah. Yeah, sure.’ Beau takes it with suddenly clumsy fingers. Can’t resist brushing her thumb over the knob of Jester’s spine, the soft hair at her hairline. It takes a moment for her to work the clasp but finally it clicks closed and she lets her hands fall to either side, to Jester’s shoulders, and leans forward until she can kiss where she had touched. Lips pressed to the vulnerable space there. ‘I want that back,’ she whispers. ‘Sooner than five years, if you can manage.’

Jester twists back to face her. ‘Shouldn’t I get to keep it for five years? You did.’

‘That’s not how the game works.’

‘I’ll let you see it,’

‘We trade it, Jes. That’s how the game works.’

‘That’s how it has historically worked. I might suggest a change in rules,’ she says, in her most Ambassadorial tones, and Beau fights a laugh. ‘I had two dozen Kryn warships fleeing before me, Beauregard, I think I can get you to change your mind.’

‘You try your best, Princess. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.’

[atiny-piratequeen]

Hello everyone. I’m here to get a bit serious, but I don’t apologize for my tone in this. 

Truth be told, I’m vibrating in pure rage at this, but I’ll do my best to formulate what I have to say in a mature manner. I will also lead off by saying, in the event that any of you happen to follow the link to report the work or tell the op to take it down, please remain respectful and keep your tones mature. I’m not keen on the idea of mobbing someone and bullying them (even though I feel very hurt and wronged), and I am only posting this link here for us to one) politely and maturely tell the plagiarizer to take down my work and two) hopefully locate the authors of the other stolen works.

Today, thanks to a followertiny-I won’t name bc idk if you feel comfortable with that-informed me of my work (Specifically, 1:28am, the Jongho Jacob’s Ladder piece I posted a month or so ago) being reposted onto Wattpad. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do NOT allow reposting of my works ANYWHERE.

All of my necessary accounts I post to have links available to them that are easily accessible either in my bio or my masterlist. If I had any update in this, you all would know. 

I do not consent to ANYONE taking my work off of their designated sites. Hell, my timestamps aren't even on my ao3 account. (I consider them little lovely gifts for my tumblrtiny followers so I haven’t really posted any of them there for that reason, though I may in the future). I do not use FF, Wattpad, and most of my works are too long for me to post to my Twt. I wouldn’t put them on YT or anywhere else. 

I’ve been writing fics for over a decade, the first thing I posted was a rinky dink pokemon fic as a literal elementary school kid in like ‘07, ‘08 on fucking Quizilla. That site doesn’t even exist anymore. Even then, I have never stolen or plagiarized anyone's work. I do nothing here but try and boost up my fellow writers, but this? Stealing? This isn’t it. 

What’s worse, is it not just my Jongho fic affected. This person has not only stolen my work, but the works of other writers to tack on together for their ‘daddy’ story or whatever, some of the writers not even being Atiny, as Admin Cy of KSC has pointed out to me, they’ve even stolen works from Army writer, since one of their stolen Yeosang pieces refers to him as ‘Jungkook’, but a few sentences down, he’s back to being Yeosang. There are also at least two works as part of this person’s stolen collection that are stolen from @ateezlust ,as well as them stealing from OTHER writers on OTHER sites as well

If you have all the energy to take and edit and steal people’s work, I highly suggest looking into making some of your own. 

There is nothing wrong with being inspired. I’m inspired by the writers and media around me when I write. But taking someone’s work, covering it up to pretend like it’s yours, changing the original author’s words here and there to try and tailor it for you...that disgusts me. 

I don’t care how ‘bad’ you think your writing is. How much you talk yourself down and say you’ll never be as good as the ‘popular’ authors, you keep trying. You work hard. You adapt over time. What we aren’t gonna do, is take someone else’s hard work and claim it as your own because you can’t be assed to better yourself. That’s what we won’t do. 

It is well known here that I personally sometimes stay up to ungodly hours of the morning to make my content for you all. So this really...disgusts me on so many more levels. My content, and the content of other creators is not here for you to steal and put on your fridge and say it’s your own. Most of us put these things here for free. The least you can do is respect us as creators and our work. 

I’ve issued a full DMCA takedown of the stolen work and Admin Cy is working hard behind the scenes to find the other authors of the other stolen works bc of course, like with most shameless reposters, they usually steal more than one. I take this very seriously and just so everyone is clear;

Plagiarism is illegal. It is punishable by law. 

Just because my work is not fully original and it does use idols or whoever I decide to write a fic about, does not omit it from the fact that legal action can and will be taken. As the writer, I own the copyrights to my own work and if I find my shit on your blog, you bet your ass I’m gonna have it shut down. 

Share works, support them, be inspired by them, but do NOT go and fucking slap us creators in the face like this by stealing our shit, especially when you try to pass this off as your own. 

If you are reading this, and have someone else's work reposted somewhere else, I implore you to take it down, apologize to the person you stole it from (whether they caught wind or not, you owe them that much for stealing in the first place) and reevaluate yourself. Better yourself as a person and then try the writing thing again. Your own work this time.

And those of you who may scoff at this, think you can't be caught, think somehow in your mind that you stealing peoples work for your own selfish benefit is okay...unfollow me. Leave and dont come back. All of my works, dont touch them. I dont need likes or reblogs or comments from someone who would so carelessly put aside a content creator's feelings and ignore the fact that we all say this to people, writers and artists alike to NOT repost our hard work.

Idk where you're from in the world, its 2020, the concept of "reposting is stealing" /"dont repost my work" is not foreign or some niche thing. We have artists and authors who post it in their bios and everything telling you not to repost bc they're tired of it. You have NO excuse for this behavior and if you condone this behavior and see nothing wrong with these actions, I ask you leave my blog(s) and dont come back. I do not tolerate this at all, not for myself or others.

Thank you.

-Fie, Atiny-PirateQueen/Flora-Jimin

[radioactive-mouse]

overcomplicated niche and close-to-my-heart xeph&strife lore gang rise UP give us the deets op - @strifesolution

me: ask about my xephos and strife lore

anyone: asks

me: oh fuck oh shit-

heads up a lot of this was made in conjunction with @chaotic-solutions because we never shut up about yogscast so like. go follow them this is a threat.

CW: a lot of talk about depression and addiction because blood magic is Bad

but basically i am very adamant about alien strife and xephos, and the fact that strife went to college with sips is incredibly funny and under appreciated. i feel many different emotions about them being a dumb college trio.

so strife and xephos were roommates in college who started dating like, probably their sophomore year, and sips was their mutual friend that lived a few doors down and was in strife’s Evil Corporate Overlord class. (it wasn’t actually even called that, it’s literally just a business course. calling it that is an old joke between them that stuck even if no one gets it)

Very unfortunately for everyone involved, mid sophomore year is also when Strife started to get really into blood magic. The thing about how I hc blood magic is like, not only is it morally fucked up as hell, but it’s also incredibly bad for you. No matter how careful you think you’re being your blood isn’t even your own anymore, replaced with witches’ and villagers’ and it might make you powerful but it’s cold, feels alien beneath your skin, and quitting is nearly impossible. your altar is what sustains you, keeps you alive even if it leaves you feeling dead on your feet, and it always wants more. im getting long winded but my point is blood magic fucks with you.

it’s nearly a year before strife tells xephos that he can’t live like this anymore. he’s tried to quit and he can’t and it hurts, letting his altar run dry makes his blood feel like it’s boiling and there’s no way out. and xephos tugs him in close and kisses his forehead and tells him that they’ll find a way.

they can’t exactly just look into it, blood magic isn’t the most talked about thing, much less how to quit it, but if there’s one thing the yogs can fall back on its explosives. and sips is good with them, too, because listen i KNOW the meta reason why they had red matter is because sjin spawned it in but the idea that sips accidentally made a wormhole-creating hell explosive is the funniest shit to me. but long story short they blow up strifes altar and it hurts, it hurts like hell but for once the magic isn’t pressing in on him, begging for him to hurt someone, and such a relief that he almost forgets that he feels like he’s dying.

there’s a solid two weeks of recovery, the first of which had everyone genuinely worried that strife might be dying, being cut off from his altar, but he’s fine. he feels like shit, but he’s fine.

(A really similar sequence of events happens with parv post-blood and chaos which i WILL go off about if literally anyone would like to know)

from then on they’re pretty much in the clear for the rest of college being dumb kids trying to graduate, as strife recovers from all of That.

that is, you know, until xephos crashes his ship on minecraftia during his flight school final and is presumed dead.

strife and sips do try to stay friends, but the only person strife’s developed a close relationship with just vanished into thin air and xephos going missing sends sips spiraling into a depression that leads to him dropping out and running off to minecraftia to start a fucking dirt business. strife finishes college alone and gains 1000 more trust issues and functions pretty much on his own until solutions in chaos.

and listen, i know the plot is that xephos sent parvis to strife to learn minecraft, but i see your canon and throw it into a lake, doing as i please. jaffa factory happens (which again. i disregard canon and sips and xephos’ meeting went much differently) and sips mentions to xephos at some point when strife solutions is starting that strife’s setting up a business on planet and xephos goes to see him and they do all the mushy reunion stuff that makes my heart melt. they aren’t a romantic thing anymore at any point after college because they’ve both pretty obviously moved on, but they are best fucking friends and having someone familiar around is comforting for both of them.

[valasania-the-pale]

The Last Rose - Chapter Six

Here’s chapter six for all of you. Please enjoy and reblog!

X_0_X

If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was just like the flowers in the garden, rooted in place for all eternity. The sunflowers she’d known for longer than memory had long since wilted, but the husky remnants remained, despite the spider lilies springing up like weeds in their place.

Move.

The hinges squeaked quietly as she pushed the door open, the key gifted to her slotting with a click into the lock without protestation. Professor Oobleck had been kind, keeping an eye on the old cottage while she was away. She knew that Zwei would be happy with him – they got along better than she could have dreamed.

Dust coated every surface. The living room reeked of old must and decay. Once, it smelled of rose petals and lilac, and sometimes the sour bite of liquor.

Keep moving.

His room was empty. And clean. So was Ruby’s. So was Yang’s. Of course they were. Never did the house sparkle and shine as much as when Taiyang had something to worry about.

She could still see the spots on the wall, ever so slightly off-color where paint and spackle had been used to fill in the holes they’d created as children. There was the dark spot on the rug where she’d spilled grape juice as a little girl, Taiyang never did manage to scrub that away.

And there, the pictures they’d taken together as a family, for the last time. That one of herself, hard at work in the forge creating her beloved weapon. And there…

…

She left the house not long after entering, eyes wet and heart clenching underneath its icy shell. The letters clutched in her hands, unopened. Retrieved from the safe, where she knew they would be. She didn’t have the heart to read them – nor to stay another moment in that place.

