#it’s all i’m a woman in stem until you have multiple open windows for your literature review

[luuney]

waiting for the day i become a pet in all sense of the word

[upon-a-starry-night]

Number Neighbors Pt.29

Natasha Romanoff x Fem! Reader

Natasha Masterlist Series Masterlist

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary:  When you catch sight of the newest trend going around you know you’re all but bound to at least try it, it was harmless anyway. What could possibly stem from something so little?

----

There’s nothing like the warmth of a home-cooked meal. Especially in comparison to the mediocre meals you were cooking for yourself. You like to think it heals a little part of your soul with each bite you take. 

Your mother doesn't question why you suddenly accepted her offer home after months of refusing but you have a feeling she might know. She’s always had weird physic mom abilities. At first, you thought you could get away with acting normal but the look she gave you when you got in her car at the airport told you you’d been caught.

Since that moment your mother has been doing an exceptional job at distracting you and you’ll never be able to express just how grateful you are for her. 

The few days that you’ve been home your mother’s been parading you around town, showing you what’s new and telling you stories of all the crazy things you’d do in every building, playground, and park. When you're home, your mother finds excuses to give you small brushes of physical affection and you don’t realize just how lonely living by yourself has gotten until you woke up to waffles and a kiss on the forehead.

You have a small inkling that she’s behind the occasional disappearance of your phone as well but you don’t comment on it. It’s a welcome break from the chaos of social media but you know you can’t avoid your problems forever and reality hits one afternoon when your mom is out grocery shopping and your phone dings with a notification.

You pick it up to see multiple news outlets blowing up about the upcoming press conference the government will be holding to explain what happened to the Avengers and you all but rush to turn the news on the TV.

There are a few unfriendly-looking government officials in suits and balding hair standing in front of a podium full of microphones and before any of them have even spoken there’s a flash of cameras from somewhere behind the camera.

One of the taller white men steps forward and the room goes silent. You’re on the edge of your seat with anticipation and you’re sure everyone else watching is as well. The man in the suit looks less than excited to be there and you can already tell by the look on his face that you’re not going to like what he has to say. Your stomach sinks in.

“I know this has been greatly anticipated by the public and I’m sure you all have a lot of questions so I'll get straight to the point.” Another camera shutter clicks. “ Around a month ago we approached the Avengers group about the amount of destruction they left behind after their battles. We felt the damage was too significant to let it continue happening, so we came up with the proposal that the Avengers agree to government supervision and limitations to minimize the damages.” 

You let out a low hiss through your teeth as murmurs fill the conference room. You’re sure most of the Avengers wouldn’t have taken kindly to that situation. If you’re honest you’re surprised a full-out fight hadn’t started. It only makes you more nervous for what’s to come.

“Unfortunately, a few members of the group didn’t agree with our terms and have since fled to avoid responsibility” Your blood boils at the way he’s talking about the world's greatest heroes, like they’re teenagers who broke the neighbors' window. You’re sure they’re purposely leaving out details of their contract to make the Avengers look bad. “Due to this circumstance,” A woman steps from behind him and hands him a file and he opens it and begins lifting picture after picture “The following Avengers are now considered wanted felons. If you see any of them please contact your local authorities-”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as the room erupts into chaos. Reporters are shouting, cameras are flashing left and right and questions are being flung at the uncomfortable-looking officials. 

You practically shoot up from your seat in outrage. The Avengers are wanted felons? What was the government thinking? Just because they wanted control over the world's strongest and smartest? You hated to think what the world would descend into now that criminals not only didn’t have to fear the Avengers, but could call to get them arrested as well.

Security steps in and the room calms a little but reporters refuse to let the subject go, raising their hands to question such an idiotic decision.

“With the Avengers gone, what are you going to do about the influx in crime?” One asks, and another white man steps up to the podium to answer.

“We will be doubling the police force in every state to ensure the crime rates go back down” The reporters don’t seem satisfied, another raising a counter-question

“What about supernatural criminals and weapons?” The man swallows nervously and you’re sure a cartoonish bead of sweat is about to trail down his forehead when he speaks up with less confidence than before.

“Rest assured our officers are being trained to handle any possible situations, and we will be arming them with state-of-the-art weapons” You practically groan at his words, and your phone dings with notifications from various sites. Your friends from the Stark party are texting you about their outrage, news outlets are blowing up, and your mother wants to know if you want any cereal. 

You text her yes and respond to your other texts, tuning out the bullshit coming from the TV until pictures of the ‘wanted felons’ appear on the TV. Over half of the Avengers pictures are on the screen with the words “Wanted” under them and your eyes unconsciously drift toward Nat as a woman speaks

“We haven’t been able to get a hold of any of the aforementioned Avengers so if you have any information about their whereabouts please call-” you practically scoff at the TV. Of course, they couldn’t get a hold of Natasha Romanoff, if she wanted to disappear you’d never see or hear from her again-

Your head spins. A dangerous thought sneaks into your mind and despite your best efforts you can’t block it out. The government official had said they tried to make this deal around a month ago- around the same time Nat stopped responding to you.

With your heart leaping to your throat, you immediately rush to grab your computer. It wasn’t like you hadn’t considered Nat’s name being Natasha but you hadn’t wanted to plaster Natasha’s face onto this total stranger, and you definitely didn't want to project your feelings for your celebrity crush onto a real person who had nothing to do with her.

You never let yourself go down that hole, especially because the more you talked to Nat the less she seemed like the stoic Natasha Romanoff you knew of. 

You still refuse to believe it until you can prove it though, so the only thing you can think to do is pull up every single publicized mission the Avengers have gone on and open your phone to Nat’s contact. You ignore the painful jerk your heart gives as you scroll past your pleading and Nat’s last “I’m sorry” text until you find the last time she said she had to go away for ‘work’.

She’d been gone for two weeks but still managed to send you a quick ‘goodnight’ text on one of those days. It made your whole week that she’d been thinking of you even while she was working and still chose to text you even though she could get in trouble for using her phone. 

You scroll through the missions until you find one with a similar date. A mission in Eastern Europe that took the three of the Avengers two weeks to complete. It doesn’t state which Avengers so you brush it off as a coincidence and scroll up further, searching for another ‘work’ message.

Half an hour later you have at least fifteen ‘coincidences’ that line up almost perfectly with when Nat would leave you on delivered. You want to believe it but you’re at war with yourself.

Something joyful tugs at your heart and you shake your head to try and get rid of the images of Nat smiling on the other side of the phone. 

The other part of you is astonished you’d even believe such a thing. Why would Natasha continue texting you? There was no way she’d trust something as childish as ‘number neighbors’. And if she did believe that… why wouldn’t she just block your number?

Although you suppose she did try and get you to stop texting her, you just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Suddenly all of her threats feel a little more serious. 

For a split second, there’s relief. The weight of the fear that she’d ghosted you because she was tired of you lifted from your shoulders. The fear of never knowing her face or what she sounded like was gone. Instead, it was replaced by anxiety. The woman you loved was a wanted criminal AND an Avenger. You don’t know if it’s better or worse that you can read all of the texts in her voice now.

Your brain is screaming at you while your heart is frolicking in a field full of flowers.

The woman you’ve had a fictional crush on for years is actually the woman you fell in love with online, surprise!

Still, you’re worried you’re getting a little ahead of yourself so you try to calm down and scour the internet for more proof. You find an old video from when the Avengers did a live slumber party for charity and zoom in on Nat’s pajamas. Yep, the same gray as the photo of her pants she’d sent you from way back when you first met. 

The first photo she ever sent you and it was truly a gift to receive but big deal- lots of people wore gray to bed! 

The thought of gifts reminds you of the surveillance footage the restaurant promised to send you months ago when Nat bought you dessert. God, you really should read your emails. After scrolling through work emails and companies advertising their sales you find a very old email from the restaurant with the footage from their back alley. 

You can’t believe you forgot to look at this.

Sure enough, as the waiter had said, you can only see a hoodie from that angle but you’ll take anything you can get. You pause and play the video at every millisecond until a sliver of a design is visible and you reverse image search until a picture of that exact hoodie pops up.

You pull up every single member of the Avengers’ Instagram's until you see a picture of Clint Barton wearing what seems to be the same hoodie only two months ago. It’s a stretch, you’re sure anyone could own that hoodie but at this point, you’ve already fully convinced yourself it’s her. You feel like an FBI agent with how deep you’re digging for evidence and the thought reminds you of one of the first things you ever said to her

“What, are you an FBI agent or something?”

“Something like that”

You were truly the world’s biggest idiot at this point. Natasha had been trying to tell you at the Stark party, hadn’t she? You knew the joke sounded familiar. 

A sort of mirth sparkled in her eyes as she spoke her next sentence “Well I’m no FBI agent” It feels like an inside joke and you're trying to pinpoint where you remember it from but after a few seconds you shake it off and blame it on the alcohol. 

Not to mention how hesitant she’d been to talk to you in the beginning. She was a super spy! Of course, she wouldn’t believe you got her number by coincidence. Did that mean that she knew who you were from the beginning? She probably knew everything about you from your apartment number to your first pet. 

But…if she knew everything about you and still chose to stay and talk to you then maybe there was the smallest, tiniest chance she liked you back the way you liked her.

Why else would someone like her spend every day putting up with your antics?

All this time you’ve been wondering who she was and why she left you and now you have an answer you have no idea what to do with. It’s not like she’d be at Avengers Tower right now, nobody knew where she was. And she hadn’t responded to any of your messages. How could you tell her you knew? How could you tell her that you weren’t mad anymore? Will you ever be able to confess how you feel to her in person?

You don’t even realize you're crying until a drop of water lands on your computer. You were overwhelmed with so many different emotions; joy, worry, love. The idea of loving Natasha Romanoff was scary but loving Nat? Loving Nat was easy. And you have to keep reminding yourself that they’re the same person. That The Black Widow was a persona while Nat was her real self. 

The sound of the front door doesn’t register in your mind until you hear your mother calling your name. You turn to look at her with your tear-stricken face and her expression softens as she takes you in.

“Y/n, what’s wrong?” she drops her groceries and makes her way over to you, wrapping you in her arms immediately. The way she says your name with so much love reminds you of the last time you heard Natasha’s voice-

“Take care of yourself, Y/n.”

The sentence only makes you cry harder and your mom soothingly rubs up and down your back. She doesn’t know you’ve just had the discovery of a lifetime or that you accidentally fell in love with a superhero. She just comforts you as you cry in her arms.

“Oh honey, it'll be okay”

You hope she’s right.

Pt.30

A/n: This chapter took a lot longer to write because I wanted to really get Y/n's reaction right- sorry it's late! ~ Starry

---Taglist--

@marvelwomen-simp @cd-4848 @wandanatlov3r @rebeltombraider @ctrlamira @fxckmiup @aliherreraaa @natsxwife @la-douler-ne-finite-jamais @romanoffsgal @moistblobfish @natashaswife4125 @elenimoris @how-to-disappearrr @screechcat @toouncreativeforausername @ordelixx @autorasexy @blacklightsposts @vmpnano @jono723 @sylencr @saraaahsstuff @autorasexy @gay4hotmilfs @tofu9162 @dyslexic-dreamer @graniairish @colettehope @kosmichs1 @nmhlver @natblidaclexa @skittlebum @dorabledewdroop @nothanksbye07 @mrsrushman @midastouch013 @thalia-is-not-ok @tessalah @annab3113 @officialnighttime @taliiiaasteria @bgwlsmahf25 @chibilauren @natashasgirlll

[aj-draws]

Addictive - Ch. 1 of Guns and Roses

Summary: A Mafia AU with Khun as a mob boss and Bam as a cop who may or may not take on the role as his bodyguard in the future.

Word Count: 2,367

---

Bam never had a first love. He was the top of his class, graduating at a police academy with exceptional grades and excellent combat skills. Though he knew exactly what he fancied when his gaze lingered on a particularly handsome man passing by, the kind of job he had left no room for romance.

Bam had never known failure. He handled his work with diligence and all of his cases so far had been handled successfully. It was true that he had his fair share of problems, but with the help of his clever captain, no case of his was left unsolved. 

So on one fateful night, he had the pleasure of experiencing two things he had never felt before.

It all began with a heist and a plan that went wrong.

After a case was assigned to him about the development of a mafia gang, Bam had spent the last two weeks meticulously gathering information. All he had were photographs and names of some of the supposed members, but he knew he needed more.

Captain Hwaryun had arranged for him to go undercover as a dealer in a gambling den that all of the gang members would be at. It wasn’t clear what their objective was, but since he had never been able to see all of the members at work in the same room, Bam was ecstatic.

He struggled to keep his cool as he folded the collar of his button-down with trembling fingers. Bam stood in the break room and contemplated his outfit in the mirror, hoping the clothes Hwaryun picked for him were fitting for the occasion. Glancing at his watch, he grabbed his suit jacket and tossed it onto his shoulders before exiting the room.

Bam approached the woman he was covering for, who retreated from the table and left him to set up. He worked at a leisurely pace, trying to focus more on counting the playing chips rather than his jittering nerves.

Once he had settled into a game of poker, Bam let his eyes slowly wander the room. He was intent on recognizing the familiar faces from his case files, and sure enough, he spotted the charming con artist who went by Endorsi and her fellow pickpocket, Shibisu. Those two were the only ones who had been seen by the public eye on multiple occasions but were not caught by the cops. There was a third member who Bam had very little information about because he was pivotal to any robberies that took place. While the gang’s thief was busy picking locks, Endorsi and Shibisu served as distractions.

However, their boss was nowhere to be seen.

There was no sign of the infamous, cutthroat man who left an officer in the emergency room after they crossed paths. His name, Khun, was the only thing known about him, and that was the information given to Bam when he took over the injured officer’s case.

When Bam spotted Shibisu making his way to the bathroom, he quickly finished his game to pursue the brown-haired man. He opened the door and locked it just as Shibisu was walking over to the sink. Bam rushed forward, unsheathing a knife from his pocket and pressing it to the man’s back.

Before Shibisu could make a noise, Bam snatched his earpiece and crushed it under his foot. “Don’t move.” He ordered.

“W...What do you want?” Shibisu managed through gritted teeth. He lifted his hands, bottom lip quivering as he did so.

“Why are you here?”

“As if I would tell y-”

Bam interrupted him by slamming the knife’s tip on the sink. Shibisu inhaled sharply, eyes bulging when he noticed how close his side had been from being stabbed. 

“Please choose your answer carefully.”

“A heist,” he blurted out. “We’re stealing from really arrogant people so if you’re looking for money or retribution, we-“

“That’s not necessary. I’m not here for the money.” Bam cut him short, pausing to choose his next words. He swallowed before asking, “Where is your boss?”

“On the second floor.”

His stomach dropped.

No..that couldn’t be. Their boss never went on missions with the other members. He never needed to. The job always got done. Why was...he..here?

He had to find out himself. It was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

Bam tied the man’s hands to the faucet with his belt, making sure the knot was tight and secure. He discarded Shibisu’s phone in the garbage and gagged him with the handkerchief in his breast pocket. 

He hurried outside and rushed to the elevator. Passing by a hallway full of doors, Bam stopped in his tracks when he heard a scream. The door was ajar, allowing him to peek inside, where a man was being threatened by someone with black hair. The frightened man was revealing a code and Bam was suddenly torn between stopping a robbery and confronting a mafia boss.

Then Shibiu’s words echoed through his head and his mind fixated on the phrase ‘arrogant people’. Bam made his decision, letting out a sharp huff before spinning around and pushing the elevator button.

As soon as the doors opened, Bam was tugged inside and engaged in a fight with two heavy-set men in black suits. The elevator rocked under his feet as she darted from side to side, blocking punches and delivering jabs to the neck. As soon as he saw an opening, he whipped his leg around and kicked one of the men right in the jaw. He crumpled to his knees and Bam flung his heel over his head, knocking him out.

He took out his knife and eyed the remaining man expectantly. Bam wiped the sweat off his forehead, springing into action with a swing of his blade. One second he was ducking his head and the next he was standing over two limp bodies. The ding of the elevator signaled the end of the bumpy ride and he walked out, leaving the knife lodged in the man’s throat.

Bam stepped forward and surveyed the room. His gaze passed by the door to a bathroom, the bed, and the window until he caught the dazzling blue eyes of a man sitting down on a sofa.

The man was currently preoccupied with snipping off a rose’s stem, leaving the petals to lay on a nearby table next to two glasses of dark wine. Locks of silvery-blue hair framed his face, curling around his broad shoulders and brushing against the pearls dangling from his ears. His navy blue vest clung to his hips, the silky fabric shifting as he leaned back into the sofa’s plush cushions. His lips were painted with a cherry red and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows. He ran his fingers along his cobalt necktie and gave a radiant grin, adjusting his leg to cross it over his other one.

Bam forgot how to breathe.

He lost all reason when the question slipped out of his mouth, “Who are you?”

He wasn’t thinking clearly. Bam knew the answer, but he needed to be sure. He wanted to be certain his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him.

“My name is Khun Aguero Agnis.” He spoke, picking up a wine glass in each hand and standing up. “I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

The click of his heel snapped Bam back to reality. He drew his gun from the inside of his jacket and pointed it at the man. Khun simply continued walking, his footsteps bold, despite his threats. Bam stood his ground and cocked his gun, arching an eyebrow.

Khun stopped in front of him, sighing loudly. “You can put the gun down. Look, I don’t have any weapons.” He gestured to his empty belt with his hands, which were currently occupied by wine glasses. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re too valuable.”

“Valuable?”

“I’ll cut to the chase since you’re itching to leave.” The man flashed him a devious smile, offering a glass to Bam. “I want to recruit you.”

Bam eyed the drink curiously and remained still. “I refuse.”

Khun raised his arm. The sudden movement made Bam’s finger fly to the trigger, but all the man did was down his glass in a single gulp. “I thought you’d say that. I suppose you need some convincing.”

The last thing Bam saw was his wink before he got blinded by a wave of dark red liquid. 

The wine burned his eyes and he squeezed them shut, grunting in annoyance. His hands, which were cut by the glass, throbbed with pain. The gun slipped from his fingers and Bam quickly swiped his sleeve across his face. He bent down to pick up the gun when a kick to the stomach made him double over. A frustrated noise erupted from his throat as he moved to attack Khun with swift punches. Bam’s fists made contact with air and it was confusing him that Khun was now taking the defensive, dodging with his hands tucked behind his back.

When Bam paused to catch his breath, Khun was back on the offense without a second to spare. His fighting style was something foreign to him-polished to perfection and incredibly unpredictable. He didn’t want to believe it, but he began to tire, his muscles taut and overworked. 

Khun wasted no time to take advantage of this. He landed one solid punch and Bam was knocked onto the bed, clutching his side.

All of a sudden, Khun was on top of him, grabbing his wrists and slamming them onto the mattress. He tried to move his leg, but Khun was quick to pin him down, the heat of his thigh causing Bam to tense up.

“What is your name?” He demanded, leaving no room for negotiation or defiance.

“I...I’m Bam.”

“A cop.” Khun spat with a viciousness that made him shudder.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I started working there recently.”

“So you’re a newbie. How interesting.” The anger Khun previously displayed had dissipated, replaced with a thoughtful sparkle in his eyes. “I think you’re wasting your remarkable talents.”

“So...what do you want from me?”

“You,” Khun spoke, his voice a velvety purr. 

The gentleness of his words greatly contrasted the powerful grip on Bam’s wrists.

“...What?”

“Be my bodyguard.”

Bam stared up at him. The shock in his expression brought on Khun’s laughter.

“If you worked with me, I could grant you the freedom that the police could never provide. There would be no more of those pesky rules to hold you back. All I ask in return is that you fight for me. I don’t need your protection, but I have a feeling that I’ll enjoy having you by my side.”

“But...I-“

“You can’t say no.”

“Why not?”

“I won’t allow it. I can’t let something so...impressive out of my sight for a second longer,” Khun leaned in close, his floral cologne tickling his nose. The more Bam fought against his grasp, the tighter he clutched his wrists. “Besides, I know you want to. I can tell.”When Bam stopped struggling, he let go of him. Khun’s fingers trailed down his arms until he got to his cheeks, which he cupped in his palms.

“All of your desires are displayed right in front of me-from the clenching of your jaw to your erratic heartbeat,” Khun smirked, bringing their faces closer together. “I could hear it from a mile away.” His thumb lightly touched his bottom lip. Bam shivered under his warm body and bewitching stare.

Khun’s head dipped and Bam squeezed his eyes shut. He let out a shaky breath as he felt Khun’s lips press on the corner of his mouth. His fluttering eyelashes grazed Bam’s cheek and his breath was hot against his neck.

Khun murmured into his ear, “Join me. I could show you a fun time.”

Enthralled by the softness of his voice, Bam barely registered the faint click of handcuffs from the bed frame.

Wait.

Wait, wait...handcuffs?

“I’ll give you a day to think about it.” Khun sat upright, slipping a card into his breast pocket. “Give me a call, will you?”

Bam frowned silently. He knew he had lost, but that didn’t mean he liked it at all. The man slipped off the bed and Bam felt his eyelids close, the scent of sleeping gas and a hint of roses being the last thing she remembered.

---

Hours later, Bam regained consciousness. A woman stood over him, shining a light in his eyes and giving a relieved sigh when he stirred.

“So...did you finally..get some?”

Bam gave a pout and Hwaryun responded with a lighthearted chuckle. As she picked the lock of the handcuffs, he tried to wrap his head around everything that happened. Once his wrists were free and he was sitting in a police car with Hwaryun at the steering wheel, Bam came clean and confessed to his captain about meeting Khun Aguero Agnis. He told her the important details, like how he got his ass kicked, skimming over the part that made him blush. Bam left out Khun’s offer entirely.

“I should stay away from him.”

“Yes.”

“He’s dangerous and I should avoid him at all costs.”

“Exactly.”

“But there’s a problem,” he thought to himself.

Bam brushed his finger along the corner of his mouth, where Khun’s scarlet lipstick stained his skin. His fingertip lingered for a moment before he bit his thumb, the heat burning from his flushed cheeks.

“I can’t stop,” he whispered.

He was charmed, intrigued, but worst of all-

-he was addicted. 

---

Later that night while Bam pondered over his decision, he fished the card out of his pocket, blue rose petals spilling out when he did so. He gaped at the petals sitting in his palm and let a small smile rest upon his lips.

The rose was a symbol of the mafia gang. Khun had claimed him as his own.

Bam grew flustered at the thought and left the petals on his desk. He fell asleep with a pounding in his chest and the realization that he had been marked by a mafia boss.

[cloudywriter]

i never got to say i love you - 1

~~~

A/N: heyy, so i wrote this like a month ago when i was super into reading some modern university au acotar fanfiction & then i even planned out a whole storyline but then i just kinda sat on it. but i like it so i decided i would just put it out there, i can continue it if people actually like it too.

masterlist & AO3

~~~

Feyre walked along the sidewalk leading to one of the dorm buildings of her new school, Velaris University. 

