#it's a reversal that makes me really thankful for the medical care i have access to. this is the shit that can kill people like me!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

messwriting · 4 years ago

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Written for the Whorehouse Compilation [RAW DOG 1080p] (Try Not To CUM) Collab: Masterlist.

Open wide: the Doctor is IN

Shirabu Keijiro x Female Reader

Doctor Shirabu gives you a very special treatment on your first appointment.

Rating: E for explicit | Don’t read this if under eighteen.

Note: I’m sorry for being this late to the party. The cursed porn search we all have looked at least once (some... lots of times hehehe). THANKS TO @dymphnasprose for the little porn search bar i love them so much ;-; <3 My (very) late contribution to the Whorehouse Server CUMpilation. Thanks for letting me participate Miki! Doctor Shirabu is ready to see you now.

Warnings: POSSIBLE TRIGGERING CONTENT. CONSENSUAL NON-CONSENT. DOCTOR/PATIENT. MEDICAL PLAY. INAPPROPRIATE TOUCHES. WRONG GYNECOLOGICAL EXAM. Breast exam but not really. Corruption Kink. MEDICAL KINK. Use of medical equipment in inappropriate ways. ANAL PLAY. Established relationship clarified at the end: role-play. Poorly researched medical stuff. Overuse of Good Girl.

Word count: ~4.4k

You’re such a cute little thing.

Sitting on top of the big, pristine examination table, waiting for him while wearing an easy summer dress, square heels dangling from one side to the other as your hands fumble with your own fingers on your lap, eyes flying to him immediately as he enters the close space - big, bright eyes shining in the dull white hospital room, framed by beautiful eyelashes and soft makeup. Your tempting lips are almost deployed of lipstick from as much your teeth have punished the plush flesh.

“Hello.” Shirabu greets you with an easy smile, one that he doesn’t really use despite the little effort it takes.

“Oh, hi Doctor.” There’s an anxious smile on your lips and Shirabu feels a tingle start on his fingertips, climb his arm, spread down his back to burn in his guts. You’re so pretty when you’re nervous.

“How are we today? You can come and sit by the chair first.” Shirabu moves calmly, closing the door behind him; carefully turning the key without bringing attention. He’s still testing the waters but he can gather that you’re a trusting one, waiting to hear from him what exactly you need to do and then do it.

“Ahhh, um… I’m good, just came for my annual checkup.” You say while taking a seat on the chairs, only risking one look up at his face, then lowering those eyes onto his coat, clearly reading his name. Your expression seems surprised… but pleased. Is it because he’s young or because he’s attractive? Shirabu can’t decide, but there’s a clear smile in his lips as he looks you over, then circles his way to sit behind the table.

“Is this your first time here? If not, when was your last appointment?”

“Actually,” Your eyes meet his when your head angles up and you scurry them down as if you’re embarrassed. Your lips are once again suffering under your teeth before you free them and speak, “It’s my first. Like, ever.”

“Oh,” Shirabu let’s slip with a breath. There’s too much joy in that little sigh and in his tone when he asks, “Really?”

Your head goes up and down first, fingers fumbling, then you seem to remember that you need to speak with him, “Yes.”

“Do you have a medical file here already? Any complaints I should know?” Shirabu covers the usual bases first, calmly checking his agenda and time, how much he can have with you and how he can extend it.

“Hm… No complaints, except…” You fall silent for a moment and Shirabu can feel the burning in your face all the way through the table.

“It’s okay.” He’s quick to tranquilize you, “I’m your Doctor, you can tell me anything.”

“I think my birth-control is… uh, how can I say this? Making me… a little numb?” You tell him in a low voice, a hint of worry slipping through as you try to send him a little embarrassed smile as if you’re worried he may feel bad about it.

Shirabu is quick to smile back, so pleased at how you relax and melt back into yourself at the sight of it. He can’t help but think you’re such a good girl. “You didn’t answer the first question, though.”

“It’s my first time in the clinic as well. A friend of mine recommended it to me.” You give a precious little giggle as if your nervousness scrambles your train of thought and Shirabu thinks it’s endearing, especially the fact that you’re a pretty little thing who doesn’t know best and you’ve ended right on his lap.

Well, he plans to make the most of it.

“Hmm, understood. So, Miss… Is it Miss?” Shirabu sends you a charming smile, one he knows it’s good, and your eyes seem to flash with something at the sight of it, your throat bobbing right before your lips split in a little smile.

“Yes,” you giggle his way with a little roll of your eyes, as if it’s obvious and he makes a surprised face along with another dazzling smile. Shirabu has smiled more in the last ten minutes than n his whole week and he’s face will soon protest.

“Really? You’re so pretty, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had already planted a ring on your finger.” God knows he would, and as fast as he could, too.

You bite at your lips to avoid a smile planting itself in your face, eyes fleeing from his as your hands fist your dress and you left a little breathy laugh out. As if he’s being ridiculous.

“Okay Miss, so since it’s your first time doing this check-up, I’ll need you to do a few things for me, okay?”

“Sure, Doctor.” God, that shouldn’t mess him up as it does, the hairs on his arm standing on edge at the delicious sound of it in your voice.

“I’ll need you to go to that bathroom right there, strip all your clothes including underwear and change into the paper gown that’s right on top of a cabinet there. Leave the opening to the front and then come back to sit at that examination table right there. Can you do this for me?”

“Of course, Doctor.” Warmth spreads from his body, rolls thick with his blood around his limbs and starts concentrating south. Jesus, you’ll be his demise like this.

“Good. Now go.”

Once you’re out of sight, Shirabu makes arrangements. And when you come back, clad in nothing but a paper-thin gown that leaves little to the imagination, he buttons his coat as long as it goes. Just to be sure.

His eyes thread carefully over your barely concealed body, enthralled by how your breathing comes in quick puffs of air, goosebumps rising on your skin under the cold temperature of the room. Pressing against the warmth of his palm at the slight touch of his fingers on your shoulder.

“You can sit at the examination table. We’ll start with a breast exam before you lie down, okay?” Shirabu knows his voice is sweeter than usual; carefully built in a trusty tone, words rolling off his mouth a little deeper, a little low - all just so he can assure he has your attention.

“I’ll start with a breast exam and then you can lie down.” He explains his steps one by one, so when he opens the front of the barely existing paper gown, all you do is take a sharp breath and slowly let the air out. So nice. Such a good girl for him.

He carefully brings his fingers to glide over the outskirts of your breasts, pressing on your flesh with steady, slow to warm digits. Shirabu feels as you fidget slowly when he circles the flesh once, slow and deliberate with the pressure he applies. “I’m checking for any unusual lumps around the tissue,” Shirabu tells that so close to your face he can feel the warm wave of air your gasp lets out at his words, and he pretends the little taste does nothing for him despite the way his blood boils in his veins.

He does the same circular motion a second time, then a third time in reverse, and all but grin in his self-satisfied way when he notices the shy nub stand to attention. Your brows are furrowed even from such little stimulation, throat bobbing as your mouth sucks cold puffs of breaths inside your lungs.

Shirabu’s digits slide up your collarbone, then press together in a quick motion from all the way up to under your breast, stealing just the slight touch over your erected nipple.

“Please put your hand over my shoulder,” Shirabu says carefully, detached; and is delighted when you push a little dazed “what” out your swollen lips.

He can’t help but smirk; poor little lamb is lost to the wolf around her - and his claws are already in.

“Like this, honey.” His hand takes yours in his, open your palm with his fingers to press it on his shoulder, a wide-angle that gives him better access and provides for a comfortable examination.

“Hm, okay!” You strangle it out, cute and bashful and Shirabu feels his slacks getting tighter.

“Good,” he breathes close to your face and restarts his movements, digits massaging up and down your chest, right side first as his fingertips get together to start to draw patterns from outside until the center in a repeated motion that ends with just a barely-there, butterfly touch over your nipples as he does a careful glide around the circle.

Your shoulders tremble and curve inwards as your abdomen seizes, hints of your pleasure that Shirabu can pinpoint even without his medical expertise. It makes his heart soars; such a little innocent thing that you can’t even speak up about it, just quietly suffering from the need growing inside you until you’ll burst.

His hand stops under your breast to weigh it, palm covering the extension of flesh as his thumb slides in a fond motion to the sides.

“Now I’ll do the left,” Shirabu announces and feels as you tense, eyes looking up at him in a lost haze even as you blink and nod. There’s a small storm brewing inside your eyes clouding them over, as if you’re struggling to catch up to his fingers, trying to fully wrap around his motions and still falling victim of your innocence, agreeable and placid, trained and directed to respect authority.

Dr. Shirabu knows best, you’re probably thinking as you nod once again, hands grabbing at anything they can to hide their trembling. Then he starts his ministrations by rolling your nipple with his thumb, drawing a gasp from you.

“Oh, sorry,” Shirabu says with fake sorrow before he starts the circling massage around your breasts once again.

A humming agreement is all you answer him, lips pressed together as if you’re embarrassed by the noise you’ve left. Oh, poor little thing.

He can’t wait to ruin you.

Shirabu wonders if you can notice how he changes the motions of his fingers this time around, pressing closer to the center and around the halo of your breast as he kneads the delicious mound with his digits.

Your knees are practically pressed together and you’re struggling to hold your shoulders up in a straight line and Shirabu is absolutely delighted at causing your downfall with such little, fickle things as the point of his fingers.

He waits for the moment where your teeth close sharply over your swollen lips, holding both breath and noise inside, and angles both his hands to press under your breasts, upwards motion that is a good excuse for groping - not that you’d know. Your spine curves as your head turn down in waves of burning hot embarrassment at your own behavior and Shirabu simply has to move before he does something bad.

Well, worst.

“All done,” he tells you with a small curve on his lips as he steps back. You wait for him to turn before letting a breath out, but even that sounds sharp in the silence of the room. Shirabu hides his hands from your eyes in his pockets, fingers twitching in the absence of your smooth skin under his digits.

“Now we’ll pass to the examination.” The little tremble in your frame is enough to add twisting fire into his veins, temperature rising even when the air conditioning is running low. Shirabu does his best in making his voice sound unaffected and neutral, walking over to the stirrups and adjacent dressing table where he keeps his medical gloves.

“You can lie down and put your legs over the supports.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

You obey like a good girl, the simple motion already flashing him the precious skin underneath, legs spread wide open and immobilized. Anxious eyes look for his in reassurance, then seem to think better of it as they fall down to watch your open legs. The view making you squirm once again in the padded table.

So precious.

And trusting.

Your hands are clasped over your belly in an attempt to keep them from fidgeting, eyes eagerly fleeting between Shirabu’s frame and the ceiling. He sends a smile your way as he pulls the chair close to the stirrups and your disconcert is practically charming.

When Shirabu walks over to sit between your open legs, his cock strains against his slacks, immoral coil twisted hard at the small peak of heavenly skin, of glistening folds swollen by the blood flow.

If only he could lick it.

There’s a tremble to your form that he can’t pinpoint, but the wide-open arch of your legs immobile over the stirrups clear are involved in; that, and the pulsating arousal in your center, if the way you’re throbbing open for him is any indication.

Shirabu had considered going slow, threading carefully before taking what he wants, but the fortitude of his mind is being challenged by the view alone: You, laying on the table, legs spread and skin glowing. It’s wicked. Shirabu wishes so much to taste, but he’s snapping his gloves on instead.

“Are you sexually active?” He makes small talk, chair sounding loud in the silent room as he finally takes his place on it.

“I’m, uh, not for a while.”

“Any unprotected intercourse?”

“Hm... N-no.” Huh. Shirabu doubts he was able to hide the motion in his lips signaling that the little slip in your tone isn’t lost. “Are you certain? We may need to do a test, just to be sure.”

Your eyes fleet to him, shining in the artificial illumination, flustered expression as you down them for your clasped hands after. It’s rather endearing to watch as your anxious behavior spike, the way you’re unable to twist or move, pinned there by physical barrier more than just his eyes.

“It’s possible.” You answer him, meek, and he tries not to smile. “But I’ve been on the pill.”

“Ok, then. You mentioned numbness. Did you mean during intercourse or just in general?”

“Sometimes general, but normally when I’m… touching… myself.”

Oh well. What a nice little improvement. His eyes bore on yours between the valley of your legs, the air surrounding you both turning thicker.

“Understood. I’m going to be touching you now.”

You nod, and then gasp when his hands actually touch the inside of your open thighs, a light caress to satiate the need to know how soft and plush you feel, and it’s exactly as much as you look. You suck in a breath slowly, and Shirabu lets his fingers slide up to your hot center.

“I’ll start with the pelvic exam. If you feel any pain or discomfort, just say so.” You nod and he starts slowly, two gloved fingers carefully threading over the swollen labia with acute precision, circling motions as he caresses the underside of your most sensitive place and downwards, rounds the dripping wet entrance, and sliding back up, fingers opening in a “v” motion, a small twirl around the engorged nub above it all. “I’m making an exterior exam, any numbness?”

You nod your negative. Eyes barely holding themselves open, teeth sunk on your lips. “Tell me if you either don’t feel anything or feel anything hurting.”

“Okay,” it’s mostly a whine, breath leaving your mouth as soon as you open it. He descends a third finger over your sex, up and down circling motions that rip a groan from your throat.

“Does anything hurt?” Shirabu’s voice is collected, calm, a stark contrast to the throbbing length in his pants. “Numb?”

“I...don’t think so?” You’re trembling, voice breathless as the stirrups squeaking under the strain of your thighs and Shirabu’s other hand comes up, palm planting over your pelvis, feeling the soft skin and then pressing his palm on it.

“Doesn’t seem like you have a problem with sensibility.” He tries to reassure you as his fingers thread to your entrance, indicator slowly tracing the tight circle pulsating in front of his eyes. You’re dripping wet, soaking his gloves and all he can think is what a delicious little patient.

“I’ll be entering you now, okay? There’s no need for the speculum, so I’m performing a touch exam.”

“Oh-kay, doctor,” comes your little gruff voice, putty under his hands and opening up nicely for his fingers when he presses inside. You’re tight, wonderfully so, clinging to his gloved fingers. Shirabu angles them up and deep, your blistering warmth spreading from his digits to his arm and then his whole body.

He’ll have to find a way to “test” you there, as well. He doesn’t retreat his fingers, but he aims the motions of them inside and above, looking for the sensitive place that’s bound to make you-

“Ah!”

There it is. Shirabu chuckles and rounds the place with his digits as your knees buckle inside then angling out, spreading wide. He retreats his fingers, rolling them with a little scissoring, then plunges deeper inside as an excuse of trying to reach your cervix. If only he could use his cock- that’d be way easier.

“And now?” Shirabu asks, wicked. “Any pain? Numbness?”

“N-uhnn-” You try to speak but choke on a soft moan, your hands flying to your face as you swallow and answer him back in a trembling tone, “No.”

“Anything else?” It’s teasing, clearly, but you don’t seem to notice it, dazed eyes searching for him as you wet your mouth before speaking.

“It feels�� weird.”

“Really? ” Shirabu spreads his fingers a bit, rolls them to feel around your walls. “Why’s that?”

“I- I don’t know. It’s… good.”

“Hmmm… That’s interesting.” His gloved thumb descends over your labia, rolls over your clitoris with strict precision, fingers angling inside to meticulously hit that special place once again. The table squeaks under the strength of your buckling, open cunt pulsating around his fingers in plain view for his appreciative eyes. “You seem to be a bit oversensitive, not numb.”

“Is that- a problem?” You say between breaths as Shirabu’s thumb rolls over your clit. He’s astonished you don’t question any of his debatable moves, only looking at him with dazed, soft eyes.

“Depends. Do you always leak like this? It can be a condition.” Shirabu presses his palm over your pelvic bone, angle his fingers meticulously and swirl your clitoris with his thumb in firm precision. You moan and immediately recoil in embarrassment, mouth agape in your own surprise. Shirabu scissors his fingers in a rotating motion, inside and out for barely a few seconds and your spine arches off the table, mouth falling in a wide “o” as you tremble on his examination table.

Delicious.

“Sorry, did I hurt you?”

“No,” you answer in a breath.

Shirabu palms his length to release the pressure, cock straining at the soft expression of rapture on your eyes. “Everything seems good inside; But maybe you’re sensitive. I’ll keep that in mind for the next exams.”

“Is it… done?”

“Almost.” Shirabu smiles, but it's a be-ready-for-trouble one. “All we need is the ultrasound for the internal exam.”

“I thought you had just-”

“This one was the touch one, the next one is done with the ultrasound equipment. It will be inserted inside and then I’ll be able to take a good look at your uterus health.”

“Oh, okay.”

You seem focused on catching your breath as your stretched hole keeps winking at him, as if begging for more. Unfortunately, Shirabu has to move on. He pulls the equipment table close, moves the screen to the side and at a fairly inaccessible angle for your eyes. The transducer reminds a wand, long, shaped anatomically thin with a slightly larger head, barely two-fingers girth.

“Have you ever orgasmed before? Sensitive dysfunction can make it harder for women to achieve sexual gratification.”

“I… actually don’t know…”

Shirabu slides a condom on it, drops a generous amount of lube over it and then turns to you with a smile. Your legs twitch and your walls clench and he has a strike of brilliance right there as he eyes the pretty furl of muscle under your pleading pussy.

You yelp as he brings a lubed finger to draw rings over your rear, embarrassed eyes quickly searching for his.

“Doctor?!”

“Oh, sorry. The equipment goes in anally. Didn’t I mention that?”

“No?!” You groan, surprised, a soft breath escaping your lips.

“Sorry. I’m just preparing you, passing something to help it.” Shirabu explains, as a liar, and slowly work you open with his indicator pressing inside - carefully, slowly, with clinical precision until his whole knuckle is inside and your breathing is labored, open pussy throbbing for something he can’t give it to you just yet. How precious. “I’m inserting it now. Please tell me if it hurts.”

Shirabu angles the device on the lubed hole and watches, enthralled, as your ass swallows it’s wider head whole with just the first push, the rest of the body following easily as the tight ring presses the overflowing lube out. Fuck. Shirabu’s cock is weeping uncontrollably inside his slacks and he carefully brings a hand to help with the tightness of his pants, opening it enough to allow his thick length to escape free, but still covered by his lab coat.

Then Shirabu presses the device deeper, the angle sharp. He brings the receptor over your belly, presses way to closer to the apex of your sex. “Does it hurts?”

“No,” you breathe out, dazed.

“Does it feel good?”

“...Yes,” you sigh.

“Hmmm, interesting.” Shirabu retreats it, pretending to angle it somewhere else. He moves the equipment a bit more and your knees tremble as your pussy starts to drip on the floor. Jesus, that’s fucking hot. He leaves the receptor over your skin to fly his hand to his cock, slowly pumping it to relieve the throbbing ache. You’re way too lost in your own pleasure to notice his, and that only makes him more feral.

“You can feel something entering you now, but it’s just another equipment,” Shirabu says as he abandons his aching cock to slide two fingers inside your pleading hole, instead. He’s not even sure you understood his warning. Cute.

“Doctor,” you breathe, almost panicked and Shirabu rolls his thumb over your clit to hear you yelp, your ass tight around the transductor as he scissors his fingers on your wide-open cunt.

“Yes?”

“I feel... “ You sound so wrecked and lost, a shiver wandering down Shirabu’s spine as his throat bobs. Your pussy throbs around his fingers, begging for something it can’t even pinpoint. Poor thing.

“Pain?”

“No? Something… else.” Such a cute breathless voice, chest heaving with rabbit-fast beats that Shirabu almost can feel on his fingers deep inside your soaking walls.

“Pleasure?” He offers, fighting the need to smile at how your confused expression, brows furrowed as you try to think of another word but come ultimately short.

“I…” You start but bite your lips to hold the noise at how he aims at your special spot. Then blink twice, still losing the fight against the thick pleasure fog in your mind. “I guess?”

“Wow.” You’re so honest. Shirabu’s surprise is fairly genuine. He hopes his tone sounds more understanding than completely hungry. “Well… It’s not unusual for patients to feel arousal by exams considering their invasive nature. It’s okay, don’t panic.”

“But,” You start, tense and writhing, but Shirabu stands up, the equipment in your ass changing angle but his eyes are finding yours in the distance.

“It’s okay,” Shirabu repeats and you listen, hazed eyes focused entirely on him. “Take a deep breath.”

You obey so well, mouth opening as you breathe deep, chest filling even when Shirabu slowly edges the equipment out of your tight asshole. The fingers inside your pussy don’t stop, though, and he brings his other hand, now free, to aid him in wrecking you. “Now surrender to it. Let it wash over you…”

“I…” You whine and tense, but then his two hands are gliding over every erogenous zone on your labia with acute expertise, and you let go, bones essentially melting under his ministrations; letting out a soft, obedient, won over, “Okay.”

“Good girl.” He tells you and rotates his fingers in and out, keeping you nice, wet and wide. You’re close. Shirabu can feel it in how you’re swelling around him. “You’re an amazing patient, Miss. Just do as I say and I’m telling you to cum.” That does it, as your head angles back, hands holding yourself and the table as you take a deep breath.

“Yes, doctor,” You whisper and moan, surrendering to the intense orgasm that pulses suddenly through you and quivers around his fingers. It’s beautiful to watch you come undone, legs trembling sharply as they’re held wide open, pussy fluttering in a wave of wetness that joins the puddle on the ground, mouth open as your tongue slides past it, eyes rolling inside your skull and probably seeing white.

Shirabu never feels tired of it, finally angling himself to bend over your frame, mouth looking for yours quickly as he breaks character.

“Keijiro,” you sigh, pleasure-drunk and Shirabu licks over your open lips, bites on your jaw, sucks the skin to leave his marks.

“Yes, love.” He answers against your pulse point and you lets out a satisfied sigh by his ear.

“That was amazing.”

“You think so?” Shirabu rolls his hips against your bare, soaked wet pussy, and his free cock rolls deliciously between the lubricated folds. “I’m just starting, though, Miss. I think you’ll need a more thorough exam, though. With special equipment too.” He brings his hand to angle his cock on your entrance, eyes locked on yours as you blink and smile, blissed out and pleading. Shirabu presses himself inside and you throw your head back in bliss, hands planting on his shoulders with sharp nails aiming for his skin. “Such a good patient I have. Open wide, love.”

