#it's been almost fifteen years and I STILL have to double and triple check that i spelt connelly right lmao

[safyresky]

Scrimbly Jacqueline 47/52: Every day Elle WAKES UP ready to unleash meme hell on Jacqueline, and Jacqueline is never ready.

Remember when everyone was drawing their ocs/blorbos a la this image:

That's where this came from lol. I forget if it was me or Ana who went "THE GIRLIES" or if perhaps this was an errant Dani thought that got tucked away? Regardless this isn't my first attempt at drawing the girlies like this...

yeah....didn't go far. I got frustrated? I can't remember why, though. I think I then attempted to do it digitally? Let me do a little looky loo.

Found it!

It's actually...not too bad! It has good BONES lol.

Anyway. Elle belongs to the amazing, stunning, showstopping Ana @shittyelfwriter! Plz enjoy this doodle of our silly kiddos with old, outdated memes lol

[vemaro]

alone again

[PART 3]

This is a link to PART 1 and PART 2.

Pairing: Astarion x Tav (female Tav)

Word count: ~2900

Notes: Sorry this took so long! I was just so unhappy with everything I wrote. I redid this part a handful of times. Honestly, I’m still not totally satisfied. Oh well! I finished this at almost 2 am and proofread really quickly before work so hopefully this thing is legible. Ngl, this song helped inspire me a little. I hadn’t heard it in a while and it fit the mood.

Here you go!

…

Tav is convinced she’s dreaming.

For years, she’s sent out letters inviting all of her friends to attend numerous affairs; grand openings, galas, holidays, even a simple meal. Most of the time, at least two of them would show up. Sometimes, if luck is on her side, three will appear at once. Never as many as today. Her and Terrick’s wedding ceremony was the last time she managed to persuade them all to come to the city, but even then Lae’zel was absent.

On occasion someone will pass through the Gate without having been directly invited, like when Astarion, Karlach, and Dammon showed up on her doorstep months prior. Although, that is an extremely rare occurrence. And again, never as many as today. She can’t help but wonder what prompted this mass visitation. Deep down, she knows (hopes) they care, but her intuition tells her this is no mere coincidence.

Despite Tav’s inner turmoil, the banter between her and Astarion comes as easily as it always has. His quips are semi-censored due to Callum’s presence, but other than that, it feels like old times. Well, that and the addition of the umbrella. She lets the nostalgia wrap around her like a warm blanket.

Not fifteen minutes into the journey home, Callum falls asleep. He’s nestled comfortably on her side with his cheek resting on her shoulder. Every few minutes Tav will turn her head away from the conversation to bury her nose in his hair or press a kiss to the crown of his head. Having her son so close helps stave off the negativity and paranoia, but it can only do so much.

Tav licks her lips. She might as well ask him now. Get it over with. “Astarion?”

He hums in reply. “Hm?”

She mentally braces herself. “How long will you be in Baldur’s Gate?”

Astarion keeps his voice nonchalant and his eyes trained on the path ahead. “Oh, you know, darling, just until the end of the month.”

Tav lets his words sink in for five long seconds. Then she gawks up at the vampire. “I’m sorry, did you say until the end of the month?”

He smirks, but still doesn’t look her way. “I did.”

“But—” She counts to herself, lightly tapping her fingers against Callum’s back. Then she counts again because that’s way too many days. Then once more for good measure. After checking, double and triple, she balks. “But that’s more than a tenday.”

He chuckles at her shock. “Yes. I’m aware. We rented our old suite at the Elfsong Tavern until—“

She halts in place. “We?” she parrots, voice bordering on shrill. “Who else is staying?”

Astarion internally smacks himself for the slip. Damn it all. He really needs to learn when to stop talking around the woman. “Don’t tell them I ruined the surprise, darling. The slash happy gith will take pleasure in gutting me if she found out.” She continues to stare up at him, waiting for him to elaborate. The vampire sighs. “All of us are staying for the remainder of the month. Even Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc are supposed to pop in at some point.”

“Everyone will be in the city?” she presses. “Everyone everyone?”

He rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Yes, everyone everyone.”

The question slips out by accident. “Why?”

Astarion is taken aback and the mood is immediately soured. “What the hells do you mean why?”

Why are they here? What could have possibly brought them all together? Is there a new threat looming over them only she isn’t yet aware of? Is that why Gale suggested they spend the day together, to strategize? Is that why Halsin, Jaheira and Minsc will be joining up? Why are they here? She says none of this out loud. She says nothing at all.

He pulls his arm from her grip and takes a step back, exposing Tav to the sunlight. She winces at the sudden brightness. “You literally invited us. We’re here because you asked us to come.”

But why she wants to ask again. Why is this the one time they all decided to show up? Why now? Why not before? Why today? “I-I know that,” she stutters.

“Do you not want us here?” he accuses.

Her panic from earlier returns tenfold. “What? Of course I want you here!”

“Then what seems to be the problem?”

Yes, what is the problem? They’re here, aren’t they? That’s all Tav’s ever wanted. And yet she can’t ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach that something’s amiss. “There’s no problem, none at all,” says the druid, but even she can hear the lie as it passes her lips.

A frown forms between his brow. “Really? It feels as though there is.”

“No, I …” Her desperation for answers is being misconstrued for annoyance. What was she supposed to say? If she keeps talking, it’ll only make things worse. “I …”

“You what?” he snaps. “I can go if my presence is such a burden.”

“Don’t!” She instinctively reaches out to grab him, but aborts the movement at the last second. “I’m sorry, Astarion.” And she’s confused and she’s tired and she deeply regrets starting this conversation. “I didn’t mean to come across as ungrateful. I am happy you’re here. I just …” She stops right as her voice is about to crack. Tav swallows the lump in her throat and tries again. “I miss you.” The back of her eyes sting. To hide the tears building in the corners, she lowers her gaze down and away.

When he sighs, his entire body softens. All the tension melts again and he’s left feeling guilty for losing his temper. “I miss you as well.”

A sinister voice hisses something wicked in her mind. Does he? If he misses Tav as much as he claims, why not visit more often? A much more cruel voice provides a bittersweet answer; because she did this to him. Because he doesn’t miss her at all. How could he after what she’d done? After condemning him to a life in the shadows. Who is she to shed tears when the fault is her own?