Not home – not anymore. Dust, where did it all go so very wrong?

…Where did she go, now?

…

Is home a place? Patch was home, once. I felt safe there. Safe and secure and loved and surrounded by people I could call family. In our little cottage, I could believe that anything was possible, and that the world was just waiting to open up before me the moment I stepped out the door.

It’s not home now. Not anymore. Probably not ever again.

I’ve heard that home can be a person. A bond. That our loved ones are what make a home what it is. Something in that seems right to me. Fitting, I guess. But… where is home for me, then? Is it possible to not have a home at all?

…I’m sorry. I hope I’m not too late. The questioning, the doubting, it never stops. It’s like a disease, and no one has a cure.

So much has changed… and certainty feels like it’s in ever smaller supply.

Ha… Answer me this, if you’re so smart: whether home is a place, or a bond… whatever it is… to where have I returned?

X_0_X

It was like walking through a dreamworld.

Ruby numbly chewed a mouthful of fresh greens, served to her with a flourish by a smiling Ren.

Just like she’d expected, it was delicious. The Mistrallan’s skill in the kitchen was as of yet unrivalled by anyone Ruby knew, and his nutritional acumen was (now) supplemented by a pounded-in knowledge of what actually tasted good, courtesy of Nora.

It didn’t cure her of her daze, but it certainly gave her the excuse she needed to process everything that had happened since she’d left the flight.

At first, she’d been beyond delighted.

How long had it been since she’d last spoken with her friends face to face? How long since she’d last gotten to hear their voices, feel their warmth, bask in their familiar presence?

After prying her redheaded limpet away from her, ribs and weakened arm protesting all the while (“Nora! Air! Need! Please!”), her elation came crashing down around her ears with the abruptness of running headlong into a brick wall

Yes, Ruby; how long has it been since you last came to visit your friends?

‘How long have you been hiding away in Mistral? Running away from your problems? Don’t you think they’ve missed you? After all this time?’

‘Shut up,’ she told that part of her, firmly.

That was beside the point. She’d been dealing with those sorts of doubts for years now; they were secondary to the real revelation.

Nora, Ren, they were here.

She hadn’t seen her friends in… seven years now? It felt like longer.

Ren’s hair was trimmed short, shoulder length and tied back in a stylish ponytail. Nora was as infectiously bubbly as she remembered, sporting a few crow’s feet around the eyes but otherwise untouched by time. Both fit and hale and almost exactly as she remembered of them from before.

More than that, the two were obviously happy.

She could see it in their eyes. Ren’s glowed like lotus blossoms in the morning sun, Nora’s like glistening ice. In every movement, every loving glance, Ruby could read the contentment they held for themselves. Each marker a testament to the life they’d built for themselves here, without her.

She touched Crescent Rose’s folded-up length at her side, where she’d leaned it against her chair. How long had it been? Had they been so happy when she’d left?

Ruby felt like an intruder.

She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t. It would have taken the power of the gods to stop the inevitable conclusions from making themselves.

She should have been at their side from the beginning, growing comfortable in this new city that had sprung up from the ashes of the old alongside them. They had all been a team – family, of a sort. Inseparable. Unconquerable. Loved.

She should have been there – shouldn’t have missed all that time, shouldn’t have run away, shouldn’t have let old arguments fester for so long…

But she had, and still they were happy.

Was… she even needed here? Wanted, even?

They’d been family, but her leaving had severed that connection. Ruby felt the tattered ends keenly, deep within her soul.

The entire walk home, listening to the two chatter on – well, Nora mainly chattering, with Ren contributing in his own sedate way – every rationalization she’d made over the last decade, every justification for missing out on another week, another month, another year of her friends’ lives was shoved into the light and she was numbed.

She was uncomfortably reminded that she’d just left other friends behind, and might not see them for just as long. Maybe longer…

Dust, was there nothing she hadn’t fucked up?

And being the wonderful human beings they were, too excited by her return and too kind to try and peer deeper into her troubled soul, husband and wife were both oblivious to her inner discomfort.

Nora slammed her open palm down on the dining table. “We have got to take you out around the city, soooo much has changed since you were last here!”

“Since so much of the population fled during and after the Fall, a lot of room has opened up for immigrants and entrepreneurs to set up shop and fill in the niches left behind,” Ren explained.

“Like that one lady with the huge boobs and six secret boyfriends down on Fifth street! She makes the best pastries – the way she uses cinnamon is just di-vine~!”

“Nora, that’s uncharitable.” Ren frowned disapprovingly. “She’s only cheating with the one other man, not six.”

“And how do you know that, mister? I didn’t take you for a gossip-monger. Do I need to be worried about the neighbors knowing about my delicates?”

“Only the ones you leave out on the floor for too long. We’ve established that not picking up after yourself is grounds for retaliation long ago.”

“Oooh~ Gonna punish me, Renny?”

“Nora! Not in front of Ruby!”

Ruby… stared.

She had no frame of reference anymore; it had been too long.

The banter, the mischief… she didn’t remember it coming so easily. It was bizarre to see Ren of all people firing back without hesitation, to see the lightness in his bearing, the openness of his expressions... And the loving glances… The joy…

Her stomach twisted in on itself; it was a struggle to continue chewing.

She’d expected a deluge of memory upon her arrival. That she would drown in the prickly, painful nostalgia that would surely rise up to envelop her. She’d expected anxiety, nightmares, residual grief, and whatever else she’d shoved to the back of her mind over the last decade to rear its ugly head, and that that would be the worst of her problems.

Part of her even expected arguments. Surely, they would have words for her for leaving… words that wouldn’t have fit into a letter. Surely…

The last thing she’d anticipated was the disconnect.

Since stepping off the platform she’d been beaten over the head with little else but how unfamiliar it was. Everything was different.

This shop that was once a clothing outlet was now renovated into a flower shop. That storefront was converted to a new set of apartments. The docks were now the lifeline of the city, where before they’d been little more than an afterthought compared to the grandeur of Downtown and the airport.

And though she had felt the eyes on her as she followed her friends back to their home, her weapons marking her as a huntress as surely as the predatory grace she walked with, compared to the familiarity she’d experienced in Mistral, they were not kind. They were strangers’ eyes, questioning the outsider and her purpose here.

Who was she, to walk among these people like she’d earned her right to live here?

Ruby was the intruder in their midst. It was an alien, uncomfortable situation, not felt for so many years...

She was used to at least being trusted in her role as a huntress. She was the Reaper. A guardian. Aegis of the people, fighting for them because she thought it was right, and recognized for that.

That was not something she doubted.

…Was it?

Her eyes flickered shut and she took a breath. No. She wasn’t doing this. ‘You will be okay,’ She told herself, shutting down the train of thought. ‘You just got here. You never expected it to be easy.’

She did not doubt her role. She wanted to help people. That had never changed.

The people just didn’t know that yet, just like they hadn’t in Mistral before she’d proven herself. It would be one of the first things she rectified, once she was better recovered.

If she were to stay here – if she was to continue her work here – she had to have a good rapport with the civilians. She’d need to find contacts. Friends. The people had to know their sentinels, their guardians, as she had to know them.

‘Know the people you’re protecting. You’ll fight harder for ‘em that way.’

“Ruby?”

A heavily calloused hand waved in her face, mere inches from her nose. Ruby jerked back, eyes blinking their glaze away rapidly. “Sorry!”

“Don’t be,” Ren said, frowning. “You seemed deep in thought. May we ask what’s on your mind?”

“Ah…”

Tell them how desperately awkward she felt? That she was in the middle of a crisis of faith? That she had no idea what to do with this strange otherworld she’d found herself within? With these new people? Them?

Nora picked up on her hesitation faster than Ren. “Sorry Ruby,” she said, frowning. “This is probably all really overwhelming for you.”

“We don’t want to overload you,” Ren chimed in.

“Right.” Nora nodded emphatically. “Especially since you’re still recovering and all.”

Dust, she didn’t want them blaming themselves. “I’m fine,” Ruby protested, a pink tint entering her cheeks.

“Pssssh.” Nora exchanged an artfully exaggerated glance with Ren. “Bags under your eyes.”

“Movements kept to the bare minimum.”

“Doesn’t look like you’ve gotten a shower in a few days,” Nora sniffed.

Ren nodded. “You’re free to use ours before you head up to the school if you’d like, by the way.”

“And by ‘if you’d like’ he really means you really should take us up on it because you look like death warmed over.”

“Nora.”

She shoved Ren’s shoulder playfully. “Oh pish! You might be too polite to say it, but Dust knows a lady could use a shower when she’s not at her best. Warm water and a good scrubbing does wonders for the spirit!”

“You guys,” Ruby interjected, thumb fidgeting with her silverware, rubbing a single spot until it started to gleam. “I’m fine, really. I don’t want to put you out, or to make you worry, or…” she paused. Wait. “Do… I really look that bad?”

Nora held up her hand, three fingers extended. She didn’t do much to hide her pitying expression. “Three out of five, honestly. You don’t look awful.”

“But maybe a good soak would do you good,” Ren finished delicately.

“Oh.” Ruby swallowed. Well then. “I, uh. Might take you up on that then.”

Now slightly ashamed (Dust, was it really that noticeable, or— well, they were huntsmen…), Ruby hid herself in her salad. She was fine.

The dressing was good. She half-decent in the kitchen herself after so long cooking her own meals, but she seldom got to experiment with some of the more ambitious flavors she tasted here.

This was fine. Just fine.

And now the other two seemed much more attuned to her discomfort, sharing glances while Ruby avoided their gazes. Were they afraid? Worried?

Damnit she’d wanted to avoid this.

“Soooo.” Nora broke the silence. “Find anyone special while you were in Mistral?”

Her hand paused midway between bowl and mouth. “Um, no.”

“No pretty thing able to keep your attention?”

…She hated small talk. “No, not really.”

‘Please leave it,’ she implored mentally.

Ren coughed, stepping in for Nora. “If I could ask you something, Ruby?”

“Sure,” Ruby mumbled awkwardly. “Go for it.”

“Well,” he glanced at Nora. “You never said in your letter. We figured, after so long, there had to be a reason for you to change your mind… but, what made you decide to come back to Vale?”

“Was it work?” Nora added, head tilting to the side. “We thought you’d taken time away from hunting after your ordeal.”

“Or that you’d had a falling out with someone back in Mistral.”

“But then we found out that Sun was one of the people taking care of you while you were recovering – and couldn’t think of anyone else you mentioned in your letters that you were close to.”

“So…” Ren trailed off.

“What brings you home, Rubes?” Nora finished.

Ruby ground to a halt whilst they spoke, forced to think by the question; one she didn’t have a clear answer for herself yet. There was so much.