Although she was focused on lugging her single suitcase behind her as one of the wheels was broken, she couldn’t help but admire the tall impressive structures that surrounded her. She could hear the trickle of the Sidra river to her right while observing the courtyard adjoining multiple dorm buildings to her left. The courtyard was large and pristine, made of stone, with an abstract silver metal statue which stood erect in the middle loosely resembling an infinity sign. The housing units were situated around it in a semicircle.

A path winded down from the courtyard and back towards the main section of campus, organized there were the various department buildings, the cafeteria, admissions, and so on. Feyre was making her way up said path after she retrieved her student key card from the main office. 

She had just transferred from Courts Community College after she finally saved up enough money to afford tuition to VU. 

In her senior year of high school, Feyre visited the small city in which Velaris was located, Prythian, with her school on a field trip. It was on that small excursion she fell in love with the Prythian and the university it had to offer. In particular, Feyre loved the huge art district that occupied nearly a quarter of the city. 

Her family looked down upon her choice of major, art, they told her time and time again that it was impractical and her success rate in the field was microscopic. However, their comments didn’t deter her, she couldn’t imagine studying business or stem as her father suggested, it simply wasn’t for her. She wanted her life’s work to be doing what she loved even if it came with the risk of struggling financially down the road. 

Feyre finally reached the tall double glass doors of the middle building. She grabbed her ID from her jacket pocket and held it up to the scanner. The device beeps three times loudly, flashing a dot of red light. Feyre tries again with the same result. She sighs, did she get a faulty card?

“Turn it around,” a feminine voice suggests from behind her.

Feyre whipped around. There stood a young woman, likely Feyre’s same age. She was breathtakingly pretty with long, bright blonde hair that stopped below her chest and eyes that were a shade darker than honey. She was fairly tall as was Feyre and her demeanor demanded respect. She seemed sure of herself and her looks and capitalized on them. 

“The black bar on the back is only good for your dorm room door, to get in the main entrance you have to scan the front of your ID. I know, it’s weird, took me five minutes to figure it out yesterday,” the woman explained. 

Feyre gave an appreciative smile and nodded, turning her attention back to the scanner which now responded to her with a flash of green. 

“Thank you,” Feyre breathed as she opened the door and held it for the student behind her. The girl strolled through and smiled at her. “It’s no problem.” 

Feyre directed her attention to the slip of paper in her hand, failing to remember where it said her room was. Room 223, Level 3. A blonde head peered over her shoulder. 

“Room 223? You’re right next door to me!” 

Feyre offered her a smile. “Does that mean you’ll show me the way?”

The blonde looked delighted and casually looped her arm through Feyre’s as if they’d been friends for years and led her towards the elevator. This slightly alarmed Feyre, she had never had very many friends let alone pretty girl friends, usually, they weren’t all too kind to Feyre. Despite the fact that her sisters, Nesta and Elain, were rather popular. Nesta easily took on the role of the pretty mean girl, though she wasn’t outwardly mean often. She just radiated the energy and didn’t bother with most people. 

Elain, however, was friends with everybody and was sweet to all who crossed paths with her. She had almost everyone in the school wrapped around her finger, though she had no idea; from the boys who tripped over each other to open the door for her and the girls that scrambled to sit near her at lunch. 

Feyre did have one redeeming quality in high school, well, redeeming person. Her high school sweetheart was Tamlin Spring, the football team’s star quarterback. He was one of the boys in the school that the girls drooled over constantly, but somehow it was Feyre who caught his eye and it was Feyre he asked to accompany him to homecoming. You’d think this high up connection would earn her some credit but no, the girls still teased her, convincing her it had all been a dare. 

Feyre remembers, in a fit of rage and embarrassment, she stomped over to Tamlin’s locker after the last bell and confronted him. It was there he promised her that it was no prank, it was there he first kissed her. Feyre felt like they had clicked until her mother suddenly passed away from an undiagnosed illness, the death leaving an ugly, deep scar carved into Feyre’s and her family’s lives. Feyre’s life took a turn for the worse and with it so did the relationship she shared with Tamlin. 

The gentle ding of an elevator door alerted Feyre before she found herself spiraling too deep into her thoughts. 

Her leader didn’t seem to notice her brooding state as she took Feyre out and to the right, down a decently sized hall. The floor was mostly white tile with dark blue, almost purple tiles making a design down the middle; the walls were painted a light gray and littered with numerous posters. Feyre didn’t have time to read what all the papers said before the woman stopped outside a wooden door, a plate engraved with the numbers 223 to its left. 

“This is your room. I’m just next door in 225.” 

Feyre nodded. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” The girl smiled at her and then her face lit up in realization. 

“Oh, my gods! I didn’t even introduce myself!”

Feyre let loose a small smile. “I’m Feyre,” she said at last.

To her surprise, the mysterious girl pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, “I’m Morrigan, but I really just go by Mor.” Mor then pulled back, still holding Feyre at arm’s length. 

“My roommate is named Vivane by the way. We dyed her hair silver in the bathrooms last night, you can’t miss her. She’s always hanging out with her boyfriend though, so if you ever need anything don’t hesitate to come find me!” Mor offered politely. 

“Thank you.” Feyre breathed out a little sigh of relief having found my dorm without too much trouble.

A girl down the hall called Mor’s name, she muttered a quick see you later and disappeared into the herd of students and luggage. 

Luckily, Feyre managed to open the door without issue and hauled her suitcase inside. She felt a little silly walking here with such a small amount of stuff, most students had a cart full of their belongings. 

Feyre observed the room, the same white tiled floor and light gray walls as the corridor she just exited. It wasn’t ridiculously small, but it would still be a bit of a squeeze. Nothing Feyre wasn’t used to, having shared a room with her two older sisters growing up. A few boxes and bags were already scattered about on the right side of the room. It was clear her roommate had been here and left. She dropped her black, sticker ridden suitcase on the empty bed, plopping down next to it. 

Both sides of the room were identical, two tall beds held up by drawers pressed against opposing walls, two nightstands, two narrow desks situated at the ends of each bed, and one decently sized wardrobe, all made of the same light creamy wood tone. Rather flimsy-looking violet plastic chairs were also tucked into the desks. 

Feyre began to unpack her clothes into the drawers holding up her bed in an attempt to distract her growing anxiety. She pulled out her bag of art supplies and dropped it on her desk. The bag held a paint set that was on its last leg, paint brushes that were horribly frayed at the ends, both drawing and colored pencils, sad leftover eraser nubs, and her worn leather bound sketchbook. 

The door to her room opened up with a click revealing who could only be her roommate standing on the threshold.

She was on the short side and was relatively curvy. Her skin was a tanned brown and she had dark brunette curly hair that was tied up in a loose bun. They both stood observing each other for a second.

“I see you took advantage of the half-off sale at the uni shop too.” She spoke with a smile, gesturing to the identical, oversized VU sweatshirts they were both wearing over black leggings. 

Feyre returned her smile and nodded. “I’m Feyre.”

I held out my hand which she took instantly with a squeeze, “Alis.”

Feyre felt a sense of relief in Alis’s presence. She had a gentle, calming, almost motherly aura about her. Alis invited Feyre to join her for an early dinner to get to know each other.

The girls entered into a huge room adorned with the same marble looking tiles and gray paint mixed with pillars of dark brick filling the walls where windows were absent. Two of the walls were almost completely glass letting a vast amount of natural light fill the space. Above them, three huge circular lights hung from the high ceiling. Wooden tables of various sizes and the same shade of violet accent color plastic chairs neatly filled the room. Stretching along two of the walls were a number of booths to grab food. 

Feyre and Alis settled on grabbing salads from one called Sabrina’s Kitchen and snatched a table for two near one of the walls of windows. They talked about the usual, their family, where they were from, what they were studying, etc.

Feyre learned that Alis was from the town adjacent to Feyre’s own, Springlee. She used to live there with her sister, her husband, and their two boys. She only left to pursue a degree in education but missed them terribly.

Feyre gave Alis a quick rundown of her own home life, leaving out many details that came with her dysfunctional family and explained she’d transferred after two years at Courts Community, working on an art degree. Alis loved the idea of having an artist as her roommate and insisted Feyre paint pictures to decorate their dorm. 

They’d long since finished their salads but continued chatting as the cafeteria began to fill up nearer to dinner time. 

“Whoa, whoa. Don’t look now but the hottest group of guys just strolled in,” Alis gasped. 

Feyre giggled a little and rolled her eyes, she wasn’t the type of girl to fawn after hot guys anymore with her track record. She did not trust a pretty face. Alis’s eyes were transfixed behind Feyre. 

“Would you like me to grab you a napkin to clean up your drool?” Feyre poked at Alis. 

Alis playfully swatted her hand away. “Just look at them!”

Feyre huffed and turned around in her seat; she didn’t even need to ask for clarification from Alis it was clear who she was referring too. In one of the lines stood a group of three guys, she could hear them laughing and talking from her seat.

She could only see two of their faces, but that was all she needed. They all had similar shades of black or very dark brown hair and tanned complexions, not to mention how fit they all were. One’s hair was shoulder length and half was pulled back in a bun, the other two had shorter hair cut in rather nondescript styles. Though, the quietest one who had his arms crossed over his chest and only said a few words or offered a small smile every now and then had some curl in locks. The last one had his back turned to Feyre but if his backside and friends were any indication she could only assume he was equally as beautiful. 

Noticing Feyre’s prolonged glance, Alis spoke up, “who needs a napkin now?”

Feyre snapped back around and giggled. “Shut up!”

The sheer number of students piling into the room had it near overflowing as Alis and Feyre tore their eyes from the boys and walked back to their dorm. 

They sat on their beds and talked for a while more, mostly making up ridiculous ways to find out who those boys were and how to get their attention. Feyre doodled in her sketchbook while Alis suggested they break into admissions in an attempt to get some information on them, that plan quickly fell apart as she realized they’d need to know more than their faces. 