She tries to take a deep breath, to steady herself, but the weight of Callum, the tightness in her throat, and the corset of her dress are making such a task seem nigh impossible. It shudders and breaks, coming out more like a sob. She slaps a hand over her mouth, cursing herself for losing her composure. There are people all around them. If they aren’t already watching, they will if she starts openly sobbing.

A cool hand touches her shoulder. “Tav?” He says her name like it’s the most precious thing in the world. It makes her want to openly sob.

She shrugs off the appendage and turns away. “I’m fine.”

His blood red eyes bore into her back. He wants nothing more than to comfort her somehow, the way she used to comfort him and the rest of their friends, but he can’t bear her rejecting his aid a second time. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because I’m a mess,” she says through choked laughter.

“Please tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing is going on, Astarion.” But she can feel a tear trickle down her cheek. “Just go to the tavern. I’ll walk the rest of the way on my own.”

“Hold on—” Without thinking, his hand darts out to prevent a hasty retreat. However, he underestimates her speed, so his hand passes the outline of the darkness enchantment. “Fuck,” he growls when the sun burns his skin.

Tav spins back around, horrified. “Oh no. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—I didn’t know you’d—I’m so sorry.” Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut? Why couldn’t she just accept things at face value? If she had, he wouldn’t haven’t gotten hurt. It’s her fault. It’s all her fault. It’s all her fault. It’s all—

“We need to leave now.”

Without warning, his hand is on her back, pushing her forward. Tav doesn’t fight it, drowning in remorse for what just transpired. He’s not leading her up the main road anymore. They twist and turn down alleys and side streets until she finds them outside an decrepit building. He makes quick work on the lock, throws open the door, and all but shoves her in first. She hears the door shut and the lock click.

A fresh set of apologies are ready to spew out of her like vomit. “Astarion. I am so—“

He’s quick to cut her off with the swipe of a hand. “Stop. It wasn’t your fault.”

She looks at him as though he’s grown a second head. “Yes, it was. If I hadn’t tried to walk away, you wouldn’t have tried to stop me.”

“I was the one foolish enough to lunge after you in broad daylight,” he argues.

“You only lunged after me because I’m on the verge of tears.” She is no longer on the verge, she is in tears, fucking hells. “So let me apologize properly.”

“Alright then. As an apology, I want a godsdamn explanation for whatever this is.”

She shakes her head. “This is nothing. For the last time, I’m fine.”

He throws the umbrella onto the floor. It clatters onto the dusty floor. “I’d be more likely to believe you if you didn’t have twin tear tracks running down your face.” He closes the distance, leaving a foot of space between them. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She finally lets it explode out of her. “What’s wrong is that you abandoned me like everyone else in my life! And no matter how long you stay, you’re inevitably going to leave again!” Callum stirs in her arms. The little boy’s eyes flutter open and he mumbles something incomprehensible. Astarion backs off, giving Tav room to soothe him until he’s lulled back to sleep. She whispers sweet words of affirmation in his ear and bounces him like she used to when he was a baby.

It takes a few minutes until Callum is sound asleep again. Even then, the silence stretches on a little longer. Tav stands on one side of the room and Astarion stands near the middle, leaning against a ruined cushioned loveseat. They’re eyes are locked, expressions unreadable.

She breaks the silence first. “I miss you. I miss all of my friends. I hate being alone again.”

He cards his finger through his fine, white curls. “No one forced you to stay in Baldur’s Gate or told you to get married.” Most of them tried to convince her not to wed Terrick.

She frowns. “I didn’t have many other options.”

The vampire scoffs at that. “You could’ve left the city and not get married.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere your heart desired.”

“The only place I want to be is with you—” Her cheeks burn with the confession, though it’s hard to distinguish with her face already flushed red from crying. “—or any of our friends.”

He pushes off the back of the chair to stand fully. “Then why didn’t you come with one of us?”

“No one wanted me to go with them.”

“What gave you that idea?”

She suddenly feels embarrassed and needs to look away again. “No one asked.”

One step forward. “I’m pretty sure any of our friends would’ve been thrilled to have you accompany them.”

“Any of our other friends, but not you.”

Another step. “And what gave you that idea?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “You know why.”

Two more steps. “Spell it out as if I don’t.”

Robby shuffles in place and adjusts her hold on Callum as a stalling tactic. By now, Astarion is standing right in front of her again. She’s too nervous to meet his eyes. “I’m the reason you’re stuck in the Underdark. It’s my fault you’re responsible for thousands of vampire spawn.” She pauses, debating whether she should say her next words. No, she will. “Stopping the ritual was the right thing to do and I don’t regret it. I would do it again, but … I also recognize you suffered for my decision. Why would you want the person who stuck you in that position around?”

Because he’s madly in love with her and nothing would make him happier than to have her by his side. “My life isn’t precisely as I imagined it would be, and yet I am still content with where I ended up.” As content as he can be without her there. “And you’re right. You would’ve been a reminder for the position I’m in; free and out of Cazador’s control.”

She finally feels brave enough to look into his eyes again. Unfortunately for her, the tears are back with a vengeance. “You don’t hate me, not even a little?”

He gently cups the side of her face and uses his thumb to brush away the fresh tears. She leans into his touch and thank the gods his heart doesn’t function properly or else she would’ve heard it pounding. A small smile finds its way on his lips. “No, not at all.” It’s quite the opposite.

“Then why do I see everyone, at most, twice a year?”

The smile turns wry. “Because we’re shit friends apparently.”

She grabs the wrist on the hand cupping her face. “And why is everyone suddenly so keen on staying in the city for more than two days when that’s never happened before?”

“We were trying to surprise you,” he says.

She gets that cute crinkle in her brow whenever she’s in disbelief. “That’s it?”

He shrugs. “That’s it.”

Tav’s eyes flicker between his, trying to determine if he’s speaking the truth. She so, so badly hopes he is. “You swear?”

He raises his right hand and draws an X on his chest. “Cross my heart, darling.”

And just like that, she relaxes. She releases the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and her shoulders droop. A few more tears leak out as she laughs. “Well, this is humiliating.”

His signature smirk is back in place. “I wont tell if you don’t.” He holds a finger up to his lips and winks. “I’d appreciate it if you pretended to be clueless about our long visit.”