Why?

There were too many emotions tangled up within her for it to be simple.

She hoped to discover a new purpose, for one. Padma’s words had stuck with her that far.

Hopefully she’d manage to find some closure with the city she’d left behind so many years before, if she could manage it.

Maybe, if things went alright, she might also quell some of her doubts – some of her shame, the guilt of leaving behind her family for so many years, if that much was even possible after so long.

But…

But telling them all of that; telling them the reason behind all of that – that she’d been torn down to her lowest point in nearly a decade, and that she still didn’t feel anywhere close to recovered – well…

She didn’t want to intrude.

Some of her feelings crystallized. This was a personal journey for her. Ren and Nora were clearly happy. They had lives. A home. Jobs they enjoyed and a family together with their daughter.

All the things they’d ever wanted since they were left alone together as children.

She would not put that in jeopardy.

So, she lied.

“Nothing like that,” Ruby said, carefully.

‘Be confident, be purposeful.’ Those were the first two secrets to a good lie. Ruby took care not to over-act, while also pushing the emotion she wanted to convey into her words.

They were huntsmen, they would see through all but the best. “I thought that after my accident I should come see you all. My recovery’s been pretty slow, and winter in the city wasn’t doing me any favors, so it seemed like a good time. I’ve missed you all a lot since I left.”

The third rule recommended sprinkling in a little truth. She did miss them all. It was good timing to spend her recovery among people she could catch up with after a long time away.

She’d just…

She’d never had that extra push to come back before. All of that was true, except that she’d never stared mortality in the face so clearly, felt it sink vicious claws into her soul and hold tight. She’d never seen it etched so clearly in her wretched reflection before, so much irrefutable evidence of her failure to stand on her own two feet as an adult.

There was motivation, and there was motivation.

They only needed to know the first kind. The second she would hold close, lest it ruin the fragile hope she nursed deep within.

And it worked. Beautiful, wonderful, trusting people that they were, it worked.

Nora smiled softly, dimples showing themselves as she reached across the table to squeeze her shoulder. “We missed you too, Rubes,” she said.

Ren mirrored her, a silent but firm presence, and their hands on her shoulders filled Ruby with a fuzzy warmth at odds with the chill she felt in her heart.

It would be worth it. She would get better and make it worth all the pain and dishonesty.

Not wanting them to question her further and feeling heavy with another new doubt pressing on her shoulders, Ruby quietly pushed her bowl forward, thanking Ren for the delicious meal.

At a simple request, Nora cheerfully directed her up to the bathroom where she began to strip out of her clothes to wash and at least fix one of her concerns for the day.

She did not notice the perturbed glance that Nora shot at her back before the door closed, wondering where the cloak that usually rested comfortably across her shoulders had gone.

When she stepped under the steaming water, Ruby had no idea that the couple was deep in conversation at the table downstairs, meals entirely forgotten and frowns pinching their faces with concern.

While she was busy pondering her own life’s choices, husband and wife were busy asking themselves an entirely separate question.

What had happened to their friend?

X_0_X

‘It’s a wonder Roman Torchwick wasn’t ruling over the city wholesale with this one as his right hand.’

“Seriously not helping right now,” Oscar Pine muttered to the second presence in his mind, rolling his eyes as a split second of warm amusement leaked over.

He didn’t need the distraction right now, thank you very much!

Older, stronger, and debatably wiser than he had been several years ago, Oscar was well-versed in the art of the chase. There were only three tenets one need follow: Don’t exhaust yourself with an ambitious, unsustainable pace, don’t break line of sight, and remember to breathe.

‘Bonus points for minimizing collateral damage.’

“That was one time!”

His mark dashed off down one of Vale’s many dingy alleyways, breaking his second rule temporarily before he made the sharp turn after her.

‘The Society for the Restoration of Vale’s Parks and Services, evidently. You didn’t really have to detour through those freesias, did you? They were coming along so wonderfully.’

Well it wasn’t his fault his pursuit of that particularly slippery thug led through that park, now was it? He’d had to apologize for weeks before the chairman stopped sending him those passive-aggressive letters.

Even no he still got the occasional dirty look from a ‘concerned citizen.’

But of course, he was only doing his job! Never mind the full breakfast, sometimes you had to break a few eggs to make an omelet! Never mind that Vale was a city where those eggs were already broken, rotten, and smelling like a pub dumpster after a Saturday night! No, protect the damn flowers, Oscar.

‘Well, they were particularly pretty flowers.’

He got a laugh from his other half as he cursed under his breath again.

This particular area of the city – formerly a part of the Residential District, now long since walled off from the recovering city – was grey, crumbling, and still suffering from a Grimm infestation.

There were rocks all over the streets from where some random explosion or flying chunk of lead smashed into some building, or where some overenthusiastic huntsman had ripped open the streets. Oscar was forced to detour around several impassable obstacles – each time losing just a little more ground.

It was enough to drive him to distraction. Rock. Rock. Pit. Oh look, there were a few Boarbatusk – better get out of the way before they bowl you over! He was too fast for nuisances like those to catch him unawares, but he just knew that his running straight into them was anything but an accident.

His target, Bianca Corallo, was a wily, mischievous sadist. Just the sort to get a laugh out of him staggering into the middle of a Grimm ambush.

‘You know she doesn’t like being called that,’ Ozpin chided.

“Don’t… really… care!” Oscar panted, sprinting up a flight of stairs after the last glimpse he’d gotten of her fleeing, colorful form.

Unfortunately for him, Corallo was small, fit, fast, and slippery like an eel.

One of Vale’s many, many criminals aspiring to fill the void left behind after Roman Torchwick’s empire crumbled around the rest of the city. She’d risen to power through an ample and often arbitrary application of brutal force, ambitious heisting, and balls of steel.

Unlike most of the scum and scrabbling thugs he usually had to contend with, she was also unique in that she was actually having some amount of success in taking over from her old boss.

Hence, the chase.

He reached the third floor just in time to see the flash of wild, multicolored hair vanish through one of the many gaping holes in the side of the building. Cursing, he pressed himself further, dipping slightly into his aura to soothe the complaints building up in his thighs.

‘You shouldn’t have skipped leg day.’

“Shut. Up!”

Oscar turned his fall into a tight roll, compacting his body tight against itself to disperse the force. Thankfully, the ground was relatively free of rocks. Less thankfully, Corallo was nowhere to be seen. “Fuck!”

‘Do you kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?’

“What happened to you being a wise, immortal being?” Oscar demanded, not for the first time, his mind working overtime. “Did all that go away when you got shunted into permanent shotgun?”

‘I prefer to think that I’m more like the little light on your shoulder, actually.’

“Hilarious. What do you recommend, then?” He didn’t have time for this. He scanned every direction, hoping to catch some sign of Corallo’s passing. Too little dust on the ground to note any footprints, and she was too savvy to leave a noticeable trail through the rubble.

‘I recommend you duck.’ And suddenly Oscar was in motion, Ozpin smoothly taking control like a hand slipping into a glove.

The bullet that whizzed over their head was nothing more than an afterthought as they whirled and set themselves in a solid fighting stance.

Glass shattered above them and they instantly looked up to meet Corallo’s dichromatic, mocking eyes. In one hand she held her parasol – frilly, white and pink like you’d see on some vapid little girl’s doll. In the other, a long cane lightly smoking at the tip, which she swiftly recombined with her parasol to form a single piece.

She tucked her weapon under her arm, giving her hands the space to gesture at him rapidly. ‘ME LOOKING FOR, GEARHEAD?’

“Corallo,” they growled.

‘FLATTERED,’ she signed, fluttering her eyelids. ‘YOU MY NAME REMEMBER.’

Oscar took control back from Ozpin, the rush of sensation barely even fazing him after so many repetitions.

“It’s my job,” he said. His lips curled downwards into a dark frown. “We’ve been through this before. Surrender and I can guarantee you a trial before you are sent to prison. Fail to stand down and I am permitted to use however much force I deem necessary to eliminate you as a threat to Vale’s security.”

Which was to say he’d probably be forced to kill her, if he couldn’t effectively cripple her in some way.

Vale was a changed place from before the Fall, after all. The law didn’t have time to fuss around with criminals when every day was a struggle to fend off the ever-encroaching Grimm. With every day a new vicious scrap for each and every block, the people – and especially the huntsmen – had quickly lost any and all patience for the unnecessary wrongdoings perpetrated by other humans.

With people like Corallo? Oscar could do essentially whatever he’d like.

He had standards though. Standards he anticipated seeing return to the rest of the force, once he could properly weed out the unscrupulous members.

Standards that, unfortunately, made seem like he had his cane shoved up his ass when said aloud.

‘Oscar,’ Ozpin sighed dramatically. ‘We’ve practiced this. You need not sound so stuffy. What happened to all of those action films you’ve been watching with Amaya? Take a leaf from their book.’

Corallo evidently agreed. ‘CAN YOU BORING LESS? ME THINGS BETTER COULD DOING.’

‘Fuck both of you,’ Oscar sighed.

The things he did for this city…

With a tiny flick he set off the beacon at his waist – specific to huntsmen working outside the secured sectors so that backup could be summoned where it was needed within minutes. He just had to keep Corallo distracted until backup arrived. Or take her down himself, if he could manage it.

She caught the motion and shot him a mischievous grin, dropping down to his level, knees bending slightly to distribute the force with a minimum of effort. ‘YOU FIGHT WANT?’

He reached behind his waist and grabbed the preternaturally familiar hilt of their cane, extending it to its full length with an elegant flick of the wrist. He’d practiced for hours to get that just right.

‘Vain.’

‘Ass.’

Complain about his stuffiness when he read their rights, moan about the time he spent trying to work on improving his cool factor, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. There was no pleasing millennial disembodied soul-companions.

‘Add an extra splash of caramel to our next cocoa and we’ll talk.’

‘If you shut up about my caffeine shots, then deal.’

‘Acceptable.’

Corallo was oblivious to their internal dialogue, circling opposite of Oscar while his body simply went through the motions of tracking her movements.

The benefit of having two souls in one body was, at its most basic, parallel processing. Even splitting some of his attention between the fight and Ozpin, both of them were carefully analyzing their foe, drawing on past experiences, comparing those to what they knew of the tricky crime boss, drawing up tactics and discarding them just as quickly.

It began suddenly.

Corallo’s body shattered with a surge of flashing light only to reappear behind him. Her parasol swept downwards like a bludgeon. Oscar twisted in place, cane swinging up to deflect it off to the side, pulling his leg up and bending laterally to deliver a powerful kick to her abdomen.