Eventually, both girls turn in for the night. 

~~~

enjoy, let me know if you want more or not!

[prince-claremont-diaz]

étoiles et fleurs

Summary: Lucas is next in line for the throne, about to be engaged to marry a young noble woman and he hates it. That is, until he runs into the curious florist, Eliott, on a walk through the city. Lucas has little choices in life, but will one of them be Eliott?

Word count: 2.9k 

Warnings: none

ao3 version:

ii.

Lucas sighed, putting his book down on his knees and turning to look out the window and onto the grounds. The massive garden was alive with colour, the lawn a vibrant green, flowers of every kind covering the hedges and trees and bushes. Roses and marigolds and lilies and carnations, perfectly trimmed and watered.

That day, it was a particularly clear afternoon, only a few pale white clouds bobbing along the pale blue June sky. Lucas could see one of the gardeners out with his clippers, trimming the hedges neatly.

Lucas looked along the corridor for any signs of life, tilting his head back against the window frame, tucking his knees in closer on the bay window. He could barely get a second of peace anymore now that he was technically dating Chloé. Although it was hardly dating since it was arranged and he couldn't stand the girl. The more he got to know her, the more he realised she was physically incapable of not talking, always going on and on about complete nonsense. She talked his ear off at dinner about annoying servants, complained in the garden about friends back home, babbled in the library about her new clothes she was sent.

Opening his book once again, Lucas pushed all thoughts about Chloé out of his mind and continued to read his book.

He was almost onto the next chapter, starting to get into the scene, when he heard quick footsteps behind him, followed by someone grabbing his shoulders. Lucas startled, dropping his book onto the floor with a thud and spinning around so fast his neck clicked. When he came face to face with none other than Yann, his startled frown melted into a grin. "You gave me a fucking heart attack, Yann!" he whined, shoving his friend and getting off the window sill.

Yann snorted, shoving his shoulder back. "Don't be such a drama queen—sorry, prince. It's not my fault you're jumpier than a kitten," Yann replied, smirking and jumping out of the way of Lucas' swat. "Oho, that's not very nice, is it? I know I'm just a servant, but surely you don't have to be so cruel!" Yann mocked defense, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting.

"Can I help you, Yann?" Lucas asked, crossing his own arms.

Yann shrugged casually, plopping onto the windowsill with his back against the window. "Shouldn't I be asking you that, your Royal Highness?" Yann teased. He digressed, straightening up. "But really, no. Mum let me go for a wander and I was bored so I came to exactly where I knew you'd be."

"How'd you know I'd be here? No one else knows about this area," Lucas asked, furrowing his eyebrows together, "No one ever comes here because it's not even near any staff quarters."

"Oh, Lulu, you underestimate me," Yann replied, "Of course I know where you hide from your little girlfriend. You're far too predictable, really." Lucas rolled his eyes. "A distant, mostly deserted corner of the castle which is relatively close to the library and has a good enough view of the gardens? Hmm, I wonder how I figured out you'd be here��"

Lucas leaned against the wall by the window and slid down to the floor with his back against the wall. "Okay, so maybe I am a little predictable," Lucas admitted. He lifted his fallen book and flattened out its pages, closing it properly and setting it down by his side. "But can you blame me for hiding? That girl never stops. I needed a break before dinner later on."

"How on earth would I ever manage to talk to her, Lucas?" Yann deadpanned, staring at Lucas, "I'm just the butler's son and she's a noble who is soon-to-most-likely-be-engaged to the heir to the throne."

Lucas groaned, shut his eyes and hit his head against the wall. "Fuck. Sorry," he muttered, "I don't use my head at all."

Yann poked his nose with his finger. "No, you don't," Yann said, "But it's okay. I forgive you."

They fell into amicable silence, Yann watching the gardener water the plats while Lucas fiddled with the pages of his book, legs outstretched in front of him. If he really strained, Lucas could just about hear the chirping of birds outside the window.

"Do you really think I'm going to have to be engaged to Chloé?" Lucas asked after they had been sitting in silence for almost 20 minutes. He looked over his shoulder, making Yann turn his head from the window down to him.

Yann sighed, placing a comforting hand on one of Lucas' shoulders. "I hate to break it to you, but yes," Yann admitted sadly, "Most likely. She's from a noble family that has pretty much always backed your family and she's been basically living here since late April. And you're of marrying age. I think it's safe to say you'll be engaged at least by the end of summer."

Lucas groaned, falling onto his side on the itchy carpet, burying his face in his hands. "But I don't want to marry her," Lucas whined, distorted by his hands, "She's annoying and talks too much and I'm not even 21 yet. I don't wanna marry anybody yet." Yann climbed off the bay window and settled down beside Lucas, forcing him to sit up. "I know it sounds stupid, but sometimes I really hate being the prince." Lucas rested his head on Yann's shoulder, scowling.

Yann reached up and patted his head. "I know, Lucas," he said, "I'm sorry." Lucas frowned deeper, glancing sideways.

"Sorry? What for?"

"Even though you're a royal and have all these privileges, at least I have more choices in life than you."

♤

Dinner that evening was a disaster. Lucas' father called him out for hiding from Chloé all day because she asked multiple people where he was (including the king!). This turned into his father yelling about duty and chivalry and honour and how Lucas would never be a good enough king. Chloé cried, his mother left the dining hall shaking, his father accidentally broke a plate slamming his hand on it in anger and Lucas stormed out of the dining hall with his hands curled into tight fists.

Lucas burst into the hallway, pacing the floor and breathing heavily, tightening and loosening his fists. The doors to the dining hall swung open again and Manon hurried out, holding up her scarlet dress, hair a mess. Lucas was hunched, leaned against the wall, eyes burning with hot tears as he tried to keep himself from punching the wall out of anger.

"Lucas? Lucas, are you okay?" she asked, striding over to him. She held his fists in both her hands, uncurling his fingers to reveal red rimmed crescents indenting his palms. "He's wrong, Lucas. None of that is true. You'll be a far better king than he ever has been, okay? You have more chivalry and honour in your big toe than he does in his entire body." She wiped the tears from his cheeks, smiling sadly.

"But what if he's not wrong? What if, when I become king, I ruin everything?" Lucas cried, sniffling. "And I'm hardly ready to marry anyone nevermind her."

"Maybe if you tell mother—"

Lucas cut her off and shoved her away. "No! I'm never going to be satisfied with my spouse and you know it," Lucas snapped, "I'll never be happy enough with who I marry and our parents won't ever care." Manon started to reply, but Lucas was already marching out of the hallway, heels clicking on the stone floor.

"Lucas, where are you going?" Manon called after him, hands on her hips and worried frown on her face.

"Out! Anywhere is better than here!" he called over his shoulder, storming down a flight of stairs. He heard Manon's heels following him down the stairs frantically, hair flowing behind her and skirt bunched into her fists. "You're not stopping me, Manon."

"Come on, Lucas. Don't do this. You can't just leave the castle."

Lucas stopped and spun around, fresh tears in his eyes, making Manon blur in his vision. "I'm just going for a walk, okay? I'll be back later." And before Manon could protest further, Lucas spun back around and stormed out the front doors once again.

♤

It was sunset by the time Lucas reached the middle of the city. He was mostly calm now, walking through the winding streets. The evening air was cool against his skin, having neglected wearing a coat, which left him in his simple white button down. All the market stalls were shut for the night as well, only a few shops and restaurants still open. The streets were almost deserted and Lucas only passed a handful of people, thankfully. He was considering turning back, shivering with cold, when he stumbled upon a small florists still open, warm light flooding onto the dim street.

Lucas pulled his sleeves over his hands and stepped inside the shop. He was instantly overwhelmed by the strong floral scent filling the air, along with the pleasant heat coming from a small fireplace in the corner. Lucas glanced around the entire store, brushing his fingers over the soft petals and leaves, occasionally leaning down to smell one.

"Hello," a voice said in his ear. Lucas lept to the side, whipping his head up, eyes wide. He found himself barely an inch away from the same florist from the market stall pess than a month ago.

"Fuck, you scared me!" Lucas exclaimed, clutching his chest.

The man chuckled, eyes crinkling as he smiled. "Sorry, I didn't mean to!" he replied, still laughing, "I was just coming to see if my customer needed anything. Looks like I found my favourite one."

Lucas flushed, distracting himself by fidgeting with the stem of a gloxinia.

"It's been a while. I was starting to think you were a dream," the man continued, "Or at least that you weren't coming back." The man was standing so close to Lucas he could feel his breath on the side of his face and neck. It sent a chill down his spine.

"Yeah, I've been, uh, busy," Lucas replied sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. "And I live just outside of the city, so it's hard to come here often, I guess."

"What a shame," the man said. "Where's your companion from last time? The magnolia girl."

Lucas snorted at the memory. "She's back home. I came here myself."

The man nodded and clapped his hands together once. "Right. Well, can I do anything for you today?" he asked, stepping away finally to gesture towards the flowers surrounding them. "I'm Eliott, by the way. I don't believe I introduced myself last time. Silly me." He held out his hand in front of Lucas.

Lucas shook his hand, lingering for far too long to be considered normal. "Lu—Louis."

Eliott smirked, a knowing glint in his eye. He's onto me. "Well, Louis, what can I do for you? Another arrangement for a special someone?" Eliott asked with a teasing lilt to his voice. He gestured around the shop again. "I can do loads of different bouquets for all occasions."

Lucas stepped past Eliott further into the shop, looking around the room at the seemingly endless array of flowers filling the room. They were set in baskets and vases and paper bags on the wall, overlapping endlessly in a rainbow of petals and leaves and ribbons. Lucas made his way all the way to the back of the shop where he found a bunch of parchment stuck to the wall, adorned with what looked like pressed azaleas and peonies.

"They're my favourite flowers," Eliott said, appearing by Lucas' side, "They symbolise my soul. Like spirit flowers or something."

Lucas walked ever closer to the wall, lightly touching one of the azalea petals. "So like floriography?" Lucas asked casually, glancing sideways at Eliott. Eliott's smile softened, looking down at Lucas through his lashes.

He nodded. "Yeah. Exactly like that."

"So." Lucas turned his entire body towards Eliott, who mirrored him. "What flowers am I? What's my soul flower?" Lucas asked, raising an eyebrow teasingly, suggestively.

A sharp intake of breath. A grin. A pause. Eliott looked Lucas up and down thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side. The silence in the air hung heavy and charged, but no less comfortable. "I don't know. I'll think about it," Eliott said after a moment. "Maybe come back and I'll have one in mind."

"Okay then…" Lucas turned around, circling the store once again. "Will you make me an arrangement at least? Any that you like. Any occasion you can think of," he said, walking backwards, grinning. Eliott followed him, eyes full of mirth.

"Now that I can do." And then Eliott was hurrying around the small shop, knocking down baskets and grabbing flowers here and there seemingly haphazardly. Lucas hopped up onto the cash desk, swinging his legs back and forth as he watched Eliott hurtling around the room collecting the flowers for the bouquet. It was the most fun Lucas had had in weeks, watching Eliott stumble and scatter around, a man on a mission, barely pausing for breath.

After five minutes, Eliott came over to the table with a bundle of flowers, laying them down and searching through the stack of ribbons. He pulled out a baby blue one and went to work arranging the flower assortment into the way he liked. Lucas watched with interest, giggling when Eliott dropped flowers or struggled over tying the neat bow to perfection. Finally, after making sure the bouquet was satisfactory, Eliott presented the bouquet with a flick of the wrist, holding it up for Lucas to take.

Lucas gasped as he looked over the arrangement. It was made with gloxinias, yellow tulips, white carnations and a few sprigs of heathers, all bunched together perfectly tied with the baby blue ribbon. Love at first sight, loveliness, admiration, Lucas thought to himself. The mixture of flowers smelled divine. Lucas glanced back up at Eliott, cheeks burning, and smiled flirtatiously. Eliott watched Lucas inspecting the floral arrangement, smirking, eyes glinting hopefully. Lucas took another whiff of the bouquet, eyes closing with contentment.

He looked back at Eliott and raised his eyebrows. "This is quite the selection of flowers you chose," Lucas said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

"Well I thought they would suit you, now," Eliott replied simply, "I'm glad you like it." He stepped forwards, closing the majority of the gap between them. He was only a few inches away, warm breath hitting Lucas' face with mint and coffee. Lucas sucked in a breath, eyes wide as he peered up at the taller man with awe and something he thought was attraction. Lucas could have sworn he saw a similar look in Eliott's bright eyes that stared straight into his soul.

"How much is the bouquet?" Lucas asked, taking a step back and clearing his throat.

Eliott blinked, stepping back as well, face falling briefly before returning to a polite smile. Lucas' heart fell with it. "You can have it for free," Eliott said, "Take it as a gift from me."

"Are you sure? I assure you I can afford it—"

Eliott nodded. "I insist. Your sweetheart must get gifts like these often. Perhaps you should get something for a change." Eliott pushed the bouquet closer to Lucas' chest, still forcing a polite smile. Lucas caught Eliott's wrist, staring at him.

"Thank you, Eliott."

Eliott gulped. He glanced at Lucas' grasp on his wrist and back at Lucas, eyes wide. "I'm serious. No one's ever done something like this for me. So, thank you," Lucas repeated, deadly serious. His heart was racing with the intensity in the air between them, eyes burning from staring at Eliott so long.

"Well, I'm glad I can be the one to do it for you," Eliott replied, finally breaking their eye contact, glancing at the bouquet. "You deserve—"

"Eliott? Are you ready to go?"

Lucas ripped his hand off of Eliott's wrist, jumping back and nearly tossing his flowers behind him. Both men turned towards the door to the shop where a young woman was standing looking at them curiously. She glanced at Lucas and he turned away, avoiding her eyes.

Eliott peered at Lucas and back at the woman. He cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck. "Lucille. I apologise, but I was just speaking with this customer and, er, got a bit distracted," Eliott replied, moving towards the back of the shop and disappearing behind the desk. Lucas watched the exchange with his heart at his knees, face scarlet.

Lucas took a deep breath, straightening his trousers and pushing past the woman–Lucille and into the street. "Thanks for the flowers, sir," he said over his shoulder, ignoring the woman and looking at Eliott behind her. "The recipient will love them, I'm sure," he added cryptically, smiling politely. Lucas turned fully away and began his trek back down the street, sighing.

"I'll see you again soon, sir." Lucas stopped walking. He turned back around and found Eliott standing outside of the shop, hands in his pockets. Lucille was unlocking the door to the shop, back turned to them. "Please." Lucille finished, turning to face Eliott and Lucas.

Lucas nodded stiffly, gesturing with the flowers. "If you can find my soul flower, I'll certainly be back for more of these arrangements," he replied. Before Eliott even had the chance to react or reply, Lucas was already hurrying away down the street. He looked down at the bouquet once again and couldn't help but smile despite the discomfort caused by the girl interrupting them.

Maybe he would be coming back to the city more often.

[side-effect-of-the-meds]

Merry Christmas! May I present (hah) to you, SoC Au Part 2!

It was noon before Kaz finally reemerged from the basement. With great difficulty, he dragged himself up the three flights of stairs and rinsed the blood from his body. Squeezing between the two dogs that now occupied his bed, Kaz let his exhaustion drag him under. He had school tomorrow. Missing school was the least of Kaz’s worries but if he wanted to keep playing Exy, he knew he had to keep up both his grades and his attendance. 

Sleeping through the remainder of the day and the entire night, Kaz managed to recover some of his strength. Waking early Monday morning Kaz managed to snag his cane. Nothing looked any different from the way he’d left it. He prayed that neither Lola nor Romero had entered the office while he slept. Kaz turned the dogs loose in the backyard before grabbing a quick breakfast and headed to school. All day long, Kaz was out of it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from straying back to the box in the safe. Now that he knew exactly who the man was, Kaz knew he’d be able to find something, anything, to point him in the right direction. 

Standing in his goal, Kaz watched the scrimmage, his thoughts drifting. Every member of Edison High’s Exy team had been handpicked by Kaz. None of them had been very good when they’d began. Half of them hadn’t even known the rules. Looking at them now, Kaz felt a small swell of pride in his chest that he squashed almost immediately. They’re just an investment, he told himself. 

Before Kaz, none of these kids had had anything to live for. Their lives were rendered barren and loveless by the opioids running rampant on the streets. Guidance counselors and motivational speakers were brought in each year, preaching about how life would get better. For many of them, it never did. Most kids on the streets of Baltimore grew up and fell into one of two categories: drug dealers or drug addicts. Sure, some made it out, but there weren’t nearly enough. It wasn’t that they didn’t want a way out. It was that they didn’t have one. 

Unlike many of the adults in their lives, Kaz didn’t go around spouting that bullshit. He knew his words would offer no comfort to the souls of the grieving. He knew the biting pain of being cold and alone and desperate on the brutal streets of Baltimore. He knew that it stole the will to live right out of you and making you cling fiercely to every scrap of kindness someone threw your way, no matter how cruel and unkind that person might be to others. He knew that it made people easy to manipulate and eager to please. 

Seeing an opportunity, Kaz jumped at the chance to build his own army. It took a great deal of bargaining but Kaz managed to convince Nathan to give him bigger, better jobs. The more dangerous the job, the greater the risk but with it came greater rewards. Building his reputation as Dirty Hands, Kaz racked up enough money to purchase the dilapidated hotel a few blocks down from the school. Kaz managed to finance the renovations with a loan from Nathan and opened it up to anyone that made the cut for the Exy team. 

With three meals a day, a roof over their heads, and a bed a little softer than the concrete walkways, Kaz's offer was hard to turn down. With such a big pool of applicants, there were a few kids that were already half-decent. Kids like that had no place on the lineup. Kaz didn't need a good team, he needed a desperate one. 

And they were. Every time Kaz stepped off the court he saw the ravenous glint in their eyes and it made Kaz smile. Not so long ago, they’d been the worst team in the district. Everywhere Kaz went, he heard the laughter of skeptics. 

“Poor Brekker,” Van said from his seat atop the desk in Kaz’s office. “You’ve really scraped the bottom of the barrel with this sorry excuse of a team.” 

“Look at them, Van,” Kaz said. He heard Van hop off the desk. Joining him at the window, the two of them watched the kids dragging their meager belongings up the walk.“When was the last time you saw Hutchinson smile? Or heard Cooper laugh? I’ll bet fifty bucks that today is the first time you witnessed either of those.” Kaz smiled when he saw the way Van’s expression soured. “So what if they’re the bottom of the barrel? They’ll play until their bones break and their lungs give out. So long as their hearts beat, they will fight. Do you know why?” Kaz asked.

“Greed?” Van replied, his own lips curving in a knowing smile. 

“Greed,” Kaz assented. These kids had fought tooth and nail for their place on his team. They knew, if they failed, it wasn’t just the game they lost. It was their home, their food, their whole life was on the line. Offering these kids Exy made them his. By breathing life back into the empty husks they’d been, that life was his to control.

“No one will ever believe in them. They’re the worst of the worst, Kaz. They’re those things you find at the bottom of a teacup. The…” Van scrunched his face up as he looked for the right word. “The dregs! That’s it.” After a moment’s consideration, he added. “You know that doesn’t sound half bad.” 

“The Dregs,” Kaz echoed, feeling the word roll across his tongue. Van was right, the name wasn’t half bad at all. 

The buzzer at the other end of the goal sounded, leaving the score 7-1 in Kaz’s favor. Filing off the court behind his team, Kaz let himself get dragged into a conversation about plays for Friday’s game. They had to win. If The Dregs had any chance of getting recruited for college, they were going to have to prove they were worth it. Kaz had promised his Dregs a future free of their demons and Exy was their ticket to it. 

In all honesty, Kaz’s Dregs weren’t much better of than their families had been. Anyone who knew an addict knew that their drugs were the center of their world. It was their solace, their safe haven, from the horror and misery of day to day life. Wasn’t Exy the same for the Dregs? Exy was their salvation. Exy was their solace. Exy was their everything. The Dregs were just junkies chasing a high, only better off than their drug-addicted relatives for their dependency gave them a future. Now that Kaz thought about it, no matter where he started or who he looked at, every one of the Dregs’ problems stemmed from the opioid crisis. Kaz would have to remember to thank Romero for handing him a team like this before he put him in the ground. 

Late at night, Kaz continued to hunt through the files in search of something, anything, about Romero in Nathan’s files. It wasn’t until late Saturday night that Kaz found anything. Kaz had originally decided to work backward from his arrival at the Wesninski house and found nothing. After some research, Kaz found that there had been an exponential increase in opioid users in 1984. Kaz decided to start there. He hadn’t known what exactly he’d expected to find in the files but it wasn’t this. 

There was a single unmarked drive in the subsection. Inserting it into the computer, Kaz found that it had multiple layers of encryption. Kaz slipped his phone from the pocket of his hoodie and called the only person that could help him. 

“Kaz, honey, it’s three in the morning.” Kaz could hear Van struggling to hold his temper.  

“I’m aware but it’s urgent.” On the other end, Kaz heard the sultry voice of a woman calling Van back to bed. Oh. “If you’re busy, though-” 

“What do you need, Kaz?” Before his luck could run out, Kaz explained his predicament. Half an hour later, Kaz opened the door to find Van standing at the door. Dark circles rimmed his bloodshot eyes. Shoving a cup of coffee into Kaz’s hand, Van moved past him and marched up the stairs. A small part of Kaz wanted to apologize. 

Van wasn’t like the rest of Kaz’s associates. Unlike them, Van wasn’t bound to him. There were so many things in Kaz’s life that he had no control over and it drove him mad. What if scenarios played through his head and hurled him into bouts of self-doubt that sent him careening to the brink of death. Having control over the lives of others distracted Kaz from his own growing worries. Being able to orchestrate incredible schemes, riddled with twists and turns that easily blindsided his prey reassured him of his abilities. Still, he wouldn’t be able to do it without information. For the longest time, Kaz had assumed that all he needed was information on the target: who they were, their habits, their appearance. He’d been wrong. Cons weren’t like pickpocketing. They weren’t one-off things. Kaz had found that if you wanted to be a successful con man you needed to be a bit of a renaissance man too. 

Lucky for Kaz, picking up new skills wasn’t hard. Fueled by vengeance and spite, there was very little that Kaz couldn’t teach himself how to do. Despite being a jack of many trades, coding just wasn’t something Kaz could do. He’d tried his hand at it multiple times but he simply didn’t have the knack for it. It hadn’t stopped him from trying to hack into the school’s database to dig up some dirt on his prospective teachers. Kaz never knew who he’d have to blackmail to do what but teachers seemed like people who’d need some extra convincing to get what he needed. Kaz’s own grades weren’t a problem. His team’s were. Enter Van. 

Kaz had never heard the name in his life nor could he conceive what kind of parents would name their kid that. As such, when Van first showed up in Kaz’s room uninvited, he’d rightfully lost his shit. Putting a knife to his throat and pinning him to the wall, Kaz had expected to see fear flood the boy’s eyes. To his infinite horror, Van had only pushed close until the tip of the blade bit into his flesh. Kaz watched in awe as a stream of blood trickled down from the point of his blade. 

A lazy smile stretched across Van’s face. A manic light danced in his eyes. In an all too friendly tone, he offered to help breach the school’s firewall and dig up dirt on every member of Edison High’s staff. When asked why he’d help, Van had only shrugged. 

“Why not?” he’d countered. “It’ll be fun.” Kaz had been skeptical but allowed Van to try his hand anyway. It had taken him no more than a few hours to dredge the deepest, darkest parts of the internet and find something on each and every member of, not only the school’s faculty, but their families, and the entire board of education. Kaz couldn’t refuse that kind of help. Van became Kaz’s biggest asset and, along the way, someone he’d come to lean on far more than he’d meant too. 

It wasn’t often that Kaz went anywhere without Van. Kaz didn’t actively seek the boy out. No, Van just had a habit of appearing wherever Kaz went. It irked him to not know how Van kept managing to follow him without getting detected. Not knowing his motives or being able to control him, scared Kaz far more. 

Kaz tried not to stare at Van as he worked. Nestled on the floor on a bed of sheets, surrounded by the dogs, Van seemed to genuinely relax. Kaz knew that Van’s usual laid-back attitude was a facade, but he’d never quite figured out what it was Van was trying to hide. On the list of problems in Kaz’s life, Van ranked just beneath his vengeance for Romero. Van had never done anything to harm Kaz. Not yet at least, but Kaz couldn’t help but fear that one of these days, Van was going to flip on him. 

“Why don’t you give up?” Van asked, not taking his eyes off the screen. His voice startled Kaz from his thoughts and he floundered for an answer. “You’re never going to solve me.” Kaz scowled. Van looked over then and smiled. It was the same lazy smile he’d given him when Kaz had pressed that knife to his throat. “Ask me.” For the last two years, Kaz had hunted for something, anything, that might have given him a clue as to who Van might be. Questioning people had come up empty. Few people knew he existed. Even fewer knew what he looked like. Van was a ghost. Kaz couldn’t even find his name in the Social Security database. Van was a nickname, short for God knew what, and every attempt to find his last name had hit a wall. 

“What’s your last name?” Kaz asked, knowing very well he wouldn’t get a straight answer. 

“Don’t have one. Maybe you could give me yours.” Van winked at him. Kaz wadded up a scrap sheet of paper and chucked it at his head. “It was worth a try,” Van said as he passed the laptop back over. He’d done it. Of course, he had. Kaz had yet to find a firewall that Van couldn’t breach nor a system he couldn’t hack. Kaz would have to find a way to put a leash on this kid and soon. 

Gathering the blankets up from beneath him, Van threw them over himself before curling up between the dogs. With a groggy ‘good-morning’, he fell asleep. Turning his attention to the screen, Kaz felt a thrill go down his spine. This was it. He was finally going to find the proof he needed to nail Romero. He could feel it in his bones. Romero would be sent to prison in disgrace only to be found dead in his cell days later. A wicked smile curled the edges of Kaz’s lips as he thought of all the things he would do to him. Romero’s death would not be quick or easy. No, Kaz had to pay him back for ten years worth of suffering. Opening the drive, Kaz found a single folder. Lenimen Parem, it read.