Tav laughs some more. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

She pulls him into a one armed hug to seal the deal. “I’m sorry for being dramatic.”

He should be glad she’s moving past everything that just happened, but it breaks his heart that she’s taking the blame. However, it’s for the best that he leaves it be. “Melodrama is my thing.” He hugs her back. “But I forgive you.”

Being in his embrace feels right, feels safe. Tav pulls him in a little closer. “You know, Callum would love if you came by more often. It doesn’t have to be monthly, but once a season sounds fair.”

“Just Callum, eh?” he teases.

And she’s blushing again. “I wept over how much I missed you. It should go without saying that I also want to see you more often.”

“I could stand to hear you explicitly say—ow!”

Tav leans away and smacks him on the back. “Don’t be an ass, Astarion.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Just trying to lighten the mood, Tav dear.” Even with her leaning away, she’s still so close. She’s right there. All he would have to do is lean forward and … “Why, I believe it’s about time we get you home.”

“Yes. Right.” She reluctantly takes a couple steps back. “Don’t forget the, uh …”

The vampire holds back a grimace. “The magical prop that prevents me from burning alive, I know.” He goes and picks up the umbrella with a loud huff. “Let’s try this again.” He saunters over to the door, opens it, and bows lowly. “Lead on.”

Tav comes over and hooks her arm with his. “Okay.”

And they were off.

…

“Why aren’t we killing the bastard again?”

Gale pinches the ridge of his nose. “Because he’s a public figure,” he deadpans.

Astarion matches his expression and rolls his eyes. “So was Gortash and we still killed him.”

“Gortash wasn’t married to our friend.”

The vampire shrugs. “Semantics.”

“Astarion,” Gale hisses.

“What?”

He is well on his way to a migraine. Astarion is a (mostly) trusted friend, but he’s a lot to deal with at best and downright incorrigible at worst. Tav was always the one to steer him in the right direction. “I think we can all agree in our distaste for Tav’s choice in spouse, but it’s a delicate situation.”

“Distaste,” he repeats mockingly. “I fucking hate the man.”

Gale sighs. “I concur.” Astarion opens his mouth, probably to say something smartass, so the wizards beat him to it. “But you agreed to stick with the plan. A plan that I believe will leave Tav and Callum unscathed.”

His eyes snap to the woman he loves across the room. She’s smiling, glowing, as she watches Karlach and Wyll entertain her son. She doesn’t deserve what that monster is doing to her. Terrick doesn’t deserve to continue living. If it was his choice, Astarion would slit the man’s throat and be done with it, but apparently the public needs evidence of his wrong doings. “Fine …”

“Thank you.”

“If he steps one foot out of line though, screw the plan.”

Gale chuckles darkly and pats him on the back. “I know.”

[i-call-me-clarence]

Life’s a Cemetery (Dig It)

Kevin and Jack get their hands dirty on grave duty. 

Rated G 

Suptober Day 6: Cemetery Boys

Fic below the cut

----

“You sure you’re good?” Dean asks for the third time. 

“Kevin is here, and if anything happens we have angel blades and silver bullets,” Jack answers, making a little wave motion at Kevin who’s silently asking him how much longer he’s going to be on the phone. Kevin rolls his eyes and goes back to leaning on his shovel, refusing to start digging until Jack joins him. Jack doesn’t want to keep him waiting any longer, “Dean, I’m sorry, but I have to--”

“And you’ve got the iron poker, right? And the holy water?”

“We still have everything in the pack you left us.” 

“But did you double-check? A real hunter always double checks, triple even--”

Before Jack can respond Kevin is taking the phone from Jack’s hands, “Believe it or not the ex-god and current prophet know what they’re doing. Bye.” and he hangs up the phone. 

Jack gives Kevin an apologetic shrug of his mouth as Kevin hands back the phone, slapping it into Jack’s hand. “He’s protective.”

“He’s turned into a helicopter parent. If I wanted that I’d just go back home.” 

“But that would put your mother at risk.” Jack tilts his head in confusion.

Kevin rolls his eyes and tosses Jack a shovel, “Come on. Let’s get this done before the sun goes down.” 

---

Three hours after sunset and they’re still digging. Jack started feeling lightheaded thirty minutes ago, and it’s gotten to the point where he needs to sit down. 

“I’m sorry, I have to--” Jack ends up thunking down on his butt before he can finish.

“Hey, are you okay?” Kevin asks warily, stopping his digging and leaning against his shovel, “Is the talisman wearing off or something?” 

“I--I don’t have a talisman,” Jack’s body is shaking and he’s starting to feel nauseous. Perhaps he should have listened to his body hours ago when it screamed at him to rest. But Kevin had kept going and he’d said he wouldn’t dig alone so…

“You don’t have an energy talisman?!” Kevin gaps at him and drops his shovel, “Are you kidding me?! You do realize you’re basically human now?” 

How could Jack forget? Being human was so difficult that it was impossible not to be reminded of it constantly. Even when he slept. He didn’t use to sleep as a Nephilim...or as God. But Amara’s taking care of that now. Letting Jack have a ‘normal childhood’ as she’d said. Something she was envious of and didn’t want Jack to miss. ‘Even Chuck let himself have one. After he invented the concept.’ when she’d told him that it was clear she was hiding a deep sadness. Jack had decided after his childhood was over, he’d take over as God again so she could have one too.  

“How are you even standing?!” 

“I’m...not.” 

Kevin looks at Jack, taking notice of the way he was starting to sway a little. Before cursing and getting down on his knees next to Jack. 

He grabs a hold of both sides of the necklace his talisman was supposedly attached to, “I’m going to regret this,” Kevin groans, before taking off the necklace and holding it out to Jack. A green light pulses from Kevin’s chest, swirling around his arm, before being sucked into the little medallion hanging from the golden chain in Kevin’s outstretched hand. 

Jack quickly takes the necklace, seeing the sudden strain in Kevin. As soon as he has it, Kevin lays back with a dull thud as his body hits the earth. 

“Oh my god,” he gasps, suddenly breathing very heavily. “Worst part about that talisman,” he pants, “After you take it off, you feel every bit of exertion. All at once. Oh, I’m gonna die.” 