Corallo used the blow to disengage. Her aura flashed faintly, dispersing the force with the same ease Oscar would dispatch a mosquito. Her parasol unfurled to drain her momentum – one of her favorite tricks, he knew. He’d thrown her off of several buildings and tried to slam her into plenty enough walls to learn that gravity and inertia meant very little to her.

The world slowed. Negligible damage, for a first clash. They were just testing the waters. They’d done this enough to know each other well, the others’ fighting style. It was almost a “Hello” between officer and kingpin. Did you get enough sleep? Eat a good breakfast? Did you do you warm ups?

‘I’d certainly be disappointed if we died because you skimped on your calisthenics. Oh, what a thought.’

‘Shut up.’

Corallo was certainly up to her usual standards. Even as the watched each other, mirrored predators eyeing the other, her smirk faded just a little. Her eyes gaining the sharp glint Oscar knew so well. The bloodthirst roiling just below her skin.

This time Oscar took the initiative.

Corallo’s eyes narrowed, so slow. Her fingers tightened. Oscar’s footsteps rang with his heartbeat, the world draining of color as his semblance activated.

Time dilation – fitting for a successor to someone of Ozpin’s reputation. Useful for battle, where it gifted him with a great boon in the extra time to consider his options. Sadly, his body was caught up in it as well.

If only – he’d be unstoppable otherwise.

‘If that were the case, I do believe Ruby would be after your head for absconding with her semblance.’

‘She could use the competition!’ Oscar retorted; eyes locked with Corallo’s. He also – ironically – had to be quick. It would be a shame to drain himself prematurely by abusing his ability.

Twitch. Twitch. Shoulders tensing. Her eyes flashed understanding. She knew him. His abilities. What he was doing. She would play unpredictably, just to throw him off. She would block, block again, most likely duck out of the way and disengage. Force him to exhaust himself, not let him get a single hit in.

They’d see about that.

The world resumed its usual pace.

Regardless of his inability to include his body in his semblance’s effects, Oscar was fast. Blisteringly fast. Only Ruby, Ren, and a few very other select huntsmen were capable of keeping up with him when he had his blood up.

Corallo was one of those few.

He swept his cane around, forcing her to contort herself backwards to avoid the strike. Her legs lashed out, he skipped backwards. With a series of incredible gymnastics, she leapt back on him. From the front, the sides, from above. She was a whirling dervish – where he put forth his strength she melted away. Where he defended, she refused to meet him.

In that was she was a wraith. Untouchable. Devious. And absolutely vicious where she caught an opening.

But he was a wall in his own right. He didn’t take everything she dished out, he caught it, pushed, shoved, and redirected. He and Ozpin combined were capable of vast feats of skill – their strength was their mind and the finesse they brought to the battlefield. Unpredictability was met with precision, and for a time they were matched.

They knew to respect her abilities. She knew enough to be wary of his.

Unfortunately, she knew she was on a timer and broke the stalemate with characteristic bluntness, shattering a few dozen feet away and drawing her gun-cane from her parasol.

‘Ugh.’ Ozpin gave the mental equivalent of a scowl. ‘She’d going to make you use it, isn’t she?’

The first shot shattered the asphalt where Oscar had been standing been mere moments before. The ammunition, Fire Dust – he could feel the heat from a dozen feet away. ‘You know, not everyone is happy smacking things around until they give up or pass out, aura or not!’

The second shot whizzed by his head – Oscar didn’t bother wasting energy getting away and bent his head to the side. The heat of the shot made his aura above his ear flare into visibility – protecting him from the burn he’d have otherwise received. He shoved his long coat to the side, hand wrapping around the lacquered wooden stock of his little baby.

‘It is a perfectly serviceable tactic! Miss Xiao Long just corrupted you!’

Oscar snorted and drew his weapon from its holster, appreciating for a moment the satisfying weight in his hand. ‘It’s an extra tool in my pocket. I would think you’d appreciate that!’

The third shot he swatted aside with their cane – his pine green aura flaring at the very tip to avoid detonating the shot on contact. The abandoned storefront it sailed into was reduced to rubble by the shockwave unleashed – Lightning Dust at its finest. In the same motion, he raised his other arm and took aim.

KA-WHUMP!

Corallo shattered away from her perch, now crumbling into assorted cobblestone, shattered glass, and shrapnel. ‘Perhaps… but did you really have to go with a shotgun? It’s so… blunt.’

‘I told you, I’m not trading Fidelis for a pistol!’

Corallo was on him in moments, taking advantage of his reduced versatility now that both of his hands were full, and refusing to let him re-holster and regain his edge.

Her parasol jabbed into his guard repeatedly, the sharpened tip doing work drawing energy from his aura reserves. Each pinprick threatened to bust through and pierce flesh as he was forced to fortify each miniscule spot.

He had his own advantages as well. Devoid of other options beside tossing it aside and opening himself up for a new salvo of ranged attacks, Oscar worked to get every ounce of use he could out of it. ‘Blunt’ or not, a shotgun at close range was a force you had to respect.

More than once Corallo was forced away just to avoid her aura getting perforated with a spray of raw Dust-shot. But after a minute of fending her off Oscar realized with a pause and tightening of his eyes that he could not yet hear the sounds of approaching airships, nor the telltale beep of his beacon alerting him that backup was fast approaching.

‘Where are they?’

His lips pulled into a scowl, and he shoved Corallo away, gaining himself some breathing room.

She flowed with it, coming to a stop with a flick of her parasol and letting it rest on her shoulder unfurled. The motion was just a little too smooth – a little too smug. ‘COMPANY EXPECTING, GEARHEAD?’

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Ozpin hummed.

The world greyed. He needed time to think. He was running low on precious aura, but he had the feeling Corallo didn’t intend to freely gift him the moment.

‘Thoughts?’ Oscar asked, mind racing.

He was not long in waiting. ‘She likely predicted this confrontation before she initiated the heist,’ Ozpin mused.

‘Which means she’d also put countermeasures against interference in place.’

‘Most likely. On the one hand it eliminates the probability of her being overwhelmed by superior force. Her favorite kind of fights are personal one on one duels – her records show a dearth of drawn-out, gang-style fights since Roman Torchwick’s demise. Too messy.’

‘And most of her operations involve concentrated, precise heists instead of the kind of multi-level criminal enterprises Torchwick favored.’

The old kingpin’s records pegged him as very comfortable working with his army of grunts and underlings – taking advantage of their numbers and rudimentary skills to supplement his own fairly mediocre abilities. Torchwick’s mind and charisma had been his greatest assets.

Almost the complete opposite of his protégé. She was cunning like a fox and deadly as a striking King Taijitu, but her strength was in her ability to crush her opponents beneath her foot like pathetic insects. She was prodigious among huntsmen – hence why she’d avoided capture for well-on two decades.

‘Indeed,’ Ozpin mulled. ‘She also enjoys fighting you. Much as she enjoyed fighting Commissioner Greyson before he was forced into retirement. Skilled opponents in general appear to be her favored prey.’

Which meant that…

‘And we’ve fallen into the trap.’

The world sped up as Oscar released the spell. Corallo was already sprinting toward him, rapier drawn from the depths of her parasol and glinting polished silver in the bright light of midday.

He was tired. She was fast. He was younger than her, but she had all the powerful vitality of someone half her age. Somehow, despite the multiple hits she’d taken, and all the times he’d drawn the flashes from her aura, she managed to ignore her fatigue and come at him like someone fresh to the fight.

A breath before she reached him Oscar dropped Fidelis and brought their cane up in a defensive posture.

Just in time.

Oscar was forced to draw on every iota of their shared experience as Corallo came at him in a whirling fury.

Unlike before she did not disappear at random, forcing him into constant motion just to keep up with her evasive tactics. Instead she just attacked. Vicious thrusting attacks like before – draining him shockingly quickly of his failing aura reserves – supplemented by powerful cutting slashes that he was better able to parry to the side.

He put in a few of his own hits – the pain of which he could see reflected back at him from her dichromatic eyes – but most of his energy was dedicated to keeping her away, keeping her back, keeping her from turning him into a living shish-kebab.

‘They’re still not coming,’ Ozpin muttered in the back of their mind, trying hard to keep the edge bleeding into his mental voice from distracting Oscar from the melee.

Deflect! Deflect! Oscar lashed out with a lateral kick - ‘Get back, bitch!’ – but his eyes widened as Corallo whirled to the side and seized his leg in a vice grip, ripping him off his feet, and threw him off to the side.

‘Shiii-iit!’

He slammed into a wall. His aura held, just barely, but he had only a moment to process before Corallo was on him and her rapier stabbed forward through his aura and sonofamotherfuckerthatHURTS!

‘Oscar!’

Ozpin took over from Oscar, blunting the sensation of the full foot of cold steel piercing their midsection before it could punch through Oscar’s synapses.

They could even feel the reverberations as the blade struck stone, an ominous hum all the worse for being felt so deep inside. The elder huntsman grabbed the weapon’s hilt – trapping it, out of Corallo’s reach – their other hand dropping their cane and lashing out to seize Corallo’s throat in a chokehold.

They lurched forward – both souls cringing inwardly as the pain in their side flared unbearably – and Oscar blindly joined Ozpin in bringing their weight down on their opponent. Their other hand left the rapier to join the first, and the added strength forced Corallo’s smaller hands to drop her weapon entirely to fight back. They could feel her clawing at their wrists, nails sharp and drawing blood and struggling against the inevitable as they throttled her.

Her lips worked furiously, gasping for air. The nails dug deeper, her unassuming strength showing in the bruises she created on their skin, seeking desperately for a weakness. To exploit. To break their grip. But she found none.

Her eyes flashed – cold, angry, no – raging – a cornered animal fighting for survival.

Some of her strength slackened and they allowed themselves to hope, just for a moment—

‘Almost… there…’

—But all too suddenly the weakness vanished – shifted as instinct gave way to intent. Corallo’s grip changed, her fingers grabbing their wrist like a vice, her abdomen tensing, her legs tucking in against her stomach as she tensed and shoved!

They went sailing over her head to land hard on the ground. Oscar cried out – lancing agony shooting through them as the rapier dragged on the asphalt and ground and cut against their innards.

For a moment, they simply lay there. Their body alive and burning with pain. Their minds a rushing tempest caught along in it. They could hear the sounds of Corallo retching behind them, her heaving, labored gasps. She wouldn’t take long to get back up – unlike them she still had the aura reserves to spare on healing.

Their heart pounded. Their breath was a harsh rasp. Blood soaked hot and thick through their clothes, fast enough for their self-preservation instincts to start flaring.

They had to get up.

Get up.

GET UP DAMNIT.

‘Fuuuuuck that hurts!’ Oscar groaned, rolling to their side and taking a bit of weight off of the blade. He froze again as the burn turned to lightning – gravity pulling the heavier hilt down and momentum shifting the blade along with itfuckfuckfuckSTOPTHAT!