Of all of Kaz’s ridiculous obsessions, learning dead languages was his hardest to defend. Sure, knowing Greek and Latin roots gave him a deeper understanding of words but he’d yet to find a use for it. Until now. Lenimen Parem. 

“Better solace,” Kaz whispered. Feeling infinitely more pleased with himself than he should, Kaz navigated to the folder to inspect its contents. In it, he found scanned copies of handwritten chemists’ notes. Fractions were scrawled beside barely legible elements. Compounds were labeled in the order in which they’d been mixed. Scrutinizing the notes written beside each failed attempt, Kaz struggled to discern the purpose of these experiments. Slowly but surely, the sun’s rays snuck up between the shafts of the blinds and spilled through the curtains hung over the windows. Sleep threatened to drag Kaz under, lulling him with sweet words and seducing him with assurances of rest. After all, the drive could wait until tomorrow couldn’t it?

“Sleep, Kasimir,” Jordie cooed. “Tomorrow, I’ve got to run a little errand and then I’ll take you to the pier. How does that sound, lieve schatje?” 

“M’kay,” Kaz mumbled, his eyes fluttering shut. They were only closed for a few seconds before Kaz jolted awake. They’d never gone to the pier. They’d made it halfway there before Jordie and his friends caved and found a little alleyway where they’d be safe from prying eyes. A greedy light had danced in their eyes as they dug out their needles and their newest bottles. Kaz had begged Jordie not to do it. Jordie had shoved him away before inserting his needle into the soft cork of his bottle. Pain at the memories of their past life had driven Jordie to opioids. He’d sought solace in them. 

Lenimen Parem. Better solace. Kaz felt his heart stutter. Opioids. Nathan had been creating a new strain of opioids. Frantically, Kaz searched through the labels and formulas listed. The final listing was for a strain called Jurda. Reading through the notes beside it, Kaz felt his chest tighten with every passing sentence. By the end, he could barely breathe. 

Nathan’s purpose in Lenimen Parem had not been to simply heighten the experience of the drug. It was to heighten the addictive properties of it too. And he’d done it. Nathan had managed to manufacture a drug that produced the desired effects and compel the user to actively seek more. The downfall of the project had been the fact that an unknown impurity in the batch. Unable to discern the impurity that had made the drug so efficient and, Nathan had no choice but to abandon the project, settling for selling a less efficient strain. 

Warehouses were burnt down. A hit list of all the chemists involved in the creation of the drug was compiled. The only evidence left was the test subjects themselves. Anyone involved in the testing would have to be eliminated. Hundreds upon hundreds of names were compiled in the list, a number and a date by each. Dated 11.21.94 were seven names that Kaz recognized. Bishop Clark - 14. Sarah Hendriks -17. Inna Bethesda - 16. Roy Sanders - 16. Meena Reyes - 19. And finally, Jordan & Kasimir Rietveld - 10 & 6. 

[julesthequirky]

Forget Me Not -Two-

Summary: You wake up as Y/N Winchester, having no recollection how you came to be, all you know is there’s a Djinn out there and you have to find it. It’s your job, your duty, except the world isn’t as it should be. Castiel isn’t Castiel and he’s claiming you aren’t you. Or are you?

Warnings: Dissociative Identity Disorder, angst, language, car accident (in flashback)

3 YEARS AGO

You preferred to take the country roads, that way you could see all the lush greenery as it whizzed by. It made you feel at peace during your busy work load. You were slightly late and you knew you would be forever making apologies. So to try and at least make it a little more on time you allowed yourself five miles over the speed limit. You weren’t a daredevil and this was even a little wild for you. Adele was on the radio with her new song ‘Hello’. You sung along making your journey just that bit better.

You thought about your lines, going over them in your head and wondered what was in store for your character in general.

You turned a corner.

You didn’t see the car before it was too late. Your heart jolted going straight to your throat and in a knee jerk reaction you spun the wheel, trying to avoid hitting them.Your breath stopped, arms locked and your knuckles whitened, your eyes widening with terror as the car didn’t slow.

Your braced for the impact.

The car hit you from front left corner making your car flip over to the right. You shielded yourself, body buffeting with each roll. Your air bag never deployed and the dodgy seatbelt decided to snap back. The car stopped hitting tree, crunching up, and you smashed through the window, rag-dolling, hitting your head hard on the cold grass, knocking unconscious.

 Everything hurt. Your bones ached, your head pounded, your throat had glass stuffed down, making it hard to swallow. You groaned, gritting your teeth. A flurry of thoughts blew up in your mind. Where were your brothers? What happened to the vamp nest? Had they beaten you? Were you now one of them?

You felt a hand cover yours and you opened your eyes, the brightness blinding you. A familiar face sat beside you, donned in his usual get-up you let your lips curve into a weak smile.

“Cas.” You croaked, your eyes fluttered with the effort to keep them up.

His hands covered your face and he pressed his lips to your forehead. You moaned as the pain radiated throughout your body.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

“What happened?”

“You got into a car accident, darling.”

Baby. Oh my God, did Baby make it out? Were Sam and Dean okay?

“Baby…”

“I’m right here. Always here.”

You brain didn’t comprehend his words. You were too hung up about the accident. The last you remembered you neck deep killing vamps.

“Sam…Dean…Where are they? Are they okay?”

He reached above you, sounding a bell for the nurse. He squeezed your hand, his eyes expressing concern for you.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

But you could tell he was lying. His eyes had widened slightly, lines etched on his forehead and his lips set in a straight line.

“Cas…”

Before he answered, a nurse came in and he stood up, rushing over to her as soon as she stepped in the room.

“Something isn’t right. She’s not herself.”

“All right, I’ll get the doctor. Please don’t worry. I’m sure it’s only temporary.” She touched his shoulder and walked out.

“Did we get the vamps?”

He turned to you. He looked like he didn’t know what to say.

A doctor walked in and delight lifted his face.

“You’re awake, that’s good news. You’re in Vancouver General Hospital and my name is Dr Butler. You’ve been in a coma for almost two months. Do you know who you are?”

Two months?! That couldn’t be right.

“Y/N Winchester. Are you sure, two months?”

He looked to Castiel, they both shared the same look. He turned back to you and gave a tight smile, nodding.

“Do you remember what happened?”

You licked your lips, Castiel came back to your side and held your hand.

“I was in Marble Falls, Texas with my brothers Sam and Dean, we were…doing business there. Pest control.”

“Doctor, I think she thinks she’s her character.” Castiel said as he stroked the back of your hand. He gingerly touched your forehead. “I think she hit her head so hard she’s become the character she plays.”

Character?

“If she was thinking about her character before the incident, it could possibly be. How long would you say she’s played this person?”

“For about two years now.”

“How often does she play her?”

“Almost constantly, except when she’s at home or on break. Is it some kind of amnesia doctor?”

“It could be an alter of hers. She could have developed Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“You mean Multiple Personality Disorder?”

The doctor nodded.

“Well how long will it take her to go back to normal?”

“I can’t say, Dissociative Identity Disorder is rare and an alter can last from a few hours to maybe a few weeks or longer. I can run an MRI on her brain, it will detect any existing trauma and if any part of her hippocampus is damaged, but until she is her core personality, I won’t be able to tell if she does have amnesia.”

Castiel looked stricken, he had a hand to his forehead and his hand on yours tightened.

“Do it, give her the best treatment out there.”

“For now, you could try to integrate her with everyday things, something, anything, even from the smallest thing could trigger her core personality.”

Castiel nodded.

*

A week was far too long. You hadn’t remembered anything during that time. The doctor explained when you had become your core self, you were still most likely to be asleep. He called it recouping, you called it a takeover.

The last thing you did remember was the crash.

At the hospital, you talked in lengths about what you were thinking, and how the crash happened. To your husbands delight you didn’t have any amnesia, but you were both worried about Y/N Winchester resurfacing.

You were shocked when Misha explained you had been in a coma for two months.

Outside,after being discharged you hugged your husband, hard, not never wanting to let go. He had been there everyday, you hadn’t known it at the time but you could tell when you awoke. He had waited patiently for you and even dealt with your alter. And for that you didn’t know how to repay him, you didn’t know how to thank him.

All you knew was, if it happened to him, you’d do the same thing.

 NOW

It was a maze and you hadn’t a clue where you were going. You just went as you pleased. You spotted Lucifer and made a beeline for him.

“Y/N, no!”

Lucifer turned and smiled at you, spreading his arms wide.

“Y/N, how’s my favourite girl.”

You got one good punch in before fake Cas pulled you away. You struggled against him, yelling at him that it was Lucifer. Fake Sam and Dean rushed over to him, as Lucifer stemmed the blood coming from his nose.

“That’s not Lucifer. He’s just the guy who plays him. Why don’t I take you to your trailer?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

You didn’t hear fake Dean’s words as fake Cas guided you away. He pulled you to the an area where sets of trailers presided. You walked passed two enormous ones, walked passed smaller ones and bumped into fake Cas as he stopped. This trailer was on the small side. It looked more like a caravan than anything.

“This one’s yours.”

He lifted up the mat and produced a set of keys, he stepped up and opened the door.

“It’s a little basic, but you fell in love with it the first time you saw it. They tried to upgrade yours actually, but you protested.”

Inside shabby chic and minimal came to mind as you stepped in. It wasn’t your style at all. The other you had an orchid on a table, had photo’s of fake Cas and her, including the same wedding photo. It was tidy, whereas you knew you were a mess. It was pretty, but it was plain.

“Why don’t you get yourself acquainted, while I go talk to Bobby.”

You spun on your heel and grabbed his arm, stopping him from going anywhere.

“Bobby? Bobby died. I mean he did and there’s a Bobby in apocalypse world.”

He took your hand, squeezing gently and giving you the same small smile that was fast becoming regular for you, before letting go.

“I mean the director, Bobby.”

You let out a weak oh before turning back round and heading into her cupboards. The door closed behind you and you let loose inside her trailer. She didn’t live on burgers and fries, oh no, this woman, Misha’s wife lived on the crème de la crème. It was lucky for some.

Next you found scripts in folders. You pulled them out, casting your eye on over the highlighted lines, you gasped. You had done all these things. You had said those things. Had she written it all out? Fake Cas’ words came to you. None of this was real. Well you were real.

Wanting to know more, you snagged her Macbook and turned the thing on. She had no password. That was dangerous. You had a look through her files. There wasn’t anything spectacular, just speeches about mental health, specifically aimed at personality disorders.

You scoffed and found your way to her images. Most of them were ‘you’ with fake Cas and friends. ‘You’ at events and woah! Fake Cas private photos. You flew past the inappropriate ones only to find more images of ‘you’ with fake Dean and fake Sam. ‘You’ were even with Lucifer and Rowena. Crowley too!

You couldn’t take any more and slammed the lid shut. You went into the small bedroom and hunted through what little clothes she had left here. They were all plain. Where were the plaid, the rock t-shirts, and the jeans? It was full of leggings and pastel coloured t-shirts with slogans on, or fun images.

“Girl, you need a wardrobe revamp.”

Your hope of getting out of the clothes you were in was a no go.

You tripped over a bag which had somehow gone out of its way to get in your way, and crashed through the screen door and into the bathroom.

“Fuck, ow.”

You picked yourself up and nosed at her toiletries. She liked to smell like strawberry and cream whereas you just gave a crap if the motel had soap or if the bathroom by your bedroom was restocked.

The door to the trailer opened and you heard fake Cas talk to himself about your mess.

“Y/N?”

“In here.”

You sniffed at the products she had, then turned to see fake Cas in the tiny hallway. He had a hopeful smile on his face.

“See anything you know?”

“God no, and those photos- I’m scarred for life now.”

His cheeks tinged pink but he didn’t apologize.

“Y/N thought they would resurface her if her alter came through. I’m a little disappointed they didn’t work, but… what can you do?”

“What did the boss man say?”

“To try your best. We’re a little behind schedule and we’ve never done this before. They’re gonna put out new lines, so you won’t have much to say or do.”

“Lines?”

“A script.”

You nodded and spritzed perfume in the air, and sniffed.

“Ooh fancy.”

“Whilst we wait, why don’t you tidy up a little?”

You pulled a face. You hated doing that. Your room in the Bunker was a mess. Sam and Dean had quit asking you to make it a bit more representable.

Your stomach rumbled interrupting you both. You couldn’t remember when the last time you ate was.

“I’ll show you to the canteen.”

You stepped over things as you made your way to the door and hopped down the steps. He locked up and you observed him as he put the key under the mat. He lead you past the trailers and buildings until you came to a serving gazebo. You grabbed a plate and loaded up with two or more food items. You always had a big appetite and it was one of the things Dean loved about you. You could scarf down an entire hog roast and still be hungry.

You ate like you had been starved. Fake Cas or Misha as he called himself ate with you. He tried talking to you, but you held up a finger, then pointed to your food and shook your head. You didn’t like to talk whilst you ate. Food was of the God’s and you liked to give it the respect it needed by giving it your sole attention.

You went back for seconds and had dessert. You saw fake Cas talk to the people in he tent, he spoke with Gabriel giving side glances to you. He was talking about you and you didn’t like it. You wanted to know exactly what he was saying.

When the pages arrived you read them furiously. Fake Cas was talking to someone. True to fake Cas’ words, they didn’t get you to do a whole lot. You turned the page.

Rage boiled your blood and your hands shook, bunching up as you read the paper, unable to control the anger racing through you. You scrunched the few sheets you had and looked towards fake Cas.

The fuck were they about to kill you off. You were here to stay.

Forget Me Not Tags:

@ezilyamuzed @ain-t-bovvered

Misha Fic Tags:

@goobykeding

[seungkwanslowqualityenglish]

Florist!Taeyang

Who: Taeyang

Word count: 3486

Warnings: Some minor cursing.

You owned a small flower shop, Sweet Stems, it was a small store but you were lucky to have opened it especially at your young age.

There was another florist just a few streets over, Sunshine’s Flowers, but the realtors had assured you in a town so big that two flower shops could thrive even with only maybe five streets separating the two.

And they were true, or at least you assumed his shop was also thriving due to the large number of flowers you often saw there on your way to work, and how most would be sold when you passed by again returning home.

Taeyang didn’t like the idea of another florist in the area when he first heard of your store opening, he thought you were some corporate flower shop that would take his business.

He had came by your flower shop early in the morning, you were watering some of the hanging plants and he was taken aback.

He expected some crotchety old man or some man wearing a suit or uniform, but he was surprised to see you.

The moment he saw you struggling to water the hanging plants, that were hanging just about six inches above your head, he instantly gave up on his plan.

He rushed out just as another customer came in, running back to his store.

You hadn’t heard the bell ring when Taeyang entered, but you heard it as he left, seeing an elderly woman entering and what seemed like a purple haired boy running across the street.

The store you had opened easily stole some of Taeyang’s regulars, but he didn’t mind, it was mostly the people he hated having to work with anyways.

The middle aged moms that would refuse to pay if one rose was more of a reddish pink than a true red, the rude husbands that would complain if one flower stem was longer than another because their wives hate asymmetrical things, and so forth.

But you never had problems with them, and they quickly became the main source of your income.

You regularly saw the middle age mother who would bring her toddlers in, the man you knew was cheating on his wife and trying to appease her with flowers, and the elderly gentleman that bought flowers for his wife of sixty years weekly.

Honestly you loved your job, and you’d never exchange it for the job your parents wanted you to have, like a nurse or doctor.

Money wasn’t your top priority, happiness was, and being a florist is what made you happy.

Taeyang found himself unable to stop coming by, he’d never come into your store, but he’d walk by and look at you, sorta stalkerish but he was just too shy to come in and actually talk to you.

Everything was going perfectly until that one day, it was a Thursday morning, and everything started to unravel.

It was 5 a.m. when you were woken up, the alarm at your shop was going off, and the police had been called.

Rushing to the store you saw a horrible sight, broken glass, destroyed flowers, and a cash register that looked like it had been hit multiple times with a shovel.

Everything you had worked for was destroyed, the police said they found no one in the store, but it seemed that someone had broken in through the glass windows in front in the search of money.

You always put the money in a hidden safe, meaning the robbers found none, so they instead destroyed your shop.

They said they would do their best using the security footage they had, but not to get your hopes up.

The police advised you to go home, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to do that, you couldn’t just go home with your shop how it was.

Sitting on the counter, the only surface without glass shards on it, you cried.

After working so hard, here you were crying because your shop was destroyed.

Taeyang woke up as usual at half past 5, and something felt off.

He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, except his flowers, but he had a habit of walking to work just to go by your store, and then walking around the block at lunch to see your store again.

It sounds weird, but he kept telling himself to go in and talk to you; but he never would, always getting really shy and deciding not to each time he almost did.

This day was different however, he left to work early and as he was walking heard a slight sobbing.

It was someone crying, it was you crying that he heard.

He couldn’t stop himself from rushing over towards your store, seeing the store he passed by daily in ruins.

He was concerned, pushing open the door to see you on the counter, sobbing.

“Are-are you okay?” He asked.

The voice shocked you, you had been there for almost an hour crying to yourself.

No one had stopped to ask if you were alright, you didn’t even know if anyone had stopped.

Looking up, you saw a purple haired stranger, the one you had seen on your first day, unknown to you.

Taeyang quickly made his way across the room, managing to luckily not step on any class.

As he got to you, he grabbed your hand, looking at you like he was trying to see if you were injured.

“Are you okay?” He asked once more.

You nodded in reply, before staring down at your hands.

It was all gone, like that, everything destroyed and useless.

It would take you months to get everything back to how it was, rebuild and replant.

And not only that, but also all the orders you had for the next two weeks that needed to be filled.

“I’m fine. Just fine.” You said through tears.

Taeyang however didn’t believe you. “You don’t seem fine.”

“Of course I’m not fine, just look around, it’s all gone, destroyed, I have nothing.” You practically yelled at him.

You shouldn’t have yelled, yet he said nothing, just nodding as he listened to you.

“All my flowers, dead, all my vases, destroyed, they might have as well burned my shop to the ground, it would have done the same about of damage.” You said, looking around at the ruins.

Sighing. “I have orders I can’t fulfill, I have no idea what I’m going to do.” You said, close to tears once again.

Taeyang honestly didn’t know what to do, he wanted to tell you he could help, but he thought letting you know he’s also a florist would cause you to think he caused this, which he didn’t.

“I could help you, I like gardening and grow a lot of flowers, I can help you.” He suggested.

Shaking your head, you start to think about how you are going to tell all your clients that they won’t be getting their flowers any time soon.

You had enough grown in the greenhouse in the back, that luckily didn’t get destroyed, to maybe fill all the preorders for the next three or four days, but after that you had none.

You didn’t want to accept his help, you’d just explain to your customers what happened, and if you lost them you lost them.

Taeyang sighed as you shook your head. “It won’t be a problem, I’d like to help you. I know that if I owned a flower shop and this happened to me, I’d be thankful for someone’s help until I got back on my feet. And if it makes you feel better, I could even charge you for the flowers, if you just don’t want my help since you think it’s a handout.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be that bad.” You murmured, before nodding.

Looking up at him. “But only my preorders that I don’t want to cancel on, that’s all I’ll let you help me with.” You told him.

Nodding his head, he smiled, before handing you his phone. “Give me your number, so then you can tell me how many and what kind you need, and I can bring them to you so you can fill the preorders.”

Putting your number in his phone, and handing it back, you received a text from an unknown number seconds later, his number.

“Just tell me how many and what kinds, and I can get them to you. I grow a variety so hopefully I’ll have everything you need.” He said, before checking the time on his phone.

As he checked, he realized he was supposed to open up in about twenty minutes.

Stepping back from you, he smiled at you before he raised his hand, wiping a stray tear that was dripping down your cheek. “Don’t be afraid to ask for any, I can get them to you, but right now, I should probably get to work. And don’t be afraid to call me for anything, even just to talk, I won’t mind.”

Nodding as he left your store, you went into the back, starting to clean up around the store.

The day was long, between you cleaning the glass and dirt off the floor so that the customers that had preorders could walk through safely.

Most were shocked that someone would do this, completely destroy your store after all you hadn’t been opened that long.

A few said something along the lines that it might have been the rival florist in town, but you quickly brushed those claims off, since why would the rival florist do something like this, destroy your store completely.

It was five days before you called in to Taeyang asking for flowers, you had used all the ones in your greenhouse and was three red roses short for Oliver, the old man that came in weekly and got a dozen roses for his wife of like sixty years.

“Um, hello? Taeyang? Hello?” You asked into the phone, as the person on the other end had picked up.

Taeyang wouldn’t lie, he had a mini heart attack when you called him, like wow this beautiful person was actually calling him. “Um, yes. Hello.” He replied.

As he answered, you sighing, thinking momentarily you had the wrong number. “Are you busy right now?”

“No, do you need any flowers.” He replied, setting down the arrangement he was working on.

He was busy, but honestly for you, he was never busy.

“Do you happen to have three red roses? I’m working on my last preorder to be delivered today, and I’m three short from filling the order.” You said, hoping he had three.

Taeyang looked over to where he kept his red roses, before nodding, forgetting that you couldn’t see him through the phone.

“Yes, yes, yes. I have some, you need only three?” He asked, as he realized you couldn't see him nodding.

Sighing in relief that he had some. “Yes, only three. Where would you like to meet so I can get them?”

As you asked that, honestly Taeyang started to panic, you come get them, see his flower shop, no, just no.

“Are you at your store, I could swing by and drop them off, I’m just about to go on my lunch break, so it won’t be out of my way.” He said.

“I am, and are you sure, I don’t want to inconvenience you.” You replied.

He nodded once more, before replying. “Oh, it’s not an inconvenience.”

About twenty minutes passed before you heard the door opening, he had arrived with the roses you needed.

Rushing out of the back, you saw Taeyang standing in your store in the state it was in now.

It was cleaned with one glass panel replaced, while the other still had a tarp covering it.

“I see you’ve started to clean it up.” Taeyang said, as he also looked around your store.

Nodding as you walked towards him. “Yeah, one glass panel is in, the other is arrive tomorrow, next week my new tables and shelves come in, and I’m also supposed to have someone come reinforce the glass also.”

“That’s good, oh yeah, here are the roses you asked for.” Taeyang then said, holding his hands you, giving you the roses.

As you reached out to take them, you counted four, you only asked for three.

“I only need three, why did you bring four?” You asked him, watching as he started to blush.

He stepped forward, taking the largest of the four out of his hand.

“Three for you bouquet and one for the prettiest flower I’ve seen today.” He said, before placing the rose, that he had luckily taken the thorns off of, behind your ear.

As he did that, he started second guessing himself. “Was that too cheesey, I feel like that was too cheesey.”

“Oh it was, but it was sweet, so I can forgive the cheese.” You said, as you took the other three roses from him.

Stepping closer to him, you smiled up at him. “Thank you for the roses. But how can I ever pay you back, I feel horrible just taking these from you.”

Taeyang stood for a moment, he could ask for something basic like money, or he could use this as an opportunity to get a date.

“How about you go out with me tonight in exchange for them?” He asked, before immediately regretting it.

He then started to stumble over his words. “Yet, if you are busy or or if you just don’t want to, I don’t mind, it’s fine, you don’t have to go out with me if you want to, or if you are taken, or if you have plans, or you don’t have to.” He quickly said.

A soft laugh slipped past your lips, watching as he started almost freaking out. “I’d love to go out with you, how about pick me up here at seven?” You replied.

He nodded, happy you hadn’t said no, he honestly expected a no. “Yeah, yeah, seven works, seven is perfect, I’ll pick you up here at seven.”

After that he quickly left, not wanting you to change your mind, plus you assumed his lunch break was ending soon.

As you finished the bouquet, you had a smile on your face, he was sweet and honestly from how he reacted he didn’t think you’d say yes.

The bouquet was finished and you set off delivering it to the elderly man just a few houses over, often he came by to get it, yet with your store in the state it is, you didn’t want him to have to come all the way down for it.

To say the date went well would be an understatement, it went amazingly, and one date turned into two, then soon you’d say the two of you were going steady.

The two of you quickly had a daily routine, he’d help you fill your preorders every morning, your hidden kisses in the back of the store, and he’d bring a random flower and compare it to your beauty or your relationship.

Before long, you were filling your last preorder, and until your flowers were finished growing you’d have no more orders to fill.

Your store had been completed, now you were just waiting on your flowers to finish growing, flowers that Taeyang insisted on helping you plant because two people can plant faster than just one.

It was weeks since you started dating, before your flowers finally started to sprout, and Taeyang still came by your shop daily to give you a flower, it was part of his routine and he refused to stop it by now.