You arch your head back to look up at him, mouth falling open on command, for Shirabu to do as he pleases. You, wide open on his table, for him to do as he pleases. He’s your husband after all and you’ve learned from a long time that what pleases Dr. Shirabu Kenjiro the most is picking you apart piece by piece, white bliss searing your every nerve-end as you fall and shatter for him, drowning under his thumb as he holds you down waves of pleasure, dragging you like the tide - strong and unyielding until it hurts to even breathe.

The mere thought of having more makes your lips fall open in a moan, “yes, Doctor.”

Because you love everything about that.

#shirabu kenjiro x reader #shirabu smut #haikyuu smut #shirabu kenjirou smut #shirabu kenjirou x reader #tw consensual noncon #tw medical kink #tw medical roleplay #tw doctor

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itsjustmyfantasyroom · 3 years ago

Text

Unlikely Lovers Chapter 11

Can’t believe we are here....chapter 11. @beccabarba and I had a ball writing this and hope to revisit this series really soon. Thank you for the likes, comments and re-blogs, means a lot.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Warnings: Angst. Episode based. Nice and soft p in v smut.

WC: 2358

Enjoy x

The last words he spoke to you were running over and over in your head as you held the phone to your ear and you watched on the TV screen what was unfolding in front of you. For the first time in your career as a detective you didn’t know what to do or what to say,

“Y/N, hello, are you there? Y/N” Amanda’s voice yelled over the phone.

You had all been assigned a day off for full medicals, Liv booking yours for today. Nick stayed the night before and ended up leaving far too late, after he spent way too much time lazily kissing all over your body, before he got you right where he wanted you, jumping out of bed, telling you that you would both pick up where he left off when he got home.

He kissed you deeply and told you he loved you, before he bolted out the door to get to the station. You went about your day, getting to the doctor’s office 5 minutes before your apartment for your blood tests and then on to your therapy appointment before you went and got some shopping for dinner that night and going past your favourite deli grabbing a sandwich and heading home for a quiet afternoon, waiting till Nick came home.

You walked through the door putting everything on the kitchen bench and flicked on the tv for some background noise as you moved around the kitchen putting things away. You had just opened the wrapping on your lunch and ‘Breaking News’ interrupted the daytime movie, then your phone started to buzz in your back jeans pocket.

You didn’t answer the phone, gasping seeing Liv flash on the screen and then flashed to Nick running into a school building with his vest on. Tension shot through you, tears filled your eyes, and your phone started to ring again. You looked at the screen seeing Amanda’s name,

“H-“ you cleared your throat “Hello, Amanda”

“You watching the news? You are, aren’t you?”

“Yeah” you whispered “Do you have eyes on him?”

“Not yet, Y/N, he is a good cop, you know that”

You nodded back, tears running down your cheeks, as you watched the tv screen. Amanda could hear your unsteady breathing.

“Y/N, you need to focus. Think like a cop. You’ve been in these situations before.”

“Text me the address, I’m coming,” you blurted down the phone grabbing your badge and hurrying out of the door.

The cab drive over was the longest drive you had ever had to sit through. Finally, the cab pulled up to a sea of news vans and a mixture of police vehicles. You ran through the crowd of people to the police barricades and you flashed your badge, the officer letting you through. You saw the back of Amanda’s head and you ran as fast as you could towards her. As you got closer, you saw Amanda on the radio looking up at Fin. You rushed to her grabbing her arm and she turned to look at you,

“She just got here. Copy that, Sergeant…”

Your eyes were filled with worry. Amanda grabbed your shoulder, giving it a light squeeze and a soft smile,

“He is safe. They are coming out now, go.”

You nodded and rushed away from her heading towards the front doors of the school. Just as you got to the path you saw Nick walking down the steps with his arms around a young man handing him over to uniforms. Liv met him putting her hand on his shoulder when he looked up and locked eyes with you. Both your eyes filled with tears, you ran, as fast as your feet would carry you, Nick pulling away from Liv’s hand and he rushed towards you.

Without thinking, as soon as your fingers touched you jumped on him, Nick grabbing your thighs and lifting you up, your legs wrapping around his middle and your arms around his neck. You covered his face in kisses and then pulled back your hands going to his cheeks and you looked deep into his eyes,

“Babe, are you ok? Are you hurt?”

“I am fine, Amor. No not hurt,” Nick put you down on the ground his hands going to your cheeks, dipping his head kissing you deeply, not caring who was watching, “I love you so much.” His forehead rested on yours, “the whole time,” he muttered “you’re my everything, baby,” tears running down his cheeks.

“I was so scared. I love you so much,” you sniffed.

“Y/N, take me home, please?”

You smiled. “Of course…” You grabbed his hand and started to lead him away.

“Hey, Amaro,” came Liv’s voice. “I know you want to go home, but paperwork first, okay? Do you need to see a medic?”

“No, I’m good,” Nick replied, with a thin smile. He looked really tired.

“We’ll drop by the precinct first, then home,” you said to her. You turned to Nick. “Then I’m going to take you home and look after you.”

He looked at you with soft eyes, giving you a tired smile. “I can’t wait for it to just be us, home and safe,” he said, squeezing your hand.

When you reached Nick’s house, you offered to make dinner, or at least a hot drink, but Nick just shook his head and walked quietly through to the bathroom. While he was in the shower you made some hot tea anyway, grabbing some trail mix from the kitchen and heading through to the bedroom, setting it on the nightstand. You left to go find the takeout menus, thinking you would persuade him to eat with his favourite Chinese food. When you came back to the bedroom, he was out of the bathroom, his towel discarded on the floor, lying completely naked, facedown on the bed. Your eyes ran over his toned and muscled back, his perfect ass, and you felt a kick of heat. But more than that, your heart overflowed with love. He looked vulnerable, and tired, and you wanted to take care of him. And you were grateful he could be this honest with you, this exposed.

You smiled to yourself and went to sit on the side of the bed, running the flat of your hand over his back. He turned his head, his hair still damp and unruly from the shower, and looked up at you. His eyes were soft, grateful, as he gave you a little smile. “You made tea,” he said.

“Well you should have something. I’m going to insist we have dinner soon, but it can wait for now…” You stroked his back, then ran your fingers up to massage his scalp. He groaned softly in relaxation.

“You’re too good to me,” he said quietly.

“You’d be the first one taking care if roles were reversed,” you said, and he laughed softly in acknowledgement. He turned onto his side and held out his arms. You smiled down at him, and stood up briefly to pull off your clothes, so you were just in your underwear when you laid down next to him. He wrapped his arms around you and you pressed yourself against his chest, enveloped in his body heat. You felt his heart beating, and the rise and fall of every breath, as he kissed your face softly.

“I love you, Nick,” you said, “and I’m sorry if I didn’t seem very strong today. I just…I can’t stand the thought of…well…”

“Hush,” he murmured, stroking your head and entwining one leg with yours, “I know. But we’re both good cops, Y/N, we stay as safe as we can. And you don’t have to be strong… God knows, I don’t really feel it.” You wrapped your arms and legs around him as tightly as you could, and pressed your forehead to his. “I love you,” he said softly. And then he was quiet, his breath mingling with yours, as you just lay close together, safe and warm.

You were starting to feel sleepy when his lips found yours in a soft kiss. You smiled against him and kissed him back. You were surprised to hear an aroused moan in his throat, as he started to kiss you harder and deeper. Then he pulled back slightly, to look into your eyes. “Is this okay? You’ve been through a lot today…” he asked softly, but with an edge of urgency.

“No more than you have. Yes, Nick, please…I want you, I need you…it’s more than okay…” He smiled and pressed his lips back against yours, the kiss both harder and deeper this time. His hands moved over your back, finding the clasp of your bra and unfastening it. You wriggled out of the bra and threw it out of the bed, and Nick’s hands found your breasts, squeezing softly as he started to move his body against yours. One of his hands travelled down your body, pulling your leg up and over his, your bodies fitting together, but with access for his fingers between your thighs. He stroked the soft skin of your inner thighs, then over the thin fabric of your underwear, pressing your core through the dampening material, then sliding it to the side to touch you properly. You both groaned into the kiss as his fingers stroked through your folds, feeling your wet heat.

He stopped kissing you, pressing his forehead to yours again. “Can we take your panties off, baby?” he asked, a little smile curling his lips, as his fingers continued to caress you.

You caught your breath as his touch swept over your clit. “Yes, of course…” you said weakly, reaching down to help him pull your underwear down and off your legs. The moment it was gone, he grabbed your leg and pulled it up onto his hip, still lying on his side facing you, looking into your eyes. You felt the length of his erection pressing against your core, and pushed your hips into him.

“You ready?” he asked, and you could hear the raw need in his voice. Not lust so much as a desire for connection, for intimacy.

“Yes, so ready…” you told him, kissing him again. His tongue pushed into your mouth as he altered the angle of his hips, and his hard cock slid into you, filling you all the way. You moaned into his mouth, wrapping your leg around him to pull him into you, as he started to move his hips, slowly, buried deep in you, not really thrusting so much as just filling you, moving in you. As his cock stretched you and pressed on your sweet spots, his tongue was exploring your mouth, and his hands stroking your back, one going up to tangle in your hair and keep you locked into the kiss. You lay like that for a long time, connected and filled by him, feeling your inner walls clenching him, feeling your heart swell with love.

You could feel his temperature rising, his pulse speeding up. He stopped kissing you and looked into your eyes. “Oh god, you don’t know what you do to me, Y/N,” he groaned.

“Why don’t you show me?” you whispered back, drawing a smile to his lips. He put a hand on your shoulder and pushed you onto your back easily, settling between your spread legs, never pulling out of you as you moved together. He took your wrists in his hands gently, pushing them up by your ears and into the pillow, one hand one each, as he circled his hips and made you arch up against him. Your bodies were connected from your chest downwards, his warm body weight pressing on you. Then he started to move his hips, pulling back, before thrusting into you, each stroke slow but deep and forceful. His pubic bone was pressing against your clit, and his cock dragging against your g-spot, and you could feel your orgasm starting to build – a rare thing for you from penetration alone, but undeniable. You tilted your head back and he kissed your neck.

His pace increased and you knew how close you were. You looked up into his eyes, squirming your hands slightly against his grip, which he only tightened. “Nick, I’m going to come…” you breathed.

“Yes, baby, let me feel it…” he replied. The idea of being driven over the edge by him fucking you, and him feeling it around him, only brought your closer, and you closed your eyes as your orgasm finally broke like a tidal wave through your body, sending rippling heat out from between your legs and through every cell of your body, making you cry out incoherently with the release. Nick didn’t stop moving, but you felt his pace falter, and opened your eyes to find him looking intently into your face. “You’re so damn beautiful when you come apart under me,” he said, “and it’s going to make me…” he never finished the sentence, pushing into you deeply, coming with his cock buried in your body.

He lay on top of you as he recovered, still inside you, releasing your hands, which you wrapped around him. You were both breathing hard, hearts beating fast and in unison. He rested his head on your shoulder for a while, then looked up at you with a little smile. “I’m so grateful for you,” he whispered.

“I feel the same. It’s why I get scared, Nick. What we have seems so perfect, and I feel so blessed. I worry something will happen…” You stroked his hair and delivered a soft kiss to his lips.

“Then we’ll both have to try extra hard to stay safe, won’t we?” He laughed gently, “you know, everyone thought it was so unlikely that we’d get together…and now look at us…”

You smiled. “You’re my best friend as well as the love of my life, Nick,” you told him.

You saw from his face that the feeling was mutual. “Who’d have thought it?” was all he said.

“Apparently no one,” you laughed, as he bent his head to kiss you again.

To be continued....

Tags: @wanniiieeee @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo @randofando-spoonie @alwaysachorusgirl @amorestevens @harryssxnflwr @teamsladsandgents @thatesqcrush @storiesofsvu @skittle479 @bisexual-dreamer02 @glimmerglittergirl @witches-unruly-heart @berniesilvas @ben-c-group-therapy @elektriknachosss

#nick amaro #nick amaro x reader #nick amaro x you #nick amaro smut #nick amaro x #detective nicolas amaro #nicolas amaro #law and order svu #SVU fanfiction #SVU FANDOM #svu fan #svu x reader

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ladylynse · 4 years ago

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Chapter 14 [FF | AO3] of Whirlwind (SQ fic): Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny should’ve expected something like this when he got that phone call.

Previous | Timeline post

-|-

7:54 PM

Adrien raced for the rooftop door that would lead back into the hotel, knowing that’s where Hawk Moth would have gone. He should have risked taking Hawk Moth’s Miraculous while he’d been frozen, despite not knowing what that would have done to Danny or the imprisoned kwami. He should have known what Hawk Moth would do once free, attacking not him but the more vulnerable Susan to distract them. He should have realized that Hawk Moth would know of Randy’s smoke bombs from his earlier appearances and would use that to his advantage.

He should have anticipated all of that, and he hadn’t.

Of course, until Danny had reached up and pulled him out of Dracona’s talons and through the rooftop, he’d been contemplating the best use of his Cataclysm. Collapsing the roof below him wouldn’t have guaranteed escape, not when Dracona would fly, and he hadn’t been sure he wouldn’t accidentally touch something organic if he’d tried to strike anything else. Activating Cataclysm when Hawk Moth came to take his ring would have bought him five minutes, and his plan had come to rest on hoping for rescue within those five minutes (and subsequently asking Randy for a weapon he could safely destroy).

But even though his partners had come through for him, none of this had ended well.

When Hawk Moth had tackled Randy and slipped a smoke bomb from one of his pockets (and who knew what else; Randy hadn’t exactly gone through his pockets that Adrien had noticed), Adrien had still been moving towards Susan. He hadn’t acted fast enough to stop her from being attacked, even when he knew how quick Hawk Moth could be. It would be different if Ladybug were here, but she wasn’t, and he knew how important it was to get Susan medical attention when all the damage done couldn’t be reversed.

He hadn’t reached Susan before Jake. He hadn’t even made it to her side before Randy had been back on his feet, grabbing his arm and saying he’d take care of this, that Adrien—Nino, because he hadn’t trusted them with his name—should go after Hawk Moth. Danny had said he and Jake would find the akuma and bring it back to him, but Adrien had been willing to let the akuma go, let Hawk Moth go, to try to save Susan, even when he wasn’t the best equipped to do that.

First aid training would have gotten him only so far.

Hawk Moth was out of sight by the time Adrien flung open the door and bolted into the stairwell. He took the stairs two at a time, but the only footsteps he could hear was his own, and he didn’t catch any fleeting glimpses of anyone else.

That meant Hawk Moth would have transformed, and Adrien had no idea who he was beneath the mask. Adrien could hope to get lucky and catch someone with his build in one of the hallways, but he wouldn’t know for sure, and even if Hawk Moth had exited the stairwell on the top floor, he could easily have gone for the elevator or another staircase if not back to his room.

He’d hesitated, and now Hawk Moth was gone.

Adrien stopped, scanned for hidden cameras on the off chance that he’d be lucky and Hawk Moth hadn’t seen one, but of course there was nothing, at least not where he stood right now, and any blind spot would have been noted by Hawk Moth. He’d likely scouted out the entire building before using it. But if he’d deemed it safe to transform, then it was safe to Adrien to do the same, even if that meant he couldn’t take a look at security tapes to figure this out.

Adrien sat down on the stairs, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Claws in, Plagg.”

“Did you want me to stick close to the ceilings and zip through the rooms?”

Adrien’s lips twitched into a smile and he looked up. Plagg didn’t often to volunteer to help like that without saying he’d do it in exchange for camembert. “He won’t still be Hawk Moth.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“What I mentioned to Danny before he took me back up to the roof,” Adrien said quietly. “Get a copy of the hotel registry. It might not lead to anything—this still might not be his hotel—but I can’t think of anything else. Danny said he was happy to go to the surrounding hotels, too, and get copies of their registries, but I just don’t…. What if it doesn’t help? Is it worth stealing that information, compromising all those people’s privacy, if it doesn’t help us? He might not have used his real name.”

Plagg snorted. “Why would he be that careful right now? He didn’t know you were here.”

“But he had to know that others would be. He was trying to draw people out. I’m sure he was looking for something to use against us, maybe even another Miraculous.” Adrien groaned and buried his head again. “I was so close. I should have just risked it and taken his Miraculous. At least then I’d know his face. I don’t know how I’d find him from that, but it would’ve been better than nothing. I could’ve talked to Nathaniel and commissioned a drawing to give to Ladybug, and—”

“You and the others still stopped him from getting what he came for,” Plagg interrupted. “You know he’s here. You know he’s close. Do you really think he’s going try something a third time? No. That’s too risky for him. He’ll lay low. So, if you get a list of names and room numbers, I can look for Nooroo and report back.”

It was enough to coax a brief chuckle out of Adrien; trust Plagg to completely ignore legality and the questionable morality of this idea.

“It’s like knowing you can buy cheese somewhere on the block, or somewhere in the store, and not knowing precisely where to find it. You don’t need to unmask Hawk Moth right now to get closer to the truth.”

“What if Ladybug thinks I wasted this opportunity?”

“She’s not that sort of person.” When Adrien raised his head, Plagg continued, “You’re doing her a disservice if you think she’ll jump to blaming you for not doing on your own what you haven’t managed to do together.”

“But this is the closest we’ve ever been to getting his Miraculous.”

“And it’s the closest he’s been to getting yours. You’ve been close to Hawk Moth before. You’ll get close to him again. Ladybug will be happy that you made it out of this with your identity intact.”

Adrien smiled; it really was nice to hear that. “Thanks.” Plagg opened his mouth, maybe to demand his camembert, but Adrien added, “I’m not going to make it out of this with my identity intact, though. Not completely. I want to tell the others who I am. They deserve to know.”

Plagg, who hadn’t closed his mouth, just said, “Having allies isn’t a bad thing. If you and Ladybug ever work with more Miraculous users, at least one of you will know who they are.”

“So you don’t think telling these guys is a bad idea?”

Plagg shrugged, as best he could ever shrug, and flicked his tail. “They know about the magical world, are already keeping secret identities, and have done their best to help you. You could make a worse choice than them.” He paused, then added, “Besides, it’s not like they don’t know what you look like without a mask on. If they hang around here and look at any of the signs, they won’t need to be geniuses to figure out your real name.”

Adrien winced. “Good point.”

“Can I get some cheese before we go back up? Since I make such good points and all?”

Adrien glanced towards the roof. “Do you think Susan will, um, need help we can’t give her? Should I have called an ambulance the moment I realized I wasn’t going to catch Hawk Moth?”

“They would’ve done that already if they figured they needed to.”

“Randy doesn’t have a phone right now. Remember what he was saying to Jake before?”

“Remember when I told you the Ninja had magic? Or at least magical artefacts helping him to use magic? Some ninjas know the art of healing. It’s a handy thing to have in the field. Even if this one doesn’t, the others had phones they could’ve given him, and Susan might’ve had a phone with her, too.” Plagg zipped closer. “You’ve decided to trust them. You can trust them. The fact that Hawk Moth escaped doesn’t mean they can’t trust you, and Susan will recover even without Tikki’s—Ladybug’s—magic. We have enough time for you to give me some cheese.”

Adrien wasn’t about to argue that, so he pulled out some cheese for Plagg as his way of saying thank you and then got to his feet and started climbing the stairs. He’d transform again before going back out; he was sure Susan would keep his secret since she was Jake’s mother, but he hadn’t exactly scouted the area for cameras. Once he’d assured himself that Susan was all right and he helped her get oriented again, they could fill her in on in what had happened. It was kinder for someone to do that rather than to leave them to find out themselves on the news, though he and Ladybug usually passed the task off to friends or family or a helpful bystander because they didn’t have the time to stick around.

If Jake and Danny were successful in finding the akuma, he’d have to figure out a way to contain it until Ladybug could purify it. He’d never heard if the others had found anything suitable. There hadn’t been time to ask. If only Hawk Moth had recalled the akuma—

But he hadn’t, which meant this problem remained.

One thing at a time.

One step at a time.

“Plagg, claws out!”

7:58 PM

There were noticeably fewer people out on the streets as they got nearer to the gala, but Haley still hadn’t expected to run into a blockade when access hadn’t been restricted earlier. Rotwood split off—she saw him heading for a cluster of people, no doubt to start spreading rumours that were too close to the truth to be of any comfort—and McFist engaged the security officer in conversation. She dawdled nearby, and when he pulled out his wallet, she ducked into the forbidden area and sprinted for that initial patch of ice.

Just because she usually didn’t break the rules, didn’t mean she couldn’t.

Besides, this wasn’t nearly as bad as setting a building on fire.

Haley didn’t wait long before she started lobbing Ninja Cold Balls. Most of them were aimed behind her because she had been followed, but as the balls burst apart and spread ice, it grew into a meandering pathway that followed her zigzagging run. It didn’t make a particular pattern and certainly wasn’t the giant rink that McFist and Rotwood had been envisioning, but the result was a ribbon-like trail that stretched from one side of the cordoned-off area to the other. She hurled the last Ninja Cold Ball at someone who’d tried approaching her from the side and slipped away, running for cover.

The fact that the ice was incredibly slippery and that made following her more difficult was a bonus.

She kept running until she was far enough ahead to take a corner and lose everyone behind her. An alley wasn’t a dead end when you were a dragon, at least not when it was somewhere without cameras, so she was on the rooftops by the time someone ran by below.

Haley took a moment to catch her breath, dismissing her wings so she could lie flat on the roof and stare up at the sky. She had no idea if Rotwood and McFist would be able to do anything to hold up their end of this plan. She had no idea how Jake and the others were faring. She had no idea if Gramps and Fu and Sun—

Haley wrinkled her nose. Something smelled like stale gasoline and…. Ethanol? No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure what it actually was, but whatever it was, it was foul. She sat up, scanning the streets below before she realized the thrumming she could hear wasn’t coming there. Haley looked to the skies.

The dragon that glided towards the site of the gala wasn’t terribly big. It was smaller than Jake, maybe half his size. It tilted, circled the building, and then settled on the roof with something that would more appropriately be called a crash.

One wing never folded, and after about ten seconds, the other wing creaked out to join the first. The dragon perched there like a gargoyle, although the image was completed when it spouted a brief flash of fire instead of water.

Haley barely took the time to make sure the coast was clear before she jumped off the roof, calling out her wings as she fell to soften her landing. They disappeared as her feet touched the ground, and she kept running. She wasn’t the only person heading back to the scene, even if the crowd was thinner than it had been earlier, so her haste didn’t make her stand out. Ahead of her, people were already starting to gather and point upwards….