‘Dust, why does this hurt so much!’ Oscar demanded blindly. ‘Is this supposed to be normal?’

‘This is…’ Ozpin grunted. ‘Not… The worst… I’ve gone through… Unfortunately… But quite normal… As far as impalements go…’ He seemed to be recovering much faster from the shock than Oscar. ‘They are… almost universally unpleasant… But at least nothing vital appears to have been hit... This time…’

Fair enough, but that wasn’t much of a mercy right now. He could be grateful for small mercies later when he had time to work through all of this. Time, and the benefit of painkillers. As well as twenty hours of solid rest to regenerate his aura.

And probably a good surgeon.

But right now? He could cheerfully throttle Corallo again in retaliation.

‘Can you take over?’

The older soul did, wordlessly, moving their body inch by labored inch as Oscar retreated into the distant mist of their shared psyche to regain his bearings. He would normally be okay with taking a heavy hit. He’d managed before. Multiple times.

He’d never been impaled before, though. He needed a moment to process that.

Corallo didn’t intend to give them that much, however. Just as Ozpin managed to force them to their knees, they registered the sound of her approaching footsteps and had only a moment to register before she was at their side, her hand wrapping around her rapier’s hilt one last time and yanking it out.

To her credit, it was fast.

Such fine distinctions were – in that moment – lost on the two huntsmen. But it was something. Ever the stoic, Ozpin refused to howl like Oscar wanted, but their trembling increased to a wracking shiver-shuddering.

‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’ Their beacon chose that moment to start registering approaching reinforcements.

‘Great timing guys…’ Oscar muttered, reaching feebly out to their body to start contributing once more.

Dust almighty it hurt but he was prepared now.

Ozpin surrendered the reigns as soon as Oscar had a sufficient grasp of himself to keep from curling up into a little ball once more. Nevertheless, he wrapped their arms around himself – noting distantly the steady stream of hot, sticky blood spreading from the wound. He pressed down harder, hoping to stem some of the flow.

It worked, to an extent. Assuming Corallo didn’t kill them outright, they had a decent chance of surviving the blood loss. That was somewhat comforting.

He looked up and met her eyes, hoping to see some hint of her intentions. She was as unpredictable in reputation as she was a fighter. They knew there was every chance her whimsy might be a boon to them. That there was every chance she would leave them alive, even if just to guarantee a future rematch.

Her smirk was missing. One hand rubbed her throat sympathetically, massaging the damaged tissues even as her aura shimmered over the dark bruises quickly forming. Oscar knew that the damage would quickly be repaired – but the blood that actually caused the discolored spots would take a little longer to vanish.

Aura was more efficient when it wasn’t attempting to dispose of waste material. It took more energy than someone in the middle of combat was normally willing to waste. The fight might have been over, but Corallo didn’t strike Oscar as the type to care too much about such superficialities.

Her eyes never left them.

Ozpin was far better at reading others than he was – such things were never very high up on his list of priorities. But even Oscar could see the wariness etched on her face.

‘You surprised her,’ he told Ozpin.

‘She thought you were defeated. She didn’t expect such swift retaliation.’

‘Her mistake.’

They didn’t have it in them to repeat that feat. Their remaining strength faded with each beat of their heart – each spurt of blood leaving their body and wracking it with pain.

Oscar let their shoulders slump just a little, chin dipping to Corallo in a gesture all huntsmen knew well: ‘You’ve won. For now.’

There was the smirk again. ‘GEARHEAD DONE NOW?’

“You’ve won,” Oscar repeated, an edge to his voice. “Stay and gloat – and get arrested for your troubles – or get out of here. You’ll slip up eventually.”

‘AND GEARHEAD THERE WILL BE. ME SURE.’

He narrowed his eyes but said nothing. She knew him well.

Corallo sniffed – a movement pantomimed to resemble more of a snicker. Though he could see how delighted she was with her victory – her teeth flashing just a little too much, a bounce in her step despite the fatigue she would be feeling – she still kept a fair distance between herself and him.

Ironically, in victory she was less arrogant than before the fight began. Ozpin fed him his own observations: the genuine cheer in her eyes, the imperceptible sway to her hips as she twirled around, her smirk was gentler – no, softer.

He didn’t think Crema had a gentle bone in her body.

It was a good look on her regardless. She was proud, but it was the delightful pride of a student succeeding where they hadn’t expected to. Ozpin knew that look well enough to recognize it on sight.

‘She would have made an interesting student.’

‘Glynda would hate you for thinking it.’

‘True.’ The thought amused Ozpin so much in spite of himself he didn’t quite care. Or perhaps it was the relief; they would live to see another day.

‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’

Corallo’s eyes dropped to his waist, noting the quickening flash of the beacon. Her time was up.

She clipped her parasol to her waist – the better to free up her hands and gave Oscar a mock bow. ‘WAS A GOOD FIGHT. ME LOOK FORWARD TO YOU HEAL. REMATCH.’

“This isn’t a game,” Oscar scowled.

‘NO? MAYBE. BUT FUN!’ She smirked and blew him a kiss. ‘BYE BYE!

She shattered away, her false-reflection dispersing into glistening shards.

The moment hung for a while before Oscar sagged and gingerly lowered himself to the ground. His knees ached and his side had begun to settle into a steady, painful throb punctuated with the sensation of superheated needles sinking in every time he moved their hands. ‘Well, that went about as poorly as it could have.’

‘Cheer up, Oscar. You got a few good licks in.’

‘Thanks. I’m comforted. Really comforted right now.’

‘But look on the bright side, you’re not dead!’

‘I will be once Amaya hears about—’

The air above them shattered once more, and Oscar craned his neck to see what Corallo wanted now, mere moments before his backup arrived.

It wasn’t anything much. Her hands flew, and as he realized what she was saying Oscar groaned.

‘Told you.’ Ozpin chuckled despite himself.

‘Shut up.’ He was so done for the day.

‘AND REMEMBER NEXT TIME, GEARHEAD. MY NAME NEO!’

X_0_X

The airspace around Beacon Tower was crowded with a dozen cranes gleaming all manner of rainbow-hues.

It had once been the pinnacle of Valean architectural achievement and host to one of Remnant’s precious CCT nexi, making it the backbone to modern society, the flow of information between the four kingdoms, and lasting peace.

The Fall broke that backbone, and Vale had been reduced to a crippled kingdom in exile.

The last time she’d seen it, only the floor of Headmaster Ozpin’s office and all below remained – the entirety of the clock and bell mechanisms above it lay scattered across the campus’ grounds like discarded toys. It remained the emblem of Vale city, only then, instead of a symbol of strength, knowledge, and cooperation, it had represented failure. Decay. Ruin.

But now? Rebirth, it seemed, had come to Beacon.

Whining machinery broke the tranquility of the grounds. The gruff calls of shouting foremen echoed off the buttresses and towers and walls that made Beacon a fortress in its ancient heyday. Power tools roared, fastening rivets, tightening screws, welding, splicing, repairing, building.

Construction equipment marred the vast, green lawns of the campus grounds, either filling up corners with assorted dusty bricks and raw material or laying on the grass unused for the time. Discolored patches revealed where some of the pallets had once rested; the earth was misshapen with tracks and ugly holes, and in many places besides the grass was dried out and rotten.

The gardens, which had once been world famous among botanists for the skill and care that went into their upkeep, had been left to seed, and were now overgrown with tough, thorny weeds.

Ruby could even spot a few of the places where marks of the Fall remained visible: there was the spot that a Paladin had crumbled to the ground and crushed a façade. There was the pit where one of the transports disabled by the Griffon horde had crashed. There was the spot she’d carved Crescent Rose into the stone tile path to halt her momentum after an Ursa Major slugged her in the gut, and the scorch mark a few feet further down; where she’d sent herself flying back at the beast.

Beacon tower itself, surrounded by colossal, smudgy, colorful steel cranes – each hard at work lifting up the vital machinery, electronics, and raw material necessary to restore functions to the CCT components left in ruins – seemed to wear a cast of iron, propped up but never quite giving the impression it was fully defeated.

The tower stood tall. Like the rest of Vale, it too was healing.

She ignored Ren’s hand on her shoulder, her hand clenched at her side missing the familiar weight of her scythe – she’d left it behind with her other things – because, despite it all, she could only feel the deep ache within her chest.

Despite it all, it was still beautiful. It was still Beacon Academy.

And all too suddenly, she was elsewhere. Elsewhen. A faded tapestry spreading out before her, the colors muted, the sounds dimmed.

She was running after streamers of long silver-white hair, the splash of scarlet something she was distinctly not used to seeing flare out behind silver-shod feet. “Weiss! Get back here with my cloak! I didn’t say you could—”

“HEY! LOOK EVERYONE! I’M RUBY ROSE! I CAN’T STOP RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CHILD BECAUSE I’M HYPERACTIVE AND LOVE BEING A PAIN IN THE BUTT TO MY TEAMMATES EVEN THOUGH I SHOULD BE ACTING LIKE A RESPONSIBLE HUMAN BEING!”

“I told you!” she shouted back. She hadn’t meant to forget! “I’m sorry for forgetting to tell you about the due date getting changed for our project! Weiss!”

Her prey – the heiress-turned-dirty-thief – turned back to shout over her shoulder. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY BEING RUBY RO— ACK!”

Ruby winced as her partner went skidding along the grass. That had to have hurt…

She eyed the damage with apprehension. No doubt she’d have to spend a good hour working the stains out of her gorgeous signature cloak…

Oh, and Weiss too.

“Oh Dust, Weiss! Are you okay?!”

The heiress groaned pitifully and spat out a mouthful of turf. “…Ugh… Heels… Were a bad decision…”

Ren gave her a little shake. She’d been rooted in place far longer than the expected ‘dewy-eyed nostalgic glance’ really called for.

“Ruby? Are you okay?”

‘No,’ she thought as the ache in her chest deepened. ‘I’m not okay.’

She’d been seeing ghosts since she walked out of the door, the sights and sounds and smells a threshold into a past that existed only in her memories.

“I’m fine, Ren,” she answered aloud. “Just… remembering.”

The skin between his eyebrows scrunched up subtly. “Do you need a minute?”

She needed a lifetime. “No, let’s go.”

Ruby pulled up her leaden feet and there were no more questions.

Ren led her along, though Ruby could remember very well where she was going. The teacher’s lounge had not moved since the Fall – it was still up the central staircase, a left and then a right, and in the room with the glass panes to the left of the door.

She would never forget it, what with how many times she’d chosen (been forced) to appeal to her professors for help when the workload became too much to handle. For the same reasons, she knew each individual route to the staff’s personal offices as well.