“Gardenias mean secret love, how is our love secret?” You questioned him, as you pulled him into a kiss.

Taeyang shortly laughed, his hands finding your waist, pulling your body against his.

“Do you see us making out in the main room for everyone to see?” He asked, before meeting your lips again.

Softly laughing, you returned his kiss before nodding. “Touché.”

You watched as he left to go to work, you returning to watering your flowers before you left the store.

Walking through town, you decided to go check out the other flower shop, you had no reason really, just thinking maybe it would be nice to know exactly who your competition was.

As you walked in, you saw the back of a familiar head, then heard a familiar voice.

“Welcome to Sunshine’s Flowers, how can I help you today?” Taeyang asked, as he heard the door open.

He didn’t bother to turn back, instead just focusing on the bouquet in his hand.

You scoffed, stepping forward. “I like gardening and grow a lot of flowers, my ass.”

“I can’t believe I believed all that I love gardening shit, of course you just have to be a florist. All those customers are probably right, you probably destroyed my store so that you could get all the business yourself, you couldn’t handle a competition. And to think, I thought I was falling for you.” You ranted, before turning and running out of the store.

Taeyang turned around, shocked at your words, as you ran out, he started after you.

You were already around the corner by the time he got out the door, he hadn’t lost the person he thought of as his love, but also his best friend.

The next few days your phone was bombarded with calls from him.

He begged for you to just listen to him, just heard him out, but you wouldn’t.

He hadn’t told you he was a florist, he probably planned this all, destroy your shop, make you fall for him, then probably get you to close your store, then break up with you once he was done.

Taeyang felt horrible, he felt like his heart had been ripped out, you wouldn’t let him explain and that’s all he wanted to do.

A week past and he stopped trying to contact you, you felt saddened that he did, like he no longer cared about you, you felt bad for wanting him to care about you after how you ignored him.

Taeyang had started planning, and he was planning how he thought he’d win you back.

You had forgotten you gave him a key to the store, but he hadn’t forgotten.

To say you were surprised to walk in and see all the flower containers full of assorted flowers and all the decorating you were putting off done, would be an understatement.

Then there he stood, Taeyang, hanging up the last of the hanging plants.

“I don’t need your pity flowers or pity decorating, I can grow my own flowers and decorate myself.” You told him, glaring at him as he finally turned to face you.

“I know, I know you can, but I just want you to know I’m serious about you.” He said, starting to walk over to you, hoping you’d at least hear him out.

“I was afraid to tell you, I thought you’d react how you did. I didn’t want to lose you, but I did. Yet, I’ve realized I’ll do anything to get you back, you want me to close my store, consider it done, I’ll do anything for you.” He finally said, as he stood in front of you.

“Please, just forgive my stupid ass, I’ll do anything.” He added as he looked down at you.

Sighing, you looked around, he cleaned up the place nice, you couldn’t deny that. “Fine, i’ll give you one chance.” You told him.

“But only one, mess it up, and you can get used to the idea of never seeing me again.” You added.

He nodded, before leaning down and kissing you, which you gladly kissed him back.

“I guess I can’t give you gardenias anymore.” Taeyang softly murmured to you, confusing you.

That’s when you heard the door open, the open sign Taeyang had turned on attracting one of your regulars, who seemed sorta shocked to see the town’s rival florists arm in arm.

“Well I guess our love isn’t exactly secret any longer.” You replied, before turning to help the customer.

The reopening of your store was great, you had feared losing your regulars, but they all returned once you reopened.

Your flower shop had became Taeyang and your flower shop, before long.

He was soon closing his store and you moved all the greenhouses and flower growing over into his store, his store being where the flowers were sold and your store being where they were sold.

On any random day, a customer can find one of you two making a bouquet while the other clings to them, hugging them.

Only at Sunshine’s Sweet Stems, can you find the best flowers that are grown with love, but not only love for flowers, but also love for each other.

[avengers2k18]

First Day - Steve Rogers

words - 2032

Requested - None

Warnings - None

Description - First day on a job can be tough, at least Captain America is there to make it all better.

I step into a large, mirrored elevator and press the button 'L20'. The doors slowly close as I inhale a deep breath. Smoothening out my black pencil skirt, I close my eyes as I attempt to calm my nerves. First days are hard, especially if you're working for such an important organisation such as SHIELD. Although I have worked for the F.B.I in the past, this organisation is a little different.

I've heard Fury isn't the easiest person to work with, or so I have heard which is probably why my nerves are up to the roof. I have always had a passion to work in Law enforcement and this is the top facility that there is and If I mess up I can kiss my dreams goodbye, sure I work for the F.B.I but that mostly involved criminology whilst my main criteria lie’s in science and SHIELD will let me do just that.

The elevator comes to a halt and the doors slide open. I step out and are immediately greeted by a skinny brunette woman.  "Hi, I'm Agent Maria Hill, you must be Miss Y/N," she says with a slight smile. I smile back, "Yes I am, it's great to meet you". "If you follow me, then we can get you started," she says and she starts walking down the hall. I follow suit as my eyes cast over the designs on the walls as we walk. She leads me into a large open room with many high-tech computers lined up in rows and twice as many people. "This is the main lobby, this is where most of your colleagues will be working but not you" she raises her arm and points up to a platform where Nick Fury is stood looking right at us. " You will be working up there alongside me". I knew this was a pretty important role but I didn't know it was working alongside Maria Hill important.

Maria leads me up a set of stairs and is greeted by Nick Fury himself. "Welcome Y/N, I am pleased that you have accepted this position," he says with a nod. "I am grateful to have this opportunity, thank you, sir".I say while trying to calm my nerves, "As Miss Hill has already told you, you will be working here with herself, I have heard great things about you Y/N don't disappoint me", he stares at me intensely and leaves with a nod of approval. I wipe my sweaty palms on my skirt. "Now let's get you set up," she says as she leads me to a large glass monitor.” I believe you were the top computer programmer in your department, is that true?” she asks with a raised brow. “ Yes, I was the head of a department called STEM, which develops advanced technologies to address unique investigative and intelligence challenges not found in the private sector”, I was very proud of my work In that field. “Wow that is impressive, I was worried that it would take you time to get used to our advanced technology here, but I have a feeling you will do just fine”, Maria says with a gleam in her eyes.  

                             ⇽ ⇾                ⇽ ⇾             ⇽ ⇾

"You did well consider it is your first day Y/N," Maria says as we pack away, "Thank you its good to hear that", I say honestly. "Do you know your way out?, I have to take care of some business first before I leave", "I know my way to the elevator, I can just work it out from the". I say while mapping out the way in my head, "If you get lost just ask someone" "will do, bye now", I gave her one last smile and make my way to the elevator.

I press the button for the elevator and wait patiently for it to arrive. As I'm waiting, I feel a warmth presence beside me, I turn my head and standing beside me is the Captain America. He's dressed in a jacket, black jeans and a tight white t-shirt that leaves little to imagine.I let out a small gasp and feel my face turn red. His head turns towards me and smiles, "Hello, I haven't seen you around here before, are you new?" I lift my head and internally scream, "Yeah I am, my name's Y/N" "It's nice to meet you Y/N I'm Steve Rogers". The elevator doors open and we both step in. "how was your first day?" he asks curiously, "It was amazing, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity". I really was grateful to have this job, more so now that I've gotten to meet the Captain himself. Our conversation was cut short as the doors slide open revealing the main lobby. "I look forward to seeing you around Miss Y/N," Steve says as he steps out the elevator and disappears into the sea of people before I can bid my goodbye.

The next day as I sit in my leather chair typing away alongside Maria, I hear multiple sets of footsteps behind me, I spin my chair right around and are met with Dr Bruce Banner, Nick Fury and Tony Stark. All very intelligent individuals. “Agent Hill” Fury barks as he marches is way over to the both of us. “System 32, the regeneration cradle is down, start it back up now”, Maria quickly gets to work whilst I admire the other two gentlemen that are in the room. Mr Stark Looks my way and gives me a wink, my cheeks heat up instantly and I turn back around to continue with my work.”It's not letting me reboot the system”, I turn back around at the panic in her voice. Dr Banner quickly takes over from Maria, “Looking at the database here, System 20 through 45 are not in our system”, Fury and Stark Both tense up at Banners words,” So what does that mean?” Dr Banner turns around and faces the others, “It means someone else is controlling the systems”. Furys eye darts straight to the computer screen, “That's impossible our programmes are the most strategic to hack into, Do you know who or what is controlling it?” Dr Banner turns to the computer screen once again, after a few moments of quick research, he turns back around and says something I never thought he would say “ a programme called STEM”.

I gasp and four pairs of eyes turn to me. I look up and my gaze lands on Maria, her eyes light up in realization, Bruce turns to me after my sudden outburst, “Do you know what that is?” I look around at everyone before I prepare what to say, “ “before I started here I worked for the F.B.I Federal Government, more specifically In a department called STEM, which I was the head off, they develop advanced technologies to address unique Investigations, all we did was make equipment to help the criminology department, After I left a man took over from me called Samuel Le Doux, his plan Is to change the department into some kind of robotic lab to make special weapons for the F.B.I.” Everyone around me was speechless, until Tony who has been weirdly quiet about this whole situation,”So why would he be trying to hack into our system, when we have connections to the government?”. I try to think of a reason as to why he would do this, but I can't think of any, “Maybe the F.B.I doesn't know”. Fury readjusts himself and stands straight, “Miss Y/N is there anything you can do to get them off our system?” I nod and quickly move over to Maria’s computer, I type in two different codes that temporarily shut down the STEM system down.” They are off the system but it won't take long before they realise what caused them to shut down”.Tony nods his head, “Bruce, Y/N follow me”. I stand up and follow Mr Stark, leaving my workstation behind.

Mr Stark and Dr Banner lead me into a hospitalised room that has Dr Helen Cho Hawkeye and the infamous Black widow. Clint raises his head at the presence of more people in the room. His gaze turns to me “who the hell are you?”, just as I'm about to state who I am, Tony buts in,”no time for that, Y/N the regeneration cradle is one of the systems that STEM has overwritten, can you fix it?”, “I think so”, I make my way over to the cradle and start typing the same two codes that I previously type on the computer, a few moments pass as the cradle glows green, I smile to myself. Helen gives me an appreciative nod and turns to Clint to print new tissue on his wound. My gaze lands on Natasha who smiles at me, I smile back. “Excellent” Bruce says with a light chuckle, I stand up straight and get ready to leave when Tony interrupts me,”We aren't finished yet Y/N, come”, he says and he motions with his finger to follow me. I follow once again behind him and he leads me into an open space room, large windows lined the walls, overlooking the city. I was too busy looking at the view I didn't realize that Maria was in the room along with Steve Rogers. My cheeks turn red as I look up and make eye contact with him, his face lights up with a smile and before he can say anything Tony speaks first, “Cap a word”, Tony signals for him and Maria to follow him and we are all lead into a private meeting room, glass lining the walls, making it look like a glass box. Soon after we entered we are joined by, Natasha, Clint, Fury, the scarlet witch and Hawkeye.

Tony starts off the conversation,” Right, first things first, this is Miss Y/N she’s new here, previously worked for the F.B.I more specifically, STEM and that is what hacked our system”, he says as he motions towards me. All eyes turn to me, I look down but not before catching Steve gaze, as he smirks. The redhead perks up at the new information, “what exactly is STEM?”, I turn to her, “It's a department developed by the F.B.I, it developed advanced technology, I used to run the department”, I tell her. Steve shoots her a curious glance, making her shift on her feet under his gaze. Fury fills everyone in on what has happened in the last few hours, leaving one question on everyone's mind, why did they hack the system?. The meeting comes to an end, not much else can be said till they get more information. Everyone stands up to leave, Tony and Bruce head to the lab, whilst everyone else attires to their rooms. As I exit the room a strong hand grabs my elbow gently turning me around to come face to face with Steve. “This Samuel guy, would you consider him to be a threat?” her asks worry laced in his voice, “Possibly, STEM has a lot of dangerous equipment and materials and if that gets into the wrong hands, who knows what will happen” I state honestly. “you did good in there, answering everyone's questions, I know It can be a lot”. I sigh in relief, “thank god, I've never been interrogated like that before” I say as I laugh nervously. Steve leads me back to my desk, I gather my bag and a file to continue my research at home. We continue to talk as he leads me to the same elevator we met at yesterday. “I'll see you tomorrow Miss Y/N”.Steve leans in and kisses my right cheek lightly and walks away, my cheeks burn bright red and a squeal escapes my mouth before I can stop. The Captain America just kissed me.  

[sariasprincy]

Where it Happened ix - ItaSaku

Part i    Part ii    Part iii    Part iv    Part v    Part vi    Part vii    Part viii       Part ix (here)    Part x

Yes, I know this is massively late. What else is new?

Where it Happened part ix

keep reading

“What are you still doing here?”

Without picking his head up from the wall, Itachi opened his eyes. He angled his head towards Shisui as his older cousin stopped in front of the chair he had claimed only five minutes earlier. “I still have another six hours on my shift.”

Shisui shot him a look that clearly stated that hadn’t been what he was implying. “I meant what are you still doing here? In this hospital, in this city.”

A long sigh escaped Itachi. He had just performed a valve replacement before being pulled into emergency surgery the moment he scrubbed out.  And his shift wasn't even halfway over. He was the epitome of exhausted. This was the first break he’d gotten since walking through the doors that morning and he didn’t want to spend it debating with Shisui. Again.

“Not now, Shisui…”

“Then when?” Shisui slipped into the empty chair across from him and leaned back, his attention focused solely on his younger cousin. “You’ve been back for two months and you’re already miserable.”

“I am not miserable.”

“And apparently you’re a liar now too.”

Itachi scowled. “Who do you think it was that convinced me to come home?”

Shisui didn’t immediately answer. Guilt flickered across his face, causing Itachi to immediately regret his words but he didn't take them back. “Alright, maybe I did convince you to come home for selfish reasons, but I...I thought you were just being stubborn. I thought if you had talked to your father and sorted things out, we could go back to the way things were, but…”

A pair of nurses hurried past the row of chairs behind where Shisui was sitting, and Itachi watched them disappear around the corner before he sighed softly. “Things will never be the same here.”

There was a finality in his statement. As if he was finally voicing a truth they had all been trying to avoid for so long now. It had been kept deep in the back of his mind but Itachi had known all along that this place he had once considered home would never be a safe haven again. Too many things had happened. Too many things had changed. And he needed to change with it.

“You should go,” Shisui urged.

Itachi eyed his cousin for a long moment, wondering when he had become so mature. It wasn’t a side he often showed but he smiled nonetheless. Even if it was filled with nostalgia and quickly fading.

“My mother…”

“Mikoto will understand.”

“My patients-.”

“I’ve already reassigned your cases,” Shisui smirked.

Itachi arched his brow curiously. “How long have you been planning this?”

“A few days.”

Against his better judgment, Itachi chuckled quietly. He couldn’t find it within himself to feel annoyed or manipulated. Because the truth was he had been itching to return to the hospital that had begun to feel more like home than his actual home.

He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t one pink-haired cardiac surgeon that made him miss the life he had started to build across the country but he would only be lying to himself. He missed Sakura. He missed their banter and her no-nonsense personality. She was easy to talk to and he could rely on her when he needed another….well, him.

Itachi had tried to convince himself that his affections for her were nothing more than a crush. She was just someone he had redirected his attentions, a distraction, but as the days passed into weeks and weeks into months, he was beginning to understand she was more than that. He cared for her. And he missed her. He wanted to go back. He had to go back.

“What about you?” Itachi asked as he fixed his gaze on Shisui again.

His cousin shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ll be fine. Besides, it won’t be the last you’ll see of me.”

The last of Itachi’s anxieties faded upon Shisui’s smile and for the first time since he had returned home, he had something to look forward to. “I’ll need to book a flight.”

If possible, Shisui’s smirk turned even more smug. “I already have. You leave tomorrow night.”

xx

Over two months had passed but it was as if things had ever changed. The condo Itachi had rented during his extended stay was still waiting for him as was the car he had left parked in his parking stall. His mother had asked him multiple times if he had plans to give notice to the landlady, but a part of him had been unable to give up the small living space he had made his own. Like he knew one day he would return.

Itachi didn’t linger long in it now, only stopping to gaze out the window at the view that had become so familiar for only a moment before he showered and changed into a fresh suit. He had a scheduled meeting with the Chief in a few hours and if he knew Tsunade as well as he believed he did, she would have quite the earful for him for leaving so abruptly.

He passed the coffeehouse he used to frequent on his way to the hospital and quickly stopped in. The same barista was behind the bar and she smiled in recognition before she made his usual.  He waited patiently as he reread the email from the Chief’s secretary, confirming his appointment with Tsunade later that morning.

A moment later his attention was ripped away as the sudden screech of tires clashed with the blaring of horns.Itachi picked his head up just in time to see the immediate aftermath of a delivery truck striking a city bus broadside. People both inside and outside the coffeeshop paused in front of the windows, blocking the majority of the damage, but the screams and shouts for help could be heard throughout the intersection.

Without pausing, Itachi sprinted out the front doors. A few civilians were already hurrying towards the bus to help and so his focus shifted to the delivery truck. The entire front end was crushed, crumbling the door and making it impossible for anyone to get in or out, but the window still was mostly intact and he pulled himself up to it.

“Someone, please help me!” the driver called.

“I’m here,” Itachi said, drawing the man’s gaze. Fear danced behind his eyes and flickered across his face but it lessened upon sight of him. “My name is Itachi. I’m a doctor. What’s your name?”

“Chi-Chiyo.”

“Alright Chiyo, what hurts the worst?”

“My leg,” he answered. Both his legs were stuck under the dashboard, making it impossible to assess the damage. “I think...I think it’s broken,” Chiyo added.

“Without moving your neck or back, can you tell me if the bone has broken the skin?”

It was a moment before he answered. “N-no. I don’t think so.”

“That’s good,” Itachi told him calmly. “What about your chest? Does it hurt to breathe?”

Chiyo shook his head, causing Itachi to immediately still his movements. The frightened man tried again, “No. I think-I think I’m okay. Can you help me out of here?”

“Chiyo, I need you to stay here and try not to move,” Itachi said calmly. He could hear the sobs and cries of the injured through the rest of the wreckage and he was itching to see how bad it was. “The fire department is going to have to cut you out. I need to go check on everyone else, but I need you to stay still.”

“No, wait! Please don’t go,” he begged.

Itachi bit back his impatience. “You are going to be fine, Chiyo. But I have to go check on everyone else.”

The plea was only too apparent on the man’s face, but  Itachi said nothing before he jumped back down off the truck and hurried towards the bus. It was far worse than he thought. There were two casualties he noticed immediately, but he quickly turned away to help those still alive and in serious condition.

By the time the first responders began to survive, he had already stemmed the blood flow on three survivors and was in the process of stabilizing another when they suddenly lost a pulse. He began chest compressions and didn’t stop even as the paramedics loaded them into the ambulance until he felt the familiar throb of a heartbeat under his fingertips.

The minutes ticked by as the rig raced down the main road. The lack of trauma equipment was making him restless, but after asking for an ETA for the fourth time, the familiar emergency entrance for the hospital came into view and Itachi breathed a small sigh of relief as the first responders unloaded the patient to the awaiting doctors.

“Uchiha? What the hell are you doing here?”

Tsunade was eyeing him half surprised, half annoyed as he stepped out of the back of the ambulance behind the stretcher. She waited for him as the rest of the staff rushed the patient inside before they hurried into the ER after them. “I am here to discuss the possibilities of signing an extended contract.”

The Chief shot him a pointed look. “And you thought you would come in style?”

“I have a meeting with you in an hour,” Itachi said as he pulled off his suit jacket and hung in on an empty hook reserved for trauma gowns. “But I believe it is safe to say that we will have to reschedule. I need to get this patient into surgery. Do I have privileges?”

Tsunade pursed her lips but her decision was made when a flatline was suddenly called. “Get in there.”

With barely a nod, Itachi swept into the trauma room.

xx

Sakura was upset. Beyond upset actually and more into the realm of downright pissed off. Her emerald eyes were narrowed as she scanned the surgical board, eyeing the long list of ongoing surgeries. A nurse was in the process of updating the board and she watched her pen move with active interest as she cataloged the current traumas.

“Does that say that there’s a Cardiac Tamponade in OR 3?” Sakura asked suddenly.

The nurse paused in her writing to glance over her shoulder at her. “Uh...yes.”

“And how exactly do they plan to repair that with the only Cardiovascular attending standing here?” When the younger woman just stared wide-eyed, Sakura’s glare deepened. “Why the hell wasn’t I paged?”

The nurse just blinked at her bewildered, a bit taken aback to be on the receiving end of Sakura’s harsh words. Sakura knew it wasn’t her fault, but it had been a crazy day for the hospital.

Ten trauma surgeries, back-to-back. Ten victims had come in from a bus crash downtown and every single one that had been rushed through their emergency room doors had been brought down to an operating room. Sakura had been in and out of surgeries for near that of eight hours, and she didn’t understand why she hadn’t been paged for a surgery that obviously needed her skill and experience.

Admittedly Sakura was tired and cranky. She had put in a lot of extra hours in recent weeks and she was pretty sure her blood had turned into coffee and caffeine, but she didn’t offer the nurse an apology as she spun on her heels and hurriedly caught the elevator to the surgical floor.

A surgical team was already inside the OR and silently Sakura watched them work through the windows of the washroom as she pulled on her mask before scrubbing. Irritation still simmered in her chest but she made sure to scrub thoroughly before she finally slipped into the room.

“Who the hell decided it would be a good idea not to page me?” Sakura asked loudly. She accepted a sterile cloth from a nurse and dried her hands as she gazed pointedly about the room.

“That would be me.”

Sakura stilled. She knew that voice.

Automatically her eyes drew to the person standing in the Lead Surgeon’s spot. Even under the scrub cap and mask, she recognized him immediately. Everything about him was familiar: his tall, lean form, his stance, his stunning, black eyes. Even his technique as he cut and sutured was unmistakable.

“Itachi.”

He glanced at her briefly at the call of his name before he returned his attention to the task at hand. Emotion struck her suddenly and sharply in that simple look, twisting and knotting in her chest until she didn’t know how she felt.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He had gone and left her behind, and now he was standing here as if he had been there the whole time. Betrayal took root under her breastbone and she fixed Itachi with a dark glare. “What the hell are you doing here, Uchiha?”

“I am working on resolving a fairly complicated Cardiac Tamponade,” he replied without looking at her.

“You don’t work here.”

Itachi paused to glance at her, his eyes unreadable. “I do as of seven hours ago.”

She blinked. “Under whose authority?”

“Chief Tsunade.”

He returned to the patient with his answer, leaving Sakura speechless. She hadn’t seen him all morning; they must have just been missing each other. And she hadn’t spoken to Tsunade since the night before as they were both pulled in and out of surgery.

Sakura felt blindsided. She wanted to yell and shout and hurt him all the ways he had hurt her, but she refrained. There was still a patient on the table in serious condition, and the only person she trusted to help them more than her was Itachi himself. He may be an ass, but he was an incredibly intelligent, incredibly talented ass.

The surgical staff was beginning to stare. There was nothing more she could say without causing a scene, and so without a word, she dropped her towel onto the floor before she marched out of the room. She ripped her mask off and tossed it in the garbage in the scrub room before she headed back out into the halls, in search of one person in particular.

She found Tsunade before the surgical board.

“When the hell were you going to tell me that you hired Uchiha Itachi back?”

Tsunade pulled her hazel eyes away from the large whiteboard slowly to peer at her. “Is that a problem? We still haven’t found a replacement for his position.”

“You should have run it by me first,” Sakura said, her voice unforgiving and laced with an edge of steel.

The older woman arched her brow but didn’t remark on her tone. “You and I both know you can’t run a department, never mind by yourself, when you have other obligations to the hospital. You’ve turned down every other applicant. I felt since you had no problems working with him before, you wouldn’t have any objections to hiring him back.”

“It still needs to be approved by the board.”

“It was forty-five minutes ago,” Tsunade told her. “As soon as Uchiha is out of surgery, I’m presenting him with a contract.”

Sakura blinked incredulously. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You were in surgery,” the Chief countered. “And the board only requires five votes.” When Sakura continued to frown, Tsunade turned to face her fully as curiosity burned in her hazel eyes. “Did something happen between you two that I’m not aware of?”

Sakura didn’t immediately offer an answer.

Itachi had kissed her. And then he left. She had asked him to stay and he had walked away like it hadn’t meant anything. Like she hadn't meant anything. She could admit that it wasn’t as bad as proclaiming his love or sleeping with her and leaving her alone to deal with their unborn child. Perhaps she was overreacting, but she couldn’t deny the hurt that thrummed in her chest.