This couldn’t be McFist; there was no way he’d be able to act this quickly, even with his resources, and this was beyond Rotwood. It had to be—

“There you are, kiddo!” McFist said, catching her arm and jerking her back painfully as she ran past him. He didn’t seem to notice her whimper, instead pointing up at the building and the dragon that loomed over them all. “Look what Viceroy made! A Robo-Dragon! I’ve already called him and informed him he’s getting a bonus. He was too startled for words. It was great. He’s never speechless. I had to reward it, though. This is quick work, even for him, and sending it here to test it out on the NYC Ninja was a stroke of genius—mine, of course, but I didn’t think he’d manage it.”

Viceroy.

The person who helped him with the Sorcerer.

“I can’t get him anything,” Haley said in case McFist decided to ask.

He glanced down, realized that he was still holding her, and let her go. She prodded at her arm and winced. She didn’t think he’d done this intentionally, but bruises were going to be the least of her worries for a while. She was lucky he hadn’t dislocated it.

“Sorry,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I was just excited. Couldn’t find Rotwood, and you’re the only other one who knows the plan.”

This hadn’t been the plan, though. Had it? She didn’t really count this as false advertising, but—

“I’ve paid them all off if you’re worried,” he added, nodding at the security officers. “Money doesn’t just talk. Works great for this kind of thing, too.”

Haley nodded absently, scanning the crowd. “Rotwood’s over there,” she said, following a glint to his monocle and raising her hand to point him out to McFist. “He’s getting blustery. I guess a robotic dragon is an effective way to shut down his claims about a real one.”

“Nice work. Come on.”

Haley held her ground. “Can I borrow your phone? I need to call someone. I’ll give it back, I promise.”

She wasn’t sure if it was a sign of trust or the foolishness of the rich that McFist dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her without asking any questions—or without sticking around to listen in, as he started walking off to give her some privacy. She walked in the other direction, keeping an eye on the crowd and her surroundings while she waited for Fu to pick up.

When he did answer, he didn’t say hello or the usual Fu here. He didn’t say anything at all, and she realized it must be because he didn’t know the number. “It’s Haley,” she said, and then the rest of the story spilled out of her in a torrent. The bare bones of the plan Nino had sketched out before they’d split up. How she’d gone from distracting two people to making promises in return for their help. Gramps hadn’t been entirely happy to hear that (Fu’d put her on speakerphone once she’d started talking), since he still wasn’t thrilled Jake had taken Rotwood to the Magus Bazaar in the first place, but he agreed that taking Rotwood back was a fair price for his silence.

He was even less happy about what she’d promised McFist, him being even more of an outsider than Rotwood, but Fu assured her he had something that would do the trick in reserve—he had a stock in case things ever went south and they couldn’t wait three weeks for him to brew something—and they both agreed that it was better than what McFist had initially asked for.

In turn, they filled her in on what Sun had been up to. She hadn’t just been seeding her own rumours; she’d been trying to get people away from the scene, efforts that had been stymied repeatedly until an order came from up top that cleared everyone out more effectively than she could’ve hoped. The official reason given for leaving had absolutely nothing to do with the dragon sighting, which had worked in her favour, but it clearly pointed to someone at the top stalling earlier, and she’d sneaked back to try to find out what she could.

Fu’s poker contacts had come up dry in terms of a decent magical containment device, since they couldn’t afford to bet on rumours right now. He hadn’t had any luck with any of the strings he’d pulled through his contacts at the Magus Bazaar, either, but at least Marty reported the coast had been clear at the shop since Trixie and Spud had left. Whoever had gotten to Susan didn’t have friends in the city, or at least not friends that could be spared to find and hit up anywhere of magical value.

Gramps, while he hadn’t found Susan, had made a list of ways they could tell Jonathan.

Haley nearly dropped the phone upon hearing that. “Really?” she whispered. She’d been thinking they’d never be allowed to tell him everything, that she’d always have to keep secrets from him. To think that maybe she wouldn’t have to….

“I have not always approved of your mother’s choice,” Gramps said quietly, “but there is no mistaking Jonathan’s love for all of you. Jake’s position as the American Dragon makes his path increasingly dangerous, and today has shown me that yours is little better. If my little lotus flower is not safe from the perils of this life, then your father must have a chance to choose it for himself.”

“He will. I know he will. Jake told all of us about the time he fought the Strigoi and didn’t even realize it. And the Jersey Devil.” She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “When do you think we can tell him?”

“Once we have Susan with us again.”

The words spread cold across her lungs. “Jake’s working on it,” she breathed. “He’ll do this, with his friends. Kara said he could.”

“I hate a wet blanket as much as the next person, but she said he’d have help, kid. Not that it would be enough.”

“It’ll be enough. He’ll make sure of it.” She finally caught sight of waving in the crowd, and she raised her own hand in recognition. “I have to go. Someone will call you soon. With good news.”

“Hope so. Good luck.”

“Yo, Haley,” Trixie said as she got closer. “Where’s Jake? I found that thermos of Spud’s he wanted, and he’s not answering his phone.”

“I’m not sure,” Haley admitted. She glanced over her shoulder to the dragon. “That was Spud, right?”

“Got it in one. He’d been working on something for the family restaurant and then decided to repurpose it.” Lowering her voice and leaning closer, she added, “Keep this on the down low, but we had to break into the school to steal some stuff to finish it up, so if anyone asks, that’s on Rotwood.”

“Rotwood might actually cover for you guys if you make a deal with him, you know.”

Trixie snorted. “Oh, I am not going there. If Jakey wants to take a trip to crazy town, he can go without me.”

“Rotwood’s helping me now.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Girl, Spud and I caught him yelling about a dragon and a ninja when we got here. That is not helping in my book.”

“It’s, um, not as straightforward as it sounds.” Desperate to change the subject because she was feeling like a fool, Haley asked, “Where is Spud, anyway?”

Trixie pointed across the street to one of the buildings Haley had flown past earlier. “He needed the height for sight lines. Should be coming to join me now that the dragon’s grounded. We can take over Rotwood duty if you wanna get this to Jake?” She held out the thermos.

Haley took it. “Yeah, I’ll find him. Thanks.” She passed Trixie McFist’s cell phone and added, “This belongs to McFist. The rich white guy with the prosthetic arm. Loud. Probably accusing Rotwood of making everything up and claiming this is all a publicity stunt. You can’t miss him. I made a deal with him, too. Pass that back to him for me?”

Trixie whistled. “What exactly did we miss?”

Haley shrugged. “That’s what I want to know, too.”

7:59 PM

Susan used the damp scarf to wash away some of the blood (Randy had helpfully wet part of it for her with a well-placed Ninja Hydro Hand), but she didn’t dare try standing yet. The Ninja—Randy Cunningham, as he’d promptly introduced himself—had been kind enough to not only heal her wounds but to help her clean up, and she didn’t want to worry him by admitting that she wasn’t feeling quite as well as he seemed to think.

She was tired. Her head ached. Her memories were fuzzy, blending together like someone had given her a botched memory potion, and it was difficult to sort through them. She knew the important things, though. She knew she’d become a danger to everyone, flaunted the existence of the magical world, and been saved by her son and his new friends. She remembered the feeling of the wind beneath her wings, the heat of fire warming her from within, vividly enough that the memory warmed her now—or would, if the rest didn’t sicken her. She remembered anger and had a vague sense of struggling for control that left her with an impression of pride and foolishness—her own, not Jake’s.

“…shoob who totally owes me a new phone and magical air purifier. Since you’re his mom, can you nag him for me? I have a feeling that he’ll forget.”

Susan was saved from answering when the rooftop access door opened and Chat Noir emerged.

He was empty-handed. More to the point, he wasn’t smiling.

She didn’t need to remember the details to know he’d gone after the person who had done this to her. She’d suspected he wouldn’t be successful, not between what she recalled about Hawk Moth’s character and what she’d learned from Randy’s grumblings. From the way Randy’s shoulders suddenly slumped as he noticed Chat Noir’s expression, however, he’d held out hope. “Adrien, isn’t it?” she asked quietly as the boy reached them. “Thank you for your help.”

He froze. Apparently oblivious, Randy corrected her. “That’s Nino, actually. Well, we call him that. Didn’t I tell you? Anyway, the last guy is Danny.”

Nino. So he hadn’t wanted to tell them he was supposed to be one of the stars of the show? She could respect that, though she knew she wasn’t mistaken; he hardly looked different from his posters to her, though seeing through a subtly woven glamour was something she’d always been able to do. That was the reason she’d found most of her staff. “My apologies,” she said as he sat cross-legged on the roof, not looking at either of them.

“No,” he said. “No need to apologize.” He raised his head, meeting her eyes and then looking to Randy. “My name is Adrien. I was going to tell you all now anyway. I…. I’m sorry about not saying anything earlier.”

“What for?”

“For…for not trusting you. And—”

“No, I mean, you don’t need to apologize. There’s nothing to apologize for. And I dunno if I’d trust those guys either if they tried to drown me, so I don’t think they’re going to blame you.” Perhaps reading—or misreading—Adrien’s expression, Randy added, “I got the story earlier.”

Adrien opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, “Thanks.” Turning to Susan, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better, but I’ll be all right.”

“I know you must have a lot of questions,” Adrien said, “even if Randy’s already filled you in. The memory loss is normal, and you need to understand that everything you did was under Hawk Moth’s influence and that you weren’t thinking clearly. He knows how to twist people’s emotions to manipulate them into doing what he wants.”

“No. I’m still partially at fault. There were times when I could almost block him out of my head, and I was aware of what I was doing. If I had been thinking more clearly, I hope I would have known that using you as bait to draw him out of hiding carried too much risk, but I still made that decision.”

Adrien blinked. “What?”

“I thought there was a way to defeat him and keep what I’d gained, and I risked all of your lives because of that. Perhaps I wasn’t thinking clearly, but Jake was right; some part of me should have known better, and for that, I apologize. To all of you.” She raised her head to speak her last words louder as Jake and Danny came back. Jake transformed and ran to her immediately, wrapping her in a hug that made her wonder how she could have been so angry with him before when she’d known he’d acted out of worry and fear for her.

“If this was anyone’s fault, I vote we blame Hawk Moth,” Randy said.

“Randy’s got a point,” Danny said. “People make mistakes all the time, but he’s deliberately trying to hurt people. You guys need to stop blaming yourselves for everything.” Turning to Adrien and holding out his hands, which were cupped together, he said, “We’ve got the akuma. We just, uh, don’t have anywhere to put it.”

“You won’t need to put it anywhere,” Susan said, speaking before Adrien had a chance. She might not know how Adrien usually addressed the problem, but she knew the type. A corruption of magic was hardly anything new, and neither was pouring it into a vessel, even if that vessel wasn’t typically alive. “You should just need to purify it and release it.”

“That’s the problem,” Adrien said. “I don’t have that ability, or at least I don’t think I do. My partner in Paris looks after that.”

“Jake can do it.”

Jake pulled back from the hug to gape at her. “What?”

“If you stopped listening to music during your training sessions,” she chided gently, “or at least kept it low enough that you could still hear what you were being told, then you would know already. Dragon fire is purifying.”

“That’s why it changed colour!” Danny exclaimed. “I knew that had to mean something.” He opened his hands, releasing a white butterfly.

Adrien grinned, straightening as he shed the weight of worry, and raised his hand. “Bye, bye, little butterfly.”

(see more fics | next)

#secret quartet #miraculous ladybug #danny phantom #adjl #american dragon #rc9gn #randy cunningham #sq fanfiction #fanfiction #my writing #ladylynse #snippets #crossover snippet #dp snippet #ml snippet #adjl snippet #rc9gn snippet

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destroyyourbinder · 6 years ago

Link

I want to thank Jacob for his enormous bravery in speaking out publicly about how the “puberty blocker” (GnRH agonist) protocol and the medicalization of his identity affected him as a struggling trans teenager.

I want to note before I share the article that stories like Jacob’s are being politicized by groups like Mermaids (the primary transgender child lobbying organization in the UK) to claim that while "blockers” are “safe” and “reversible” and ought to be immediately provided to trans children who are beginning puberty, that any problems with GnRH agonists indicates that clinicians should begin cross-sex hormone treatment early. Organizations such as Mermaids and various other groups in the US frequently claim that there ought to be no formal lower age bound for the initiation of cross-sex HRT (i.e. testosterone for female children, estrogen and an anti-androgen drug for male children) and Johanna Olson-Kennedy (a pediatric gender “expert” and head of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) advocates regularly for female children to receive testosterone at twelve and has possibly given children as young as 8 testosterone treatment. So in sharing this kid’s story, I want to be careful, since there is a real danger that exposing the harms of using GnRH agonists such as Lupron on gender-variant children will lead to a change in strategy where these children are merely dosed early with cross-sex hormones, a protocol that to my knowledge that we have zero long-term data on. (Children are given GnRH agonists as a means to halt precocious puberty, and in fact, these drugs are approved for this purpose, so we have some data on their effects already. As far as I know, there has been no previous medical reason to give female children testosterone or male children anti-androgens and estrogen.) The article is behind a paywall but I am transcribing it here: Puberty blocking drugs: ‘For the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child’ Jacob has just turned 16 and for the past four years the teenager’s body has been put on pause. He has been on hormone blockers to stop puberty while he decides how far he is willing to go to become a transgender man.

He claims that taking blockers was “the worst decision I’ve ever made”.

Jacob was born a girl but felt unhappy with his gender. “I always felt so weak and pathetic and inferior to the men.” He started using the male pronoun and imagined himself growing up and “dating a woman”.

When Jacob became one of thousands of young adolescents to be referred for puberty blockers by the NHS’s main gender clinic for children he was delighted. “It was sold to me as a miracle cure for being trans,” he claimed. He told another trans school friend about them, who started requesting blockers too.

Hormone blockers are only licensed in Britain to delay the onset of puberty for children suffering “precocious puberty” — that is, those who start developing abnormally early before the age of eight or nine.

However, their use is promoted by the transgender campaign group Mermaids as a way of giving young people “a pause button” while deciding whether to graduate to the irreversible, cross-sex hormones that will trigger the life-changing, fertility-reducing jump from one gender to another, once they reach 16. The vast majority of children who begin blockers go on to take that step.

Blockers are physically reversible, insofar as puberty will eventually restart once someone stops taking them. But no one — not even the directors of the country’s leading gender clinic, the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service [GIDS] — knows their long-term impact, for example, on the teenage brain.

After just a few consultations at the Tavistock, Jacob was referred to the endocrinology clinic at University College London Hospitals [UCLH]. He claimed the clinic did not consider his background, such as the trauma of a sexual assault at primary school, or his parents’ difficult divorce. He and his mother were soon making regular visits to London from their small village in the west of England for the injections.

“They promise you that your breasts will disappear, that your voice will be deeper, that I would look and sound more like a boy. For me, that was the best thing that could have happened,” he said.

Only, Jacob found that wasn’t what happened at all. Far from becoming one of the lads, as he’d hoped, he felt even more alienated from them as their physiques changed and Jacob’s remained the same.

“At school, other people were maturing into adults. The guys I grew up with were growing hair and growing up. For someone who’s trying to fit in as a boy, that’s not what you want.” Jacob had always been the tallest among his friends. Now he was the shortest. When his little brother overtook him in height and strength, he found it too upsetting to be in the same room as him. “My little brother is 18 months younger and now he has completely outgrown me. I go to school and I feel like other people are developing and I still feel like a child,” he said. Jacob also claims he was not warned about the side-effects of the drugs. These have included insomnia, exhaustion, fatigue, low moods, rapid weight gain which caused his skin to become covered with angry, itchy stretch marks, and a reduction in bone density. “I’d never broken a bone before [taking puberty blockers],” he says. “I’ve since broken four bones.” “I stubbed my toe, it broke. I fell over, my wrist broke. Same with my elbow.” As he took the blockers, Jacob’s mother watched her child become even more introverted and body-conscious. “The blockers contributed more to the self-image problems that were already there,” she said. Jacob found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on schoolwork. If sitting GSCEs is hard enough with raging hormones, it’s even harder without them, he said. “I’m someone with the developing mind of a 12-year-old who’s doing exams designed for a 16-year-old.”

He added: “The worst part was probably the depression. There were moments when I wanted everything to stop. Weight gain and depression — for someone who is already self-conscious about their body, that’s a lethal combination.” Clinicians who resigned from GIDS for ethical reasons said one of their main concerns was that young people were being sent down a medical pathway without proper exploration of the possibility they may simply be gay. Jacob is no closer to understanding who he may be attracted to at 16 as he was at 12. “My friends are all talking about having sex and girlfriends, and going to prom... but I’ve never had a crush. I’ve never felt sexual attraction to anyone. I feel so out of place.” In hindsight, Jacob finds it surprising how little his background — and the reasons why he didn’t want to be a girl — were discussed before being referred for treatment. “They didn’t even look at my history or trauma,” claimed Jacob. “They sent a child whose circumstances and feelings they didn’t understand [for hormone treatment].” Jacob is speaking out about his experience to warn other transgender youngsters to think twice before starting blockers. “I was sold a miracle cure. They promised happiness with little evidence behind it. Then four years in, you realise, oh my God, I’ve no idea about the long-term effects.“

“They asked a 12-year-old to make a decision an adult would struggle with.” “It was like, ‘here are the drugs’ and off we went. It’s a ridiculous process. It’s not gone the way they told me it was going to go.”

Mermaids, the transgender lobby group, claims that puberty blockers are safe and “completely reversible” and that not giving them to youngsters who request them can be more damaging than prescribing them.

Gendered Intelligence, another trans campaign group, claims on its website that hormone blockers give children “breathing space to ensure that they are sure about the permanent effects of cross-sex hormones, without the adverse effects of an incorrect puberty.” Jacob is scathing about such claims. “Breathing space! It really isn’t. I’ve not had any space to breathe the last four years.“

“They sell it to you as a break from feeling like a girl, and that’s fine for the first few months but as soon as everyone else around you starts developing it becomes ‘spot the transgender kid’, which is so easy because you’re stuck as a child.“

“If anything, I’ve been more depressed than before. My thyroid is messed up. I’m hungry all the time. I have no idea how my breast tissue will develop.” He claimed: “They push and push you on to this one-way train you’re not allowed off.” Asked whether it was misleading to promote puberty blockers as a “pause button”, a spokesman for Mermaids said: “Mermaids cannot comment on clinical cases as we are not involved in any individuals’ medical pathways.” “We offer young people and their families information, support and access to others in similar circumstances.” Gendered Intelligence declined to respond. Jacob claims the main focus of his treatment at the Tavistock was on the milestones of transition — “how far you’re willing to go” — rather than discussion of the consequences.

He claims: “My Tavistock worker was saying to me, ‘once you have the testosterone, you’ll be a boy’. “But it shouldn’t be about milestones. Being trans is how you think; it should not be about how far down the line you’re will to go.” A spokesman for Tavistock said: “All young people considering the puberty blocker or cross-sex hormones are repeatedly made aware of the known potential impacts of these medical interventions... as well as the areas of impact that remain to some extent unknown.“

“The information that we give patients about the blockers makes it clear that they may get tired and experience low mood. We explain to young people that hormones give us energy and drive, not just our sex drive but our overall ‘get up and go’. “We also emphasised to them routinely that while on the blocker they would stay early puberty whilst their peers developed. This is a routine part of the discussion.“

“In the end the decision to go on blockers is a balancing act weighing up these factors against the perceived distress of undergoing puberty in the ‘wrong’ gender and developing unwanted and potential hard to change secondary sexual characteristics.” Jacob decided to come off the drugs on turning 16. He began to feel the benefits almost overnight. “I grew taller, I lost weight, I felt livelier. It was like getting the poison out of my system,” he said. He will now wait until reaching 18 before making any big decisions.“I’m just fed up with all of it. I’ve felt like a guinea pig from day one. [Blockers] only made my life more complicated and it was pretty complicated already.” He added: “I’ll be 18 in two years, but for the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child. Blockers took away the chance I had to grow up with other kids. Now I want to give my body a break.”

#medical47 #risks01

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aventurasdeunatortuga · 4 years ago

Text

Laredo Part 2

Week 1

Hey friends,

After a long travel hiatus, as some of you may already know, I am back in Laredo, Texas. I’ll be here for about 3.5 weeks working with shelters to support recently arrived asylum seekers at the US Mexico border. I was here 2 years ago doing the same thing, you can go through the laredo tag on here to get some more background about what is going on here and to read about my experiences in 2019.

I have been here already for about a week and have been so exhausted I haven’t had the energy to write anything, but here is more or less what is going on.

So since Fall of 2019, the border was closed to all asylum seekers thanks to 45’s cruel Remain In Mexico policy, which forced asylum seekers from Central America to wait along the Mexican border for an undetermined amount of time until they could get an immigration hearing. In the past asylum seekers could wait with their families in the US for their court dates (it can be a long wait). Waiting at the border in Mexico, a country they are not from, left folks vulnerable to human trafficking, kidnapping, gang violence, and extortion from the cartels operating along the border. During COVID folks were living in makeshift tents along the border with no running water and were left vulnerable to exposure, flooding, disease, dangerous wildlife, and the millions of other dangers that come from being outside in 113 degree heat with no water. There was no international aid brought in and support was limited to the few aid workers allowed to cross the border, which was very dangerous given the amount of gang violence on the Mexican side. One shelter director in Nuevo Laredo was kidnapped and murdered last year.

When Biden was elected, he reversed the Remain In Mexico policy just a few weeks into his presidency. Meaning that asylum seekers could now enter the US after surrendering at the border and being held for indeterminate amounts of time in ICE detention centers. Once they are released from there they are given a court date in wherever their final destination in the US is, but are left on the street with nothing.

Most folks are illiterate, none speak English and some only speak indigenous dialects. All of their possessions and money have been taken by either cartels or by ICE. Most havent eaten in days and many are seriously ill. None of them know where they are or how to get where they’re going. ICE will drop them off at random towns along the border after releasing them from detention, sometimes hundreds of miles from where they crossed. They just have a name and phone number memorized of a friend or family member in the US that is sponsoring them and who they are planning to stay with.

The vast majority of folks are from Central America, they are fleeing cartel violence , government persecution, extreme poverty, and natural disasters caused by climate change. The instability in these countries (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador) was caused directly by US intervention, but that’s a whole other topic I won’t get into now. Folks must show a credible proof of being threatened or persecuted in their home country to even be granted the status of asylum seeker and to be given a court date.