It wasn’t anything a normal student would struggle with. Part of her still felt a touch of shame for that. Beacon was a rigorous institution – far more so than the smaller schools scattered throughout the kingdoms – and mediocrity was weeded out from the beginning.

For someone skipping two entire years of content, though? For someone as young as she’d been, and as disinclined to the mountainous class work?

It had been overwhelming, hence the need to ask for assistance when her team couldn’t buoy her up anymore with study sessions and crash courses in all the material she’d missed out on.

But she was distracting herself.

Ruby was going to meet her professors again.

Her old professors, who were now strangely enough her colleagues.

And what had changed with the older men and women (woman – she’d heard that Professor Peach returned to her native Vacuo after the Fall) she’d looked up to as her mentors? Would Professor Port still be boastful? Was Glynda turning grey? Had anyone thought to give Oobleck decaf?  Would they have advice for her?

Everything else was already so different. How could she hope to keep up with it all?

“Ruby!”

Silver eyes widened and she flinched. A new-old doubt flared.

She’d almost forgotten about Jaune. Or, she’d almost convinced herself to not think about him, but now it was too late for that.

There was only one question she had for him: would he still be angry with her?

Before she turned, the memory of their last argument flared.

…He cut her off mid-sentence, torrential blue eyes cutting through her fury like a blade. ‘STOP!’

He turned away from her, leaving her with fists by her side, fury and shock ringing like the burst remains of pounding artillery in her ears. So much she could say – so much she wanted to say; to scream at him until he understood, or until she could make him understand!

He struggled for words, however, clearly disinterested in what those things were, before finally, through clenched teeth, his voice ground something substantial. ‘I can’t—’

His fists clenched, his metal gauntlets creaking.

‘No,’ the last of the control slipped from his voice; a hidden fuse finding hidden fuel. Ruby’s blood chilled as he turned to look her in the eye. ‘Get out… Now.’ His voice rose to a peak, until he was shouting. ‘Get out. GET OUT!’

And eyes wide, her hurt and fury drowned out by fear and shock…

—He’d looked at her like they’d never be friends again—

…and the remainder quickly chilling to the bone, Ruby turned and fled.

It was a physical effort to fight the nostalgia of the moment and turn toward him. Her feet were fastened to the ground. Her blood was cold. Her heart raced; for a moment Ruby feared it might drag her down into a raging sea of primal fear and panic again, and that this time she might not be able to haul herself out.

It echoed: was he still angry with her? Why wouldn’t he be? What possible difference could time make? Distance? It was Ren and Nora, but worse, she couldn’t lie herself out of it she couldn’t this would go so badly she—

She was afraid to have an answer so soon.

It was far too soon – there was far too much, could she even hope to—

She found herself crushed in an embrace.

Strong arms, muscles corded like steel wire, the faintest hint of sweat and apples; the remnants of a day training in the yard, or demonstrating in a classroom.

Ruby looked up to meet the sapphires twisted upwards in a giddy smile.

“Jaune!” she coughed, struggling for breath. “It’s good… to…” Okay, not working. She couldn’t breathe! “You’re squeezing a little too hard, Jaune – too much armor!”

She punched his breastplate ineffectually – it was heavy, polished white steel trimmed with bronze – and he got the message. Her ribs breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry! I got excited,” Jaune laughed. He reached out to grab her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “It’s just been so long!”

“Yeah, it has,” she rasped, eyes wide and fingers clenched as roiling emotions frothed within her. Her eyes were trying to bend the world into the shape of a fish-eyed lens; no doubt in league with her raging pulse.

She fought them back. Now was not the time to break down because her body decided she could have an anxiety attack.

Not now.

‘Dust…’ she growled to herself. ‘Compartmentalize. You’re going to drown if you keep this up…’

Stop. In. Out. Breathe.  

Again.

They were staring.

She breathed anyways.

In… Out…

Ruby recovered enough to look back up at Jaune. And immediately her head tilted to the side as she properly looked at him, underneath the gleaming shell he’d encased himself in.

He’d… grown. Not in height – he was a tall man already, towering nearly a foot over her head even with the benefit of heels back in their Beacon days – but rather in bulk. The arms that had been her prison mere moments before were thicker – and covered as they were in polished white plate had all the appearance of a knight snatched straight from the old tales. The same went for his chest and upper waist.

No scars she’d never seen, hair still the same, short, choppy length, and his chin covered in a fine layer of stubble… Her brow furrowed, finding his waist. Crocea Mors seemed to be in fine condition, all of it gleaming white steel contrasted against the softer, decorative bronze crossguard.

Too clean. Too solid.

Everything told her that Jaune was in fine form. Probably hitting his stride as a huntsman and equipped with the best arms and armor Remnant had to offer. Now that he had a daily serving of students to keep up with, and skilled colleagues to hone himself against, he would be more formidable than ever as well.

She saw before her a huntsman ready to meet all the trials and challenges thrown his way, standing leagues above where he’d begun so long ago… But…

Wait. Her eyes narrowed.

Where was the sash?

Her eyes flicked upwards, lips parting slightly to demand an answer, and met his eyes at last.

Cold-cut sapphires.

‘GET OUT!’

The question died in her throat.

He stared back, giving her the same examination. His brow was tight, the joy draining, making way for concern. His lip curling downwards. His eyes on her shoulders, on her waist. The beginnings of a scowl pulled down her own lips. She felt a chill she hadn’t with Ren and Nora.

Something flickered deep inside those sapphires; something dark and wary, yet it was tempered by something else. Something hard, yet strangely hesitant. Like she was staring into the eyes of an animal not yet sure it was ready to approach. To trust.

Cold-cut sapphires, boring into her feeling them on her back as she fled on aching feet. Down that endless stairwell through those crumbling halls – away. Far away. Far enough not to feel those eyes on her any more, never feel those eyes again, the judgement, always staring blue green gold grey brown red go away she could still feel them on her go away go away GO AWAY!

‘Dust!’ Ruby stuffed the rising tide back down. She was suffocating again, her pulse beginning to race, to undo the work of the oxygen she’d taken in.

The questions finally started to pile up, more than just the one.

What could she say? After so many years? She could feel his silence like a physical wall, or a chasm between them. His judgement, the hidden predator in the shadows, his anger. How could she break this… this barrier between them? Had she let the old wound fester too long?

What could she do?

…Fearfearfear go away go away GO AWAY!

…They’d been best friends. Leaders together in their school years and sharing the role in Mistral. They’d seen some of their highest highs, and some of their lowest lows together.

Sometimes she’d felt like she’d known him like she’d known her own team. She’d known what to say to wind him up, make him laugh, frown, sag or smile. And she’d known he could do much the same with her.

What did he see in her now?

“So!”

They both jerked.

Ren stepped between them, putting an early death to their not-a-standoff. “I have no desire to intrude on you two catching up,” he said (too) lightly, shooting Ruby an apologetic look. “I’m sure there’s plenty to talk about! But I don’t believe we should keep the faculty waiting?”

He phrased it as a question, but Ruby and Jaune stared at him in silence until the Mistrallan started to fidget. Given it was Ren they were talking about, that was quite the accomplishment on their part.

Another moment passed and Ren’s smile grew more brittle. He spread his hands, his expression turning just the tiniest bit pleading. “Guys?”

Ruby shook herself. “Right.” Now wasn’t the time to question whether or not her friend was still her friend. Poking that Ursa could come later. “You’re right. Faculty. Gotta meet my new colleagues, right Jaune?”

She hid her hesitation behind a smile, lightly jabbing her elbow into his arm. She pretended not to notice the slight flare of aura as she hit armor and pins and needles shot up her arm.

His aura. A white veil that whorled and danced like light through water. A manifestation of the inner self – the soul – that only flared as a defensive measure.

His smile was just as plastered as her own. “Right.”

Her stomach twisted.

Later.

Ruby pulled her lips wider and twirled her finger. “Lead on, Ren.”

As they fell into line behind Ren, they listened to him comment – at first warily, but with growing confidence – on the current state of affairs at Beacon and how far the repairs were coming along and oh there’s the thing An was going on about! Ruby steeled herself while only listening with half an ear and ignored the confused, intense stare burning into the back of her head.

This was home now. She would make sure of that. Everyone felt uncomfortable and nervous moving into a new home, right? Everyone dealt with these messy, painful emotions when they met up with old friends, right?

The traitorous part of her mind wasn’t so sure.

‘Welcome to Beacon…’

X_0_X

Neo’s throat still twinged with the echoes of faded pain as she stepped out of the shadows behind a few of her subordinates, the faint illumination given off by her semblance hidden away behind a few strategically placed shipping containers nearby.

Those, she’d decided, would always stay far enough to avoid giving any eavesdroppers an easy chance to listen in, but close enough to make her quiet entrances possible. After all, how could she possibly be expected to get rid of one of her favorite pranks?

She stepped between them on silent feet without preamble.

Her lieutenant – a short, meek looking doe-faunus with her lower face hidden away behind a grey scarf – yelped and drew her weapon before she realized just who it was that appeared out of nowhere. “Boss!”

Neo hid her smirk and pretended not to notice the pistol just a few inches from her gut. Appearances and all that. ‘STATUS REPORT?’

“I, ah, sorry Boss! I, we—”

Neo rolled her eyes and whacked the girl over the back of the head.

She’d picked her right hand well enough – she’d never be cut out for combat or intimidation, but when Neo wasn’t fucking with her, she had a sharp mind. Her innocent looks distracted from her cunning, and the ruthless intelligence she had sequestered away for Neo to exploit.

The girl had a terrible stutter though, when she was caught off guard. Woe to be her, it amused Neo to no end.

The girl coughed awkwardly. “Um. Status report. Right.” She straightened. “While you were out chasing down Pine, we completed the heist. During the crossfire with some of the PD we lost one of the containers of Dust, but the rest is already on its way out of Vale to our warehouses down the coast.”

‘TRACKED?’

She nodded. “We’re sure. It was too public an operation to avoid. Do you want us to remove the tracker and reroute the cargo, or let it sit?”

‘KEEP. WE GIVE RIFT NICE SURPRISE. THEY LOOK FOR DUST, THEY FIND DUST. THEY FIND CHARGES, FIND OUT WE TRICK THEM. THEN THEY WONDER WHERE REST IS. FUNNY, NO?’

Rift was one of the many smaller cities scattered along Sanus’ northern coast, nominally under the jurisdiction of the kingdom of Vale. In the aftermath of the Fall they’d enjoyed a long decade of functional independence. The coastal city, situated as it was at the mouth of an inlet and partially dug into a tall, stony mountainside, was an excellent hub for black market activities, being near enough to Vale for the survivors to take advantage of (or flee to), and near enough to Vacuo’s primary shipping lanes to receive a steady influx of materiel and restricted ‘merchandise.’ With the labyrinthine tunnels running deep into the hills, it was also a smugglers paradise.