“No,” Sakura eventually said. “Nothing happened.”

xx

The sky was dark outside the hospital windows, the moon hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. Itachi watched them drift past as he pulled on his suit jacket, only turning away as a resident tentatively called his name. Hyuuga Hanabi was standing in the doorway of the Attendings’ lounge with a chart in hand and he silently stepped away the window to accept the offered binder.

His patient was stable. And their labs were clear, meaning he could go home tonight without concern. “Are you working tonight, Hyuuga?”

“I stayed last night,” she told him. When Itachi glanced at her, she flushed and immediately amended her statement. “But I can stay again.”

He nodded as he flipped the chart closed again and passed it to her. “Good. I want her labs checked again in a few hours. Page me if there are any changes for the worst.”

The young surgeon-in-training nodded before she took the chart back. However, she didn’t immediately turn to leave and Itachi turned back to her as she toyed with her next words. “Can I ask, are you just visiting or are you back?”

For a moment, Itachi merely regarded her. When he found only curiosity in her gaze, he murmured, “I plan to stay for some time.”

A genuine smile passed her face. “Welcome back then.”

Her energy was infectious and Itachi found the corners of his mouth turning up but he didn’t say anything more before Hanabi finally exited the lounge. It was only once he was alone again that he realized something. No one else had welcomed him back. Not even over the course of his ten hour shift.

A strange emptiness settled behind his ribcage as his smile vanished as quickly as it had come. The lounge suddenly felt so empty without any other surgeons present, and silently he slipped his old employee card into his pocket before he left the hospital.

Out in the parking lot, Itachi scanned the rows of cars, searching for where the intern who had picked up his vehicle had parked it. He had barely scanned the first stalls when a familiar face caught his notice.

Sakura was following the walkway down to the employee parking lot, the strap of her purse in the crook of her elbow and an overnight bag thrown over her shoulder. She hadn’t seen him and Itachi quickly followed her, wanting to catch her before she drove off.

“Sakura,” he called.

She picked her head up from where she had been digging through her bag for her car keys. When her eyes landed on him, she frowned. “My shift already ended, Uchiha,” she said as she resumed her search.

The use of his surname was not lost on him nor was the irritation sharpening her tone. It was the same one she had used in the OR earlier that afternoon, and it seemed that time hadn’t cooled her mood.

“Can we talk please?” Itachi asked quietly as they stopped beside a dark midsized SUV.

“You can talk to me tomorrow when I get in.” She didn’t spare him a glance as she finally located her keys and popped open her trunk. In one smooth movement, she slipped her bag over her shoulder and tossed it in before she reached up to pull the trunk closed again.

It was quickly becoming apparent that she was content to end their conversation there as she turned towards the driver’s door, but Itachi quickly moved around her, his hand coming to rest on the door handle before she could reach it.

Sakura glared at him, silently conveying that he would do well to move before she made him move. He knew she would too, and he shot her a pleading look. “Sakura…”

Her expression didn’t soften but the immediate threat faded. “What?”

She shot that single syllable at him like a bullet, leaving a sharp, stinging pain in its wake, but he didn’t flinch away. He understood her frustrations. She was disappointed and angry and he suspected hurt, even if she hid it well behind frosty, emerald eyes.

“I know that my leaving upset you. I am truly sorry.”

“Are you sorry you upset me or sorry for not telling me you were leaving?” Sakura asked pointedly.

“Both,” he admitted. “When I first came here, I never intended to stay. It was only supposed to be temporary.”

“Then why did you come back?” Sakura snapped.

Itachi didn't immediately answer. He had a few reasons for coming back, some more significant than others and some he wasn’t quite ready to admit aloud. Especially not with Sakura still looking like she was one misplaced word away from physically removing him from her path.

“Because of you,” Itachi finally said. When she scoffed, he quickly continued, “And Kakashi and Neji and even Ino. You all have breathed life into a place that is normally filled with pain and suffering. You all remind me what it was that made me choose to become a surgeon in the first place. That is why I came back.”

Sakura looked away as her anger lost much of its vibrancy. He waited with bated breath for her to speak, but when the seconds continued to tick by silently, he pressed quietly. “You asked me to stay.”.

She shook her head slowly. “But I didn’t ask you to come back.”

Her words were soft spoken but the betrayal rang clear in her tone. Her hurt resonated like it was his own and Itachi found himself unable to meet her gaze as a sinking feeling suddenly settled in his chest. “I needed time to get my life back together.”

Again, Sakura didn’t answer. That was when the first raindrop fell on Itachi’s hand before another peppered his skin next to the first. When he met her eyes again, Sakura’s face was unreadable. Not blank, but full of so many emotions it was hard to decipher one from another.

“Can we talk over dinner?” he asked. “Or coffee?”

Sakura didn’t move. For a long moment she simply stared at him as the rain began to quicken, striking the ground in slowly growing droplets. And just when he thought they would stand there forever, she murmured quietly, “You never called. Or texted. I never even got so much as an email. So you can’t have that much to say. And I know that I don’t either. I’m going home. I’m tired.”  

Her rejection struck Itachi like a physical blow but he said nothing before he opened her door for her. He waited until she slipped behind the wheel before he closed it behind her and stepped away, silently watching as she backed out of the parking stall and drove away.

It seemed after all they had been through together with the cases and the late nights, and the shared losses over ice cream and pizza and all manner of junk food, they were back to where they had started: Itachi, the new attending, and Sakura wanting nothing to do with him.

to be continued...

[djinmer4]

From Petals to Flames (GoT)

It starts on Dragonstone with flower petals.  Soft, delicate petals in every shade of blue with fall from his mouth when he coughes.  No aches or pains or heaviness in his chest, like the petals are appearing from nowhere.  They dry fast, wrinkling in the hot air until they resemble the fragile paper the queen has imported from Essos.  Ser Davos suggests getting a maester to look at him, but he can’t afford any weakness at this time.

Unnerved, he tosses them out of windows or drops them into the fires that are omnipresent on the island.  Hopefully this is just something bad reaction to being on Dragonstone and away from the North for so long.  He ignores the shards of ice, shards of winter sky, and shards of ocean deep, to focus on winning Dany (Daenerys) to their cause.

“Hanahaki disease.”  The coughing had not stopped upon leaving Dragonstone, instead progressing until he was coughing up entire winter roses.  “It’s a rare disease, first identified in Yi Ti.”

Samwell steps back from examining him with a frown on his face.  This has grown into a usual occurrence for them.  From the first meeting where Sam denounced him for taking up with the murderer of the Tarly family, to when Sam had revealed to all his banner men that he was actually the son of Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen (confirmed by the Three-Eyed Raven), the fat Reachman has made it clear that he no longer considers Jon a friend.  Jon had tried to respect that by staying out of Sam’s way.

But there is no one he can trust with this.  Maester Wolkan had served the Boltons and now acted on his sister- his cousin’s orders.  There are a few Dothraki healers, but anything they find will be told to Daenerys right away.  Sam may be angry with him, but he can trust Sam not to tell anyone else about this.  “What’s the cause and the cure?  Will I be able to fight?”

“You’ll be able to fight.  It can take years for Hanahaki disease to kill you; flowers will fill your lungs and roots will grow through your chest.  You die by choking on petals and drowning in your own blood.”

Jon winced as he put on his shirt back on.  “Sounds like a bad way to die.”

“Worse than being run through then resurrected as a wight?”

“That might be worse.  How is it caused and how is it cured?”

Sam looked at him with an unreadable expression on his face.  For a second, Jon wondered if he would refuse to tell him, or if there was no cure.  Then those fat lips firmed before he opened his mouth.  “Alright, I’ll tell you.  The cause and the cure are one and the same.”

Jon’s never been so happy.  When told about the disease and the cure, Daenerys had been remarkably positive.  “I know I won’t ever be able to bear children.  This will allow you to continue the Targaryen line, and also solve the issue of the rebellious North.  And if you love her, so much for the better.”

He’d been amazed that the proposal had been accepted.  Looking around at the grim but unsurprised faces of his former banner men, he rather thought that the Three-Eyed Raven might have warned them about his illness and the solution ahead of time.  But it was a stroke of luck for them too.  The North could keep it’s independence, but still gain the dragonglass from Dragonstone and the manpower from Daenerys’s armies.  All that was necessary was for Prince Jaeherys Targaryen, Jon Snow, to marry the Queen in the North, Sansa Stark.

If the acceptance of the North had been unexpected, the complete acceptance of the Starks had been a miracle.  Well, almost complete acceptance, Arya had refused to talk to him ever since he and Daenerys had presented the proposal to the Northern council.  And Bran’s feelings on the matter were less acceptance and more indifference.  As for Sansa, she had smiled that porcelain smile of hers and said yes immediately.

She had been so beautiful on their wedding day, dressed in white with accents of grey.  With her flaming hair, she had been the image of a weirwood, made into a woman.  She hadn’t bothered with a maiden’s cloak, but when Arya gave her away and he had wrapped her in the black fur she had made for him at the Wall he thought his heart would burst with love for her.  And the wedding night was the best he could have hoped for.  She had been reticent and shy (no surprise given what that Bolton bastard must have done to her), but warm and so wet when he entered her.  Since then, he took her every day, sometimes multiple times a day, hoping to plant his seed before he had to head farther North to confront the King of the Others.

The only flaw in his happiness, was that he hadn’t stopped coughing out winter roses.  But he didn’t really expect her to actually love him just yet.  Once the war was over, he’d have plenty of time to win her over.

He didn’t understand why he wasn’t getting better.  They had won the war, at the cost of most of Daenerys’s armies and all three of her dragons, and returned triumphantly to Winterfell.  But instead of petals, now there were stems too.  The thorns tore at his throat, and now blood came with the roses every time he coughed.  He’d survived the war, only to be brought low by an illness that even the Essosi have believed to be merely a fairytale.

“Sansa, there’s something I want to ask you.”  It was just her, Jon and Daenerys in the room.  Daenerys’s handmaiden Missandei had learned of something and now the two Targaryens needed to know if it was true.  “Have you been taking moon tea all this time?”

“Yes.”  No hesitation at all.  The other two in the room gaped at her.

“But why?” he choked out.  The blood ran freely into his beard, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off.

“You can order me to kneel to you, you can order me to wed.  You can order me to share your furs, but you cannot order me to love you.”  Back straight, head held high, she looked so much like she had that day at the Wall.  Regal, cold and unbreakable.  He thought he could win her heart, but instead the loving, warm wife he thought he had . . . it had all been an act.

He once wondered, when Bran told him that Sansa and Arya had murdered Petyr Baelish, how they had managed to get him off his guard long enough for them to have carried out the act.  Now he knew, and had fallen for the same trap.

Daenerys was furious.  “You, you, how dare you!  Do you know what I’ll do to you!  I’ll-”

“Raze Winterfell to the ground?  Massacre our servants and the smallfolk?  Execute me and my siblings?”  The smile the Stark bestowed on the queen was a cold, hard thing.  “How?”

She was right.  Daenerys’s dragons had died in the war, grounding their erstwhile sibling and bringing the King within reach of Longclaw.  Her armies had been hammered, while all had taken equal beatings from the wights and the Others, her Dothraki and slave legions had not been ready to deal with the biting winter cold.  For every man the North lost, she had lost three or four.  They were still a credible threat, but a threat she had already sent South to prepare for the next conflict.  Only a token honor guard remained with her here at Winterfell.

“You could kill me here, but do you think you would escape Winterfell alive?”  No, she could not.  Daenerys was perfectly capable of stabbing Sansa here in this room, with only him as a witness, but everyone would know.  Every animal from here to Moat Caillin would be Bran’s eyes and hands, and every person they met would potentially be Arya in disguise.  And even if they got that far, they’d still have to cross at the Twins.  Brynden Tully would never allow the murderer of his niece to go free.  Death by Arya’s hands or by Bran’s warging would probably be cleaner than what Brynden would put her through.

Check and mate.  “Enough!” he shouted at Daenerys, grabbing her hand even as she went for the dagger at her waist.  “I understand.  I only ask that upon my death I will be placed in the crypts, so that I might be with our brothers.”

The Queen in the North turned that fell smile on him.  “In accordance to tradition, you will be given the funeral rites of your ancestors.”  The smile widened, and the weight in his chest grew ten fold.  “Upon your death, you will be cremated in the manner of the Targaryens.  Your ashes and bones will be given to your aunt; the Great Sept of Baelor no longer exists, but I’m sure she will find a suitable resting place for your remains.  Perhaps the dragon pit.”

She kept talking after that, but he could no longer hear.  Instead he fell back on his pillows, coughing and coughing.  Roses fell from his mouth, the blue petals completely covered in his blood.  His sight began to dim, and the last thing he saw was Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth bursting into the room, disarming Daenerys before she could take more than a step towards Sansa.

[punkpoemprose]

A Brief History of the Farm; Or Why Emily is the Way She Is

As requested, a brief (okay it got really really long) history of life, adventures, and my/ my family member’s fuckups on the farm.

@karis-the-fangirl I hope some of this is helpful/ amusing. Feel free to ask questions at any time if you’d like. If living in the sticks can be helpful to anyone I’m more than happy to share the knowledge I have.

So my dad has like the longest list of insane stories related to farmwork, so a lot of these will be his, and I should say that my family farm is only a hobby farm, so the work is a lot less difficult than my cousin’s dairy farm and the farms around me. We’re more of a subsistence farm/ homestead.

           When my dad was in middle school/ highschool he worked on my cousin’s dairy farm, and nearly died there five times that I know of (there’s probably more).

1.)    In the hayloft and a board broke out from under him sending him to the floor below (about a 10ft drop), which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that the weak board sent him into a pile of very sharp tools that should have probably impaled him. He walked it off.

2.)    Was switching off equipment because he heard a storm was rolling in. The first strike of lightning in the whole night hits the barn, comes through the outlet, and knocks him flat on his ass, gasping for breath.

3.)    Was digging a trench for waterlines out to the barn. His little cousin was playing with her sisters in the back yard and went running, fell into the trench and straight on top of my father (she wasn’t necessarily small at that age and it was a 12ft trench). She nearly broke my Dad’s back, but it was lucky that she landed on him, because if she hadn’t, she likely would have hit a stone at the bottom of the trench and died.

4.)    Rolled a tractor (you’re not supposed to live through that), and not like a John Deere Mt or a little Ford or something, no, a huge commercial farm tractor with no cab. Again, he went flying, but walked it off.

5.)    Some kid decided to walk up to the back of one of the tractors when a PTO (power take off- basically a thing that spins wicked fast that you can use to power equipment off the back of a tractor, like a mower or what have you… this might explain better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_take-off) shaft was running. If you so much as touch one of those babies when they’re going it can break your arm/ leg. God forbid you get a scrap of clothing stuck in there, you’re as good as dead. Anyway, kid gets too close, my Dad sees what’s about to happen and shoves the kid out of the way. You can probably guess what happens to Dad’s pants. If it weren’t for the fact that Dad yelled for the kid to move and the kid screamed, which caused my Great Grandfather to come running and shut the tractor off, I probably wouldn’t be here today. Oh, and what happened to him? He walked it off.

Mom wasn’t born on the farm. She was a city gal. Okay so like not a big city, but they had more than one grocery store, so that’s a city for me. My town only has farms, car garages, a post office, a town hall, and the general store an Amish lady opened up about a year ago (the pie is so damn good and her prices are so low it’s a miracle I bake at all anymore tbh, my grandmother has definitely given in all her thanksgiving pies were handmade by Laura Yoder and her three girls).

When she first started seeing Dad she was about my age (I think around 19 or 20?). They met at her summer job (at a plastic plant out towards Utica). My dad was her supervisor, and even though she had never done farm chores before, she started to learn on her visits. My father lived with his grandfather and the house desperately needed a woman’s touch, so Mom often did the dishes and tidied up for them, and she learned to crochet during the winter just to make my Dad a blanket.

By the time they were married Mom felt much more comfortable on the farm, but let me tell you (as she would, she’s a lovely woman and likes others to learn from her mistakes) she made some major mess ups/ had some adventures before and after the wedding.

She ruined about three weeks worth of green beans by weeding the row while they were wet (when you touch green beans while they’re wet they “rust” which is basically a disease/ blight that ruins the beans on the affected plants).

Planted three different plants that are so terribly invasive we’ve done everything we can to kill them since the early 2000’s and they still keep coming back (word to the wise if you ever want to plant spearmint do it in a pot).

Somehow Virginia Creeper ended up in our grape vines, and thankfully Mom only ate one berry (they look a lot like wild grapes). It lit her whole mouth on fire, and luckily she and dad were able to tear it all out before anyone else made the same mistake.

She didn’t fully cook Swiss Chard and had a similar adventure in mouth/ throat burning (The plants have tiny microneedles in their stems that will make you feel pain like no other if you eat it raw/ undercooked).

Once she made a pie with the apples off the back tree, and somehow managed to get several worm filled apples which did not reveal themselves until dinner that night, dead in the pie. In similar bug/ apple tree issues she accidently sent a wasps nest out of the tree and onto my father while picking apples (though Dad got his revenge when I was a kid and sent a chuck of beehive onto her by accident).

She was pulling weeds in the garden, accidently dug up/ pulled out a snake and panicked, not letting go of it, but running so that the poor thing (just a little garter snake mind you) was bouncing up and down the whole time, probably just trying to be free of her. She only dropped it when she ran over to my father (who’s terrified of snakes) and he smacked her hand.

When she was pregnant with me, she and Dad hadn’t accounted for such a cold/ long winter, so in the middle of February (7 months pregnant), she was up in the woods filling up a sled (that didn’t hold much but was heavy when full) with wood to bring back to the house. She had to make this trip 3-5 times in a day, and the woods are a quarter mile from the house in any direction.

When I was a toddler and my brother was a baby she worked in the garden with him in a playpen and I would be playing with my toy garden tools. My cousin, unfortunately, had planted a cornfield in the lot behind my house that he rented from us that year and I toddled off into the corn field. My poor mother ran through the corn field barefoot with my brother in one arm, screaming like a banshee for a good fifteen minutes. By the time she got back to the house, ready to call in a search party, I was being pushed on my swing set by my great grandpa (who was very hard of hearing).

My Gramp was the sweetest/ toughest man you would ever meet and doted on my brother and I terribly. He was half deaf, blind in one eye, his heart barely worked, he had a bad back and barely functioning lungs, but he would go up into the woods on the hottest day of summer to pick wild blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries for me and my brother. When Conner was a baby and I was a toddler he would do it for hours, come back, mash them all up for us with some sugar, let us eat it all, and tell us stories. My dad always said that he wouldn’t have lived as long as he did if it weren’t for me and my brother being around to give him something to live for.

As far as my experiences go I’ve been lucky to avoid anything too possibly life ending. Though we cut our own wood, and when I was a kid my Dad would fall a tree and cut it up and me, my mom, and my brother would load it into the truck or the wagon to take back to the house. Well my favorite thing was when he’d fall a tree on a hill so that we could roll the blocks down the hill to be split/ loaded. One time my shirt got caught on a log I was rolling, and it took me with it. I thankfully got thrown off the block before it could roll on my chest, but it got my leg pretty bad and it knocked all the air out of my lungs. I was pretty young at the time so my parents were worried. They made me and my brother stay in the truck the rest of the time, but we really just wanted to be out rolling more blocks. Also I’ve been hit multiple times by thrown pieces of wood to varying levels of damage to myself. I accidently broke my dad’s glasses when I didn’t see him and tossed a piece at him when I was about 12. But he was mostly fine and my brother broke a window doing the same thing when we were filling a shed, so we’ve all done something.

We use a tractor to plow out the driveway in the winter because we get so much snow. When my brother was a baby he loved riding on the tractor with Dad. (He called it a put-put because that’s the sound the exhaust/ exhaust cap makes when it runs). One time my dad hit a snow bank pretty hard and my little brother (probably about 2 or 3) went flying off the tractor and into the bank. I’m about 4 or 5, so I’m just sort of confused when my dad plucks my brother out of the snow and grabs us both (amazing given how puffy both of our snowsuits were really) and says the one phrase the three of us still share today “Don’t tell mom!”

When my brother and I were up playing on the edge of where the field meets the woods (where my great grandma used to throw the trash because they didn’t have pick up or anything like that) I sliced my finger open on a piece of glass and my brother said I’d have to get stitches so I tried hiding it from my mom for hours. I don’t know how much blood I lost, but my mom (God bless her) found out and managed to butterfly bandage it closed and made me drink a ridiculous amount of water. I probably should have gone to the hospital, but it never scarred and I lived. I have other stories that did leave scars, but I can sum almost all of them up as “young Emily really liked animals but the animals didn’t always like Emily back”. I didn’t learn obviously, I’m a Biologist.

When I started being able to do chores on my own I got my shoe eaten by pigs while bringing them slop, accidently pulled out all the plants and left the weeds in the garden because the leaves were very similar (thankfully we were able to replant them), I accidently broke a ton of eggs, I lost most of the hay out of a bale I was carrying, I ripped open a feed bag because I held it wrong, and I fell into what I will affectionately refer to as “puckey” more times than I’m willing to admit. I also freed all the fish my brother caught (because they were cute), cried over a bird that my brother shot by accident while trying to scare them out of the tomatoes, and with detached emotion named my three pigs breakfast, lunch, and dinner (my brother, who really isn’t a monster I promise, named his bacon, ham, and sausage).

I refuse to hunt, but I’ve gutted deer (the first time was an adventure trust me there), and for the last year I’ve been the closest thing my family had to a farm vet. The vet most people used around here passed recently and evidently a student of biology with a firm understanding of google is good enough for my family when it comes to the chickens and wildlife. I’ve only lost one patient and consulting with my actual vet student friends, she wasn’t going to make it anyway.

Also critters get into the house a lot and because I’m the only one in the family who isn’t afraid of them (mostly mice, bats, moles, and the occasional bird, my mom can handle the frogs/ toads/ salamanders herself), it’s been my job since I was about 12 to shoo them out. I don’t do snakes (because while I respect them I’m afraid of them), but I’ve been known to catch spiders and bring them out to the deck. The only thing I would ever outright refuse to catch is this fucking massive squirrel that used to hang out in the hay loft of my friend’s barn. It was a terror.

Oh and my brother and I had our hair chewed on by a horse when we were kids because we used to have straw blonde hair.

I overfilled a pressure canner once and I nearly died when we opened it prematurely because it blew the pressure gage clear off the top and just past my head.

My dog ran across a wet bridge and sent my cousin into the creek below where he broke his arm. I had to run back to the house (about a half mile) to get my mom to call his mom so we could bring him to the hospital (I was about 13, so he was either 14 or 15).

My brother and I have pulled more stone out of the fields around my house than I can count. Not little ones either. You can run little ones over with the tractor. I’m talking rocks the size of a laptop or larger. Once or twice we’ve found ones so big that we needed my dad to come through with the tractor to get them out.

I’ve been face to face with a bear (which is why I bring my brother, our 4-wheeler and his rifle whenever I go blackberry picking now), and we’ve all had deer, coyote, porcupines, skunks, and snakes cross our paths. Dad tries to shoot all the woodchucks out of the lot (they cause a lot of damage), but I won’t let him kill them if I’m around (same for the moles in the lawn and the field mice in the house).

There’s like a million more things I could say, but this is over 2500 words and I think I should stop now.  

[superkaralovesfanfiction]

Smoky Mountain Rain