Shelters in border towns do what they can to support folks being released from detention. They help them make phone calls, provide translation, help them buy bus and plane tickets, give them food, water, medical care, showers, clean clothes, toiletries, and a safe place to sleep until they are able to make travel arrangements to their final destinations.

During the last 2 years under the Remain In Mexico policy, no one was being admitted and so shelters lost a great deal of funding, staff, and volunteers. They turned more towards community work, which was especially needed during COVID.

Shelters are in a difficult position now though, folks are allowed to enter now which is good news but shelters are having to meet even more extreme needs with far fewer resources than they had pre-COVID.

For a long time the shelter I worked with before, La Frontera, was closed due to lack of funding; but only very recently reopened again. I have been spreading my time between La Frontera (run by Catholic charities) and the other shelter in Laredo, Holding Institute Community Center, which is a community center run by the Methodist Church. Both of these shelters have 2-3 paid staff members, a revolving door of volunteers from around the country (the majority of them nuns), are entirely donation based, and receive 200-300 new people every single day.

About 20-30% of each busload of people that ICE drops off are infected with COVID. ICE refuses to test folks that they detain for COVID because if they knew they had positive cases they would have to provide healthcare and a place for them to quarantine. Instead they lump everyone together in cramped conditions and COVID is allowed to run rampant in these detention centers.

In detention folks are kept in overcrowded rooms, communicated with almost exclusively in English, are provided limited food and toiletries, and are kept in refrigerated rooms (65 degrees) with no blankets. These places are called the ‘ice boxes’. Sometimes folks are separated from their families here as well.

Lately there has also been a dysentery outbreak due to the fact that the city of Laredo does not currently have drinkable water, residents are advised to drink only bottled or boiled water, which asylum seekers do not have access to until they reach the shelters.

When folks reach the shelters, they are given on the spot covid tests by a team of nurses and public health officials. There is no room for them at the hospitals, even if there were room hospitals wouldnt accept them because they have no insurance. The city government has offered bottled water to the shelters but thats it.

After being tested for covid, the health team divides folks into 2 groups, positive and negative. Folks who test positive have to quarantine for 10 days in an empty warehouse next door to the shelter or if they’re lucky and the shelter can afford it, a motel. Yesterday the shelter bought out a motel because there were 200+ covid patients who arrived. We have two small classrooms at the shelter that have been converted into sleeping areas for about 40 covid patients. The medical team leaves boxes of food and clothing outside their door, and once a day they are taken to shower and then the entire bathroom is sanitized.

Those who test negative are immediately vaccinated on site, and then taken to get clean clothes, food, and a shower. They sleep on cots outside under the trees in the fenced courtyard of the shelter.

For the first few days I’ve been here, I’ve been working at Holding only because I didn’t know La Frontera had reopened. I was mainly working on sorting and organizing clothing and helping folks find clothes that they need. Last night though 200+ covid positive patients arrived and we had to stop allowing people in the building to pick out clothes, and today we moved to just putting together kits of different sized clothes to give directly to them.

I was feeling a bit frustrated the last few days because the staff member in charge of organizing donations was being extremely critical of me and it was very frustrating and degrading to be around. I was yelled at a number of times by her. For example, I saw a pile of 200 towels on the ground and folded them. I was told that I did it wrong, to unfold them and fold all of them a different way. Or I started organizing toiletries and was just told ‘no, you’re messing it up, don’t touch that’. I understand that I’m new but no one took the time to introduce themselves to me, orient me, or show me what to do and I was trying to be helpful. I also understand that folks are stressed and under pressure but please don’t take it out on people trying to help you. Most everyone there is extremely nice it was just one of the staff members in particular that was acting this way. I was told I wasn’t allowed to give water or shoes to people who needed them because “I didn’t know how to do it” and because “if you give water to one person, everyones going to want it, and i don’t have time for that”. I didn’t come down here to sit inside doing nothing next to a giant case of bottled water and be told I’m not allowed to give it to the thirsty person in front of me.

So I walked out and I left the shelter in the middle of the day to go drive around town and take a breather, because everything I did seemed like made someone upset. When I came back I inserted myself into the kitchen crew and ended up making 200+ sandwiches for dinner. I also had a long talk with one of the nuns who assured me that that staff member is like that with everyone and has a lot of control issues due to the amount of pressure she is under, and not to take it personally. She told me that La Frontera had reopened and so ever since then I started dividing up my days between the two shelters. This has made a big difference and I feel a lot better and more useful.

I also connected more with some of the nuns here and they invited me to dinner tonight which was nice. One of the sisters is writing a book based on narratives of folks passing through these shelters and is interviewing people she meets. It was fascinating to talk to her. She has worked with undocumented immigrants and DREAMers from around the country for 28 years, and wrote another book based on those experiences called Silent Voices In The Shadows (Paula Schwendinger), which I just finished reading and highly recommend.

Oh, also it has been raining really hard for the past day or so with 95% humidity and constant thunder and lightening, which has made things even more interesting.

I will try to keep posting semi regularly while I’m here.

#laredo #texas #borderlands #immigration #asylum seekers

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starwarsfic · 4 years ago

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Breathe In With Hunger

Originally posted September 13, 2020

Summary: Obi-Wan had spent his whole life keeping his species a secret, until the Clone Wars made that impossible.

Details: Sithspawn Stewjoni AU.

xxxxxx

Obi-Wan hadn't known what to expect from the clone medical staff--he'd seen how efficient the troopers were, he almost hoped that he'd be able to get in and out of medical without any fuss.

That, however, was not to be.

"General," the medic, who had finally introduced himself as Sleep, seemed baffled by something and Obi-Wan braced himself. "Your medical records require Council authorization."

"Ah."

His casual acknowledgement called more notice to them than he'd thought it would, the focused attention of so many similar people clawing at him in the Force.

It also didn't help Sleep's attitude and, from the bags under his eyes and the tell-tale sign of stim-caused tremors, Obi-Wan was beginning to understand the name was possibly an in-joke. "General, I can't treat you if I don't know even the basics about you. It's the entire file except your name and birth date! Even your gender is redacted!"

He shifted, glancing around them. Only clones.

Whatever that meant. As he still wasn't sure how he felt about Jango Fett creating a supposed army for the Republic.

Alpha-17 was there, shifting closer to them with his tell-tale scowl. Beyond him, a few other troopers lingered, ones that had been on the recent mission with them, back-up when no other Jedi, not even his Padawan, were available.

Thus, too, why Obi-Wan wasn't being seen by a Jedi healer who already knew about him.

They all felt safe. Alpha had certainly proven himself time and time again to Obi-Wan.

And if the war continued on as it was going, they would all find out sooner than later, regardless of how careful Obi-Wan was. Perhaps an early warning would garner him the troopers' help in hiding himself in plain sight.

"Do you know what a Stewjoni is?"

Sleep blinked at him, like a droid that had just rebooted, and then startled. "You...but...." His fingers flew across the datapad in his hand, most likely at whatever medical information he'd been able to collect from their own databases. "That would explain the copper levels," he finally allowed, seeming to fumble over his words.

Beside them, Alpha-17 let out a low string of curses in Mando'a, a few that even Obi-Wan didn't know. "That would have been good to know, General," he bit out the title, condescending. "Especially with how the Sith are always all over you."

"I apologize for the oversight, Alpha. It has never been necessary information for those who temporarily worked with me, before."

Obi-Wan needed the distraction from thinking about the Sith--the feel of them against his senses, the smooth Darkness that flowed out of them. His instincts were dulled by over three decades with the Jedi and still they were so, so hard to resist when he was injured and someone like Ventress was right there.

He still remembered the taste of the Sith on Naboo, his instincts tearing through him after watching the killing blow delivered to Qui-Gon, feeling their bond start to come undone. It had just been the slightest amount, enough that he'd come out of the encounter with not even a bruise, but it had made his food taste like ash for months after.

"What do I need to know, sir?" Sleep dragged his attention back from places he really shouldn't let it go.

With a sigh, he motioned for the datapad and reluctantly logged into his own medical profile, watching as two lines became a short lifetime of information. "This is full access, trooper. I expect you to be discreet."

Sleep nodded and, distracted as he was, barely said anything when Obi-Wan slipped from the room. It wasn't as though he had gone alone, Alpha-17 was at his back the whole walk to his own temporary bunk in Tipoca City.

"If you're looking for another apology, Alpha, I'm afraid one isn't coming."

That just earned him a snort, Alpha-17 closing the door behind him and standing in the private room like he was a common fixture and not a new oddity in Obi-Wan's life.

"Your blood was blue."

"Excuse me?"

"After Ohma D'un. I thought it was some trick of the weapon you'd been exposed to."

Obi-Wan licked his lips, glancing down at his wrists where carefully crafted tattoos gave the impression of near-human blood vessels under his light toned skin. "I have an implant," he said, finally, "that helps make my blood look red, or close enough. It had failed by the end." The added iron often made him feel sickly and he'd been almost glad that it wasn't working, with how much damage his body had taken.

"Do you need...accommodations?" When his answer was a raised eyebrow, Alpha-17 glowered and continued, "Like General Koon or General Fisto need. Environmental? Special rations?"

"Have I given any indication that I do?" Now it was Alpha-17's turn to give him a look. "It's not...you must understand, my people were manufactured. We're quite capable of living in very diverse environments and, when our preferred food is scarce, living off of nearly anything." He gave a wry grin. "Though, despite it all, I'll never be as fond of live insects as my Padawan is."

Alpha-17 grimaced, remembering a few particularly harsh campaigns where Anakin had become creative with additions to their GAR-issued rations. He remained silent for a few moments, clearly working through something serious, and Obi-Wan took the time to prepare some tea for them. The ritual of it, adopted from his own Master (who adopted it from Dooku, though Obi-Wan tried not to think of that), was comforting.

As much as he'd deny it, this was a nerve-wracking evening. The last time he'd revealed himself had been when he'd taken Anakin as his Padawan, needing the boy to understand the idiosyncrasies he might notice and the difference in emotions that would flow down their bond. Anakin had already been facing so many changes, and had such a unique perspective compared to the Core and Mid-Rim peoples that Obi-Wan normally encountered, that it had gone easily.

He wasn't sure how the clones would actually take the information, when they had time to process it. Obi-Wan was aware that how human he looked could often be unsettling to those who knew the truth. That his whole being could come across as a lie in itself.

"Are you holding back?" Alpha-17 asked into the silence, after Obi-Wan served him tea in a delicate cup, as if sensing his thought process.

"What do you mean?"

"During our fights. Are you holding back because you're...hiding."

Obi-Wan stroked his beard with one hand, the fingers of the other tapping against his cup. "I suppose, if you wanted to be fully accurate, I am. But it's not because I worried you would find out," he hurried to add, "it is because if I were to stop...it would be very difficult to come back from that."

"What does that mean? You would...go feral?"

He coughed out his sip of tea, trying not to laugh. "No, Force, what sort of odd fictions are you troopers reading?" Alpha-17 had the good grace to look embarrassed. "I could far more easily take on someone like Ventress or even Dooku himself if I used my...natural abilities. However, I do not know if I could stop myself from...feeding from their essences. Which in turn would kickstart a healing process in my body that could very well reverse all the very extensive, and expensive, surgeries I have had over the years and possibly get the Order in trouble for harboring such a dangerous creature as I."

"Right. Because...you don't really look like this."

"Is that a problem, trooper?"

Alpha-17 regarded him and Obi-Wan was confused by the weight of the hurt settling within him at the hesitation. "No, General. I can't say I'm not curious about what you'd really look like, but it's no problem from me." He scowled. "I'm not some longneck who is going to judge you for not being exactly what I was expecting."

***

Sleep died in an explosion four months later. Alpha-17 disappeared into Tipoca City to train ARC troopers after severe injuries towards the end of the first year of the war. The others who new were picked off here and there, the rate of survival for the troopers worryingly low.

Obi-Wan told the medics of the 212th, when he was finally assigned to them, but he did not tell anyone else. The longer he went without doing so, the less he felt like he could.

It was Ventress who told Cody, taking great delight in stroking the scars along Obi-Wan's exposed back as his vulnerable Commander struggled against his bonds. She had a thing for stripping clones that Obi-Wan didn't like, anymore than he liked how she kept chaining him up whenever she caught him.

"He's a pretty thing, isn't he?" she cooed at Cody, carding a hand through Obi-Wan's sweaty hair. "But...why? Isn't it odd, Commander, how he seems to be nearly everyone's type?" Her smirk was self-satisfied and Obi-Wan wanted to kick it off her face. "As if he were...made...to appeal to people, regardless of their species."

Cody just seemed confused, at least at first. What he might have said was lost behind the gag that Obi-Wan found himself more and more thankful for as Ventress continued, pointing out the marks of his surgeries. Where his spines down to their very base had been dug out, where his eyes had been capped over with lenses, where his ears had been cut down and reshaped.

When she stripped down his lower body and gave Cody a view, the anger and distress coming from the clone had sharpened into rage.

As soon as they were free, it was all Obi-Wan could do to keep Cody from beating Ventress to death with his bare hands. Which was...more flattering than he wanted to admit.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Commander," he said, as they settled into the command center of the ship they were now alone on and waited for their rescue.

Cody stared at him. "Sir, that's private information. As long as the medics knew, that's all that I would expect from you."

"Truly? You're not...unnerved?"

The answer was a shrug and what might have been the beginnings of a blush, Cody's shields once more impeccable enough that Obi-Wan couldn't actually tell his feelings in the Force. "I admit it...answered a few questions I had...but it's none of my business."

"Questions about my attractiveness?" he supplied, remembering Ventress using that as a starting point.

"You do, uh, seem to garner a lot of...cross-species interest, General."

Obi-Wan gave a gentle smile, an expression he'd practiced as a youth after noticing how the humans around him responded to it from others.

"My people weren't originally created by the Sith, like every other species of what are called 'Sithspawn' they took us and twisted us to their purposes. Sith Flesh Alchemy allows for otherwise incompatible species to breed, so that they can adopt attributes the Alchemists thought would be useful." His smile turned wry, an expression that felt more natural on his face these days. "I am attractive to so many species because I was genetically engineered to be so. The closest translation into Basic for 'Stewjoni' is 'Siren,' if you know any old Aldeeranian myths."

That got Cody's attention. "You had me read those. I thought it was just...entertainment."

"Ah, you've caught me, my dear. They're not accurate per se--as you can tell, my people no longer spend much time in the water--but they serve as warnings."

"You thought we needed a warning about you? Sir, we know you would never--"

He held up a hand, stopping whatever Cody was about to say. "When Sith are involved, Cody, when they've created you, in a way, you can never be fully trustworthy. There's always the chance that somehow, someway, they still have their grip on you."

His kind weren't prone to nightmares, but everyone he'd had since the war had started was the same--Dooku's shadowy Master finding a way to turn him on his people, on his troops, with little more than the properly worded phrase.

Cody watched him, sadness seeping out from his shields. "General...Obi-Wan...just because those demagolka changed your people somehow...that doesn't mean you're monsters."

"Not just monsters, perhaps."

***

Obi-Wan was not capable of hate, not in the way most species felt it. He knew what it was, knew what it felt like rubbing against him in the Force like a tamed tooka, what it tasted like flooding him as he sipped from a Sith opponent, but he didn't feel it.

If he could, he was almost certain that he would have fallen sometime between being shot at by his suddenly blank-feeling troopers, hearing from Yoda of how most of the Council had confronted Palpatine--Sidious, and having to watch the recording of Anakin slaughtering his way through the Temple.

"You went hunting a Sith without me?" the hiss in his words was the only sign of his emotional turmoil and he tightened his hands and tried to get himself together.

How many of his colleagues--his friends--would still be alive if they had waited?

“Important, it was, to strike quickly.” Yoda’s ears were tucked closely to his head, his shoulders slumped, but Obi-Wan had little sympathy. “The Will of the Force, to act.”

“To act without thinking, to rush headlong against a Sith powerful enough to hide from all of us,” he shot back.

Obi-Wan had known--had accepted--that a war against the Sith would mean exposing himself fully by the end. He’d even imagined that it might end up being against the hidden Sith Master, had looked into ways of reversing some of the procedures he’d gone through--at the very least for claws and teeth, and venom--and none of that mattered, apparently.

He didn’t think he could take Sidious by himself, not when the man would be prepared for attacks and surely knew what he was.

If they’d waited until Obi-Wan had returned, he could have given them the upperhand. “I sincerely doubt the ‘Will of the Force’ wanted the Jedi slaughtered,” he muttered, finally, starting off into the catacombs they hid in.

“Go to face Sidious, do you?”

“No, I’m going to find Anakin. There’s nothing we can do against Sidious, not right now.”

***

The first place he thought to look was with Padme. How many times had he and she played a game of pretending he didn’t know Anakin had spent the night there? How many times had he taken up the role of possible illicit paramore to draw attention from her closeness with Anakin?

She was near-panic, clouding the Force with her strong emotions, but she understood what they needed to do. If Anakin was caught in a torrent of the Darkside, they’d need to be very careful in talking him down.

“If we can’t reach him...will you kill him?” Her hands clutched her rounded belly, as though the children within could understand the conversation and needed comfort.

Obi-Wan took long breaths, staring down at Mustafar as the ship approached. The whole planet was rife with the Dark, making his instincts claw at the back of his mind. But it was Anakin he felt most strongly, the blazing sun of his Force present nothing but rage and fear, now.

“If we can’t reach him, that means it’s not Anakin anymore. We don’t know what Sidious did to him to get him to this point.” His hands clenched, imagining some of the stories his people shared of Sith crimes. “There might just...be nothing left of him.”

He was upsetting her, perhaps unnecessarily, but he needed her to know. Needed her to be prepared.

“Your children must be your priority, Padme. It’s what he would have thought, too.” They stared into each other’s eyes, her trying hard not to flinch away from him.

Outside, the volcanic air was harsh enough that Obi-Wan worried for her health--and Anakin's. The Force could do much, but if he wasn't careful, Anakin would ruin his lungs. He'd always been so reckless with his own body.

xxxxxx

A/N: This got a little too long to just be shoved in my drabble collection (where you'll find some other stuff using the same headcanons) so I decided to make it it's own work, even though I rewrote the ending like six times over the last few weeks.

This post has everything so far about my headcanon, but in short: Stewjoni were originally sentient predators that fed off of Force users in particular and when the fallen Jedi alchemists met up with the Sith and found out about them, they experimented on them and made them into basically Sith hunting pets.

The very original idea was because I really can't stand Stewjoni (considering it was a joke that Lucas refused to back down on) and "Stewjon is Space Scotland," and there's this Scottish legend called a "baobhan sith" that's like a siren.

Sleep is one of my clone OCs.

#character: obi wan kenobi #character: alpha 17 #ship: alpha 17 & obi wan #character: cody #ship: cody & obi wan #ship: anakin & obi wan #character: yoda #character: padme amidala #ship: padme & obi wan #theme: clone wars #theme: order 66 #theme: dark #verse: sithspawn stewjoni

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lille082 · 5 years ago

Text

avi•o•pho•bia

I’m sneaking in just before midnight on the West Coast so this technically still qualifies for Moneypenny Monday, right? ;)

A fic fulfilling the “Moneypenny friendship” and “Reverse a common trope” for the Trope Prompt Table (004) by @mi6-cafe

avi•o•pho•bia

—————

“Your target,” M said as he handed the file folder over to Q, “and your tickets to Hong Kong. Double-Oh Nine will be waiting for you in a silver MG6 in Car Park 4. ”

Q nodded, opening the file to skim the first page. M hesitated before continuing, waiting for Q’s attention to be back on him.

“I know it’s a bit. . .unusual, this. But we wouldn’t be sending you if we didn’t think it completely necessary.”

“I understand. A paper file feels a bit nostalgic, really,” Q smirked, holding it up. “I’ll be sure to destroy it after reading.”

“Yes, well, that’d be a good idea. To have our analysts worried about just having his name in our system, you’d think the mere mention of it would alert him to our presence,” Mallory sighed and shook his head. “But no, I apologize about having to send you on such a. . .lengthy flight.”

Q shrugged and slipped the file into his messenger bag.

“All in a day’s work, sir. I don’t mind a bit of field work now and then. It gives me a bit of perspective about what agents deal with out there; it can come in handy during the design process. Is there anything else?”

M studied him for a moment, feeling a bit like they weren’t having the same conversation.

“Uh, yes. I took the liberty of contacting Dr. Smythe ahead of our briefing. If you’d like to swing by Medical, she’d be happy to provide you with something to make the trip more bearable.”

Q frowned, hiking the strap of his messenger bag up higher on his shoulder as it began to slip.

“I’m afraid I’m not following.”

M shifted uncomfortably.

“Ms. Moneypenny informed me some time ago of your—er, aviophobia, is it?”

“Ah,” Q frowned and he looked down, fidgeting with the fraying cuff of his cardigan, “I see. Well, don’t worry about me, sir. I’ll be fine.”

M cleared his throat as he sat down behind his behemoth desk.

“Of course, Q. Good luck in the field.”

—————

As he rode the lift up to Moneypenny’s flat, Q took a deep breath and tried to relax his shoulders for the first time in what felt like months, despite it only having been two weeks. He hadn’t been lying when he told M he enjoyed being in the field occasionally, but it was good to be on home soil once more.

His physical presence had actually been required this time and taking down their target had challenged Q in a way he hadn’t been in a long while. And even though the target had been taken care of, Q was positive it wasn’t the last they’d see of his network.

The doors of the lift opened with a laconic ding.

Q knocked on Moneypenny’s door moments later and wasn’t kept waiting. Eve flung the door open with a sunny smile and Q couldn’t help returning it.

“I got Pad Thai,” he said, toeing off his shoes as Eve grabbed the take away bag from him.

“Did you know you’re my absolute favorite?” She said, pulling plates out of the cupboard. A bottle of red was already breathing on the counter, two empty wine glasses beside it.

“You say that to everyone, Eve,” Q snorted as he poured them each a generous portion.

“Yes, but I actually mean it with you.” Eve grinned, opening up one of the containers and inhaling the spicy-savory-sweet steam it emitted. “When’d you get in?”

Q paused to think and shook his head.

“Fuck if I know—I technically left tomorrow? My body has no idea what time is anymore.”

Eve giggled as she dished them both heaping platefuls.

“Well, it is eight o’clock on Friday night and you, my love, are in for a much needed wine and whinge night.”

He toasted her before taking a healthy slug of his wine.