Jack puts on the talisman and instantly feels better. Better than he’d felt since turning human. He wonders what would happen if you kept the necklace on all the time--

“And if you’re tingling from the charm and wondering ‘why can’t I wear this all the time,’” Kevin says in a deep mocking voice that sounded suspiciously like Dean, “Just look at me after five hours. Imagine a week, or even just a whole day.”

“It kills you?”

“It kills you.”

“I can finish this alone.” 

“Yeah, but first,” Kevin tried to sit up, grunting in pain, “Help me out of this damn hole.”

---

It had been an hour since Jack started digging by himself, making a grand total of eight hours. Just a constant monotony of stab scrape shovel. At least Jack felt pretty good with this talisman, and at least they were almost done. 

Stab, scrape, shovel. Stab scrape shovel. Stab--THUD!

Jack gasps in surprise, and Kevin leans over the opening of the hole to look down at Jack equally surprised, and elated. 

“Oh my god,” he laughs, falling back on the grass, “We finally did it,” Jack hears him say. And then he groans, “But now I have to move.”

“If I were still God I could read this. Or create new eyes that could,” Jack notes, scrapes the remaining dirt off the coffin with his hands. 

“If you were still God we probably wouldn’t even need this spell. And if we did, you could just teleport the tome out without all this bullshit.” 

A reneged sector of angels, lead by the angel Inias, had decided to declare war on all remaining prophets. They thought they could use them to find a way to spy on Amara and overthrow her from, well, Goddesshood. This was the grave of a prophet, and inside was a tome they were buried with that held a spell to make prophets invisible to angels and demons. Probably how she lived long enough to die of old age. At first Jack had been sad, thinking this would mean he wouldn’t get to see Kevin anymore. But Sam said he was pretty sure that he could rework the spell so any angels or demons that gave of their blood in the ceremony would be able to still see prophets. 

Jack hopes so.

Kevin leans his head over the grave again, wincing. “Wow, now that you’ve uncovered it, those sigils are really bright.” 

Jack agrees, though what seemed like blue glowing sigils to them wouldn’t appear at all to normal humans.

Jack opens his mouth to say so but is cut off by his phone ringing in his pocket.

“Is that Dean again?” Kevin asks tersely. 

Jack checks the caller ID and nods.

“Hand it here,” Kevin says, lunging his arm forward and down.

Jack hands over the phone and Kevin rolls back over with it, out of sight.

“Dean?” Jack hears him say. “Bring burgers and water.” A pause where Kevin must have been about to hang up because he says, “Oh, and get your asses over here.” and Jack hears a beep from the call ending. 

“Here you go,” Kevin dangles his arm over into the grave, phone in hand.

-----

They eat inside the impala--Kevin mostly chugs water at first--with the engine idling and cabin lights on. Kevin and Jack are both filthy, but Dean doesn’t mind. ‘Part of bein’ a Hunter’ he’d said. Back in the old times, Cas or Jack would clean everybody up. But seeing as they were both human now, he and Kevin were doomed to be dirt-covered.

“How did it go?” Castiel asks from the front seat, mouth half full of burger, “You didn’t run into any problems?” Castiel had been wearing his regular suit before he’d left but was now wearing a space cats hoodie he’d gotten for himself when he took Jack to Hot Topic. He must have brought it with him in the car.

Kevin stops chugging water to answer, “No ghouls, no cops, no cemetery keepers or grieving loved ones, though that last one would be unlikely seeing as she was buried three hundred years ago. Where’s my burger?”

“Got you four,” Dean grins and waggles his eyebrows. 

“I may just be able to eat that many.”

“Yeah and I’ll finish whatever you don’t. That goes for everybody.” Dean continues.

“Didn’t you just get back from a dinner date?” Kevin asks suspiciously, “Actually, if you didn’t, don’t answer, I don’t wanna know.”

“We did just get back from dinner…” Cas starts slowly. “It was, uh...fancy.” 

“Too fancy,” Dean grumbles.

“Ah. Small portion sizes.” Kevin nods, but then pauses, “Aren’t you supposed to have fifteen courses or something?”

“Yeah well, we got a call three courses in to deliver some emergency burgers.” Dean shrugs, “Prefer the burgers anyway.” 

“Jack, are you wearing an amulet?” 

Jack jerks as he realizes he forgot to take it off, “Uh oh,” he says, setting down his burger. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

“What’s happening?” Dean asks looking around the cabin, panicked.

“Jack left an energy talisman on too long.” Cas sighs, looking sorry.

“Ohoho buddy,” Dean says into the air,  smiling but also looking kind of sorry too, and even more so when he meets Jack’s eyes. He pauses. “Yeah bud, uh, that’s gonna be a bitch to take off.” He frowns.

Jack grabs the golden chain--

“Woah, man, what are you doing?” Kevin gasps after having grabbed Jack’s arm and stopping him from taking off the talisman. 

“Will it kill me?” Jack asks everybody, suddenly nervous.

“Well, no,” Dean begins, winces, “It’s just gonna hurt like a bitch.”

“Then shouldn’t I get it over with?” Jack asks, confused.

“You might pass out,” Castiel warns gently.

“You’re probably gonna wanna go with the passing out,” Kevin says, putting a bracing arm on Jack’s shoulder “It’ll suck less.”

Kevin nods at him and Jack takes that as a sign it’s time to take the talisman off. He lifts the chain up and off, and then something strange happens. 

A green light swirls from both Jack and Kevin’s chests and swirls into the amulet. 

Both of them double over. 

“Woah! You kids alright?” Dean asks, lunging a hand over the backseat to touch Jack’s back, as Castiel quickly spins out of the car and back in at Kevin’s door, holding him up, checking his eyes and tongue, he goes to stick his finger in Kevin’s ear to take his temperature before remembering he can’t do that anymore. 

“Kevin? Are you okay? Jack! Jack, are you okay?” Castiel asks urgently.

“Goddammit,” Kevin sighs, “Twice in one night, oh man I’m really gonna die.” then he looks at Castiel before reassuring, “Really, it wasn’t that bad.” Kevin turns to Jack, “How do you feel?”

“...Not that bad,” he answers truthfully.

“Hot damn.” Dean is smiling, leaning back into his seat, “Well now we know that’s a thing!” 

“It could potentially save lives,” Castiel agreed. “I’ll have Sam tell the other hunters...though this may just be a situational occurrence between a prophet and a Nephilim. Who knows really.”