Smoky Mountain Rain A Supergirl Story- by superkara For Supercat Week, day 1, abilities ------ This story came from the song Smoky Mountain Rain by Ronnie Milsap. Kind of. It's not as close as I would have made it, or as long as initially intended, but as I thought this up 7 days before Supercatweek, and had 7 stories to write, that's right I'm writing a fic for each day, then needless to say, it's kinda rushed. I might make an extended version at some point, but I have so many unfinished supercat fics at this point that I could write for months and not finish them all, I figure I should devote some time to those. But, alas, every time I start writing one, I think up 3 more, so I should have a fic for any situation now. Anyways, enough with my rambling, I hope you enjoy this. Day 1, supercat week, abilities ------------- Cat stared at the rain pelting the beach and deck of her vacation home and sighed, wondering what National City looked like tonight. Whether it was sunny or gloomy like it was here. Cold and wet. The thought of sunshine brought Kara into her mind for the trillionth time that day, and Cat sighed again, her breath fogging up the window before her, blurring the view. ''Was it a mistake, Kara? To let you go?'' Cat asked to the window, watching with tears in her eyes as lightning crackled dangerously over a choppy, angry sea. ''You told me heroes never run. I did exactly that. So why did you ever call me a hero in my own right? Clearly I'm nothing close to you.'' ---- ''She was the one that got away from me.'' Cat explained sadly to the girl that had joined her at the bar a little while ago, asking if she could use company for a while. She was beautiful, Cat had to admit. Long white blonde hair, pale green eyes, a pouty smile. She was a stunner. But she was no Kara. ''Have you considered calling? Apologizing?'' ''Mm. No.'' Cat said, tear soaked eyes on her empty bourbon glass. ''After running away first, I don't get to do that. I don't have the right to come crawling back for her forgiveness.'' Cat smirked at the memory of their exchange outside CatCo. Kara looking at her in utter shock when Cat had blurted out that she loved her assistant. And then Cat's mistake. Kara had wanted to speak. She'd been about to say something, her cape fluttering behind her in the wind blowing recklessly through the city streets, and Cat had left then. She'd left and stopped whatever Kara had wanted to say, and Kara being Kara, hadn't followed, too struck to speak. ''I just wish I'd had the courage to let her speak.'' ''You were emotional, scared.'' The girl, Kassandra was her name, said in a soft, caring tone, sipping at her mineral water. ''I don't deserve the fear though.'' Cat said sadly, twisting the delicate glassware in her fingertips as she spoke. ''She takes fear and turns it into strength. She uses it as her power. If I can't meet her like that... well. She's so above me...'' ''Tell me about her. Maybe it'll help...'' ''She's... she is, no. She WAS my best girl. Best assistant I ever had. Through the yelling, the anger, even corporate destruction, she didn't leave me. She stayed with me. I suspect I know why...'' Cat stopped for a second, thinking. She knew why. Kara was Supergirl. But she didn't have the right to reveal that name. ''But, regardless, she was like a ray of sunshine, somebody I looked forward to seeing in my office. Which is exactly why I don't have the right to a chance with her.'' ''Because she was your employee.'' ''Precisely.'' ''But it happens. It happens so so much. If she hadn't worked for you, you would probably never have met the girl. Maybe there's a reason...'' ''It's not that.'' Cat said, stopping the other girl. ''I know it happens. I've seen it happen in my office. My photographic journalist, his girlfriend works on the same floor. She was his girlfriend and I still hired her on the spot. I know it can work. But it's the fact that she deserves so much better. She's such a bouncy happy little thing, the last thing she needs is me, such a cold, icy person. She needs someone who will treat her like a precious rose. I'd just wilt her with my cold words. I can't give her what she wants.'' ''What is it you think she wants?'' Cat looked at the woman beside her, eyes narrowed in concentration, wondering why this woman was being so mysterious. ''She wants brevity. Happiness. Beach trips and flowers. Cuddling all weekend and calling in sick to work so she can spend another day with you because two days wasn't enough. All I can give her is coffee addiction and more work. She's 27, and I'm... this. She's practically... I could be her mom. She deserves everything else, not coffee and am meetings and late nights at the office.'' ''Maybe that's what she wants?'' ''I'm sorry?'' Cat asked, a little defiant. ''Not all girls are the same, Cat. Maybe she wants to wake up with you at 4 am and go to CatCo together, with you. And then stay till 8pm and go home together and work until late into the night. Some girls aren't fragile little flowers. Some are stronger, like the stem of the rose, holding up life.'' ''That's insane.'' Cat scoffed softly. ''If she's the stem than I'm the thorn.'' ''Every rose has it's thorns, Cat. The stem holds the thorns.'' Kassandra noted, turning to Cat to speak to her head on. ''Is it insane? You say she's your best. I think, if she kept coming back even after the yelling and company failure, and the cold lattes and the endless work, she's not a fragile rose petal. Maybe she's made or more.'' Now Cat said nothing. Because despite how much she wanted it to be false, to be right, she knew Kassandra was right. Not her. ''Oh, my girl is here. I've got to go.'' Cat looked up with a little smile as Kassandra slipped off the barstool and walked over to a beautiful Latina girl in the doorway, the turned back and came back over for a minute. ''Don't be stubborn, Catherine. Call the girl. If she's moved on, at least you'll know. But if she's as good as you make her seem, then she won't desert you. She's probably just as hurt as you. All you need is $1 and a pay phone to hear her voice.'' Cat watched as Kassandra slid a few coins across the tabletop and smiled, then turned back to her girlfriend, who waved shyly at Cat, and then they walked away together. Cat barely heard Kassandra speak, and saw her girl smile. ''Work time?'' ''Yeah, let's go.'' Kassandra answered, and Cat smiled, nodding to herself. Well damn. Cat watched for a minute, looking at everything and nothing, and then decided that maybe yes. Maybe Cat did need to make that call. --- No answer. Cat sighed and waited, listening to the ever annoying ring of CatCo phones, and thought, praying to hear Kara pick up the other end. Finally someone picked up, but it wasn't Kara's sunny voice. Cat sighed and looked up, wondering where Kara was. It was mid afternoon in National City. Kara should be there, knowing Kara, this was very weird. Kara answered all the phones. Every damn time. ''Hello?'' Cat sighed, her eyes on the rainy grey skies, and felt a stray raindrop land on her nose. James was there. Well, okay. Maybe Supergirl was busy, though Cat hadn't heard anything from the girl on news or otherwise in days. ''It's me.'' ''Cat. Um... calling to check in?'' ''Uh, yeah. Sure. Listen, is Kara around? I need to talk to her.'' ''She actually isn't. She took two days off sick, and hasn't called in yet. I told her she can take as much time as she needs, but...'' ''A Supergirl thing?'' Cat's asked without thought about her words, fear rippling through her veins at the thought of the girl of steel, sick. ''Uh... Ms.Grant...'' ''Relax. I know about her little secret. Is she alright?'' Cat asked, ignoring the rain that was now opening falling heavily, turning the grey world around her a dark brown, slipping through the thin fabric of her suit vest, cold on her shoulders. ''I don't honestly know. You know she lost her powers before. She should be fine, I just told her to take it easy for a few days. Relax. Paint. Sleep. I haven't heard from her besides a text two days ago saying she was a little sick. I wouldn't worry much, Ms. Grant. She's Supergirl. She probably just caught a cold when she lost her powers.'' ''I see. Okay. Well, could I have her cell number? I need to give her a call.'' James relayed a number to her, and Cat hung up sadly, then decided to take her next call off her cell inside, because of the damn rain that felt more like a flood at this point. When she got to her hotel room, soaking wet, went straight for her phone and punched in the numbers with shaking fingers. Both at having Supergirl's private number finally, and because even though James claimed she was fine, Cat felt something off. Cat held herself together for the three separate times she tried Kara's cell, laughing at the message even though she felt sick with worry. Cat tried it one more time, listening through the 4 rings and then Kara's message tone. ''Hi, you've reached the Supergirl hotline, how may I save you?'' ''Kara, please pick up. Let me know you're okay. I know I don't deserve to hear your voice, but Kara, please. Just say hi. That's all I'm asking for.'' Cat stopped the message, clicking the bar away, and fought the urge to throw her phone across the hotel room floor. Cat knew that under all circumstances, Kara should be fine. Of course, Kara should be fine. But for some weird reason Cat couldn't place, something here felt wrong. Something felt off. As if Kara wasn't safe as everyone believed her to be. Cat had always had a sixth sense of Kara, something she also didn't understand, and knew whether the girl was okay. If she wasn't, Cat felt tingly. Every damn time. If Kara was hurt, Cat knew. She couldn't explain it, something along the lines of how Kara always knew things before she did. Right now, Cat was buzzing out of her skin. Which told her something was very wrong. She'd rarely felt this before. Cat grabbed for her phone again, switching to messages. Cat texted her too, leaving multiple messages, apologizing first and then asking for Kara to please get back to her. Even one word. If Kara as much as told her to fuck off and leave her alone, Cat would. But she would not stop this until Cat was sure the girl was okay, because this uncanny sense she had about Kara's wellbeing was making her feel straight up sick to her stomach, and the last time she'd had that Kara had been nearly dead in an underground facility while the world fell apart above her. Cat hoped this wasn't similar in any way. After 15 minutes with no response, Cat couldn't wrack her brain anymore, sitting here sopping wet and scared. She didn't know how she felt Kara like this, she just did. But she was getting worse, and to figure this out, she needed a clear head. And that required a walk. So despite the rain, and the wind, and the cold, Cat grappled for her black trench coat, and stuffed her phone into her pocket and left, going mindlessly, not even looking up to see which street she headed onto. She needed to think. Calmly think. Better for her to mindlessly walk. It helped. It didn't help. 40 minutes later Cat brushed wet bangs from her forehead and sighed at her shaking hands. From the cold this time, not Kara. But her fear of Kara... Cat thought back to her days with Kara, the girl's mismatched desk, oddities and weird things that the girl collected and placed. It became some sort of weird art, and despite Cat's perfectly organized sense of style, Kara's oddity appealed to her. Cat couldn't fathom why, on anyone else it would come off as disgusting. But Kara, with the 4 pairs of vintage sunglasses on her desk, three yellow photo frames with no images, a cup that seemed meant for lost zipper ends, a rainbow of paper notes, and an even wilder array of pens, and a computer screen with so many star stickers on the edges that Cat would get dizzy. What was it about this girl and yellow, in her dresses, in her flowers, in her shoes, in her hair, and if one stared long enough, and Cat had, there was one tiny fleck of yellow gold in her gorgeous blue green eyes, just one. Seemingly only there to amuse. And to sparkle. Oh god how it sparkled. Oh Kara... how had Cat ever done something so idiotic as to leave the girl? Kara... Supergirl... ''Oh, I'm sorry.'' Cat said softly, apologizing for bumping into another pedestrian while she was thinking about this so hard she didn't know where she was walking, and looked up to watch the road more properly, and stopped, noticing the wild rainbow on the window beside her. Normally she wouldn't notice, but she did, because Kara was on her mind, beautiful Kara, and Kara loved rainbows as much as she loved yellow and stickers. Cat looked up at the poster and her lips parted. It was a portrait. Two women. Hugging. Blonde. Beautiful. One slightly older, but not as much as Cat was to Kara. Cat shook her head. She and Kara could never be this. But this, it was stunning. A rainbow of clothes on them, laughing over the same ice cream cone, the younger girl with sprinkles on her nose, the older one with the sweet treat melting down the cone and over her fingers, laughing at her younger girlfriend... Her girlfriend. Cat smiled at the image, and then read the words, and her heart stopped. Everything stopped. The world around her seemed to stop and work in slow motion, broken, wet, cold, the rain falling in slow motion. If she's the one, tell her. Is she your super soulmate? ------ Part 2 ------- Kara sat on one of the cold metal DEO tables, beneath the few sunlamps, and sighed. She didn't feel off, not physically. She could still fly, breathe ice, X-ray anything, it was only her strength. How odd. "Are you sure you feel alright? No weakness, dizziness, nausea? Maybe..." "Nope." Kara confirmed with a shake of her head. "I feel fine. I just don't have my strength." "Kara?" Winn asked, walking into the room quickly. "What's up?" Kara asked, sliding off the tabletop resolutely. "Cat's texting your phone. 4 missed calls and 5 texts." "Ignore it." Kara said tightly, and Alex turned to look at her directly, unable to remember the last time Kara had refused her boss anything. "She wants to know if you're..." "I said ignore it. She... I can't... I have nothing to say to her." "Didn't you at she confessed her love to you?" "And then she told me it was stupid of her to do so. She told me she loved me, and then left. She ran away from me. And she never mentioned Kara. She mentioned Supergirl. I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be so emotional, but I can't be good about this. I've loved her ever since I walked into her office for my interview. When she told me she loved me, I was thrilled. Then she told me she wished she didn't. Listen, can we please focus on figuring out what happened to my strength, not my love life? Or, lack of it?" Alex glanced around nervously, then focused back on her table of laptops, and thankfully everyone else did too, ignoring Kara's little outburst. Supergirl was dangerous when she was mad, and thankfully everyone knew that enough to know when to let the girl deal alone. ------- Cat sat back and sighed, waiting for a response. Winn had texted her back on Kara's number, which told her that Kara had to in fact be at the DEO, since Cat knew Winn worked there now. And that made her worry more, because if Kara was at the DEO, then that meant she was likely there because she was unwell, because James had said she was sick, a bit. Hopefully it was only a bit. Cat had that feeling that told her it was more. Way more. When her cellphone beeped, Cat nearly jumped out of the seat in the back of the taxi carrying her back to the airport. Cat was going home. To Kara. Now. It was time to tell Kara. That Cat finally knew. That she believed in heroes and demons, in angels and devils, and that Kara was her soulmate. Because Cat had always followed rules. And regulations. Maybe it was time to dive for real, and this kind of diving required taking a beautiful woman's hand in hers, and leaping with someone who could fly. Cat had never believed in the preposterous idea of a soulmate, but Kara had. She'd mentioned the idea more than once in lazy conversations about other people, and now Cat couldn't help thinking, maybe Kara hadn't been that wrong. Because when the girl is your best assistant, your hero, your ultimate, then maybe she should be the one designed for you. Maybe she had been designed for Cat. And because Cat was who Cat was, then maybe the angels went a little nuts and sent her from a different universe. Just because special deserved unique. And Cat definitely deserved a heroine as a soulmate. 'She's losing her powers. She's slowly fading. I don't know what she did, but her powers... she looks tired. She never looks tired.' Cat gasped at the text, then quickly responded. 'I know what's happening. I'm coming home to her. This might sound stupid coming from me, but I think she's losing her powers because of my being gone. It makes no sense, but I can feel her. I know she's unwell. I'm on my way home now.'' 'That's not stupid. You're her one. On her world, there was soulmates. She simply never thought she would find one on earth. She's given up.' 'Tell her I'll be home soon. And that I'm sorry. Tell her not to give up.' 'She... she said I should ignore you. She says she doesn't care...' 'Tell her to believe. She's a hero. It's what she has to do.' ------------ Part 3 ------- ''I can drop you off as far as Houston. I'm turning back from there." "Anything. I can pay you..." Cat offered, ready to pull out her little wallet, or a cheque. $100, $1000, $1,000,000 she'd pay it to get closer to Kara. "Please don't. It'll be good company, someone with me. Someone to talk to other than the radio. I leave in 30. Is there anything you need to get? Are you hungry before we leave?" "No. I have everything." Cat shook her head, messy curls falling over her coat shoulders, still wet. "Well, I don't know about talking. I'm pretty boring, people tell me." "I've heard the rumors of your cold smile. I know who you are. It's odd to me that you aren't using your millions to get to her through the air, but I'm sure you're willing to say. Take a seat." He offered, and Cat gratefully took it and ordered a cup of bold coffee, black. Strong. Dark as hell and hot as fire. "But the thing is, and maybe is my heart talking here, but love is never boring. It's wild, untamed, and painful as hell. But it's good when it's real. Tell me about this girl. I know you've had your share, I read a lot of magazines as I pass through towns, but if this one has you running across the country frantically to find her, well, she must be really something." "I... I'll explain on the way. I... she has secrets I'd rather not reveal in... here." "I think I already know." He said and slid over a magazine, he kept the pages parted with his thumb, and Cat took it and flipped it open partly, and gasped at the sight. Her, telling the world that she was naming the new hero Supergirl. Cat flipped to the front and found the magazine over 2 years old. That explained the faded edges and crippled pages, and met the man's eyes, nodding slightly. He just smiled and finished his meal quickly, then dropped the napkin and a tip onto the counter and got up, offering his hand to Cat as he did so. She didn't take it, but followed gratefully, settling into the passenger seat of the truck as he fired the car up, and the radio came on and softly blared something old and country. He went to flick it off, but Cat shook her head and told him to leave it if he wanted to. That she really didn't mind. And it might come as a shock, but Cat did have a soft spot for that old country, and besides, the sweet sweet love songs spoke of exactly what Kara was, all sugar and spice, all blueberry pie on sunny windowsills, and bluebirds singing. And suddenly all Cat wanted was her kitchen, with a slice of such a pie, Kara in her arms kissing whipped cream off her nose, and sunshine filtering through the curtains. "So, she's quite super, isn't she?" The man said, quoting with his fingers as they slowly took off onto the highway, and Cat sighed and laughed, drying her hair in a few napkins she'd stolen from the tabletop inside the cafe. "To find her, can you make these big wheels burn?" -------------- By the time Cat arrived in the place the man had promised, it was a lot of days later, and Cat had long run out of battery in her phone, and had randomly stopped to make calls from phones to keep tabs on Kara's situation, and had gotten more sad with every call in. Kara was getting worse. She was powerless, and currently so sick she just slept. Always slept. She talked to Alex directly now, no longer Winn, and Alex was as eager to have Cat back as Cat herself was. Kara still didn't talk to her, until this call. Now, Cat wished she had enough power to crush the phone like Kara so often had at work when something ticked her off. Now it was Kara that had ticked Cat off. Kara was gone. Just gone. Alex didn't know where, nobody did. Kara was just... gone. She had left at night, apparently for fresh air, and had gone for a short walk down to the grocery store and back, so she'd said. But now she'd been missing for 7 hours, and nobody knew where to look. Cat told them to search everywhere, call everyone, and hung up. Kara Kara Kara. Where the hell would she go, silly girl? "I'm off back to Washington, I hope you find her." The man said gently, coming up beside her, and she wiped at her tears. "I'll never stop until I find her. She's somewhere. Like this, in her state, she won't get far. I have to go. I'm getting on the next plane flight to National City, and I might just crush her when I find her." "Might want to hug her first." The man joked, and Cat laughed bitterly. "Might buy a ring worth billions first, to show her I'm choosing her, the little heathen. She's a bit nuts, doing this." "I don't know much about aliens, but if she really is the one, then she should get better when you find her." "I know. I just hope I know where to look." ----------- When Cat landed in National City, she knew where to go. Her penthouse. Somehow, Kara would be there. How? Cat had no clue how. She just knew. But finding Kara cold and wet, in the dark, crying, sitting on the beach, that wasn't an expectation. She'd expected a powerless superhero, but still Kara Danvers. Not, this. Seeing Kara like this, sitting by the shoreline in her suit, watching the ocean, crying softly, Cat didn't know whether to say something or not. After fighting her way back across the country to find Kara, Cat wanted nothing more than to wrap Kara in her arms and maybe smack her on the head for being so damn stupid. But seeing her like this, Cat knew Kara wasn't just dealing with her lost powers. She was dealing with way more, stuff she'd lost, stuff she'd thought should no longer exist. It was when Cat stepped up a few meters behind her, her feet hitting the sand as well, that Kara looked up and turned to meet her eyes. Cat expected her to get up, maybe hug her, but she didn't. Kara looked up, but she kept at the water, flexing her hands in the sand now that her powers were coming back. "Kara." It was a whisper. Cat didn't know if she could say anything above that, seeing this girl so broken, even as she was powering back up. "Kara, I'm sorry, I had no idea. I didn't know you could, that we were... I've never heard of something like this in my life, I didn't think you and I could possibly be..." "It's not your fault, Cat." Cat stopped, Kara's words ringing over the ocean, over the beach, cold and broken. "Why did you say you love me?" Kara whispered, and Cat gasped, staring at her head on. "Because I do." "And then you said you wish you didn't." "Because I do." Cat repeated. Kara gasped now, and turned to face her, tears in her eyes. "You wish you didn't love me?" Kara asked, getting up to talk to Cat head on. "Yes. I do. Because I love you more than I ever should." Cat whispered, walking towards Kara. Cat reached up and started running her fingers through Kara's messy gold waves and settling them over her shoulder, fixing the strap of her tank top peeking out from the suit top as she did, a habit for perfection. "I shouldn't want you as much as I do, because Kara, you're my assistant, you work for me. If it ever gets out, that you and I... hell, I knew it wasn't good before you came out as Supergirl. And then you did." "And?" "And... I lost my heart again. I fell all over again, you and your mad colour wheel of power. And I do love the suit. Maybe it is a kink, a stupid thing, but the cape... I have the same problem with Superman and Batman. But this one was you, a girl, so close to me every day, my god Kara... the dreams I have about you... and so I left." "You left Catco because of me." Kara connected, shocked. "I did. But apparently the universe won't let me leave you. God knows I tried." Kara just laughed miserably, scoffing, something she'd no doubt learned from Cat. "Cat, I... the universe only has one soulmate for me. When I lost Krypton, I thought I would lose the chance to find my soulmate. I never thought I'd find the one on another planet. When I figured it out, that it was you, thanks to my mother's hologram, I... I lost it. Paired with what you said... I I should have contacted you back, I was scared. I didn't know I would lose my powers, that it was a soulmate thing, I was scared that I was poisoned or hurt, or... sick, something. I... Alex told me you were coming back for me, and I ignored it. I was scared for my health, more than anything else, and I couldn't even think about love. But when you got in the city, I felt it. The power. The... strength. I didn't know what to think, so I came here. I..." "Are you back at full strength?" "Almost. It'll come. Cat... I, we... do we have a chance?" "I don't know. You're such a nerd, you're strange, and you like comics and toys and... how? Why did the universe... pick you for me? An alien? Isn't human enough?" "You have high standards? Nobody on earth would do?" Kara joked. "Okay, sure, I'll accept that. It's one answer in this mess. It makes no sense... but you fly and shoot lasers and ice and..." "And we're soulmates." "How did you know? On Krypton? How did you know your soulmate?" "Not like this, we would have had an apocalypse..." Cat laughed, and Kara joined her. It felt good to laugh, even like this, dirty and wet and soaked to the bone. Cat looked like hell, matted hair, no makeup, more dirt then bare skin on her, and Kara looked the same, a disaster, her suit messy and wet, muddy and covered in sand, and Cat seemed to have gone through some battles on the way back. "Kara, I want a chance with you, with us. I don't know if we can have one, but I want one." Cat whispered, holding Kara's hand tightly, laughing at the usually white simple manicure that was now dark brown and messy, dirty. "Can we find a way, Kara?" "I don't know if Kara can. Kara is just an assistant. But heroes can, and this hero will." "Well, do you want to come inside?" Cat said, gesturing to her penthouse on the cliff. "Get cleaned up? Then, we can talk." "I'd like that."

[lavenderprose]

Fic: Perjury

Why did I write 2700 words of lawyer AU? Haha, who knows! I think I just really like the idea of illicit affairs in offices made of windows on the 10th floor of important buildings.

Here’s where I tell you guys that my familiarity with the law profession stems completely from one class I took five years ago and about fifteen minutes’ worth of wheatgoogling.

Also: Mature content ahoy.

"Viktor?"

Viktor leans over and presses the com button on his phone. "Yes, Mila?"

"Yuuri Katsuki is here." Mila sounds more apprehensive than Viktor thinks he's ever heard her, even over the phone. Considering that this is a woman who's seen just as many photos of gruesome crime scenes as he has, that's something to be remarked upon.

Viktor sighs and bites the inside of his cheek, drums his fingers on the desk and finally replies, "Send him in." He can't say he wasn't expecting this turn of events. The fact that Yuuri has actually waited until seven in the evening actually presents evidence of remarkable self-restraint, considering the situation.

Several beats later, Viktor sees Mila approaching from down the hall. The entire floor is leased under Feltsman, Baranovskaya and Nikiforov, but as the newest partner Viktor didn't exactly get a broad choice of office space. His office is essentially a glass box at the very back of the floor, bracketed in on either side by nosy junior partners whose hobbies seem to be pressing their noses against the windows of Viktor's office and waiting for something to rub off on them.

Mila opens the door and holds it open for Yuuri, who skulks through in the same clothes he was wearing at nine this morning, minus the suit jacket and minus the tie that made Viktor want to put it through the nearest shredder. Yuuri is far too attractive of a man to be wearing anything paisley. Instead, Yuuri is wearing a thin black jacket, likely donned for the walk here from the courthouse, that presents an almost incongruous counterpoint to the rest of his wardrobe. It's cotton, and has a hood. Viktor can imagine Yuuri wearing it at home over a T-shirt, soft and barefoot with his hair unslicked.

"Thank you, Mila," Viktor says, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against the edge of the desk. "Um…hey, why don't you go home for the night? It's been a long day."

Mila glances between them, him and Yuuri, with an unreadable quality to her expression. She finally nods, loose hairs that have fallen out of her twist swaying, and waves slightly before she leaves.

There is a beat of silence between him and Yuuri before Viktor says, "Do you want something to drink?"

At almost the same time, Yuuri also tires of the silence and snaps, "What the fuck, Viktor?" and then, once Viktor's words have processed, continues, "No, I don't want anything to drink. I want you to tell me why you motioned for a mistrial three days before we were set to make closing statements. We've been in court for two months, Viktor, and now we have to go through all of it again!" Without prompting, Yuuri throws himself into one of the plush leather chairs in the seating area on the other end of the office. Makkachin, who almost blends in with the sofa, hops off and goes immediately to Yuuri's knees. Yuuri despondently pats Makkachin's head.

Viktor has a very good, stalwart reputation amongst the midwest law community, and probably about 85% of it is his tendency to take his dog with him everywhere. Makkachin is a well-behaved, kind dog that has on multiple occasions brought comfort to people on both sides of warring courtrooms.

"I think you need a drink," Viktor says, and opens the lowest drawer in his desk. "I have vodka, gin, teq—"

"Tequila," Yuuri mutters, Makkachin's face mushed happily between his gentle hands. "Give me tequila."

Viktor smirks as he pours half a small Styrofoam cup's worth of tequila. "Phichit is rubbing off on you." Viktor doesn't know ADA Chulanont very well, but he does know that the man can put away spirits like he's in possession of a special second gut. Of course, Viktor doesn't judge—where he's from, such a thing is a talent. Then he says, "Or maybe I'm rubbing off on you," as an afterthought, because it's genuinely just occurred to him.

Yuuri snorts. It's not as mean a sound as Viktor was expecting.

He crosses the room and delivers the cup to a glowering Yuuri, sits down on the side of the sofa closest to the chair Yuuri has chosen and clucks his tongue for Makkachin. It shows how much regard his poodle holds for Yuuri that he just tosses a glance of his big brown eyes at Viktor before returning his muzzle to Yuuri's knee.