She grabbed their plates and chopsticks while Q managed to pick up Eve’s glass and the bottle of wine, following her to the living room. They settled beside each other on the couch, the coffee table acting as a suitable substitute for the dining table.

Q recognized the grin on Eve’s face as she turned towards him and he narrowed his eyes.

“What?” He asked warily.

“You. Double-Oh Nine. Hong Kong. Spill everything,” she gushed.

He sipped at his wine primly before setting the glass beside his plate with a theatrical sigh.

“Nothing to spill, really. The target’s network was well beyond anything Alex could have hacked and he needed help. To be honest, I was almost stumped at one point but managed to get in with a brute force attack using—“

“So it’s Alex now, is it?” Eve interrupted, just before shoveling noodles into her mouth.

“It is his name, isn’t it?” Q picked his plate up and shrugged. “You don’t spend two weeks in a rather cozy safe house without getting to know each other a bit better…”

Eve emitted a high pitched noise that Q was fairly certain could be classified as a squeal.

“I knew it! I knew he wasn’t just hanging around Q-Branch because he was ‘interested in computers.’ Interested in your arse, more like it.”

“Eve!” Q admonished, laughing. He paused to pick up his wine when a thought struck him. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know why M thinks I’m terrified of flying, would you?”

Eve coughed, inhaling a noodle on accident as she swallowed. It took her half the wine glass to be able to speak again, but Q wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t because she needed some time to form a response.

“It. . .Well, I—,” She started before deflating a bit and slouching back into the couch cushions, “Shit, I’m sorry, Q. It wasn’t something I thought would become a thing, really. . .”

“What would become a thing?”

“I may have sort of implied to M—not Mallory—that you were afraid of flying?”

“Why? When?” Q blinked, trying to process her response.

“Ugh, it’s stupid. I swear I thought it would just be that Shanghai mission, really.”

“Wait, Bond’s Shanghai mission? Before—“

“Yeah. . .I—,” Eve’s gaze had become fixed on a spot next to her wine glass. “We had just lost so many people and you were just settled into your position but the mission wasn’t something that needed you specifically there and. . .”

She cleared her throat, trying to rid it of the hoarse tone coloring it as she went on. Silence stretched between them before Q reached out to take her hand.

“And?” He rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too.” She looked at him, sadness etched in her smile.

“Come here,” he shifted on the sofa to pull her into a fierce hug. Releasing her, he pressed a kiss to her hair. “I get it. It’s okay.”

Pulling back, she surreptitiously wiped a stray tear from her face.

“I’m sorry. Somehow I think it ended up in your personnel file because Tanner started talking about it out of the blue and I couldn’t find the right time to correct it or—“

“Eve, really. It’s okay. Please, don’t be sorry,” Q paused, settling back against the couch cushions, shoulder to shoulder with her. He continued in a soft voice, “Thank you.”

She frowned and she echoed his words back to him.

“‘Thank you?’”

He smiled and nudged her shoulder with his own. “Yeah, thank you. You’re the first person who has ever cared enough about me to put their own life in danger over mine. That’s. . .it means a lot to me.”

A soft smile bloomed on her face and she nudged her shoulder against his in return.

“Anytime, Q.”

Q handed Eve her plate again and silence engulfed them once more as they ate, content to enjoying the other’s presence for a bit.

After some time, Q leaned forward and topped both of their wine glasses off before handing Eve hers.

“I have my pilot’s license, you know,” he mused. “Just a private license, of course, nothing excessive. But when you do manage to access that personnel file, maybe put something in about exposure therapy or whatever.”

Eve gaped at him before laughing, gobsmacked, into her wine glass.

He smiled to himself, pleased he could still surprise his closest friend when they dealt in secrets for a living.

“So,” she eventually drawled, wicked grin returning, “just how cozy was this safe house?”

Q hid his irrepressible grin behind his wine glass before responding.

“Oh, the standard bare-bones affair. . .of course, in places that size, there’s really only room for a single bed. . .”

Eve’s jaw dropped.

“You didn’t.”

“He was a perfect gentleman—offered to sleep on the sofa and everything. But I managed to convince him we’d get along just fine in the same bed.”

“And?”

“Oh, we got along just fine,” he smirked.

“You hussy! That first night?”

“The next morning, actually.” He gifted her with a perfectly innocent expression. “There are only so many options one has when they wake up to their bedmate’s erection pressed against their thigh.”

Listening to Eve’s playfully jealous whinging about Double-Oh Nine made Q’s heart lighter than he could remember it being.

Was she a bit too invested in his love life? Perhaps. But he couldn’t bring himself to deny her any of the information she wanted.

After all, what were friends for?

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lovebubblechoices · 5 years ago

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The Aftermath [2/2]

Note : As I fear we’ll suffer with today’s Chapter I just wanted to give you this. I know it’s not perfect but I hope you’ll like it. It’s mostly fluff but I mention death and sex (not in the same sentence lol). English is not my first language as you know and MC is still Vicky Monroe

Words: 1,753

Vicky Monroe couldn’t see through her tears and she stumbled on the gravel path but two strong arms caught her just in time so she did not fall on the ground. The massive crowd of family, friend and colleagues was now leaving the cemetery as the funeral was over. You could say the service was perfectly done and orchestrated but sadness and sorrow still lingered over Dr. Monroe’s mind. Vicky came back to her senses and realized she was still in the arms of someone, whom she had already recognized.

“Thank you Dr. Ramsey. I… er… I wasn’t paying attention”

“You’re excused Rookie” Ramsey whispered in her ear. Then he coughed and naturally detached his body from hers. He finally offered his arm to her to make sure she wasn’t stumbling again on anything.

There was a small breeze and it was as if the trees were gracefully dancing for them, encouraging them to do so as well. Neither of them talked but there was no need to talk. Vicky glanced at Ethan who looked absent-mindedly at the horizon. It was a peaceful sight and a peaceful moment after the storm. Dr. Monroe was due to attend a last gathering at Donahue’s where she could have a bite and probably drink a beer, even though she would have preferred something a little stronger. Something like a whiskey on the rocks. Then she chuckled to herself, feeling silly.

“What is it Vicky?”

“Nothing! I was just thinking about how I’d like a whiskey on the rocks but then I… I remember you did not like it on rocks and neither do I” she beamed, pleased with herself. She sighed “Everybody else is going at Donahue’s you know… but I –” she trailed off, tightening her grip on Ethan’s arm who was now intensely looking at her.

“Then I should take you home so you can rest” he said matter-of-factly. And he meant it; there was no husky tone, no invitation to dirty sex. The older doctor just wanted her to feel safe in a peaceful and quiet environment.

“But don’t wanna go home!” she whined like a child.

“I wasn’t talking about your place but mine but don’t get it wrong Vicky, I’m not going to sex you up.”

“Oh…” was all she responded.

They moved aside the path towards Ethan’s car and once inside Vicky tried everything she could to turn him on but she awkwardly failed. She felt ashamed of herself when he scowled her like she was his own little sister.

“Damn Vicky! You’re impossible. You deserve far more than rough sex in the back of a car dammit. Are a whore or a doctor?!” he snapped at her.

Needless to say that the rest of the ride was dead silent. He was mad and she was ashamed of herself. It was the first time she saw him like this, being this angry with her. She could tell it runs deep and she didn’t know what to say to lighten the mood. She wanted to cry so badly because it hurt her but she was not a baby. So she held back her tears and kept her head low thinking how she had messed up big time with him.

“Why are you like this with me, Ethan?” Vicky asked timidly

“Like what?” he replied coldly, his eyes never leaving the road

“Mean… and… and cold-hearted.”

“Truth hurts sometimes. You should know this by now – you’re a doctor. But to answer you properly, I am not mean nor cold-hearted. It’s just…” he trailed of as he did every once in a while, carefully choosing his words “It’s nothing like that Vicky and you know it.” He glanced at her.

“Is it… Is it boundaries again Ethan?” she asked him as her voice was breaking

“No, not anymore…” but he did not develop further and kept his eyes on the road until they arrived at Ethan’s.

In the elevator, the tension between the two was palpable but Ethan’s words were stuck in her head. For one, she was likely not have sex with her lover when she craved for it. She had imagined Ethan would have helped her dealing with her grief with a hot burning makeout session but the events were proving her wrong. Then secondly, the W word had been uttered and it completely shook Vicky to her surprise. Or, more precisely Ethan’s cold but furious anger but now that her brain was not focused on the sex she could have had in that car, she thought she understood him. He highly thought of her and that alone, warmed her heart. Tears began to fall down her cheeks again but the lift stopped as the couple arrived to the right floor. Next thing she knew was that Ethan carried her to his apartment in bridal fashion.

“Ethan! Ethan! What are you doing?!”

“Obviously, bringing you to my place as we were – hey! Don’t do that you little monster”

“You need to put me down! You need to– Oh gosh Ethan!...”

His southern situation was growing and Vicky had felt it against her hip. He put her down in order to unlock his door. The young blonde jumped on the occasion to unbuckle his belt and put both her hands in his underpants. She wanted to give him the best handjob he had ever received from her but she was not expecting to be stopped the way Ethan did.

“Not here babe… not here. Some… somebody could see”

BABE. She was Babe now and she was shocked. She was overwhelmed and she wanted to cry, of joy this time. Her hands had left the underpants and she heard a groan coming from Ethan’s lips. It was dark and wild, an animalistic sound indicating her he was so turned on. She was as well and she hoped that he would have his wicked way with her in the corridor, right against that door. That door which finally opened welcoming their sins and their lust for each other. Ramsey grabbed Vicky’s hand and her whole body was pulled inside the warm cocoon.

Vicky wanted to pick up the things where she had left them in front of the door but Ethan was faster to reverse the situation. He kissed her gently on the lips, biting the lower lip from time to time. Then, soft kisses traveled her jawline and her neck. Vicky moaned less and less quietly as she discovered new sensations on her skin thanks to the Amazonian Gift. Ethan focused again on his babe’s lips, this time asking for access which was granted immediately with a louder moan. The tongues waltzed together in absolute bliss and all lustful thoughts were forgotten on Vicky’s part.

Ethan finally broke the kiss as they were both in need for air. They smiled to each other, quite content with the effect they had on each other. They were completely fluttered and hands were shaking in anticipation of what would come next. But somehow, Ethan was managing to keep his cool and his hands from the incredible woman before him. He cupped her cheeks and open his mouth to speak but she cut him with one finger on his lips.

“Would Ethan Ramsey like a blowjob?” she seductively asked while crawling on the floor

“No”

“No?” she repeated, taken aback by his answer.

“You still didn’t get it love, did you?” he asked helping her back on her feet, never once leaving her eyes. “What I want is to make love to you. What I want is taking the time to explore your marvelous body, every inches of your skin. I want to kiss you until my lips are sore, I want you moaning your love beneath me, I want it to be slow because it is what you deserved.”

And that’s how Vicky knew the last boundary was gone. That’s also why she jumped into his arms taking the initiative to speed things up. Ethan responded in hot moans and groans but he kept control over himself while going to the bathroom. He striped her down, placed wet and hot kisses in strategic places and then ran a bath for her. Once he had checked the water, he very gentlemanly put her inside and stayed outside.

Vicky was truly amazed by him – his will to remain next to her but outside the bath while she was seductively rubbing her skin with her left hand. Ethan kept watching the whole time and he sure wanted to join but he had other plans in mind. At one point, the blue-eyed blonde lady got frustrated because he didn’t want to join in so she splashed water at him. He laughed but didn’t join her but he leaned and devoured her lips once again.

“I can’t join but I’ll take good care of you” he justifies himself

“But I need your hands on me Ethan…” Vicky pleaded. “I need a massage”

“Oh I guarantee you, you’ll have it all” Ethan stated “In the bedroom” he finally added as his eyes were darkening.

The sex had been intense and amazing as it always was with him somewhere between vanilla and something a little bit wilder and darker as passion was involved. They were now fully dressed and cuddling on couch of the living room, Jenner at their feet and life was quiet simple. Vicky could have easily forgotten she had attended a funeral that morning. She sighed happily as Ethan was running his fingers in her messy hair.

“When did you fall for me Ethan?”

“I don’t really remember for sure if I’m honest. But somewhere around the Tadpole Tragedy I guess”

She kissed him innocently on the lips and then resumed watching outside the window. Ethan was reading some obscure medical document but still payed more attention to her. He kissed the top of her head and replaced the blanket correctly to keep her warm.

“You know… I kind of expected wild sex earlier in the bedroom” she said

“I know yes… But I keep the wild card for our honeymoon” he explained

Vicky did not react at first to the specific term he had just used but when she felt him moving to grab something behind the cushions she chuckled at the window.

“We are not even married Ethan” she replied half amused, half sad by the comment he made

“Then in that case Victoria Rhys Eliana Monroe, I’d advise you to look at me and give your hand.”

#fanfic #ethan ramsey #dr ethan ramsey #MC x Ethan Ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #Open Heart

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thefrenchyavenger · 5 years ago

Text

First date (part 1)

Tony:

Of course ! You had to sprain your knee ! You felt like a level one agent ! You were ashamed of yourself. You had thank your opponent by breaking his nose. But according to the doctor, you had to rest for at least two weeks, which meant two weeks off for you ! You didn’t had the right to move so you might go crazy but hey …

You met Clint on your way to the parking lot, who offered to give you a ride home. Clint went as far as to stop to do your shopping. Your fridge was always empty. Clint knew you enough to know that you would rather order take away food than ask for help. He couldn’t let his friend like this.

You barely made it into your flat that, once on your floor, you saw a gigantic bouquet of flowers in front of your door. It was way too big. You opened the door before taking the flowers. You closed the door behind you and sighed. You put the flowers on the kitchen counter and saw a hand-written card :

« See you in ten ! Tony »

What the hell ?! Okay you did try to avoid him, and you did pretty well … until now. You knew Tony had a thing for you. You had received dozens of alerts, saying someone had tried to access your files. He had tried to read your personal file and the reports of your missions. You also knew that the food which was delivered to you, everyday at the same hour wasn’t from Clint. You understood that after seing him eating some of it in your office.

You sort of liked the fact that he wasn’t giving you the choice, it was somewhat thrilling. You wanted someone who would fight for you and your attention. You wanted to know if Tony was serious or if he was just enjoying the chase . You weren’t about to be a trophy for his collection.

The only bad side of Tony’s plan, was that you were definitely not ready for a date ! You took a look at your jeans, top, blazer, boots and your … splint. It’ll do. You drank some water and for the first time in a while you felt anxious. Your heart leaped when someone knocked on your door. You took a deep breath before opening it :

« Hey y/n » Said Tony with his famous smirk.

« Stark »

« Come on ! Call me Tony ! »

« For that too I won’t have a choice ? »

« Yep »

« Okay then … let’s go » You said, trying to keep your emotions in check as would do every top agents of the SHIELD.

Clint :

« The simulation has failed … I don’t like that » You said, watching your computer as if the answer would magically appeared on the screen.

You turned to watch one of your many screens to start a new simulation. These new armors were driving you nuts. You had been working on it for weeks now and no results. Nothing, absolutely nothing. One part of the issue was that you weren’t entirely focused. Because of what ? No ! Because of whom ! Clint Barton was your issue, him and his kindness and his arms that were too good to be true ! You almost got a heart attack when someone entered your lab. You almost dropped your tablet, the one you created yourself, when Clint appeared :

« Hi »

You slowly turned towards him, your heart almost jumping out of your chest. He was there, resting against door, hands in his pockets. He was the perfect representation of relaxed.

But Clint wasn’t relaxed at all ! He was acting like seeing you did nothing to his heart, like his head wasn’t a mess imagining how many children you should have, or where you should get married …

« Clint ? What are you doing here ? »

« I came to see how you were doing » He answered before sitting right next you.

You were doing your maximum not to hyperventilate when Clint’s shoulder touched yours. You did everything you could not to show the effect he had on you.

« If you keep coming here I might start to think that you can’t live without me »

« Which is not exactly wrong. » He confirmed.

When he saw the red on your cheeks he had to stop himself from jumping with happiness.

« I thought you had a mission today ? »

« It was yesterday … When was the last time you saw the sun ? » He asked, raising an eyebrow.

Clint was worried, he knew you were a workaholic , which was a difficult fact to miss when the equipment of the agents was improving under his eyes. His equipment too.

« Well … maybe two or three days ago. I’m working on this prototype but it’s not going the way I want ! » You said frustrated, once more focused on your work.

« You need a break » declared Clint before taking your hand, forcing you to follow him.

« What are you doing ?! » You shouted, trying to escape his grasp.

« We’re going on our first date ! »

« Excuse-me ?! »

« I repeat : we’re going on our first date ! »

« Because there will be more than one ?! »

« Unless you don’t want to » Said Clint, suddenly shy.

« I want to, but I might need to change my clothes »

« No need, you’re prefect the way you are »

« Can I at least take a shower … »

« You have 20 minutes »

« Sir, yes Sir »

Steve :

« All good agent, you’re free to go but be careful in the future » You said.

You saw your patient leave before noticing Steve with an impressive cut on his forearm. Now that you were thinking about it, he did everything he could to avoid every medical exam but for a few weeks now, it was the reverse. Strange.

« Hello y/n » Said Steve with a small smile, his eyes barely meeting yours.

« Hey Steve. What happened this time ? »

« My training turned wrong » He explained, not wanting to tell you what really happened, too scared of what you might think.

« Again ?! It’s the fourth time this week ! »

« It was a though one »

« As usual ! Okay, sit down, let me get my tools »

« Yes ma’am »

« By the way, how was your last mission ? »

« Quite good, but my ‘colleagues » laughed at me a few times.

« Why ? » You asked, astonished that anyone would make fun of Captain America during a mission.

« Because I was not entirely focused »

« I see, who’s in your mind ? »

« How do you know it was someone ?! » He shouted, his cheeks turning red.

« My sixth sens » You laughed, enjoying how quickly Steve could change his attitude.

« You »

« Excuse-me ? »

« I was thinking of you » He explained, watching the floor.

« I… I don’t know what to say. I admit I don’t have the words. »

« I was trying to … find a way to invite you for diner, or whatever »

« Wait a minute ! Is that why you were hurt so manny times this week ?! Don’t tell me it was on purpose ! Please ! »

« Yeah … » He admitted « So ? »

« So what ? »

« Do you … want to go out … with me ? »

« On one condition, that you stop hurting yourself just to see me, even during a mission ! Focus ! Not on me ! I don’t want to be blamed for Captain America’s death ! »

« Okay, I’ll do my best then, I can’t promise anything … » He said, a happy smile on his face « There’s a jazz concert in Central Park this Friday, would you be interested ? »

« I would love to »

Thor :

It was almost midnight when you found Thor sitting outside, watching the stars. He looked so peaceful. Not wanting to disturb him, you decided to leave. You knew Thor had a lot going on, between Earth and Midgard, his duty as a prince. But there was also the fact that you were scared to do something stupid in front of him. Of course, he saw you before you could leave :

« Lady y/n ? »

« Sorry, I was about to leave. »

« Stay ! Please ? » Said Thor with a welcoming smile.

« I don’t want to disturb you »

« You don’t, it’s quite the contrary » Smiled Thor, taking your hand in his.

« Very well then »

You sat down next to him, circling your knees with your arms to protect yourself from the cold night air. Thor noticed it and put his arm around you. You thanked him with a smile. Thor was good, making you feel safe so easily was impressive;

« You seem tired »

« I’m not sleeping well, too much stress I think »

You were not about to admit that because of him you were almost insomniac ! And the perspective of your next mission was not helping. Sleep had abandoned you.

« Why ? »

« I have to leave at the end of the week for a mission and I don’t get along well with the team »

« I’m sure everything will be fine, but if not I’ll gladly come and help, just call for Heimdall, he’ll tell me »

« Thank you » You said shyly, kissing his cheek quickly.

« When will you be back ? » He asked, hiding the happiness he felt at your kiss.

« It’s in Spain, so … next friday I think »

« I see. I recently discovered a wonderful greenhouse here on earth, you would like to visit it with me ? » He asked you, trying to make you understand that he wanted to « court » you.

« Like a date ? »

« Yes »

« That … That would be wonderful »

Loki :

You were in office, reading your notes about your patients, that was part of your job as a psychiatrist for important agents, doctors and all. Even Fury confided in you a few times ! You were mad. You couldn’t calm down since your last meeting with the god of mischief. God that you had nicely baptized as « immature idiot and first class moron ».

You were writing your last report for the day, when the walls and the ceiling of your office turned into a starry-sky. It felt like your were in the middle of a meadow. A voice broke the charm, getting your attention :

« This will be visible tonight, the better spot will on the west hill » Said Loki.

« So ? »

« I want you to watch it with me tonight »

« No thank you, I just saw it. »

« This is just a pitiful representation of what it will be » He tried.

« So, you are saying that your magic isn’t that extraordinary ? » You teased.

Loki tried to keep his calm. He knew what you were doing. You wanted him to loose control, to give you a good reason to avoid him. Strangely, Natasha Romanoff gave him some tips about you. She must had had her reasons to do so. She told him that you were a big tease with people who weren’t your patients.

« I just want to spend some times with you, is that too much to ask ? » He explained with a bit of despair in his eyes.

« Alright, I might come »

« See you tonight then »

« I said I ‘might’, there’s nothing sure here ! »

« I’m pretty confident that you’ll come »

« Is that so ? »

« I think you like me but you don’t want to admit it. So you’re trying to push me away. But let me tell you a secret, it won’t work. Not today, not ever, not with me. »

« You are awfully confident, has anyone ever told you that ? »

« Once or twice, but I don’t really care »

« I noticed »

« If you don’t come, I’ll personally take you there »

« Oh god helps me ! I’m terrified » You sassed.

« You should be » He said with a smirk.

Bucky :

In the end, after getting Bucky back. He and Steve were back to normal, like nothing happened. Steve had noticed Bucky’s interest for you. He was always asking about you, how you were doing, keeping an eye on you. He also took care of a few agents who were out of line with you, and you were blind to all of it. Basically, Bucky was following like a lost puppy would.

As soon as he had joined the SHIELD, you were the only person capable to calm him down when he had a nightmare or a crisis. With your help, he was doing better everyday. You even trained together because Steve was too scared to hurt you.

One day, when Bucky was more like himself like ever before, you decided to make this sparring session even more interesting. The first one on the floor loose and the winner could ask whatever he wanted. Bucky had no intentions to loose, it was the perfect opportunity. He was finally feeling confident enough to ask you out.