“It was still pretty cool,” Dean defends. 

Castiel gets back into the car. 

“And I’m not denying that. Why do you always jump to conclusions?”

“What are you talking about ‘always?’” Dean grunts back and starts up the car, pulling out of the cemetery parking lot.

Kevin and Jack tune Dean and Cas out. 

“That was pretty cool,” Kevin says.

“Yeah,” Jack frowns, looking at his friend. “We’re going to perform the ceremony when we get back.” This may be one of the last times he ever sees or hears him again.

Kevin puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder, “It’s going to be okay. Even if we have to do it by proxy for a little while, I won’t stop being your friend. Okay?” 

Jack smiled, putting a hand on Kevin’s shoulder too, which may have been weird or awkward but seemed like the thing to do. 

Kevin smiles at Jack before patting his shoulder and saying “I’m going to pass out now.” 

Jack nods and Kevin immediately drops his head back onto his seat and starts snoring. 

Jack leans back in his own seat, feeling exhausted as well. Dean and Cas have stopped arguing and put the radio on low, laughing at j=okes here and there as they talk softly. 

The running engine and metronome light of street lamps going by, and the familiar classic rock playing all seemed to be in some sort of competition with who could lull Jack to sleep first. The sound of the impala won. 

The End

[bitchesgetriches]

Noble citizens of the aspirationally decadent Conglomerated Nation of Bitches Get Riches: let’s have a lil’ chat, shall we? It’s been a while since we chatted about our favorite topic: ourselves!

We hope you’ve enjoyed season two of the Bitches Get Riches podcast. Recording it was a bright spot for us during this dumpster fire of a year, so thank you all for listening.

As we wrap up another season, we had a few notes to share with you. Including some more personal reflections about how we’re doing, where we’re at, and what the future holds.

Let’s get into it!

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As of today, we’ve reactivated everything! But please keep in mind that there may still be delays, depending on what’s happening in the world! We appreciate your patience, if patience is indeed called for.

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Season one transcripts

Next, we wanted to let you guys know that we now have transcripts available for season one of the Bitches Get Riches podcast!

We’re committed to making BGR as accessible as we possibly can. We know that some people can’t hear, or struggle to absorb information aurally, so transcripts were something we’ve always wanted to offer.

… But, you know, at the end of the day, we’re just two people! Transcribing and editing audio is time- and labor-intensive work, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day for us to do it along with the fifteen million other things we have to do.

We were able to offer season one transcripts thanks entirely to A Purple Life, a peerlessly talented and wonderful fellow blogger who selflessly made it happen. (If you don’t already read her stuff, you’ve already disobeyed us, as we commanded you to in 10 Rad Black Money Experts to Follow Right the Hell Now. And for that, we’re strongly considering smiting you.)

We’re incredibly thankful to Purple for her hard work on this. But we also feel strongly that this DESERVES to be paid work! So the release of season two transcripts is dependent on getting more Patreon donors to offset funding it.

Season 1, Episode 1: “Should I Tell My Boss I’m Looking for Another Job?”

Season 1, Episode 2: “How Should I Behave on My First Day at Work?”

Season 1, Episode 3: “My Parents Have Bad Credit. Should I Help by Co-signing Their Mortgage?”

Season 1, Episode 4: “Capitalism Is Working for Me. So How Could I Hate It?”

Season 1, Episode 5: “I Don’t Love My Job, but It Pays Well. Should I Quit—or Tough It Out?”

Season 1, Episode 6: “I Lent My Boyfriend Money. He Took It to a Casino.”

Season 1, Episode 7: “I’m Terrible at Budgeting. Do I Suck It Up—Or Is There Another Way?”

Season 1, Episode 8: “My Mother Demands Information About My One-Night Stands.”

Season 1, Episode 9: “I’ve Given up on My Dream Career. Where Do I Go From Here?”

Season 1, Episode 10: “I Want a Pedigreed Dog. She Wants a Rescue Mutt. It Turned into a Fight… and the Fight Got Ugly.”

Season 1, Episode 11: “I Feel Cornered by a Friend Who Keeps Asking to Borrow Money.”

Season 1, Episode 12: “Should I Believe the Fear-Mongering about Another Recession?”

Bonus Episode: Merry Bitchmas! The 2019 Star-Studded Holiday Spectacular

For transcripts, scroll to the bottom of each episode and click “episode transcript.” Or read them directly in the podcast player of your choice!

Podcast reviews

We also super wanted to thank all the people who’ve etched their names in blood upon the dusty pages of our dark grimoire written reviews for the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and other places!

We are beyond flattered by the kind things you guys have said about us. Like MoonPetalLily, who described us as “the snarky older sisters [they] wish [they] had.”

FunshineKelly said our “advice helped [them] land a $20k raise and a signing bonus without crying even a little bit.” GOOD! We don’t support tears in the workplace! Not even in the sanctity of your car parked way in the corner of the parking lot. Keep it together!

And God bless MelHubbs, who said, and I quote:

They’re prepared, and still relaxed; informative, and still light-hearted; comforting, and still sexual. It’s everything you could ever want in a podcast, in an internet personality, in your sisters-in-arms against the terrible war between capitalism and what humans actually need to survive & thrive. One of my favorite things about them is that they don’t have any corporate sponsors or ads, so you know what they’re saying is what they mean, not what their advertisers want them to say. If you’re able, support them on Patreon! If you’re not, listen to their podcast, take their advice to heart, reflect on your options, make your moves, then, with your newfound financial independence, become a patreon!

MelHubbs, you joyful sonnet!

Your review is so good that it reads suspiciously like something we paid you to write! But we’re too cheap for that—IT REAL!

Bitches Get Riches at the crossroads

All right. Time to level with you guys.

In keeping with 2020’s overarching theme (“everything is pure shit”), this year has become a real “shit or get off the pot” moment for the two of us.

Although I’m comfortable and doing fine, Piggy is still unemployed. And last week she received the last unemployment check she’s entitled to. It sucks. And it’s scary.

Being a partnership is awesome in almost every way. But one way that it sucks is that we have to earn double the amount of money to be truly profitable! (And no, before you ask, it’s not possible for us to only pay Piggy. Believe me, that was our original plan—but it turns out that’s not allowed in a 50/50 legal partnership. We must pay ourselves equally, or Uncle Sam will spank us. And he doesn’t do it in the sexy way—only the traumatic way!)