Neo’s operation had several warehouses in the city that the Vale Council was keenly interested in. Riftan officials, on the other hand, were more than happy to leave them untouched as long as no exceptional cause for raids was given – the underlings she’d set to manage the branch were generous in their donations to the city council, after all.

With the tracker on the cargo, the Vale PD would have their excuse to conduct their raids. They would find it chock-full of smuggled Dust. They would find several IEDs scattered through the warehouse. And Neo would laugh at the collective coronary they would suffer, knowing that they would only discover how much of it was counterfeit days after the fact, while the legit score was far away.

All according to plan.

She profited, Rift would receive a messy reminder that her operations were not to be touched under any circumstances, the Vale PD would be further frustrated and – if fortune was kind, down a few officers – and she could rest satisfied, knowing she’d managed to infuriate Gearhead Pine even further. Four birds, one stone.

Roman would have called it an efficient use of resources. Neo just preferred using explosive stones. It worked either way.

That left one more thing. ‘DAMAGES?’

“We’ve reports of three civilian casualties. One is already slated for release from the hospital, the other two died on-scene. We’re in a bit of trouble with the locals in Slate District; couple of our contacts are saying they’re cutting ties on account of it.”

Neo touched her chin in thought.

Only three? She’d been expected upwards of a dozen when she planned the operation out. The death toll being so low was either good luck or spoke to her underlings’ restraint.

…

Probably the former, now that she thought about it.

Right then. The second tidbit was more important though. Contacts didn’t grow on trees. ‘WHY?’

“One of the women killed was pretty well-liked. Fancied herself a humanitarian. Had some cash from an inheritance she liked to spread around. Doesn’t seem to be more than that.”

Neo cocked her head to the side, running it all through her head and ignoring the wary glances her lieutenant exchanged with the other grunt beside her. Worried she would be frustrated by the setback? That she would take it out on them?

Hmph. ‘FINE. FIND NEW CONTACTS OR GET OLD ONES BACK. WHATEVER MEANS. ME NO CARE.’ Her subordinates had so little faith!

While annoying, those were acceptable losses, and inevitable when her operation slipped up.

Killing important people always created complications. Resentments, grudges, even vendettas if she were especially unlucky – those were the kinds of things she would be displeased to hear about. A few lost contacts was fine. She would lose some maneuverability in the short term, a bit of lost profit, but that would be made up once the Dust sold.

Simplicity itself. A good day’s work – and she got a good fight out of it.

Her hand rose to rub at the tender skin where Pine had throttled her.

A good fight indeed. She’d never in her wildest dreams thought to drag such an immediate, violent response from the polite, by-the-books huntsman. Never.

Honestly, she’d been astounded for just a few seconds before she regained her bearings at the buried rage – the ancient fire glaring down at her – and the iron-hard fingers cutting off her oxygen supply.

The reason was simple enough: Neo lived for moments like that.

She would have never thought to prepare for such an eventuality. It was never in the cards. For just a few moments her blood had thrummed, and she’d felt that ecstatic tingle of joyful life as she threw him off of her and regained the dominance she pursued in a fight.

‘Ah, Pine,’ Neo thought with a soft smirk as she gazed down at the map of Vale spread out before her. ‘You’ll be worth seeking out again. I can’t let you get away from me that easily.’

She refused to let such talent escape her. Nor would she let him cool his heels forever – she’d made that mistake once with the last Commissioner and didn’t plan on repeating it. Allowing Pine to go soft would be like letting an exquisite wine go to waste on a trashy frat party.

In fewer words (and without the hangover); a disappointing waste of potential.

“Boss?”

‘WHAT?’

Weren’t they done yet? She was well aware her lieutenant was still speaking, going over the numbers, the stratagems that would further her growing criminal empire’s prospects in the ripe little gem of Vale, and the double-dealing and underhanded tactics. All the things Neo didn’t give a damn about.

They were all well and good, as far as she was concerned, and they had their place, but she delegated for a reason. Neo was no Roman.  

She was happy to leave all of that to her lieutenant and be the unfailingly deadly, terrifying kingpin. After all, who was a bigger target than the lynchpin holding it all together?

That was exactly how Neo liked things to be. Bigger target, better enemies, better fights.

“There’s one more thing, rather unrelated. You asked to be kept abreast of all huntsman traffic in and out of the city?”

‘YES.’ She motioned impatiently for the girl to continue.

“We received reports from our contact in Mistral United Airlines that three have crossed the border into Vale. One is already departed to Vacuo, the second is visiting relatives in the Port District, but the third…”

Neo snatched the memo from the girl’s hands, breaking the seal and scanning over the contents.

Interesting…

‘WE HAVE SOMEONE IN BEACON?’

“Not at the moment. They’re notoriously strict about their security. We’ve been making inroads with some of the construction crews, but Atlas screens everyone working there on account of the CCT.” Her lieutenant seemed more than a little put out by that fact.

That was a shame, but it certainly made the game more interesting.

Ruby Rose – Little Red the Reaper – was here in Vale? After almost ten years sequestered away in Anima? That was news Neo hadn’t expected to see when she’d woken up that morning.

Oh, she’d heard about Ruby. Her reputation as a huntress was as terrifying as it was enticing.

A child prodigy in her field, entered into Beacon by age fifteen against all of her peers. By all means an exceptional student in everything save her academia, and a scythe-wielder at that? Taking up that weapon, one of Remnant’s most difficult to master, took moxie that Neo could appreciate, and further, hope she’d one day encounter again.

After all, their last duel on the Vindicator, for all the tension of the situation had added to the encounter, had left something to be desired for Neo. Ruby had been young, then. Untried. Neo had been able to sense the potential there, but it had been of-yet unrealized. The girl had been easy pickings for someone of Neo’s caliber…

Well, she should have been.

And yet Neo lost, and Roman’s death had been the result.

…Fingers closing around her throat like a vice – she couldn’t breathe she stared up into the green-hazel-gold-flecked eyes of her opponent her enemy and glared she struggled against his hands pulling scratching clawing but she couldn’t breathe and—NO. THINK. She paused. Her eyes narrowed. She seized his wrists and squeezed, bunched her legs up to her chest and SHOVED…

Her lips quirked.

…The girl clung to her weapon over open air, Gryphons swarming below her. She would die once Neo cut her. Maybe she could do it slowly. One finger at a time, relish in the fear growing in the girl’s eyes as she lost her grip and vanished into the abyss of Grimm. Maybe she would survive their vicious swarm and hit the ground – it would be a quick death, at least. Quicker than the alternative.

Roman monologued behind her but Neo didn’t care. The whole world dropped away as she held the needle-tip of her blade at the girl’s throat. It would bloom sweet red when sh— WHAT THE, NO!

The smirk turned to a nostalgic smile.

…Neo clung tightly to her parasol, fending off the occasional Gryphon too stupid to realize she was a huntress with a weapon in hand, falling or not. The Vindicator died above her, and she watched as Little Red rode her scythe like a pogo stick through the air to the ground.

Roman would be dead, then.

She didn’t like the way her heart panged in her chest at the realization. His charming smile, his charisma, the kindness hidden behind the mercenary exterior…

She knew it was there; nothing else could have brought the kingpin around to taking in Vale’s lowest rat. To teaching that rat how to live, to love, to breathe combat. She’d become his hand, but he’d become her reason to live. All of that would now be gone with him…

Alani, her lieutenant, droned on beside her as Neo reminisced.

She owed quite a lot to Roman. Odds were that she would have perished from malnutrition had he not stepped in for the pathetic little mute shivering in the gutter. In retrospect it was quite the unusual gamble for the kingpin to make. She’d been stunted already. She didn’t know how to communicate. Young, and a vacuum for precious lien – at least before she started making her own money. She’d hardly been prime underling material.

But he had. And she grew. And he died. And Neo had Ruby Rose to thank for that.

…It was a tiny grave, unfit for someone as ostentatious as Roman. A simple headstone. “HERE LIES ROMAN TORCHWICK. LEADER OF MEN, FEARED BY HIS ENEMIES, MAY HE REST IN PEACE.” She didn’t know what dates to append to the stone, so she’d left it blank. Let those who found the tiny copse of trees think he’d lived a long and happy life. That he’d been buried in the middle of nowhere because it was actually a special spot for him. That maybe he’d met his first lover here. Or emerged from humble beginnings from a life in the woods.

Something more impressive than the truth. The truth kind of sucked…

Neo sighed.

She still sometimes visited that grave, but not often. She’d long since moved on. The faint grudge she’d considered nursing so long ago faded away with the knowledge that Ruby Rose was far away and suffering her own tragedies.

That was just karma, as far as Neo was concerned.

She had an empire to build and enemies to fight. Life went on.

But now an opportunity had fallen right into her lap, just as she forced her most recent rival off the playing board. That changed things.

Neo lifted her hand and slashed it across her torso. ‘STOP.’

Her lieutenant fell deadly silent.

‘BRING MY GOOD PAPER. AND PEN,’ she ordered.

“Right on it, boss.” The second underling disappeared into the warehouse.

Alani cocked her head nervously. “Do you have a letter to send, Boss?”

Neo had no intention of involving the girl in this, however. ‘INVITATION. NEED TO KNOW BASIS.’

This fight would be hers and hers alone. Oscar Pine? He was a formidable opponent with fewer scruples than Neo had been willing to give him credit for before that day. He was fast and wielded a weapon not dissimilar to her own, and he was still someone she would certainly relish fighting again when the time came.

But the Reaper?

Neo rubbed her hands together. ‘I’m going to have fun with you, Red.’

[horde-princess]

omg 17 would be perfect

Sorry this took so long! I’ve been soo busy and kinda distracted with the new season ✨ There are still a few prompts in my inbox, plus Home Is A Lonely Place, not to mention all the meta i still wanna write sldjfskj there’s a lot going on

but anyway i yelled when i read what 17 was tysm for sending it!!! 💖 this is filled with angst and does get a little spicy so. take care of yourselves out there

17. Needing to kiss to hide from bad guys

Adora twisted against her handcuffs uselessly, wrists chafed and bloody, before finally giving up and dropping her hands into her lap. Her head was buzzing with fatigue and hunger, her muscles ached from spending the night in a Horde prison cell that was about as comfortable as a bed of nails. Still, it offered a semblance of safety, and for that she was grateful–since every second spent trapped here was time that she might have spent being, well, dead.