Obviously, he won, but you did pretty well, he had some bruises to prove it. Not everyone had a super-strength … well, Steve’s nose still remembered your fist so … But it was his fault !

« So, what do you want from his sergeant ? »

« Diner, you and me in this Italian restaurant in Brooklyn »

« Is that a date ? »

« It is. Pick you up at 7 ! »

#clint barton #tony stark #steve rogers #thor #loki #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #iron man #captain america #Hawkeye #Avengerspreferences #Preferences #avengers x reader #Reader #ReaderInsert #Avengers #MCU

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mcwriting · 5 years ago

Text

starstruck (4)

Here it is... finally! It’s ~angsty~ but it was really fun to write.

I will say, I realized while writing this that the timeline of this fic is sooooo short but hey, its fiction, so I guess anything can happen lol. I tried to resolve it in later chapters but it’s definitely quick moving in these initial chapters.

There’s a lot of italics in this one lol

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Fandom: Thomas Stanley Holland

Ship: Tom Holland x Reader (eventual)

Setting: LA in general

Word Count: 2240 yeet

Warnings: angst, some mild language

Rating: still k+ right now

Last time on starstruck...

“Hey what’s going on? Uh huh. No, we actually have it handled. I might or might not be with her right now… no it’s fine. Seriously, we are laying low! We’re on the way to the hotel right now. Alright, alright I’ll see what I can do. See you in a few.”

And with that, he hung up, turned to you, and said, “That was my manager. Apparently we’ve got a problem.”

__________________________________

You pulled underneath the awning of the posh hotel Tom was boarding at, the kind of place you only dreamed of staying.

Sure, your family wasn’t poor, but your parents definitely weren’t the type of people to spend a lot of money on hotels. They claimed to enjoy spending more money on the “fun” parts of vacations than where you slept at night.

To each their own, you supposed.

Tom wanted you to come inside, per request of his manager, so you figured you would drop him off and park so you wouldn’t be seen together.

The valet had other plans, however, pulling you out of the car and exchanging your keys with a numbered slip of paper.

It all happened so fast that for a moment you just stood there, stunned. You snapped out of it when the man began to drive off and Tom grabbed you to lead you inside.

The lobby was massive and covered with marble flooring. A large, plush rug covered many of the tiles and on top of it sat some luxurious couches and armchairs, framing a huge TV on the wall.

On the other side was a long marble counter that seated hotel staff, who stood at the ready upon seeing Tom.

You also couldn’t help but note the smell, a light, sweet floral scent wafting through the air pleasantly.

This must be rich people scent you thought to yourself.

Due to the nature of it being midday, very few people were seen in the lobby, and Tom led you straight through to a hallway and past the main elevators, his hand resting on your lower back the entire time.

“I have access to a service lift so less people will see,” he explained, as if he’d just read your confused mind.

You walked briskly with Tom through the winding hall, finally ending up at the alternate elevator, where he swiped his key card and the doors slid open with a few creaks.

You tapped your foot nervously as you passed floor by floor, letting go of a breath you didn’t realize you were holding upon reaching the top.

Once again, you followed behind Tom through the hall and to his room. You stood awkwardly in the doorway, clenching onto the straps of your beach bag, as he entered to find more suitable clothing.

After disappearing for a moment, he popped his head back out.

“You can come in, you know. This might take a few minutes.”

You stepped further into his suite, making your way to the sliding doors attached to a balcony. Looking out you could see Los Angeles in full light, the people and cars below feeling so out of reach, like nothing you had ever experienced in your city.

You seemed so out of place in the heavily decorated room still in beach clothing and legs covered in sand.

You could hear Tom rummaging through the drawers and walked over, giving a gentle knock on the open door.

“Having trouble, twinkle toes?” you joked at the way he pillaged through his clothes. He smiled at your commentary.

“Maybe a bit. Do you need anything? A drink, snack? The fridge is stocked so take anything you like.”

You were surprised at his generosity and at how little he cared about paying for that stuff. In your family, everything in the hotel room was off limits if it wasn’t free.

“I think I’m good but do you mind if I use your restroom? I really need to rinse this sand off and put on some real clothes.”

“Go right ahead,” he gestured to the bathroom door.

The bathroom was also massive, especially for a hotel. The shower thankfully had a handheld spray head so you were able to just target and rinse your legs. You tugged on some athletic shorts and a loose tank top to replace your former garments.

You quickly used the toilet too and went to wash your hands, not believing how many fancy soaps and lotions covered the counter.

As you lathered, a small bottle caught the corner of your eye. It was a light yellowish color and read “OBSESSION for men.”

Of course he would wear Calvin Klein cologne. Now I know.

You finished up and made a final once over in the mirror, fixing some stray hairs in your ponytail and opening up the door.

You stopped in your tracks as your eyes laid upon Tom, who was shirtless with his back to you, the elastic of his underwear poking out of his pants’ waistline.

“You’re a pretty big fan of Calvin Klein, huh?” you asked, referring to both the cologne and his boxers. He turned around, giving you a view of his bare chest, which didn’t disappoint, a fact that you pretended was annoying.

“Hah, yeah. I really want to do an ad campaign with them if you couldn’t tell,” he bent over to pick up a shirt from the bed and toss it on.

“Well with the cologne and underwear you’re pretty much a walking billboard.”

“You like the cologne?” he asked, causing your face to heat up. You knew a blush was present and probably obvious, so you decided not to lie.

“Yeah, actually I do. It’s a nice scent. It also happens to be all over my bed right now thanks to a certain someone,” you tipped down your chin and raised an eyebrow accusingly.

“You want it? The company actually sent me like… eight bottles and a bunch of clothes not too long ago after I posted on Instagram about them. I can’t get rid of them fast enough,” he offered, walking towards you.

“What? No! I couldn’t just take that from you. What would I tell my friends when they see men’s cologne bottle in my room? I can’t say ‘oh yeah Tom Holland gave it to me’ and it would be majorly out of character to tell everyone that it’s what you wear.”

He went past you into the bathroom and rummaged through a toiletry bag, muttering an “aha!” when he pulled out another bottle identical to the one on the counter, except this was sealed and full.

“Seriously Tom I can’t just tak-” you started when he dropped the bottle into your bag.

“Whoops,” he quipped, “no take backs. Now your bed can forever smell like me”

You were ready to argue again (with an undeniable smile on your face) when there was a loud rapping on the main door.

Tom grimaced at you to wordlessly send a message of ‘prepare yourself’ as he took a deep breath in and headed out of his bedroom. You silently followed into the living room and watched Tom open the door, where a well dressed man and woman pair stood talking.

__________________________________

At first you and Tom together discussed the plan you had made at the beach with his manager and publicist, neither of whom seemed to like the idea very much.

They asked to speak with Tom privately, so you relocated back into the bedroom and sat on the side of his bed, reminiscing on how the roles were almost reversed compared to only two evenings prior.

You were only in there for about ten minutes, but it seemed like hours. You were too anxious to mess with your phone and instead looked out his window.

There was a quiet knock on the door before Tom opened it. You recognized the steely look in his eyes and the way his jaw was clenched.

He motioned for you to come out, and almost immediately after stepping into the living room his manager started talking to you.

“So, y/n, right? I’m gonna have to give this to you straight. You cannot be seen with my client ever again,” she stated bluntly, “it’s nothing against you, of course, but Tom here needs to maintain a ‘single’ rep until this movie is no longer in theatres and frankly you’re jeopardizing the whole thing.”

Your eyebrows shot up and you weren’t happy to hear this woman’s feigned criticisms.

“I’m sorry, but Tom is the one who sought me out. I never liked him, you could ask any person who knows me and they would tell you the same. I’m only here because Tom asked me to meet him about getting rid of this whole ‘scandal’ or whatever you want to call it. So if anyone is jeopardizing Tom, it’s himself.”

The publicist took a step forward.

“Look, miss y/n, it’s really nothing against you, we just want to maintain his image, and the best way to do so would be for us to go online and tell everyone he helped you get medical attention for an injury, which we all know is true, and end it at that. It makes Tom look like a hero, and you’ll be popular for weeks with your peers I’m sure,” he explained, angering you further.

“I never asked for this. I don’t want attention. I don’t want the world, or more importantly my best friend, to find out I’ve been lying about the guy I used to hate. Do you realize how many rumors this will fuel? This is ridiculous and I can’t allow you to put out my information like this.”

“Oh, well. Too bad. I just sent the tip to TMZ and they’re posting the story tonight,” he replied, “and Tom is going live on Instagram at 4:00 to address it the way we told him to and you two can’t be seen together again. Text all you want like you have been, but no public contact. Unless of course we want to do a ‘girl saved by hero reunites with him’ thing. Oh man would that look so good-”

“I’m done. This is so sick. Tom,” you looked directly into his eyes, “never contact me again, you disgusting cheap sellout bastard,” you spat, a fire in your own eyes like nothing anyone had ever seen from you.

“Y/n I-“ he began, but you were already heading to the door. You could hear footsteps behind you and the door slam shut but you kept power walking towards the main elevators, hoping they were the opposite direction from which you and Tom initially came.

“Wait!” he cried out, finally catching up and grabbing your elbow.

You threw his hand off but stopped moving forward and instead spun around to face him. Tears had made their way down your cheeks by now and you weren’t any happier to be so vulnerable in front of Tom.

Never in your life did or expect the next (or even last) guy you’d cry over would be Tom Holland.

“Y/n, please listen,” he pleaded, his face was also red, as if he were going to cry himself. You stood firm and gave him an expectant glare, so he continued.

“I don’t want to do this, I really don’t. Please understand that I have to, though, no matter how much this hurts. We can still talk. I was so drawn to you the second I saw you in that crowd just last week and I could’ve never imagined how close you could become in the short amount of time we’ve known each other. Please, babe, I don’t want to lose you.”

Anger flashed inside of you again and you felt your chest tighten at the bomb he’d just dropped..

“Do you really, Tom? Do you really care? Because to me it sounds like you actually have a choice here, but you’re too much of a pushover to do what’s right. If you really cared, you wouldn’t do this to me. I was serious back there. Don’t talk to me again, and definitely don’t call me babe if you do.”

“I’m so, so sorry, y/n,” Tom’s voice finally broke, and you could see the way his lip quivered as he continued, “I’m sorry I ever got you into this mess.”

“Me too,” you whispered.

You wiped more stray tears and turned, looking back one last time into the face of the broken-hearted celebrity, hoping it was the last time you would ever see his face, but knowing it wouldn’t be the end of it.

__________________________________

You exited the elevator, which you were glad was empty. More tears had fallen on the journey down and you mustered up everything you could to stop them, at least until you were off the premises of the hotel.

Though knowing you looked like a wreck, you walked through the hotel lobby with head held high, looking straight forward at the large front doors.

Your numbered ticket was in hand and you gladly gave it to the valet so he could pull up your car.

It was getting harder to hold it together as you waited. Finally, he appeared and parked the car in front of you.

He held out the keys and then stood directly in front of you, silently pleading for a tip, even though he could probably see the obvious anguish on your face.

Finally, you gave in, rolling your eyes as you dug through your bag for a spare $5 bill and slapped it into his hand with disdain.

“How kind. Have a nice day, ma’am!” he voiced cheerily.

You fought the urge to flip him off as you sat down in the driver’s seat and began the journey back home, dread filling your stomach the closer home became.

__________________________________

A/N: yeehaw that was a fun time. Next chapter is angsty too sorry I don’t make the rules... :)

Tag List: @marvel-lously, @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl

#starstruck #tom holland #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland dancing #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #spider-man #spiderman #spider man #Spider Man: Homecoming #tom holland spider man #SPIDER MAN: FAR FROM HOME #SPIDER MAN FAR FROM HOME #sm:ffh #MARVEL FANDOM #marvel

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megabadbunny · 5 years ago

Text

In Lovers’ Meeting (4/?)

“Be careful!” Rose called after him.

He spun round at the door. “If you insist,” he said, offering a cheeky wink before he popped open the door and stepped out into the dark.

A rewrite; dedicated to the absolutely wonderful @davinasgirlfriend . <3

* * *

- Chapter 4 -

Fluttering lids and lashes and fluorescent lights flickered overhead, on, off, on—

“—an emergency, please, open the doors!”

—light, dark—

Voices, some she knew, some she didn’t. The push and pull of a tide. An ocean full of life; bodies, packed together like fish. Murmuring.

“Move—out of the way!”

Scuffling and a whoosh sound, something out of Star Trek (or was it Star Wars?), a brisk breeze or an opening door, and her chest was so full that it ached, pounding like a lorry had hit her full-force, and she couldn’t breathe, and it hurt—

“Mrs. Tyler?” asked a voice, briskly, and a light shone into Jackie’s eyes from far away, white-hot and bright, slicing through the darkness like a knife. “Mrs. Tyler, can you hear me?”

Mouth opened but nothing emerged except a weak, strained wheeze, like one of those old people with the emphysema and the breathing-machines, and was that her…?

“...patient appears to be suffering from pulmonary edema and acute hypoxia among other—”

“Oxygen, she needs oxygen, now!”

The world tilted on its axis and she was falling—no, she was flying—no, someone or something was lift-lift-lifting her up, and then she was lying down, something soft beneath her, and she blinked and there was something on her face, a nasty plastic thing that smelled of rubber and hospitals, but at least she could breathe again, even if blackness was bleeding back into the corners of her vision.

“Mum!” cried out Rose’s voice over the sounds of frantic beeping and someone muttering “No no no no Jackie, don’t you dare quit on me, don’t you dare—”

Jackie’s eyes rolled back and Rose shouting was the last thing she heard.

***

For several long and agonizing moments it was far too quiet in the little grey room, the infirmary silent but for the sound of the heart monitor’s chipper little beep-beep beep-beeps. The Doctor listened to Jackie’s breaths and counted down the measures of her pulse and scrutinized her from head to toe as she lay on the cot, sure to hang back at a minimum safe distance while the attending physician checked up on Jackie’s vitals, pressing her stethoscope to Jackie’s sternum and stomach. After double- and triple-checking his observations, running numbers and scenarios in his head rapid-fire, the Doctor allowed himself to relax a little.

“How is she, doctor?” asked Rose, gripping the side of the cot hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

“Eh, blood pressure’s a little lower than I’d like,” replied the Doctor. “Fever’s coming down thanks to the painkillers, antibiotics should help in the case of infection, but of course she’s still got the fluid in the lungs, sounds like a few microliters more than I’m comfortable with, might have to consider a nitrate treatment, maybe dobutamine if things get dicey, but she’s stable enough for the time-being, or appears to be, anyway.”

Rose and the physician both stared at him.

The Doctor scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Right! Medical doctor, lowercase ‘d’. Of course. Got it. Carry on.”

“As he said, she’s stable for the moment,” the physician explained. “It’s a good thing you got her here when you did—a few minutes later, I’m not sure what I could have done.”

“Rubbish twenty-first century medicine,” laughed the Doctor. “One does what one can.”

The physician frowned at him, blinking uncertainly over her surgeon’s mask. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”

“Right! Didn’t exactly have time for introductions earlier, did we?” The Doctor gave a little wave. “I’m the Doctor. Nice to officially meet you. And you go by...?”

“Sarah Saito, MBBS. Just call me Saito.” Saito peeled off a glove to shake the Doctor’s hand. “Now. The Doctor. Wouldn’t happen to be the same bloke that helped with the Cyberman outbreak a few years back?”

The Doctor beamed. “Indeed I would be! How’d you know?”

Saito gestured to Rose. “Agent Tyler’s mentioned you a time or a dozen. The Doctor would do this, the Doctor would say that—”

“Has anyone else made it to the infirmary so far?” Rose interrupted. “Anyone else presenting symptoms, I mean?”

“Yes, I’m treating another live patient with this condition.”

“How are they doing?” asked Rose.

Saito hesitated, glancing between Rose and the Doctor. Whatever the answer was, the Doctor knew it could be summarized as Not well.

“Let’s focus on our objectives here,” the Doctor said quickly. “Education, containment, prevention. What are we dealing with, where did it come from, how does it spread, how do we keep it from spreading further?”

Rose nodded. “And how do we cure Mum and anyone else who may be sick?”

“And that’s where education comes in. We learn what this thing is, we learn how to stop it.”

“What do we know about this thing so far?” Rose asked Saito.

“Not much,” Saito admitted. “We’ve got security looking into the situation, trying to suss out whether this is a natural outbreak or the byproduct of biological warfare, and the medical field team is upstairs collecting what samples they can. But the quarantine protocols seem to be interfering with our network connection; we haven’t received any reports or updates for a while now.”

“Probably a couple of reasons for that,” the Doctor muttered darkly.

“Point is, we’re in the dark down here until the connection is restored.”

Rose swore under her breath. “What can we do for Mum in the meantime?”

Saito hesitated once more, removing her glasses in a bid for time. Not a good sign, the Doctor knew.

“Agent Tyler,” said Saito, not unkindly. She tucked her glasses in her labcoat-pocket. “Your mother is very ill—”

“I know. What can we do for her?”

“Run some tests,” Saito replied. “Make her comfortable.”

Rose glared at her, then turned to the Doctor. “What can we do?” she asked.

In other circumstances, the Doctor might have felt inordinately pleased that Rose turned to him for help, but—well, no, there was no but, he was just as pleased as he would be any other time, he just had the good sense to hide it at that moment. “If we’re lucky, the antibiotics will take care of everything, just whoosh the whole nasty thing out of her system and usher her straight into healing, but I don’t particularly feel like banking on luck here, and I’d imagine you don’t either,” he replied. “We really need to figure out a way to reverse or at least halt the contagion’s sanguinary alterations.”

“You mentioned that earlier, that this thing was changing the victims’ blood.”

“Exactly. Deoxygenation is our major concern at the moment. The oxygen mask is helping to prevent oxygen-starvation, but ultimately, it’s a plaster, not a cure.” He considered. “Now, if we could devise a method of speeding up platelet production…”

Saito frowned. “What are you thinking?”

“Oxygen enrichment,” the Doctor murmured thoughtfully. “Replenishing the depleted supply, so to speak. Replacing the damaged cells with healthy ones. The problem is, even though the human body is constantly producing new platelets and plasma, it can only manufacture so much so quickly. But! There were some very promising rapid-platelet-production techniques introduced sometime between the twenty-first and twenty-third centuries—you’ve got access to a somatic 3D printer and hematopoietic printing material, right?”

“What about a transfusion?” asked Rose. “Like a blood transfusion. Would that help?”

“Could do, if you had a ready match.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” said Saito. “The blood bank is inaccessible due to quarantine—”

“I’m a match,” Rose replied.

“—and with a direct transfusion, there are too many factors to take into account—”

“How do you know?” asked the Doctor.

“—such as screening for potential disease—”

“Mum’s donated to me a couple times.”

“—which, as you mentioned, we haven’t exactly got the time for—”

Wide-eyed in alarm, the Doctor frowned. “Why?”

“—and I don’t know if I could, in good conscience, endorse or participate in such activity—”

“Occupational hazard. Look, it’s not relevant, all right?” Rose said impatiently. “Do you want my blood or not?”

“Are either of you even remotely listening to me?” asked Saito, exasperated.

“No,” Rose and the Doctor both replied.

Saito huffed. “Of course not. And are either of you licensed medical practitioners, by any chance?”

Fishing out the psychic paper, the Doctor presented it with a flick of the wrist. “Depends. What does this say?”

“It just says you know everything.”

“It’s not wrong,” said the Doctor, pocketing the paper with a grin.

“But you don’t know what this is, what we’re dealing with.”

“Yet,” the Doctor replied cheerfully. “I don’t know yet. But I intend to find out. Hence the aforementioned education. Weren’t you listening?”

Fishing around in his pockets, he found the sandwich generously gifted to him earlier. “You need to eat,” he said, tossing the sandwich Rose’s way.

Rose caught the sandwich, wrinkling her nose. “Did this come from Miranda? Is it safe?”

“It is; the sonic would have picked up on it, otherwise. And you need to eat something if you’re going to give blood.”

“I can’t even begin to list all the ways your proposal violates the Hippocratic Oath,” Saito protested.

“Hippocrates! Great man, decent gambler, still owe him twelve drachma,” said the Doctor, hands in pockets as he waltzed lazily over to the door. “Or is it Euros now? Did they convert in this universe as well? I’ll have to find out. Another opportunity for education!”

“Where are you going?” asked Saito. “You can’t leave the building while we’re under quarantine.”

“Oh don’t worry; I shan’t. Just popping out for a bit of R&R—that’s Research and Reconnaissance, by the way, not Rest and Recuperation, no rest for the wicked, after all—and I’ll be back before you know it. Oh, and you should probably call someone to take care of that little zombie problem up in the cafeteria.”

“Zombies?” Saito asked faintly. “Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?”

The Doctor flashed her a grin. “Nope!”

“Be careful!” Rose called after him.

He spun round at the door. “If you insist,” he said, offering a cheeky wink before he popped open the door and stepped out into the dark.

Rose’s gaze lingered on the door all through her call with security, her brow furrowed in worry, like if she stared hard enough, the Doctor might waltz back in, smug but safe and sound.

“So,” said Saito, gathering supplies as Rose ended her call. “Still fancy him, then?”

Rose blushed. “Just shut up and take my blood.”

For some unfathomable reason, for a brief time after she and the Doctor joined company, Donna was obsessed with those ghost-hunting programs, the ones where fellows with tape-recorders and slicked-back hair stroll around empty buildings late at night trying, desperately, to make something out of nothing. Amused to no end, the Doctor would look on and shake his head as Donna watched the programs with rapt attention, her eyes glued to the blokes wandering around onscreen with their green night-vision goggles, playing with tape recorders and radio signals and pulling random words out of the noise and jumping at every little shadow that crossed their path. The Doctor, pages deep in some dusty old tome or days deep into whatever half-constructed project lay strewn about him on the library settee and coffee table, would chuckle and insult the program under his breath, meeting Donna’s protests of Oi, we deal with this sort of thing all the time, don’t we? Who’s to say they’re not every bit as legitimate as we are? with an exaggerated eye-roll and an assertion that no, these programs do not include actually feature any ghosts, at best they’re an incorporeal wavelength lifeform, Donna, terribly common and not at all as exciting as television paints them out to be, and besides, ghosts have much better things to do than make funny noises on radio waves. Sometimes the Doctor would tease Donna dreadfully, trying to convince her with mock-sincerity that that tiny critter on Falbrath IX was actually a paranormal entity or those rattling pipes in that old mansion was actually definitely a ghost, Donna! Quick, let’s take the TARDIS back to 1996 and nab a tape-recorder!