Piggy is doing okay for now. She has freelancing work, and an intact emergency fund. But understandably, anxiety and worry take their toll. She’s pushing through it, but it’s hard. Creativity and passion can’t thrive for long without some measure of safety and stability.

During these scary times, our Patreon community has been a lifeline. As more and more of you have joined us, it’s slowly crept up from grocery money to grocery and utility bill money! So thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts thank you to those who’ve stepped up and joined.

But we’re kind of at a crossroads. Because of Piggy’s situation, we really need it to become “paying the mortgage” money. And it’s gotta get there pretty fast. Otherwise, it’s just not fair to ask Piggy to invest so much of her time in Bitches Get Riches, when she could be taking on higher paying freelancing work to keep herself afloat.

And trust me, you do not want a BGR that’s too Kitty-heavy. I am longwinded af, slowly losing my abilities to think and spell, and take every possible detour to inject disgusting sexual comments wherever they are least germane (although idk maybe you’re here for that).

Our new goal for ourselves, and you

With all of that in mind, we have a new goal: to produce season three of our podcast, we need 500 total Patreon donors.

Today we have… 294. So that’s, uhhhhh… a really ambitious goal!

It’s probably too ambitious. We’re probably gonna fail. Who cares, it’s 2020! The planet is on fire and god is already dead, so we have no reason not to give it our all!

We are leaving this in your hands. We—Piggy and I—believe that the world would be a better place if people could hear reliable, relatable financial wisdom funded by regular people, untainted by corporate sponsors with deep pockets who want us to push their capitalist crap upon you. And 294 of you have already demonstrated that you believe that too. Thank you, thank you, infinity thank yous to all of you who are already a part of our Patreon community. You are shining stars that smell faintly of vanilla.

For the rest of you: if you like what we do and you want us to keep doing it, please show us that you believe in it too. You can do that by joining us at the Bitches Get Riches Patreon.

We hope to be back soon for a third season. Until then, stay safe, stay sane, wear your masks, triple-check that you’re registered to vote, and save room for dessert. (What’s for dessert? So glad you asked—it’s the rich!)

For now, Bitches OUUUTTTTT!

Join the Bitches on Patreon

Join the Bitches on Patreon

[slytherinnbitch]

Prompt #17

Prompt #17- Wedding

Pairing- Drarry

Asked by @textrovert-01​. Thank you for asking <3

Background- It’s been ten years since the war. Draco and Harry had been dating for the past five. They have been living together for the three of them. 

...............................................................................

His hand groped at the bedding beside him, in search of the familiar warmth of his beautiful lover only to find it cold. He had left hours ago, it seemed. But that wasn’t what woke him, someone was pounding at the door, yelling his name at the top of their lungs. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking around for his wand and found them at their rightful place on the bedside table as usual. He swished his wand to open the door while he put on his glasses.

Ron came barrelling inside, wearing proper wizard robes, looking like he had on his own wedding day albeit less nervous but happy all the same.

“Blimey, Harry! Did you just wake up? The wedding starts in an hour and half!” he practically shouted, giving him a headache.

“An hour and half? Why that is more than enough time I need to get dressed, isn’t it?” He knew it wasn’t--not on his own wedding day but he might as well try.

“Draco would have killed you. He has been up for almost three hours now, double checking then triple checking the quadruple checking everything. He was then stolen by Mione, Pansy and Blaise to get him dressed properly. Bloody hell, mate but now I’m going to be in trouble if you aren’t ready.” He looked terrified at that idea as anyone who knew Mione and Draco’s wrath should be and well, thinking of them combined made him shudder as well.

“Alright fine! Let me get my robes and then we’ll see what to do with this thing called my hair, sound good?”

“Right now, that is all that I would get so it’s great! Rush now!” he exclaimed as he left to get Harry something to eat while he showered and got dressed, because there was no way he could get away with not showering even though he was late as hell.

He shaved as quickly he could, using the muggle way; even after all these years that was the better and more comfortable way for him. 

As he brushed his teeth, he reflected back to last night and how both of them had been forced to sleep separately. It’s the tradition Harry Molly had said, and he couldn’t have argued with her, anyone but her. Narcissa had said the same words as well and he was forced to oblige both of his mother figures.

That was until Draco had slipped into bed, just after midnight when everyone had already gone to bed. He had shushed Harry when Harry told him that it might be bad as per the traditions, he had then proceeded to cuddle him from behind, peppering small kisses all over his neck as he fell asleep.

They had woken up early morning, sharing some more languid kisses before Draco slipped back to his own room to get another hour or so of sleep, while Harry slept like the dead. 

Merlin, he still couldn’t believe he was going to marry Draco fucking Malfoy at last.

Although he knew Ron would surely have his head, he took his time in the shower, soaping his body meticulously and just being. He won’t get another slow moment in the whole day so he cherished it.

.......

“Where are my cuffs?” he asked Ron as he buttoned up his dress shirt. He was wearing a silver dress shirt with black trousers and a black tie. They had after many many arguments decided upon wearing robes complimenting their own eye colours. He had been teased mercilessly by Draco for wearing Slytherin  colours on his wedding. He had told him about his sorting ceremony and that made Draco shut up real quick. They had also made their wedding theme upon those two colours as well, although Ron’s hair clashed hideously with both colours, still he had somehow used black outer robes to make him look slightly less-strange.

“Uh...well....” he looked sheepishly at Harry as he brushed his hand over his hair. 

“Ron Weasley, tell me where my cuffs are? My soon-to-be husband will leave the altar when he sees that I’m without cuffs so tell me now!” Ron had told him that he would take care of the cuffs and he had left it to him but now he didn’t know what to do!

“Alright mate, don’t get so much worked up.”

“Don’t get so much worked up, my arse. Tell me now! I’m supposed to meet him before the wedding anytime now!” Harry knew his voice was octave up but he didn’t care, not now.

Just then, Hermione entered the room, wearing a silver dress which made her look ethereal, what with her bushy hair-somewhat sleaked up and complexion. 

“Wow Mione, you look amazing!” he exclaimed as he took in her outfit properly.