The Rebellion defense had been a total disaster. No, that was a lie–Adora was the only one to blame. She let Catra manipulate her again, choosing to save her friend’s life even knowing it would result in defeat. Why Hordak took her captive instead of killing her on the spot was a terrifying mystery that Adora preferred not to unravel right now. She couldn’t let fear paralyze her. She had to think of a way to get out of here. She had to get back to Glimmer and Bow, she had to help her friends–

A sudden movement in the darkness outside her cell startled her. She sat up straight against the wall, blowing loose hair out of her face. Whatever they did to her, she wouldn’t let them see her spirit broken.

But the shadowy figure was… familiar. Adora’s heart rate picked up and she watched as the door slid open to reveal the only person who actually did have the power to break her. 

They stared at each other for a moment, Catra’s expression unreadable. Adora was expecting insults from her, or mockery, but… none came. Truthfully, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Catra frowned, marched over, and yanked Adora up to her feet by the handcuffs, causing her to hiss in pain.  

“Let’s go.”

When Adora resisted, Catra gripped her arm painfully and dragged her out of the cell anyway. Her animosity never ceased to feel like some kind of fucked up hallucination.

“Catra, don’t do this!”

“Would you shut up?” she snapped. “If you get us caught, we’re both dead.”

She released her and pulled out a tablet, glancing nervously around the empty atrium.

“Wait… what do you mean ‘if we get caught?’”

Catra grit her teeth. She touched the screen and there was a quiet click as a door near them unlocked.

“I’m trying to get you out of here, dumbass.”

Adora felt like the world just slipped off its axis. She must have been more exhausted than she’d realized because there was no way she’d heard that right. But hope clawed at her insides anyway, demanding and vengeful, struggling to escape the little coffin she had shoved it into long ago and buried six feet underground.

“You’re… helping me escape?”

Catra shot her a glare then started walking again, pulling Adora along with her. Hostility emanated off her in waves. They passed through the doorway and started down a deserted corridor, broken lights flickering eerily. 

“But why?”

She rounded on Adora, stoic anger turning fierce. “Do you know what Hordak wants to do to you?!” she whispered. “He’s not just going to kill you, Adora! He wants to torture you, corrupt your powers–prod you like a lab rat until there’s nothing left.”

Adora had guessed as much, but that wasn’t really what she meant.

“I don’t get it, isn’t that what you wanted all along? I mean… you’ve been trying to get rid me ever since I…”

Left. Abandoned you. Ruined everything. She didn’t know how to say it aloud. 

Catra was quiet for a moment, then she sneered.

“No one gets to take you down but me. Got it? Especially not fucking… Hordak. And if I can ruin one of his plans while I’m at it, all the better.”

There it was again, fluttering madly in the deepest recesses of Adora’s chest. Hope.

“But why not just take me out now?” she pressed, wishing Catra would just tell her the truth, for once. “I don’t have my sword, I’m powerless.”

“Yeah, well, exactly!” Catra sputtered. “You’re all chained up and pathetic right now. It wouldn’t be a good fight.”

“…Catra–”

“We just have to get to the–Shit. Someone’s coming.”

Searching frantically for an escape, Catra pulled her into a niche in the hallway. 

The space was tight and dark, and Adora could feel Catra’s shallow breaths, and every accidental touch of their bodies sent a wave of anxiety screeching down her spine like nails on a chalkboard. All at once she realized exactly what Catra was risking by trying to save her. If she got caught… it would be the end of her.

The guards’ voices drifted over to them, getting closer. There must have been three of them, maybe more.

“…weird signal coming from the prison block.”

“No, it’s three in the damn morning. It must be a glitch.”

Catra took a steadying breath. “There’s no way they won’t see us here. How many can you take?”

“Oh, sure. I’ll just take down some armed gunmen with my hands cuffed.”

Catra groaned quietly, clenching her fists, and Adora could see the wheels in her head turning. Then her body went slack and her eyes filled with what could only be described as… horror.

Unmitigated horror. 

Adora blinked at her.

“Catra?–”

“We have to kiss,” she breathed.

Adora’s brain slowly faltered to a stop like an overworked motor.

“…Um. What.”

“Think about it! Why else would two teenagers be hiding in a dark corner in the middle of the night? If we can play it right, maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

The voices were getting louder with each passing second and Adora was experiencing a strong wave of nausea. 

“You can’t be serious,” she rasped.

“Well I don’t hear you coming up with any bright ideas!”

The shuffle of boots echoing down the hall suddenly stopped.

“Hey, did you hear something?” A woman’s voice said, her flashlight beam sweeping near them.

Catra held her breath and Adora did the same, feeling like the blood in her veins had been replaced with electric current.

“Check the door over there.”

Catra was so close, and so warm, and so Catra; and if she closed her eyes she could imagine they were just kids again, sneaking around the Fright Zone, getting into trouble together. She could forget everything that had happened the past few months, all the pain they had caused each other. She could forget this was a life or death situation. She could forget that Catra hated her fucking guts.

…Though, apparently, not quite as much as she once did.

“Nothing here, boss,” one of the guards said.

“Keep moving, I know I heard something.”

It was dark, but not dark enough to hide them once the flashlight illuminated the space. As soon as the guards walked past them they’d be spotted. They’d be asked to identify themselves, if they didn’t already know their faces… fuck.

“…It has to look convincing,” Adora choked out.

Catra met her eyes, expression carefully neutral. 

“Take off your badge.”

Catra did as instructed. Adora moved behind her so her back was to the wall, hiding her tied hands from view. The guards were closing in fast. Catra’s face suddenly turned pale.

“You know what? This was a stupid idea.”

“Huh?”

“There’s no way they’ll just let us go… what if–I could take them myself, right? I  fight giant killing machines all the time–”

“Catra, they have guns–”

“Or I could tell them who I am, say I was just taking you to the–”

“Catra!”

The guards were feet away and the light was sweeping towards them and before she could think too much about it Adora surged forward and crushed her lips to Catra’s.

The earth seemed to drop out from under her.

God, it was so… wrong. It was fake and bitter and poisoned and fuck, it shouldn’t have happened like this, it shouldn’t have happened like this.

It took a second for Catra to respond, but then Adora felt her moving deliberately to make it look natural. She wrapped an arm around her waist, roughly pressing Adora between the wall and her body. The whole thing lasted for all of two seconds before she sensed a light shining on them.

“Oh–”

“What–”

“Shit–”

Adora’s head spun as Catra pulled her lips away and turned to address the guards, keeping her hands on Adora and her body pressed close. She was functioning at about a half a percent mental capacity and couldn’t begin to imagine how Catra was handling this so easily.

(Maybe it hurt her ego. So what?)

“The fuck?” Catra griped loudly. “Can we get some privacy?”

“Sorry, ladies, there’s been a security breach and–we didn’t mean to, uh–we’re supposed to check your badges–”

“We’re a little busy, here,” she interrupted, flipping them off as she turned back to Adora with a dangerous smirk. 

Her previous distress was all but gone now, masked over with an exaggerated confidence. She gave Adora a meaningful look, then leaned in and caught her lips in a sensual, open-mouthed kiss. And now that her brain had caught up with her body… Adora was on fire.

The guards, the prison, the Horde, the Rebellion–it all disappeared in a puff of smoke as Catra’s tongue twisted with hers, two opposite forces coalescing, and nothing in the world mattered but this, nothing existed apart from this. If Catra were to stop kissing her, she thought the fabric of her universe might rip apart. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the guards walking away, but Catra wasn’t stopping the kiss, and every touch, every swirl of her tongue was bringing Adora closer to some kind of breaking point. Catra slipped a thigh between hers and a soft moan escaped her, she couldn’t control her body’s response anymore, and it definitely wasn’t part of any act.

Catra must have realized that, too, because she immediately pulled back to look at her, wearing the most smug expression Adora had ever seen on someone. Heat rose in her cheeks as reality slowly pulsed back into focus. 

The guards were gone. The universe was, somehow, still intact.

“If you wanted to get me alone, all you had to do was ask, princess.”

Asshole. Adora wanted to smack the mocking grin off her face. Too bad her hands were tied.

“What–I don’t–Screw you! That was way past ‘convincing!’”

Catra cocked an expectant eyebrow and Adora relented with a sigh.

“Sorry. I… I know you’re just trying to help me.”

For some reason that made Catra’s smile fall. She leaned in again, lips close, her scent washing over Adora, smokey and intoxicating.

“Is that what I’m doing?”

They locked eyes for a long, tense moment. The taste of her lingered on Adora’s tongue and her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid Catra might hear it. There were no guards, no threats… it was just her and Catra this time. Catra, the person who had vowed to destroy Adora and everything she cared about. Catra, who was supposed to be her enemy. Catra… who was currently saving her life. 

“We should…” Adora licked her lips. “We should go.”

“Yeah,” Catra agreed.

But the second Catra’s eyes fell to her lips Adora was pushing forward and kissing her for the third time that night, giving into something furious and insane and probably inevitable. Catra sighed into her mouth as her hands raked down Adora’s body and she struggled against the handcuffs, not even feeling the pain of it, just desperate to touch her, and–fuck–this wasn’t fair–

Reading her mind, Catra raised Adora’s arms above her head and pinned them there with one hand, the other moving down to lift her leg around her hip. Adora swallowed back a whine as Catra pressed flush against her body–her kiss urgent now, consuming–and Adora arched into her, giving up any pretense of dignity or self-control. She was unraveling more with every new touch and she decided she didn’t care how fucked up this was anymore… she didn’t care if Catra was manipulating her, whether she hated her or not–what did it even matter? There was such a mess of emotion between them, it was impossible to make sense of, and if this was how it manifested in Catra, she really didn’t mind. 

Then, with a harsh movement–seemingly out of nowhere–Catra broke the kiss.

It was like having the wind knocked out of her. Adora slowly came to her senses and felt how Catra was struggling to control her breathing, fingers trembling against Adora’s jaw. The silence stretched between them. When she finally spoke, her voice was dark and… devastated.

“…What are you doing to me?”

Adora didn’t have an answer.

Catra’s grip on her loosened, she stepped away, and it left Adora feeling ice cold in the absence of her touch.

“Catra, I…”

What could she say? That she was sorry? She wasn’t. She was selfish, and stupid, and cowardly, but absolutely nothing in her was sorry. 

Not for this, anyway.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Catra stated rigidly.

Adora wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince. Still, the weight of the words crushed her. She had nothing left, her cards were all on the table. If Catra were to ever use this against her… she almost laughed at the thought.

Catra turned away from her and walked out into the hallway, but Adora was afraid to move, afraid to shatter the illusion.

This doesn’t change anything. The words echoed in her mind over and over again.

“So that’s it?”

A beat of silence.

“Yeah.”

Catra looked back at her and jerked her head towards the exit, then walked away without waiting for Adora to follow.