Now, the Doctor suppressed a shudder. Creeping through the darkened halls, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone lurked over his shoulder at that very moment, that the shadows painting the empty corridor were something more than inky darkness pooling in the dim starlight. He said a silent belated apology to Donna—if ever there was a haunted building, late-night UNIT headquarters would be it.

Soon the sounds of scuffling boots and plasticky crinkles and hushed voices in the stairwells informed the Doctor that UNIT had already dispatched a squadron of HAZMAT-suited agents in response to Rose’s call to take care of their little zombie problem, and blimey, that was fast. The Doctor opted to carry out his reconnaissance mission in a calmer area instead, popping open the door to one of UNIT’s communal office spaces with a furtive glance and a buzz of the sonic. He crept quietly through, cataloging everything around him, from the potted plants to the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, from the hardwood floor to the white-tiled cubicles stretching as far as the eye could see. Just your standard posh office workspace, even if a sense of foreboding lay over the place, settling in the walkways and the empty desks, thick like an autumn fog.

The Doctor picked the first computer that caught his eye and sat down, knocking something off the desk in the process. He plucked the something off the floor and chuckled. It was a Yoda bobble-head figurine, of all things. Hideously ugly and completely tasteless. He loved it.

“You and me, then?” he said. “Yoda and the Doctor. Seems fitting, somehow.”

Setting Yoda back on his rightful perch, the Doctor turned his attention back to the computer, aiming his sonic at the screen and cracking the passcode. He bypassed the firewalls to the secure server within moments, easy as rewiring a verteron resistance accelerator. So this sonic was every bit a magic wand as much as the last one, it would seem. Good to know.

(He refused to think of it as the different sonic or the other sonic; it looked and felt and acted the same as his old one, it was the same as his old one, even down to the funny little dent beneath the atomic accelerator. So it was might as well be the same, might’nt it? He wouldn’t even have known it wasn’t originally his, if Rose hadn’t told him. Though that notion opened up another can of worms entirely.)

“Think I’ll ever hear the rest of that story?” the Doctor asked bobble-head Yoda, whose head shook nonsensically in reply. Hardly a helpful response, but then again, Yoda did always have that annoying habit of speaking in opacities.

Fingers flying over the keyboard and eyes darting over the screen, the Doctor located and scanned over every report he could find, everything the medical team managed to upload before their unfortunate transition into zombie-hood. But so little time had lapsed since the beginning of the outbreak that UNIT hadn’t been able to run but a few tests, and what few tests they had managed to run had generated no concrete theories or results. (And of course, there was no mention of zombies or otherwise reanimated corpses to be found. If only the medical team had thought to document their experiences as they were undergoing them. Though the Doctor imagined the reports would probably just read something along the lines of “I was quite warm, and now I’m a zombie; I don’t care for it; mlaaaarggghhg brains.”) The only helpful tidbit the Doctor could filter from the mush was that one or two of the medical officers suggested the contagion could be extraterrestrial in origin, before they themselves contracted said contagion.

“And in their protective suits, no less,” said the Doctor, frowning. If the medical team had contracted the illness even in their suits, then what guarantee did they have that the security and containment team wouldn’t meet the same fate? But no, the Doctor thought; Rose would have told them everything they needed to know, and they would have responded accordingly, taking additional precautions—whatever additional precautions they could, anyway.

“I have to admit, this has me stymied,” said the Doctor. “A mystery contagion, no idea what it is or where it came from or who might have brought it here or why. Or how it reanimates the dead, for that matter. But they’re not technically zombies, not really, unless Sibelius Crow is hiding somewhere nearby and I just haven’t noticed. Which is highly doubtful, to say the least.”

Bobble-head Yoda did not reply, save to bobble his head unhelpfully when poked. The Doctor sighed in frustration. “The only thing in here that’s even halfway noteworthy is a report on the new paint job and some complaints of mold. These reports are literally as boring as watching paint dry, and just as useless.”

(Except the medical team had said something helpful, hadn’t they? Even if they hadn’t meant to, even if they’d been dead when they said it. Give it to us, they’d hissed at him back in the cafeteria, and they’d indicated that Jackie was what they were after. But why?

And if the medical team truly was dead then who was it, exactly, that had been talking to him?)

“I mean, extraterrestrial in origin hardly narrows things down, does it?” murmured the Doctor.

Yoda nodded sympathetically.

“My thoughts exactly,” the Doctor agreed.

Blinking past the blur that threatened to creep over the edges of his vision, the Doctor squinted at the computer screen for several moments before realizing, with no small amount of disgruntlement, that in this new human body he may actually need reading glasses. Well, wasn’t that just wizard. Donna’s faulty human DNA was clearly to blame.

He clicked through file after file after email after report until finally something interesting piqued his attention. He sat up in his chair, eyebrow arching in surprise.

“Now here’s something,” he murmured. “According to this report, none of the blood samples taken from the victims displayed any presence of antibodies. Strange in its own right; your body’s always got antibodies ready to fight off foreign contaminants, extraterrestrial origins or no. Bodies are sort of handy that way.”

He flashed Yoda a cheeky grin, wriggling the fingers of his good fightin’ hand. “Get it? Handy?”

Bobble-head Yoda did not respond.

“You’re right,” said the Doctor with mock-sternness. “This is no time for puns. Though I’m personally of the opinion that most times are good times for puns.

“So despite the unusually high temperatures of the victims at the time of death, we’re not actually looking at a fever here, because a fever is just the body’s way of fighting back, but whatever we’re dealing with completely dismantles the body’s ability to defend itself,” the Doctor continued, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Ergo, it’s probably not a virus or disease of any sort. What it is is something that shuts down the body’s defense mechanisms, spreads alarmingly quickly, and appears to be immune to the usual precautions and even extra precautions. However—and this is worth noting,” he offered to Yoda, as an aside, “it only seems to affect certain people. Rose, for instance, hasn’t begun to suffer any ill effects, and presumably there are dozens of others in the building who are uninfected as well. Is it only a matter of time for them, have they simply managed to avoid contamination somehow, or is there some important physiological difference between the healthy and the infected?”

Bobble-head Yoda was, as usual, silent and withholding.

“Fat lot of help you are,” said the Doctor cheerfully. “But at least now we know our next step: finding the similarities between our various victims. Shall we?”

Easier said than done; a scan of each victim’s personnel file revealed far more differences than similarities. There was Miranda, a not-quite-middle-aged dinner lady, followed closely by the second victim, a more-than-middle-aged nighttime caretaker, and a third victim, an office worker who took ill and died immediately after stepping foot in the building. Then you had the medical team, not one of them alike, and the mysterious second victim in Saito’s care, receiving treatment along with Jackie. Strangely, according to the report, the young man fell ill after being bundled into sickbay with several others, but he appeared to be the only one affected. So far, no one else in sickbay had begun to exhibit any symptoms whatsoever. At least he was still alive, even if his condition was a little dicey; the other victims had all died within moments. The Doctor tried not to think of what that meant for Jackie.

He scowled. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t find a single factor to connect the dots between Jackie and the other victims, not age, not gender, not ethnicity, not vocation nor location nor general health or anything else, save that they all worked in this building, and they were all (presumably) human. Factor in the unusual symptoms, the highly irregular behavior re: antibodies, the likelihood of non-Earth origin, the reanimation of the bodies after death, and the absence of other markers indicating an infection related to viruses, diseases, or bacteria, and you had—

—a Doctor who was still completely stumped, and a Jackie who was running out of time.

“Rubbish,” the Doctor announced. “The medical team just overlooked something, that’s all. Not that I can blame them; I’m certain they were rather busy getting infected and turned into zombies and such. But if you want something done right…”

He pushed back from the desk, offering a brisk nod to bobble-head Yoda. “So long, then. But a word of advice, one supercentenarian to another: 900 years is no excuse to let yourself go.”

Jogging to the office doors, the Doctor quietly pushed them open, sticking his head out into the darkened hallway and glancing both ways. Of course, with the active quarantine in place, the hall was deserted, free of any over-enthusiastic UNIT agent that may attempt to apprehend and re-quarantine him, though something about the faulty fluorescent lights flickering queasily overhead made the Doctor uneasy. He couldn’t shake the feeling of something crawling up his spine, even as he busied himself locating the UNIT floor directory, scanning it for the location of their laboratory.

A click at the end of the hall caused his head to whip round, his gaze sharpening, scanning the area for the source of the noise. But nothing unusual greeted his senses, just walls and ceiling tiles and potted plants and that never-ending flicker overhead. He took a few steps forward and gave a good long look at the door at the end of the hallway anyway, just to be safe.

Nothing. Just a nagging little buzz-hum rattling around the back of his head, probably the cheap overhead lighting. UNIT really should replace it all.

Shrugging, the Doctor turned back to the directory, only to jump back in shock.

Miranda stood there.

Rose tried very hard not to stare at the other patient behind the glass, averting her eyes as best she could while Saito wheeled in her mother into the observation room and arranged a more longterm setup. (“Technically a breach of protocol, bringing a patient in here for treatment,” Saito had explained moments before, “but this is the easiest way to keep an eye on everyone. That’s what comes of being the only physician on the graveyard shift, I suppose. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that.”). But Rose’s curiosity got the better of her, and there she found herself. Staring.

The patient lay in the other room all alone, prone atop a hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling through glassy dark eyes; his skin had faded to a papery nigh-translucent white, and his fingernails and lips and eyes were stained utterly black, as if painted with ink. Between the oxygen mask strapped to his face and the tubes plugged in seemingly willy-nilly all over his body, the poor young man looked like a machine more than anything, like a cyborg or maybe Darth Vader peeled halfway out of his protective black shell. He was totally still, save for the stilted breaths that entered and left his body with a watery wheeze; Rose couldn’t help but think he already looked like a corpse. Rose kept glancing through the window at him as she shed her trusty leather jacket and Saito seated her and prepared her for the transfusion. She watched him while Saito prodded at her arm for veins and swabbed the inside of her elbow with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. Even the bite of the needle in Rose’s skin wasn’t enough to tear her attention away.

White skin, watery wheeze, black-stained fingernails and lips and eyes; that poor fellow was knocking on Death’s door, and Death was about to answer.

“So, Agent Tyler,” said Saito, monitoring the transfusion tube as it pumped blood straight from Rose’s arm into her mother’s. “It’s been a while since you last visited medbay. How’ve you been—”

“You don’t need to do that,” Rose interrupted.

Saito shot a glance over her spectacles. “Do what?”

“Distract me, keep my mind off all this. I know it’s part of the routine, but you don’t need to worry about it with me.”

“Agent Tyler—”

“Not Agent. It’s just Rose, now.”

Saito hmphed. “Welp, that answers the question of how you’ve been doing, at least.”

“Yeah,” said Rose flatly. “Been a lot better.”

“Been a lot worse, too. I was actually just getting ready to commend you for going a whole three months without needing stitches or a cast.”

“That you know of,” replied Rose with a faint smile.

She quieted, looking over Jackie’s limp body, at the blank expressionlessness of her face, deceptively peaceful beneath the oxygen mask. “S’weird,” said Rose. “Usually I’m the one on the bed, and Mum’s the one fretting over me. Never knew how hard it was to be on this side of things.”

“Not a role reversal you particularly care for, hm?”

Sighing, Rose reached out with her free hand to push a stray hair out of Jackie’s face. “This is why I told her not to come after me,” she said quietly. “I knew something like this would happen. She’s supposed to be safe, at home, away from all this stuff.”

Her mouth twisted in unhappiness. “Why didn’t she just stay put, like I told her to? I told her.”

“Yes, because the Tyler women are notorious for following orders without question,” Saito replied drily.

The urge to fling a lob of sarcasm swelled like bile in her throat but Rose did not reply, focusing on her mum instead. For several moments all that could be heard in the room was the pulsing of the heartrate monitors. Rose imagined she could hear accusations hidden in their tones, a rising chorus of Your-fault Your-fault Your-fault echoing off the sterile white walls.

Something seemed to soften in Saito’s features as she watched her. “Chin up, Rose,” she said, her voice much gentler than usual. “How many times have you pulled something out of a nosedive at the last second? Besides, your Doctor bloke’s here, isn’t he? And didn’t you tell me a hundred times what a miracle-worker he is? Even if his methods are highly questionable,” she added, rolling her eyes. “But if anyone can help your mum, it’s the two of you. Right?”

Rose hesitated. I think like him, he’d said. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything, he’d told her. Part of her wanted to believe him; it would be so easy to surrender to everything her gut was screaming to be the truth, to believe he could fix everything, just like before.

(That was one hell of a bet to hedge her mother’s life on. Then again, what other option did she have?)

Rose swallowed hard. “Yeah,” she replied quietly.

“What are you?” the Doctor asked.

Peering out from behind a ragged curtain of matted, oil-slicked hair, Miranda did not reply, or rather, her body did not; it watched the Doctor in silence, blinking just a fraction of a second too slowly, dark lids sliding over dull black eyes. Ichor dripped out of its mouth, trailing a path down, down, down its chin and throat and chest, staining Miranda’s work uniform and filling the air with the cloying stench of damp and rotted things. Its veins were far more pronounced, now, a horror-movie spiderweb of pitch-black lines inked into its face and the tissue-thin paper of its sternum. Its hands hung dull and heavy at its sides, darkness pooling in its fingertips.

Anger flared up in the Doctor’s chest, so burning-violent that his hands balled into fists and shook with the force of it. He fought to tamp it all down. He didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense. More importantly, Jackie didn’t have time. And besides, this wasn’t about him; this was about helping those infected, preventing the infection of anyone else. He could punish himself for his oversights and shortcomings later.

He could punish this thing later.

“The other bodies seemed to understand me. Do you?” he asked, louder this time. “What are you? And what are you doing here? And why?”

“You know who this body is,” Miranda’s body responded, its words slow and thick, its tongue weighing heavy in its mouth.

“I know who it was. Not so sure, now.”

Miranda’s body tilted its head, almost thoughtfully. “The Miranda. This is the Miranda.”

“Except that’s not true, is it? Not anymore.” When Miranda’s body fell silent again, the Doctor heaved a sigh in impatience. “Oh, come on, you know what I’m asking. No need to play coy, we’re all friends here. Well, not friends so much as some sort of invasive contaminant and the person most voted most likely to try and kill it dead, but, you know. Potato, tomato.”

“We need your help.”

“Oh, do we now?” asked the Doctor, eyebrow piqued. “My help, specifically?”

“Yes.”

“Well, isn’t that something,” the Doctor murmured, studying what used-to-be-Miranda’s face, like maybe something in its ichor-darkened features would give its intentions away. “Curiouser and curiouser. Do you even know who I am?”

“Traveler,” Miranda’s body hissed. “Magic-maker. Time-bender. Death-bringer.”

“That last one’s a little melodramatic,” muttered the Doctor. “How do you know all of this?”

Miranda’s body shook its head. “Not important. We need help.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what we are, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Help us,” it hissed.

“Tell me what you are,” insisted the Doctor.

“Help us.”

“Tell me what you are.”

“Help first.”

“Nope!” said the Doctor cheerfully, and good grief, wouldn’t that horrible buzzing noise overhead ever cease? “You want my help, you answer my questions. That’s how it goes. No other way, no other choice. So one last time before I start to get testy: what are you?”

“Not what,” gritted out Miranda’s body. “Who.”

“Fine. Who are you?”

“We are us. Ourselves. Legion. No name. Can’t tell anything more. Not before help.”

“Oh, but you’ve already told me so much, just now,” said the Doctor, rocking back on his heels. “See, your use of we indicates the plural, moreover the persistent use of we in lieu of any other pronoun indicates a lack of sense of individual self, and that, coupled with your insistence that you’re a who, not a what, yet you’ve got no name—well, that sounds an awful lot like a hive mind, doesn’t it? And it’s clear you’re not local, not unless this Earth has got some very funny little quirks the other one hasn’t; an extraterrestrial hive mind, then. Oh, but what need has an extraterrestrial hive mind got for human bodies, hm? Human bodies, but not human brains. Make that a parasitic extraterrestrial hive mind. A parasitic extraterrestrial hive mind that, somehow and for some reason, has the capability to possess humans—”

The lights flickered again overhead and the Doctor snapped his fingers in revelation. “Ah, not somehow—telepathy, that’s how!” he said excitedly, pointing to the lights above him. “That pesky flickering, that’s you lot, isn’t it? Interference with the electronics due to a low-level telepathic field. Explains that horrible intermittent buzzing sound, too—actually, anytime you’d like to knock that off would be fine by me, still got that post-regeneration extra-sensitivity and it feels a bit weird in the teeth. Although to be fair, the new teeth always feel a bit weird, so maybe that one’s on me.

“And that explains why you’d know certain things, doesn’t it? Like my identity, all that—your telepathy has granted you access to your victims’ memories. You probably know everything about me that Jackie does. And oh!” he shouted as realizations struck him, one after the other. “Oh, that explains why the protective suits don’t make a difference, as well! Telepathic possession isn’t like an infection or a virus or bacteria or disease, it’s not strictly physical, it doesn’t care if you’ve got antibodies or a protective suit. So you possess your victims, override their consciousness with yours via telepathy, and you mutate their bodies after, killing them in the process. That makes you a telepathic, infectious, fast-spreading, parasitic, zombie-generating extraterrestrial hive mind, with a nasty little side serving of murder.”

He glanced up at the Miranda-thing with a sharp grin, feeling very proud of himself. Certainly Rose couldn’t help but be impressed, if she saw him right now.

“How am I doing, so far?” he asked.

The corpse did not reply.

“So that brings us to the million-dollar question, which is: Why are you doing all of this?” the Doctor asked thoughtfully. “Why are you infecting humans, why are you killing them? Why are you changing their bodies on the molecular level? And why have you only targeted some of them, as opposed to others? Not that I’m complaining—broadly speaking, the fewer people you murder, the better—but why choose one human over another? Or have you even got a choice, or is it something else altogether? Just, why?”

“Wasting time,” rasped Miranda’s body.

“Whose time?”

“Yours,” it replied, its voice a snake slithering through the leaves. “Hers.”

“Now that sounds an awful lot like a threat,” replied the Doctor. He chuckled darkly. “Something you should know about me: I don’t take well to threats.”

“Not a threat. A promise,” hissed the corpse. “Help us, or she dies.”

As soon as the transfusion was complete, the needle removed and the tube with it and everything swabbed and bandaged and clean, Rose grabbed her jacket and slipped it back on, wrapping it snugly round her frame. Warmth suffused her bones and she sighed in relief; she felt much better with the jacket on, shielding her like a protective shell. Not to mention, giving all that blood had made her terribly cold. And a little sleepy too. Or maybe that was just the overall lack of sleep.

“You feeling all right?” asked Saito, concerned. “You look a little pale.”

“M’fine,” Rose lied.

“If you’re feeling faint or anything, you should let me know.”

Rose pulled her jacket tighter. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about my mum.”

“Agent Tyler—I mean, Rose—”

“What should we be doing for her?” Rose asked.

Saito huffed impatiently behind her surgeon’s mask. “I will continue monitoring her and running tests. You don’t need to be doing anything right now, except having a bite to eat. And maybe a lie-down.”

“I don’t want—”

“Too bad. You gave blood; you need a snack. Doctor’s orders. Two doctors’ orders.”

Rose hmphed. “Fine,” she said, grudgingly reaching for her sandwich. “I’ll eat, and then you’ll tell me how I can help.”

“Eh, truth be told, there’s not much you can do, unless we hear something different from your bloke.”

“He’s not my bloke,” said Rose as she peeled back the clingfilm.

She could tell Saito was struggling not to roll her eyes. “Well, until Not-Your-Bloke gets back, help me keep an eye on your mum, and keep her company,” she replied, peeling off her gloves. “That’s basically all you can do.”

Saito started to stand up, but hesitated. “A word of advice, if I might?”

Rose nodded at her to proceed.

“I’d like to think we have a good shot at saving your mother,” Saito told her. “I’ll do absolutely everything I can to help her. Knowing your family, she may survive out of sheer stubbornness, much as anything. But in my experience, it’s generally wise to hope for the best, whilst preparing for the worst.”

Rose’s hands trembled around the sandwich, clenching squeakily in the clingfilm. She forced them still. “Are you saying I should start planning her funeral?”

“No. But if there’s anything you want to tell her, now would be the time. Doesn’t matter if she’s unconscious. Better to say something now than risk leaving it unsaid.” Pushing up from the stool, Saito laid a gentle hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Take it from someone who knows firsthand, Rose. Regret is a terrible thing.”

Swallowing, Rose nodded again. Saito gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze before she left the room, and now it was just Rose and her mother, and an atmosphere thick with uncertainty. Rose watched her mother as she slept, her eyes motionless beneath her eyelids, her mouth parted beneath the oxygen mask, her hands cold and still. She looked nowhere near as bad as the patient in the room beyond, but she was awfully pale, and the blackness in her fingernails had spread. Already, she looked like a ghost.

Your-fault, your-fault, your-fault chimed the heartrate monitors.

Rose clenched her eyes tight against the fear and guilt that threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn’t do that right now. She couldn’t give in. She had to be strong, for her mum. She had to help her fight. She had to help her win.

“Right,” she said, breathing out a shaky exhale. Rose set the sandwich down on the empty stool, scooting closer to her mother. She reached out and grabbed her mum’s hand, flinching when her mother did not respond. Worrying the inside of her cheek, Rose cast about for something to say. Anything. Anything at all.

(But her treacherous mind couldn’t conjure up any words, could only show her the last time she’d held the hand of a body on a cot, and the Doctor’s fingers were stiff and icy between hers, and it didn’t matter how stubborn he was, he was still—)

Rose tightened her grip around Jackie’s hand. She wouldn’t let that happen to her mother. The fact that Rose hadn’t got there in time to save the Doctor was irrelevant. She wouldn’t let her mother die. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

She gathered her breath and her courage. “So,” Rose said, her voice trembling. “Mum. What do you want to talk about?”

“Killing one of my friends is an excellent way to ensure you’ll never get my help in any capacity whatsoever,” said the Doctor with a brightness that belied the anger in his eyes. “Now, do you want to try another approach, or shall I levy some threats of my own?”

Miranda’s body blinked lazily, its lips falling open and closed, as if it were considering. “Help us and we will surrender your friend.”