“Why Harry, you don’t look bad yourself.”

“Except the fact that someone was supposed to take care of my cufflinks for me.” He looks pointedly at Ron but Hermione just laughs.

“Mione!!! You are supposed to scold him.” he whines.

“Oh love. It’s alright. The cuffs are in perfect condition but they are with someone else.”

“So tell them to bring it here. I’m to meet Draco any moment now.”

“That’s why I’m here to take you to him. Now come on!”

“But the cuffs!”

“Harry, don’t you understand?” “Understand exactly what Mione?”

“What are you gifting Draco now?”

“Cufflinks for the wedding, you know this Mione.”

“And does he know about them?”

“No”

“Don’t you think he is frantic about the fact that he doesn’t have his cuffs?”

“You can hold him off. Mione, how is this even relate--” he stops mid-sentence as Mione fixes him with her how-can-someone-be-this-oblivious stare, and after a moment it finally clicks, “Oh.....ohhhhh.”

“Yes, exactly now let’s go and leave the outer robe for later, just come with what you’re wearing right now.”

So that’s how he finds himself, standing before another unknown door of the Manor where the wedding is being held. Mione and Ron by his side; just as he is about to open the door Hermione makes a disapproving noise and he stops. She produces a green blindfold and much to Harry’s reluctance covers his eyes.

“Is this really necessary?” “Yes it is, now get inside, here hold my hand.”

He hears gasps as he gets inside, followed by numerous compliments from all their friends because of course everyone is present.

“Potter” He hears the familiar drawl from somewhere infront of him and then Hermione is dragging him to the.....center of the room?

She makes him stand a couple of inches away from Draco so his hands wander in front of him in search of the warmth he had been searching since he left in the morning and then just like that, they both are clasping their hands together.

Draco’s hands feel just about right in his own, he draws him closer so they touching. He leans forward and sure enough a pair of eager lips are waiting there to be kissed. So he kisses him thoroughly, ignoring the snickers and cat-calls of their friends. He smiles slowly, as they break apart even though their lips are still touching.

“Hey, Malfoy.”

“Miss me, Potter?”

“More than you would ever know.”

“I think I know, because I missed you all the same.” Draco leans forward to peck him once more, then leans against his forehead. They don’t need words, just being in each other’s presence speaks a thousand sentences for them.

But they are brought back to reality as someone coughs loudly and they break apart, not exactly because there is at max a inch between between them.

“In case you both are done, we do have an wedding to attend. May I bring it to your attention that it is your wedding?”

“Yes we know that Granger. It is our wedding, we are allowed to be late.”

“Absolutely not, Draco.” It’s Pansy who speaks this time, “Also don’t you both have something to give.”

He had completely forgotten about the cuffs, he takes them out of his pocket and presents it to Draco, who gives him a similar box in his other hand.

“Can’t we see them?” he asks, eager to find out what Draco had given him.

“Not now, you can look when you get back to your respective rooms.” Ginny replies.

They both mutter ‘fine’ respectively as they shove them inside their pockets. They are going to be late but this feels right, so much right that Harry doesn’t want to leave, even though he knows he will again be with him in fifteen minutes. He just likes this moment so so much. He shuffles forwards and hugs him tightly, placing his head in the crook of Draco’s neck and feels Draco do the same. 

They stand like that for an eternity before Hermione hesitantly tells them that it would be really late now. So he leaves, he lets Hermione drag him out of the room and when he opens the blindfold he realises he has tears in his eyes.

“Oh Harry.” Hermione whispers as she sees the tears.

Ron just silently whips away the tears and squeezes Harry’s hand. He knows how it feels like, after everything they are finally finally going to be together and no one can come in between them now. No one. Not the Wizarding World. Not Lucius Malfoy. No one.

......

He walked down the aisle with Molly, looking at all his friends and family standing there with the flower girl, Victoire and ring bearer, Teddy just in front of them.

He kissed Molly’s cheek and stood just in front of  the officiant who in their case was Andromeda, on both of their mutual request and decision.

He looked up just in time to see Draco enter with Narcissa. Narcissa must have looked great as well but his eyes were just for Draco now. He looked absolutely ethereal. His hair was styled back with a bit of gel, but still wavy somehow. He was wearing silver dress robes which upon looking properly had intricate designing with a emerald green silk dress shirt him inside and a silk black tie.

He then, finally looked into his eyes and he was lost. They held so much emotion that his smile couldn’t convey. They held so so much love and happiness and content. He was looking into his eyes and he was smiling at him in that sweet manner that was reserved just for him. It made him feel giddy with happiness as Draco mouthed a silent ‘I love you’ and grinned---

“Avada Kedavra.”

It was loud among the otherwise silent room. They locked eyes for one last time before he collapsed. Almost instantaneous wands were drawn out and people started starting shouting but he couldn’t focus on that, on anything.

Because his world had just fallen apart.

[maybe-your-left]

A Case In Need: Control Freak

Here is a link to my Masterlist that has all the chapters and my WIP! 

TW/CW: NSFW, allusions to violence, drinking, and some breath play! Ren’s a nasty boy and FUCK is it good. 

Also super sorry about it being a while since I updated, I just started some new anti depressants and they threw me for a loop but I'm back on track now and feeling better than ever.

  It had been two weeks since Ren had bought you your ‘gifts’. 

Scratch that. 

Two weeks since a giant monster of a man had removed you from your home, took away your valuables, hid your favorite blanket somewhere, he wouldn’t say where, and gave you a full swat team of bodyguards whenever you were out of his sight. Two full fucking weeks since he started keeping tabs on where you were, what you were doing, and who you were with. 

It was exhausting being his ‘lover’. If you could still be classified as that, it was starting to feel like a hostage situation, whenever the two of you weren’t in the office together he would send you texts or phone calls that you were required to answer. He had even gotten a spare cell phone to call you from so it was separate from his personal calls, and you presumed to keep Rey oblivious. Which oddly enough had been working, she had really no idea what was going on. She would visit him at work throughout the day and give him a small kiss on the cheek and always insisted on hugging you before leaving. At some point, she must’ve hounded him for your phone number because now here you were meeting her for lunch hours after Ren left your, ‘our’ as he liked to call it, apartment. 