Viktor waits until Yuuri has a few gulps of tequila in him before saying, "The mistrial was going to happen one way or another. Anything else would have been a miscarriage of justice, Yuuri, and you know it."

Yuuri sighs and leans forward over his lap, elbows on knees, and rubs his fingers over his face. When he lowers them, it is to give them an emphatic shake as he says, "It wasn't our problem, Viktor. Why did you have to make it our problem?"

Leaning back to cross his legs, Viktor crosses his arms and legs his foot swing. "How is a rumor regarding our love lives—yours and mine, that is, and more specially the love life we are rumored to share—"

"Exactly. That's all it is. Rumors. You've seen just as many big publicity cases as I have; sometimes the media just throws things at a wall hoping one of them will stick and they'll have a story to t—"

"—how, Yuuri, is that not our problem?"

"Because it's not!" Yuuri's hands are now gesturing frantically in front of him. He uses his hands to talk more than Viktor has seen anyone do since Sara Crispino. They're thin and graceful, his hands are, and Viktor has watched them twirl a pen around and around for minutes on end without dropping it. Yuuri Katsuki has a sort of understated elegance about him that is hard to put into words. If one were to try, they would probably use similar vocabulary to what would be used for a dancer. Only Yuuri is a member of the American Bar Association, and not the American Ballet Theatre. As Viktor muses all of this, he's aware of Yuuri continuing: "It's not our problem, it's the media's problem. We were three days away from ending this case, Viktor. It was so close I could taste it. My first big case as lead prosecutor, a conviction—"

"Is that so?" Viktor huffs, straightening up and crossing his arms. "We have absolutely no reason to believe that jury wasn't going to acquit my client."

"Okay, fine. Maybe he would have been acquitted. Maybe there are a few literal vegetables on the jury who—"

"Yuuri," Viktor says, scolding tone to his voice. "It's not like you to say something like that."

Yuuri drags his hands down his face again, then finally meets Viktor's eyes. There is something horrible there, something afraid. He says, "Viktor, I might lose my job over this. Especially if they cite double jeopardy, throw out the case—which you know as well as I do is something your client has full right to do, considering the fact that we just put him and his family through an almost-complete trial, only to mistrial at the eleventh hour because of—because someone sent a picture of us having dinner together seven months ago to some skeezy tabloid!" He utters a shaky sound, some slow and wounded noise exiting his throat. He folds his hands in front of his face. They turn into fists after a moment. "Why—why, Viktor? Do you want me to get disbarred?"

"Of course not," Viktor snaps, unfolding his legs to lean forward. "You're one of the best lawyers I know. You're passionate. You care. I would never do something like that to you, or anyone." At only twenty-seven, Yuuri Katsuki is one of the youngest lawyers in Michigan history to make Assistant DA. Viktor first became acquainted with him four years ago, when Yuuri was a beautiful face looming behind large piles of paperwork and DA Cialdini's back. He remembers thinking Yuuri standoffish at that point, although he now knows his silences to be born of anxiety, not distrust. He's a kind man, even if he lets things get to him a little more than is ideal for a prosecutor. Viktor was as surprised as anybody when Yuuri was promoted earlier this year, although he knows he shouldn't be. Yuuri is horribly dedicated, almost to a fault. Viktor sometimes walks by the courthouse late at night and sees a single light still on, and has a feeling it's Yuuri up there.

Viktor softly adds, "But especially to you," and Yuuri's wide, deep eyes bore into his for almost a solid minute.

He takes in a shaky breath to say, "They're going to accuse me of prosecutorial misconduct. And what do I say to that? It was just dinner? I mean, yes, that's the truth, but who's going to believe that? I have no way of defending myself now."

"But you weren't even an ADA at the time," Viktor says. "Tell them that."

"They already know that, Viktor!" Yuuri practically screams. "Me telling me that isn't going to change anything! I've embarrassed them! Even if I don't lose my job, even if I don't get disbarred—they'll never put me on a case like this again! I'll be doing armed robberies and grand theft auto until the day I die—"

"Yuuri!"

"Alone and sad and without anyone ever thinking I actually made a difference—"

Viktor stands up and tilts Yuuri's face towards his own, shaking his head. "Yuuri, you have to calm down."

"I don't want to calm down!" Yuuri snaps up from his chair, glowering up at Viktor from four inches down, face red with upset. "I want you to tell me why you're risking both of our careers for a rumor, something that doesn't even deserve to be given merit!"

Viktor feels his toes go suddenly and completely numb as he realizes that Yuuri expects an actual answer from him. He wobbles his tongue around inside his head, trying to gather enough saliva to speak from his suddenly arid mouth. He stutters, "What—suppose that it did—"

Before he can even form a full thought, Yuuri yelps, "Fuck it!" and clamps his hands around Viktor's head, draws his mouth down to meet his own in a ferocious clack of lips and teeth that sends then reeling back onto the sofa. Viktor twists to land first, Yuuri clamoring into his lap afterwards. He groans against Yuuri's mouth and buries a hand in thick hair, tilting both their heads at a deeper angle to get as much of his mouth against Yuuri's as possible. Yuuri has a fist in his tie now, pulling him in, and Viktor never wants him to let go.

When Yuuri breaks away, he gasps, "If this is going to end my career, then it'll at least be true." He dives back in, going for Viktor's neck this time. Viktor, who hasn't had sex in almost a year and currently has the object of his affections for at least the last two in his lap sucking at his neck, is powerless to do anything but make a sound that closely resembles a squeal. Makkachin makes an anxious sound at his knee—Viktor only then remembers his dog's presence. He manages to coordinate himself for long enough to snap his fingers and cry, "Makka! Go lay down!"

Makkachin, thankfully, is well-trained enough that he obeys. Viktor leans back, more content to die here in this spot than he is to tell Yuuri to stop, until he realizes that all the blinds in his office are open.

He nudges at Yuuri's belly to move him away. "The blinds—Yuuri, the blinds are open. I work in a glass fucking box, anyone could see—"

"You're the only person in the office; I walked through the entire floor when I came in." Yuuri's voice attains a low growling quality, it would seem, during moments such as these; Viktor wants to feel it between his legs.

"Still…" Viktor apologetically pulls away to rush around the perimeter of the office to slide all of his blinds closed. This has the added effect of plunging the room into a darkness than is only interrupted by Viktor's desk lap across the room. Yuuri stays on the sofa and throws off his jacket. When he returns to Yuuri, he knees between Yuuri's spread thighs and kisses his cheek, his chin, his neck, his chest. He groans, "Do you know how long I've wanted to do this?" and sinks his thumbs into the soft flesh along high on Yuuri's thighs.

"Maybe about a year less than I've wanted you to do it," Yuuri says, almost whispering he's so overcome. He undoes the buttons on his shirt from bottom to top. Viktor leans forward and brings down the zipper on Yuuri's slacks with his teeth. He smells masculine arousal there; Yuuri gasps.

"You want to do this?" Viktor murmurs against his navel, dragging his lips back and forth. "If we do this, we can't—we can't say we didn't, anymore. It'd be—"

"Perjury, I know." Yuuri throws a leg over Viktor's shoulder and throws himself back against the couch. "I think it's already perjury, Viktor. Even if you—even if you don't put your mouth where you're trying to put it, I don't think I'd ever be able to look someone in the eyes and say what was between us was—was just friendly."

Viktor doesn't want to be just friendly with Yuuri Katsuki. Viktor wants to have Yuuri Katsuki inside of him in every way possible and then bury himself somewhere next to Yuuri's heart and be the thing that keeps that beautiful heart beating. Viktor wants to take the sizeable fortune he inherited from his parents, not to mention his own wealth, and go somewhere sunny with Yuuri where they can while away what's left of their twenties swinging on hammocks and drinking margaritas. Viktor wants to give Yuuri Katsuki the blow job of his life and then take him home to the house that his first high-profile acquittal bought, screw him ferociously until at least three o'clock in the morning and then, maybe about a year from now, get down on one knee in front of the Spirit of Detroit and ask Yuuri Katsuki to marry him.

What Viktor does instead of airing these thoughts is go down on Yuuri Katsuki, taking him into his mouth as though his very continued existence depends upon getting his lips over a cock. Part of him thinks it does.

Yuuri comes down his throat with a wail and a hand fisted so tight into Viktor's hair that it feels like he's one flex of Yuuri's finger away from being bald. Yuuri pulls him up and Viktor rides his thigh until his own orgasm, throbbing against Yuuri's soft belly, toes curled in his shoes, fingers arched into the upholstery of the couch.

It's as Viktor is pressing kiss after open-mouthed kiss to Yuuri's neck, touching him and caressing him like someone who's afraid of being forgotten, that Yuuri presses his lips to the hair above Viktor's ear and half-laughs, half-whimpers, "I'm gonna lose my goddamn job."

"You're lost on the DA's office," Viktor whispers sloppily against his chest. It's something he's been thinking for at least six months, certainly the last two, and something that is no less true for all it comes from the mouth of a man whose throat still feels the throb of another man's arousal on his tongue. He takes Yuuri's earlobe between his teeth to inform him that this is not the end of the night; this is just a breather, a plateau, and while his mouth is there murmurs, "Come work for us. Yakov will find you a desk."

"Okay," Yuuri chuckles, as though it's that simple. It's not, but he says it anyway. "Okay."

[radiojamming]

If you feel like spoiling me, one of these: 38, 66, 95, 8 or 10 (heck, 11 is gold too) for RebelCaptain + maybe some rogue family (aka the rogue squad)? Will love any and all. Thank you.

WELP, HAPPY NEW YEARS TO YOU MY FRIEND YOU GET THE WHITMAN’S SAMPLER

—

38

“I’m going to regret this,” Cassian says, staring at himself in the mirror and assessing his reflection. Finger-combed hair tamed to the best of his ability, facial hair trimmed, clean clothes, and his captain insignia freshly polished. 

Behind him, Bodhi makes a distressed noise and holds his goggles up to inspect them. “I really have to leave these behind?” he asks, sounding almost betrayed.

Cassian rolls his eyes and holds his hand out without even turning around. “I’ll put them in the dresser to so no one steals them, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Sullenly, Bodhi hands them over. “That isn’t what I’m worried about, but alright.”

Cassian tucks the goggles away and goes back to the mirror for what feels like the tenth time. He tries to smooth out his hair again, but it doesn’t do anything except make his hair look flat on one side. He grimaces at it until Bodhi comes up behind him, reaching up and fixing the back of Cassian’s collar.

“You’re not going to regret it,” Bodhi reassures him, trying his best to smile but still looking a little distressed about his goggles. “Besides, Chirrut told me to tell you that it would be rude to stop now and have to give General Draven’s gift back.” He stops mid-fix and looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Honestly, I’d be put out if you gave it back to the General, but that’s just me.”

There’s a knock on the door to Cassian’s quarters, and Cassian turns towards it. “Yes?” he calls, and his voice sounds strained to his own ears.

“Everyone is seated at the reception hall, sir,” one of the privates says. “And uh…” The private clears his throat nervously, audible even through the door.

“And?”

“And K-2SO told me to tell you that if you back out now, he’s going to twist your arm so far behind your head that you’re going to have to turn around to fly a ship for the rest of your life.” And then, “Sir.”

Bodhi nods sagely beside him. “And it won’t be General Draven’s ship, either.”

Cassian bites down on his bottom lip and takes in a deep breath through his nose, but then he smiles despite himself. “Okay,” he says, and then turns to Bodhi, all cleaned up and not as twitchy as normal. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He knows he won’t regret it. He won’t give the General his ship back, and he won’t say no to the most beautiful woman in the galaxy, the actual, literal love of his life. In fact, he won’t even say yes. All he has to say is ‘I do’.

—

66 - AU where Jyn is still with Saw Gerrera

“You should be nice to me, I just saved your life!”

Jyn stares down at the man, flat on his back on the cold, packed dirt. His eyes are wide, his chest heaving still. The gash on his face is definitely going to need stitching, but Jyn will leave that to someone else. 

He goes from staring aimlessly to glaring at her. He’d probably sit up if he didn’t have her boot firmly on his sternum. “I don’t have to be nice to some–”

“Ah ah ah,” she says, tapping her toe against his chest with each syllable. “In case you didn’t notice, your blaster is over there?” She points, about three feet away, to where his blaster is. “And mine is right here.”

Here as in trained on his forehead, for if he makes a move or says something rude or generally just pisses her off again. She’s not beyond taking him out and just reporting back to Saw and saying he was another unfortunate casualty. Military outfit and insignia bedamned.

He keeps glaring, which she’ll allow. “What do you even want?” he asks.

Jyn shrugs. “Information. Assurance that you’re not a spy. You certainly look like one.”

“I’m not.” 

“Try harder.”

He rolls his eyes. “I can’t prove much to you when you’re stepping on me.”

“Too bad. If you’re even a fraction as well trained as someone of your rank should be, it shouldn’t be a problem to reassure me without having to do anything,” Jyn says. Then, she grins. “Besides, would you rather convince me, or Saw? I can tell you know, it’s much easier with me. Less painful.”

“Debatable,” he says, glaring pointedly at her boot.

“Not at all. Now get talking, Captain.”

—

95 - a.k.a. the family that spies together stays together

"I don’t know how you convinced me to do this.” Jyn’s voice sounds muffled through the stormtrooper helmet. She taps the side of it in irritation. “Do you even know how hard it is to breathe in this thing?”

“It has a built in filtration system,” K-2SO says from behind them. “You should theoretically be breathing better than everyone else here.”

Jyn groans, and Cassian almost has to laugh. It’s the second time they’ve attempted an Imperial infiltration as a pair, the first time as a group, and probably the fiftieth time for him alone. He’s played the part of junior officer, informant, analyst, janitor, and everything else out there. What amazes him is that this is hardly the first time they’ve gotten this far.

He’s back to being dressed like an officer, doing what Jyn called his ‘captain strut’ down the narrow hallway of the Imperial bunker. Jyn is dressed as his stormtrooper bodyguard, Kay as his assigned droid, and Bodhi as his pilot currently working to get three needed shipping manifestos from the bunker’s database. Baze and Chirrut are working on taking out a comm tower just to the north, with Baze acting as a heavy weapons specialist evaluating the turret system, and Chirrut as a mechanic, with thick goggles hiding his eyes.

It’s gone well so far, but Cassian is the farthest from attempting to jinx it. He’s nearly died multiple times even after he thought a mission was going particularly well. 

Kay interjects as they near a set of doors to their right. “The second set of manifestos should be in this room. Provided we can get through the security precautions without one of you tripping every single one of them.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” Jyn says dryly. 

“You’re quite welcome.”

As they start working on the numerous security parameters in their way, Cassian pauses for a moment, watching Jyn nervously stand guard by the door while he and Kay work. 

It’s the first time he’s ever had this many people on his team. He’s used to working alone, or with maybe one or two more people. But this isn’t just any team. This isn’t even Rebel-sanctioned. Technically, it would have only been Jyn and Kay accompanying him, but Bodhi threw himself in as they were leaving, and Baze and Chirrut were expectantly waiting by the ship when they got there, Chirrut in particularly asking them if they really thought they could leave without everyone.

Above that, he’s working with his family, the people he feels safest with, the people he wouldn’t mind dying beside. Yes, he loves Jyn especially, but he loves all of them, really. 

“Imperial officers don’t smile,” Kay jabs at him. “You’re going to give yourself away.”

“Sorry,” Cassian says, going back to looking at the security files. But he isn’t sorry; not at all.

—

8 - nsfw fo sho

“You’re so fucking hot when you’re mad,” Cassian says, his voice dark and heady, his hands on her hips. 

Jyn wants to punch him. She wants to twist his arm behind him and make him beg for her to let him go. She wants to scream and yell and tell him off until she’s hoarse. But she can’t, not with his chest against hers, his lips on her neck, his fingers getting dangerously close to the clasp on her fatigues.

“You… you idiot,” is all she can summon. There’s not much else there that she can say that isn’t firmly trapped behind the border of sheer lust pulsing through her in time with her heartbeat. 

“I am,” he agrees. One hand goes up under her shirt, hot against her skin, feeling every bit than he can. The fingers of his other hand tuck themselves between the hem of her pants and the skin of her hips, running back and forth, just shying away when they get near the clasp.

“I swear, the second you stop–” Her voice gets cut short when the hand under her shirt goes up to cup one of her breasts. His thumb brushes over her nipple, and she literally has to bite down on her lip to stop the moan threatening her. 

She opens her eyes to see him watching her, his dark eyes expectant and pleased. They catch the dim red light of Yavin, the only light source they have, and she’s quick to bring him back up to kiss her hard. The kiss is bruising, painful in the way she wants. She wants to shut him up, to close his eyes so she doesn’t have to see that thin crescent of crimson reflected back at her. She wants him on her, in her, for him to be pinned down on the bed, begging and moaning and completely at her mercy.

Then, the hand on her fatigues drops low, pressing against her through the thick fabric, and she–

She wakes up, gasping, eyes wide and sweat quickly cooling on her skin. She’s met with the perfect darkness of her quarters, except for a strip of red light coming in through a narrow slat in the window. It takes her a long moment to catch her breath, to reel herself in and ease the rampant heat between her legs.

Eventually, she falls back on her bed and stares at the darkness above her. 

“Damnit,” she says, whisper-quiet and frustrated. “Damnit, damnit, damnit.”

And not for the first time or the last, she grits her teeth and brings her own hand between her legs to fix her problem all by her damn self.

—

10 

“You are a bloody idiot, you know that?” Jyn asks, breathless. Her hands are pressed hard on Cassian’s side, stemming the blood flow from the blaster shot that he took for her. He’s alarmingly pale, propped up on a military-grade blanket wrapped around Jyn’s pack. 

“No,” he says weakly, but he’s smiling all the same, his teeth stained red with blood. “Tell me again.”

“Idiot,” she repeats, softer now, tears threatening hot in her eyes. “You didn’t have to do that.”

One of his hands goes up, his fingers running over the knuckles of one of her hands. “I did,” he corrects. “You know that.”

She sniffs, and can’t bring herself to wipe at her eyes and risk him losing any more blood. “I would have done the same for you,” she agrees.

“I know.”

—

11 - a.k.a. where have i heard this one before

“You love me,” Cassian says, his head on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her waist from behind. He knows she’s smiling, even though she doesn’t want to.

“Do not.” She reaches up and flicks him in the forehead, which just makes him laugh. “Maybe like a hole in my head.”

“That’s a little extreme.”

She makes an irritated noise before turning around in his arms, giving him a level look that he’s come to love wholeheartedly. Sometimes, it precedes a lecture. Sometimes, it precedes her leaping on him and kissing him breathless. It’s always a toss-up.

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you, Captain Andor,” she says, her arms going up around his shoulders. His heart gives an extra beat in excitement. “Something must have happened to you on Scarif, because you are an absolute scoundrel.”

He laughs again, and her expression gives way to a smile. “You need more scoundrels in your life,” he says, and then kisses her without another thought.

[comfsy]

Reflecting on Two Years in China

By Tony Inglis

As someone who likes to write, it shouldn’t be too difficult for me to express my opinions, thoughts and experiences as words. In fact, it should be near embarrassing if I find such a task so challenging as to render me useless.

But, this is exactly how I find myself upon returning to Glasgow after two years living in China. Condensing this thing that I did into a few hundred words now seems pointless and impossible. If you can’t answer the question “So, how was China?” with anything other than some fumbling and a meaningless sentence like “oh, really great…”, that kind of non-response you give to a question so utterly gigantic and encompassing that you might as well have been asked the meaning of life, then how are you supposed to boil that time in your life down to a pithy blog post? The fact is there is no way to comprehend a solution to this problem – you just have to do it, to at least try and convey even that speechlessness, to put into words the reason why you can’t talk about it in a detailed and articulate way, if not describe the actual experience itself. What a lengthy tome it would be to even type out the events, activities, thoughts, feelings, disappointments and achievements in list form of two years living in any place, never mind somewhere as truly bewildering as China.

By pure coincidence, and the fact that niche music memoirs are extremely hard to come by in the sprawling city of Wuhan, I have been reading a couple of books that have helped me figure out what I want to say about this period in my life. One of these is Girl in a Band, written by Sonic Youth member, the endlessly inspirational and cool, Kim Gordon. Around forty-five pages in, I discovered that, due to her father’s work, she too lived for a period in east Asia, specifically Hong Kong, a mere five hours and a metro ride away from the place I called home in China. Her first impressions of the city are vivid and familiar to me:

“The air was so hot and humid it was like stepping inside a kiln, and you had to gasp to catch your breath. The smells and sounds were overpowering. My first night there, I remember knocking into people on the street, and crying, which fogged and blurred the city’s yellow lights even more. I felt so overwhelmed by Hong Kong’s heat, chaos, clamour, and odours that I was convinced I would never—never—survive there a year.”

That last sentence has resonated with me. When I arrived in Wuhan, I also had a strong feeling of helplessness, questioning my decision to go there, wondering if I would make it through my time there. Just as Gordon felt, it was almost unthinkable to consider that I would survive there. But I survived, and I lived, and adapted, and thrived, and even excelled.

The similarity of our first impressions are where the comparisons between mine and Gordon’s experiences end. She was ten years younger, not there through choice, and even the place is strikingly different. (Despite Hong Kong’s geographical proximity to mainland China, because of its culture and politics it remains wildly contrasting to its communist neighbour. Even though Gordon moved there in the mid-60s when it was less developed and prosperous than it is now, I have no doubt that it was a different transition than moving to the mainland).

China is a country where everything is different. Picking yourself up and deciding that there’s nothing that motivates you in your home to then move thousands of miles across the earth to a place where not a single thing feels familiar is quite a drastic choice to make. Food, people, weather, buildings, customs, manners, working life, relationships; ways in which you interact with the world are utterly changed as soon as you step off the plane. It’s no surprise to me, especially as a Scot, that Gordon is immediately hit by the temperature there. In the summer months, it’s unlike any kind of heat or humidity you come by in the UK and, while I often complained about how that heat and humidity was so heavy it seemed to regularly hold you down and punch you repeatedly in the face, now that I am back in Scotland and seem to have swapped the relentlessly hot for the relentlessly miserable, I have weirdly fond memories of requiring multiple showers and shirt changes each day.

Curiously, there’s a part of arriving and living in China that I didn’t really appreciate until I returned home. Coming back here, to the UK, is strange; to a country irrevocably changed by circumstances that I have felt apart from, outside of, in the years I have been away. In this time of Brexit, nationalist tensions and political and economic turmoil, it feels weird to be welcomed back with such open arms when many other people arrive here to blunt feelings of disdain and intolerance. The UK has become a claustrophobic place filled with ill feeling and superiority complexes that all stem from the complete intolerance of people different from the norm and an unwillingness to see those people live alongside you as an equal.

This was a feeling I never, ever felt in China. Two caveats: I am a white, heterosexual male and so I am completely shielded from intolerance no matter where I go; and I realise that Chinese people perhaps don’t show the same warmth to all other peoples, even to ethnic minorities that reside permanently in China. Despite this, a few things that people direct hatred towards in the UK applied to me, and my foreign friends and colleagues, as I entered China. I was leaving a country in which, at the time, I felt I couldn’t prosper. OK, it wasn’t war torn, I wasn’t forced to leave, but I felt, at that moment, that I could do better elsewhere. Again, there are caveats to this description which you might be able to garner from my writings and recordings on actually being a foreign English teacher in China (I recorded a podcast called Wuhan Weekly). But the point remains: there was no jealousy, no unfriendliness. There was only respect and total hospitality. I’m not, by any means, trying to compare this situation to a Syrian refugee who has been forced from their destroyed home; or an expert in their field who leaves a country that is ravaged economically to do a job they are completely overqualified to do; or a woman who leaves a conservative society in order to be able to live her life freely; or an elderly man who is rejected disability benefit and forced to work because he isn’t of retirement age yet and his two heart attacks don’t disqualify him from being able to job seek in the eyes of the state. I am so much more fortunate than these people, and stepping into another culture and society as an outsider has made me thankful for being that fortunate and made clear how entitled people in the UK can be and have been in the time I’ve been away.

This feeling of being an outsider is something that Kim Gordon, and Carrie Brownstein in her memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, talks about a lot. I’m not sure I even deserve to call myself an outsider. But it is as an outsider I return to my home. Most of my friends no longer live in Glasgow; they have moved to London or further afield. A lot of my friends are about to become fully qualified solicitors. I’m twenty-four and essentially unemployed, though I am back at university. And I’ve just come back from China having chosen to do something quite a lot different to my peers but that was, in my opinion, no less worthwhile. It has changed me, and only for the better, and even if it has meant that I feel a little apart at the moment, I know that I’m not the only one. So now I’m sitting in my kitchen listening to Joanna Newsom looking out the window and even though it’s clear blue skies I’m daydreaming at rather than clouds of pollution, I miss China so much. The other day I listened to Courtney Barnett’s ‘An illustration of Loneliness’ – a song where the narrator, displaced from her partner, wonders where and what that partner is doing – and I am ashamed to admit I felt myself welling up. It’s not even a particularly sad song. But I too find myself wondering what is happening in a far, distant land, what the people I know are doing, envious of those I know are returning. I may not be able to sum up all the incidents, good and bad, of my time in China, but I know that I feel utterly enriched by having lived there.

Visit Tony’s blog to read more of his writing from China and beyond.

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