“And she’ll be healthy? No more fluid in the lungs, no more burning up, no more risk of turning into whatever-the-hell-you-are?”

The corpse shook its head. “She will be restored.”

“Excellent!” said the Doctor, clapping his hands. “That’s a little more like it. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Home,” breathed Miranda’s body. “Help us go home.”

“All right. Where are you from?”

“Far away. Very far away.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” the Doctor said mildly. “You got yourselves here, why can’t you get yourselves back?”

“Can’t. Not without help.”

“Why not? What, did you run out of pocket change for the intergalactic Underground?”

“We fell,” said Miranda’s body, and if the Doctor didn’t know any better, he’d think its tone mournful. “There were holes in the world. In the earth and sky. The nothing came, and it ate all the stars.”

“That sounds an awful lot like the Reality Bomb,” the Doctor murmured.

“We saw it everywhere. Stars, gone. Worlds, gone. All of them, lost to the nothing. We fled, to outrun the hunger. To outrun its maw.”

The corpse’s tongue slithered out, running over its teeth, exploring the crannies and jagged edges of them as if, perhaps, considering them for the first time. Black fluid smeared around its mouth and the Doctor grimaced in disgust.

“It swallowed everything,” Miranda’s body whispered. “Nowhere left for us to go. We took refuge in the howling black. We thought we were safe in the dark. But the dark…”

Miranda’s body shuddered. “It eats, too.”

“So you fled to the Void?” asked the Doctor, half-impressed. “How’d you manage to survive that?”

The body twitched, a convulsion borne of memory and fear. “Didn’t,” it rasped.

“Then how are you here?”

“Heard the song of the Vortex, sung by the magic box. Followed it.”

“Magic box,” the Doctor hummed. “I can only imagine you mean the TARDIS. So you did a bit of extradimensional hitchhiking, then.”

Miranda’s body nodded. “We clung to the box and followed our hope. Searching for safety. But it was too late. Just shadows, now. Desperate to live.”

“And the only way you could survive is by inhabiting the bodies of others,” said the Doctor, suddenly understanding.

“Yes,” whispered Miranda’s body. “An unfortunate necessity. Sins committed so we may survive. But we smelled it, now, the return of the stars overhead. The nothing is gone. So now, we can go home.”

It stepped forward, pleading. “We will claim no one else, if you take us home.”

A small eternity had passed by, and still, Rose couldn’t think of anything to say. She squeezed her mother’s hand, wishing desperately that Jackie would squeeze back in response.

“I guess I should probably call Pete, yeah?” Rose said quietly, staring at the floor. “So he can come and talk to you too, so that he can—you know. Just in case—”

Her breath hitched in her throat. “Should he bring Tony, too?” she asked, forcing the words out even though they hurt. “I mean—no, he can’t. Neither of them can come, can they? Not with the contagion. Can’t risk them getting sick too, can we?”

Sighing, Rose leaned forward, propping herself up with her elbows on her knees. God, she was tired. Even just thinking was as exhausting as climbing a mountain.

“Video chat could work, though,” she continued. “That way, we can make sure they both get to see you before—you know, if anything—like Saito said, about the worst—just—”

Rose sniffed loudly in the empty room, but Jackie’s eyelids did not flutter, her mouth did not move. Her hand did not squeeze back.

“Just wake up, Mum,” said Rose, and her cheeks felt suspiciously wet all of a sudden; surprised, she reached up to thumb away first one tear, then another, and another and one more. Her vision grew blurry and the pressure in her sinuses grew unbearable and before she knew it, the dam had split and tears were trailing down her cheeks, one after the other, growing fat at the curve of her jaw and dropping onto her jacket with a plasticky splat. Rose bit her lip to hold back the tears, but it was a halfhearted gesture because as horrible as it was to cry, as much as it made her feel like a small and stupid child, god, it was just such a relief.

“Wake up, please,” she said again, sniffling, and tried not to think about what life would be like without her mother in it.

(Would it have felt the same, if she’d successfully stayed in the other universe, and all the paths had sealed shut behind her? Would the realization of Jackie’s loss have struck her like it did now, pounding at her chest until she curled in on herself, until she withered under the weight of it all as the truth fully struck her that she would never ever see her mother again?

Lips pursed shut, Rose inwardly shook herself. No. This was nothing like that. It wasn’t. It just wasn’t.)

“I’m so sorry, Mum,” Rose said thickly through her tears. “I didn’t want to leave you behind. I never wanted to hurt you. Never, ever. But I wanted to get back so badly, and I thought—I don’t know, I thought if I could just get back to the other universe, everything would work out all right in the end, somehow. You know? Like it would fill this hole inside me, the one that’s been growing ever since we first came over here. I wouldn’t feel empty anymore. I wouldn’t feel broken anymore.”

Pain welled up in her at the thought of those first few months after Canary Wharf, fresh and bleating as the day it happened, so much worse than the throbbing in her damaged fingers, all of it so loud she could barely think past it. But Rose forced herself to continue. “It all just hurt so much, Mum,” Rose said, pleadingly. “Getting stranded here without the Doctor or the TARDIS—s’like, I’d had a purpose before, yeah? When I was with the Doctor, we’d travel all over, righting wrongs, fixing things. Helping people. But I didn’t feel like I could do that properly here. I didn’t—”

She sniffled, loudly. “I didn’t feel like I could do it on my own. It was like someone had broken both my legs, and I couldn’t walk anymore. But working on the Cannon, working on getting back—not just to get to the Doctor, but to stop the stars from going out overhead, to help people again—it gave me something, Mum. I had meaning again, I didn’t feel so empty anymore. And then I worked so hard, for so long, that it was like everything about me, everything that makes me me, hinged on me succeeding, in getting back to him. Does that make sense?”

Rose swallowed. “I thought everything would turn out all right in the end, somehow. So I just tried not to think about it, yeah? How much I’d be giving up, to be with him again. You know?”

Silence was the reply.

“I should have told you all that upfront,” Rose murmured. “But I was just—I dunno. After Canary Wharf, after Will, after Plymouth—”

Memories of burnt ozone and a room full of screams sliced through her vision and Rose clenched her eyes to close them out. Her lips clamped shut, the words burning her like scalding-hot coffee in her mouth, even now.

“After all that, and everything else,” Rose tried again, her voice shaky, “I didn’t want to let anyone in. I thought it would be easier that way, if anything bad did happen. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, right? But the worst is here, Mum, and it’s not like anything I planned for. Nothing I did made any difference, and now everything’s gone wrong and you’re sick and I don’t know what to do and I’m not ready for any of it, I’m just not ready, I’m not—”

Her face crumpling so hard it hurt, Rose lapsed forward onto the hospital bed, surrendering to the gravity of her exhaustion and sorrow. Clenching Jackie’s hand tight, she sobbed into the mattress. “Please don’t go, Mum,” Rose half-wept, half-choked. Great heaving sobs wracked her shoulders and she cried even harder, gasping for air. “You can’t leave me. You can’t. Please, Mum. Please.”

Jackie did not respond.

Rose wept, and wept, and wept.

Scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably, the Doctor paused to consider. Even amidst his anger and disgust, he felt a small swell of sympathy for the creatures. They’d done what they felt they must in order to survive. They’d clawed their way past impossibility, banding together in the face of certain death. Theirs were actions borne of complete and utter instinct, the desire to live overriding everything else, leaving only fear and desperation behind.

That didn’t change anything, though. Didn’t reopen the holes between universes; didn’t grant them a way to slip back through.

It didn’t change the fact that they were killers.

“Please, take us home,” said the corpse, reaching a ghostly hand toward the Doctor, palm up. Its veins were black and stark beneath moonlit flesh. A request writ in ink. A plea birthed in blood. “Please,” it rasped again. “Help us.”

**********

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

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cassolotl · 6 years ago

Text

Coming off testosterone

I stopped taking testosterone on day 235, May 19th 2019 - 6 days ago, and after just under 8 months of low-dose testosterone. I had 1 pump of Tostran gel per day, which the medication leaflet says is 10mg of testosterone.

WHY DID I START TAKING LOW-DOSE TESTOSTERONE?

I’m nonbinary, and my goal was always to be androgynous. I started taking testosterone to deepen my voice, mainly, but the idea of a more masculine fat distribution on my body was appealing because I also have dysphoria about my hips and slim shoulders. “Passing” as nonbinary isn’t really a thing because most people don’t know that there are more than two genders, so the best I could really hope to achieve realistically was to confuse as many people about my gender as possible. 😈

Changes I wanted:

Deeper voice

Genital changes

Less feminine body fat distribution

Changes I didn’t want:

Facial hair

Hairline changes (but if it happens a little that’s okay)

Loss of hair on head

Body hair

A couple of years ago I had one session of voice therapy (NHS), which was fun and very interesting, but it taught me a couple of things. One was that finding my lower pitches and getting that low resonance by finding my chest voice was definitely helpful and relieved my voice dysphoria. The other was that there was no way I was going to be able to keep up with multiple voice exercises per day to keep it that way. I pretty much decided that day that testosterone was the most sensible option, and even though it was scary I would just have to find a way to deal with the negative effects.

My voice dysphoria was sort of disconnected from my idea of my gender. All I really knew was that my voice needed to be a lower pitch and more resonant. I felt that dysphoria especially when I was talking excitedly or when I was singing. But I also knew that I didn’t want people to mistake me for a man either, and since it’s a very long slow process and quite unpredictable I knew that I would need to be careful to keep track of things to make sure I didn’t start giving myself a new kind of gender dysphoria in the masculine direction!

It was another year or two before the stars aligned and I actually managed to get the can of Tostran into my hands (NHS).

HOW DID IT GO?

As I mentioned above, I was on a low dose, one pump of Tostran per day. One can lasted about 107 days. The endocrine nurse said I could reduce the dose to half if I squirted the gel onto my leg/stomach as usual and then wiped half the gel-dribble off with tissue and threw it in the bin before I rubbed it in, but I never did that. The two-month blood test put my levels at 9.7 nmol or something like that. (Female range is 3 or below, and male range is 10 or above, so I was very nearly almost at the male range.)

The first month I got that scratchy throat feeling, which I now know happens when my voice is deepening, and I noticed my voice getting a little lower. Also I was SO GREASY OH MY GOD, I had to shower twice as much, I had to get some high-powered anti-perspirant deodorant. It didn’t make me spotty, it was just disgusting! But it felt okay because I could tell it was affecting my voice. I also noticed that I smelled different, and that my bedroom acquired that delightful(??) teenage boy smell! Ew. This kicked in properly in under a week, and trailed off around month two, though I still needed to take more showers and wear hardcore deodorant and I was still more greasy for the entire time I was on T.

On day 26 I noticed that my... [flails around wildly for non-dysphoric word] pudendum had gotten a little bigger, and I regret not getting “before T” photos. The growth was fast and a lot more noticeable than I had expected, and it was extremely emotionally intense, because I hadn’t realised but I’d been sort of suppressing and dissociating from genital dysphoria for my whole life. I knew I had genital dysphoria, but not how much or how it was affecting me. I was completely unprepared, and it was overwhelming. (I am very lucky that I was able to access fortnightly gender-specialist talking therapy at Charing Cross GIC during this time.) A few weeks later I started looking into genital surgery options. I think my genitals haven’t changed much in the last 2 months, so I guess it took about 5-6 months to get to where they are now.

Here’s the graph the Voice Pitch Analyzer app [iOS/Android] makes:

And here’s the graph I made myself using data from the app:

In the second graph, the thing I notice right away is that my highest pitch now is lower than my lowest pitch pre-T.

My first month was rapid pitch drop, and then there were a couple of months of wibbling around on a plateau, and then after that things kicked off again, I had a few scattered days of scratchy throat and things started meandering downward. A common pattern was two to four weeks of wild fluctuation and no drop, followed by a sudden drop over a day or two. Sometimes my brain took a while to adjust to a drop in pitch, and I would tire myself out speaking with a higher pitch than my vocal chords really wanted to do.

In the last couple of months I got a lot worse at making the voice recordings, which in hindsight might be because I was less enamoured with being on testosterone, and it was maybe a sign that my testosterone advantages were sort of wrapping up and it was nearly time to stop.

No one who sees me regularly said unprompted that they could hear a difference in my voice. When I asked people if my voice sounded different, they said “ehhh, maybe kinda, yeah?” I learned that testosterone doesn’t make your voice sound different! It makes it feel different, to yourself and to other people. My therapist, who I see (approximately) fortnightly, said she couldn’t tell the difference at all, and when I played her my day 1 voice recording to compare it to my current voice (6 months or so) she was like 😮.

Strangers are still mostly gendering me female, as far as I can tell, but my appearance and my voice means that strangers gender me male a little more often than pre-T. I also get “sir, I mean ma’am, gosh I’m so sorry...” more often. It makes me uncomfortable to make people uncomfortable, so I just usually say “it’s okay, I’m nonbinary so I’m kind of both??”, which rarely makes them less flustered or less confused. I had some cards made years ago that have the nonbinary flag on one side and the definition of nonbinary on the other, which I should just start handing out whenever this happens!

My testosterone dose was too low to stop my menstrual cycle, but it did seem to mellow out the highs and lows. My PMS and menstrual symptoms are generally a nightmare even though I have no uterus to bleed from, so that was a nice relief. It was very strange to experience PMS and boy puberty simultaneously.

I kept records of my specific dysphoria feelings from about 3.5 months, thanks to prompting from my gender-specialist therapist at Charing Cross GIC in London:

The ideal outcome, which I was looking out for, was all of the lines meandering towards that horizontal line in the middle. That would mean the feminine dysphoria was reducing and the masculine dysphoria was reducing.

I am pretty lucky, in that most of the changes I wanted from testosterone are permanent and the changes I didn’t want are temporary or reversible. I made some lines on the graph more bold because those were the ones that I wanted to keep an eye on. Here are my thoughts on this graph:

Facial hair was impossible to score because it gave me both masculine and feminine dysphoria. Feminine because those dark fine hairs on my upper lip are most often seen on cis women, and masculine because they were caused by testosterone and male puberty.

When my pudendum started growing it also gave mixed signals. It was good because it was getting bigger, but as it grew it highlighted that there was a lot going on down there that made me feel feminine dysphoria (mainly labia around my pudendum, and sometimes that it was still relatively small).

I am not a very hairy person. I thought I wouldn’t like having more body hair, and for a few months when I scored my dysphoria I focused on specific patches of new hair and thought about whether I was dysphoric and thought that I wasn’t. After a few months I realised I was being too short-sighted. Yes, I can totally deal with these new fine hairs on my thighs. Yes, this darker and thicker hair on my shins is okay. Sure, these hairs around my belly button are no big thing. But when I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture, and saw the hair as a pattern, my whole brain recoiled. Yes, I am definitely dysphoric about masculine patterns of body hair on myself. :S

There was a trend of all types of dysphoria getting less over time - until month 7, when they all started getting worse except voice. It took a while to be sure it was a trend, but looking back on it, that was definitely a thing!

The ideal outcome would be all of those lines converging on the middle horizontal axis, and it hasn’t happened. There are no flawless solutions for nonbinary people at the moment. As things stand and with what’s available to me right now, I will probably always have gender dysphoria. But I’m pretty glad that I’ve done what I can and I will keep doing what I can, because it is all helping.

Unrelated to any gender stuff, I have put on weight and gone up a size or two in trousers and one size in t-shirts. It could just be that I’m in my 30s and my metabolism is slowing, which is what I assumed it was at first, but the weight has come on in quite a short space of time, so that made me think about what I’ve been eating and why. I noticed that I was craving carbs and sugar, eating it, and then feeling unsatisfied afterwards. The type of hunger I’ve been feeling lately feels the same as the type of hunger I had when I had Implanon, a three-year birth control implant. When I had that removed my appetite went back to normal. So this putting on weight feels a lot like a hormonal thing. I have mixed feelings about it! I strongly dislike my clothes feeling wrong and having to buy new clothes, but also bits of me are pleasingly wibbly and it’s fun to be able to rest my cup of tea on my stomach when I slouch. :D

Also unrelated to gender stuff, even on a low dose many of my EDS symptoms were noticeably reduced: fatigue, loose joints, joint pain, IBS, dysautonomia. (Joint pain and fatigue were still present, but not as bad after exertion.) I also noticed that the really vivid dreams and very emotional days that come with PMS mostly disappeared, which I was sad about.

HOW DID I KNOW TO STOP?

People gendering me in different ways has increased lately. Like, a few weeks ago me and @watchkeyphone were trundling about town, and one charity/religion street-hawker person asked if we were sisters, and then a hundred yards later their colleague called us “lads” or something.

A week or so ago, I realised that my voice was sounding and feeling resonant in my chest pretty much all the time and that felt pretty nice, but I was still scoring my voice as sounding feminine, and I wondered if that might be because the changes are so gradual that I just changed my idea of what feminine sounds like. I noticed that I was more comfortable recording my voice to put online for various reasons.

I don’t live in a culture where people go around saying “excuse me sir” or “hello madam”, we don’t routinely gender each other in a formal way. But also, either I don’t have enough casual contact with strangers to notice gendered familiar words like “mate” or “love”, or strangers just avoid using those kinds of words with me because I’m hella queer-looking. So I basically realised that I have no idea how strangers see me or hear my voice at all.

So, in approximately this order:

I put a recording of my voice on the internet and asked strangers to gender my voice. Most of them said androgynous, leaning a little masculine. One person said I sounded like Q, a computer-generated intentionally genderless voice!

I went to a queer social group, and when it came up in conversation naturally I complained about how hard it is to know when to stop testosterone because I can’t tell how my body and voice are gendered by other people, and a lot of people I see regularly still see me the same way as they saw me pre-T. A couple of people said, “actually, in the past couple of months I have really noticed the effects...” So that was reassuring!

I decided to notice how my pitch works in different situations compared to pre-T. After the queer social group we went down to the river and some people swam, and when they got into the water and it was very cold, some of us cheered supportively - and I tried to woo like the “woo girls”, and my voice just came out at a dude pitch instead...! I apparently can’t be high-pitched at high volumes any more.

I watched a video about gender and voice by someone I’ve met in person. When I met them I noticed that their voice was pretty androgynous, and I enjoyed it and thought about how nice it must be to have a voice that can’t be easily gendered by strangers. When I watched this video last week, in which their voice was exactly the same, I noticed that they sounded like me. That was the moment that I realised my voice was done!

I spoke to my PA about it. I played my pre-T voice to her and her face was A Picture, she could not even. She then said that she has quite a feminine voice, and she suggested we each make a recording of our voices reading a paragraph of the book on the table, and then compare to her partner’s voice in a recording. My voice sounded more like her male partner’s voice than like hers.

I can now speak with a comically low deep resonant voice if I want to, and I can also speak with a high cutesy voice in order to address my cat, provided I am warmed up a bit.

HOW DID STOPPING GO?

On the day that I posted the voice file online, when strangers started saying I sounded masculine, I was honestly pretty surprised. In my head strangers in person were still mostly gendering me female, but when I really thought about it people hadn’t actually been gendering me much at all. I think I had been assuming strangers were hearing a woman’s voice because the change had been so gradual that I hadn’t had a moment where I could “update” my own gendering of my voice. I didn’t wake up one day and go “wow I sound like a dude” or whatever, so there was just nothing to update.

So, as soon as there was an indication that I might sound like a man soon, my gut said “NOPE” and I worried a little bit about going too far in the masc direction. If I keep taking T then I will sound more masculine and I might regret it, but if I stop and find that my voice dysphoria could be relieved with a little more testosterone I can start again in a few months, right? So I decided to not take it that day unless I learned/felt something that indicated I should put the gel on, and... I didn’t.

The first couple of days were pretty uneventful. Around day 4 I started to feel really run-down and chronic joint pain from EDS was flaring up, so I cancelled near-future plans. Yesterday was like the worst of my (uterusless) periods, I was in a lot of abdominal and lower back pain and then last night I slept for 11 hours... And today, also typical of my uterusless periods, it feels like a storm has blown over and I feel like a new human.

So what I’ve concluded is, coming off T triggered a very, very bad period.

Also, the past couple of days I have once again been SO GREASY, and I got spots yesterday, which is unusual in itself, but these are striking because they are WEIRDLY HUGE?? One of them is on my jaw and has caused a very noticeable swelling, so I’ve named it Balthazar.

(From “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” S03E12: Nine Days.)

WHAT NEXT?

It’s only been a week, so I’m assuming more weirdness is coming, but it’s all going to be ovary-hormone-related silliness so I’m pretty much used to it and I’m not too worried.

I am sad that I will probably slip back towards feminine body fat distribution. I will probably lose some of the weight that testosterone brought with it, but the remaining weight will probably end up on my hips again. I am really not looking forward to dissociating my hips again but I don’t know what I can do about it except have liposuction every few years?! (I will not do that.)

I am also sad that the bad bits of my menstrual cycle will go back to Full Force, and that my EDS symptoms will worsen again.

I am very much looking forward to my body hair getting finer and lighter, and maybe my upper lip hair will fade a bit too. If not I will probably have to get it painfully removed.

I want a metoidioplasty. Unlike many trans guys, I want no testicular prostheses, no vaginectomy, no phalloplasty, no new urethra. The clinicians at Charing Cross are aware that I want to have a metoidioplasty, because I included it in a letter when I wrote to the endo about a blood test, to make sure my surgery needs are documented in my medical records from the earliest date possible. I did that because they have minimum-time requirements for a bunch of diagnoses and referrals (like, two appointments before hormone treatment recommendation), which you can sometimes get around by providing reasonable counter-arguments. One of their requirements for referring for genital surgery is being on testosterone for at least a year where clinically indicated, so since testosterone has done its job now that means I’m not clinically indicated for testosterone any more, and I’m hoping that being on T for only 8 months shouldn’t be an issue. I also found a blog by a trans guy who had a simple metoidioplasty like the one I want, and his blog posts are really helpful and informative and have good quality non-porn photos (so rare omg), and his junk and my junk are extremely similar in size and appearance. (Here are his before and after pics.) So, fingers crossed the docs will consider that I have been on T for long enough and my pudendum is developed enough that surgery is an option.

I’ve written to the endocrinologist to say that I’ve stopped putting on the Tostran gel, and to ask if I still need to have those blood tests I’m meant to be having. I’m due to see him on 1st July anyway, a little over a month from now, and no doubt I will have saved up a list of questions for him!

CONCLUSION

Testosterone works.

#original posts #cassian's transition #cassian's hormones #low dose testosterone #testosterone

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