Before he left he had laid out an outfit for you to wear along with an outline of talking points you were ‘allowed’ to bring up with her during the lunch. You had rolled your eyes at him and ensured that you weren’t going to reveal anything to her, you didn’t really want your relationship with Ren to end. You just were getting tired of the short leash he kept you on. After getting dressed, and inspected by Ren, he had pulled you into a long slow kiss and whispered in your ear, “I’ll miss you Angel,” and then he was gone. 

Huffing you messed with your hair a little more and straightened out the dress he had chosen for you. Even though he was being a psychopath for control you were surprised to see that he was being generous in the gifts he bought you. The day after moving Ren had taken you to a couture mall in Manhattan and lavished you with thousands of dollars worth of clothes, jewelry, and home goods. He had insisted on keeping the house in a monotone color scheme but he did budge on your wardrobe, he knew that you liked having some pops of color and truth be told you noticed that he enjoyed, a little too much, the baby pink sets you chose at the lingerie stores. He had even gone so far to get you a custom made necklace* that was engraved with his initials, with a ruby inlay, that he wanted you to wear all the time. 

Grabbing your purse and slipping on your black strappy heels you heard your phone go off. You searched your purse for the damned contraption, even though it was a small bag it was almost like a Mary Poppins never-ending abyss when you threw things in it. Jingling out your keys you locked the front door and made it down the steps and finally snatched out the phone. 

Vicrul and Ushar will be escorting you today. Don’t be difficult with them or you’ll be in trouble. 

Ugh, he was never going to let you live that down. You stood outside and waited for their black SUV to pull up while you contemplated messaging him back. You didn’t really feel the need to be escorted to lunch with Rey, wouldn’t she think it’s weird that her husband’s men were driving you? Did she get escorted like that with the other beastie boys? It’s not like you weren’t fond of them, truth be told you liked the guys, they were always posted outside your house when Ren was gone. Usually, it was Ushar who took care of you unless it was a super public gathering then one of the other men would join in. But it had been a while since Vircul had watched you, the last time Ren had let them take you to a spa to get your nails and hair done and you had been in a bratty mood. One thing had led to another and it ended with you screaming that you were being ‘attacked’ because the men would not fucking stop hovering. The spa did not think it was funny however and Ren had to bribe the police officers who were 100% ready to arrest Vicrul because he was pinning you to the salon chair. 

The black SUV slinked up to the sidewalk and out of the passenger side came Ushar. “Hello Miss (Y/N),” he opened the back door for you, “Confirming that you are headed to lunch with Lady Ren?”. 

“Yes Ushar,” you rolled your eyes behind your sunglasses, “He already said I could go.” The men always did this with you, whenever he was gone they would double, even triple-check that you knew where you were going and any special instructions Ren had laid out for you. It was almost like you were a child stuck in the middle of a custody battle, each side was trying to make sure you knew all the rules and what you were allowed to say or do, it was getting really old. 

“Hi Vic,” you cooed trying to get a rise out of him, “It’s been a while hasn’t it?” 

Vicrul let out a low chuckle, “Not long enough Angel, not long enough.” 

You hummed back at him and settled in so they could whisk you away to probably the worst lunch of your life. You decided to play nice and shoot Ren a text to let him know you were with the guys, but you also wanted to push his buttons. 

Don’t worry Daddy. I’ll play nice.

The drive took a little over fifteen minutes, Vicrul parked up front and Ushar quickly opened your door and held his elbow out for you to take. You grabbed it, thankful for the support since you weren’t sure what to expect. The two of you began into the large building, with Vic jogging up close behind. Climbing into the elevator you noticed the other patrons were scooting away from you. Being as you were a small woman being flanked by two men who looked like they wrestled bears for a living, it was a natural response. Most people had hopped off before you hit the rooftop for your ‘date’. 

Stepping out you scanned the area and immediately noticed another hulking group of men in pitch black suits. Ahh, so the others are here too, of course, Rey would have her own guards. You let the guys lead the way and soon you were a group of six men hovering by the hostess stand. Looking around you couldn’t find Rey, she wasn’t any smaller than you, she hadn't gotten far especially with four guys flanking her…

“Ugh there you are!” she squealed before pulling you into a tight hug, effectively pinning your arms to your sides. “I thought you got lost, Kylo told me he sent the Knights to come get you but I was so afraid you stood me up!” 

“The Knights,” you whispered, still in her boney clutches. 

“Yes, the Knights,” she released you and grabbed your hands in hers, “They are the bodyguards we use!”

Oh. The Knights. That’s what Ren called them, well it made sense, they were fucking huge and seemed like they did anything for their ‘master’. 

“Are you ready to eat? I got us a lovely table out on the balcony,” Rey smiled at you. 

“Oh yes, of course,” you tried to match her enthusiasm, “Let’s go.” 

----- 

After the two of you were seated the Knights had flanked you both on your sides, leaving about a 6-foot circle for the waiter and other servers to talk to you. 

“So (Y/N),” Rey grinned at you, “How are you liking work? Kylo says you’re doing an excellent job.” 

You blushed, “Oh thank you, he’s never mentioned that.” 

“Oh, that’s just because he’s bad at giving affection, we’ve been married for almost 10 years and he still rarely says ‘I love you”,” she giggled and started drinking her cosmo. What an awkward turn this lunch had gone, and right at the fucking beginning. It didn’t shock you that Ren was weird with affection and compliments in front of people but you assumed that after ten years he would at least show something toward Rey. Your heart sank, what if he never returned feelings to you? You had been seeing each other for almost a month, and even though you knew it was wrong, you had started feeling ‘feelings’ for him. The PDA was okay, you weren’t a huge fan of it, but even at the mall he had held your hand and kissed your forehead when you found something he liked. It was strange and new for you, and being told that he wasn’t like that with his wife made you ill. 

“Let’s talk about something else,” you spit out, “Sorry, it’s just I’m at work all week so maybe we talk about something different?” 

“Oh of course,” she took another swig of her drink, “I can’t tell you the last time I hung out with a girlfriend.” another drink, “Probably since before I got married!” 

“What?” 

“It’s true,” she sighed. 

“What do you do all day then?” 

“This and that,” she motioned for the waiter to get her another, “Usually I go and play tennis at the country clubs, join in at the book club I’m a part of, you know domestic things.” She looked almost sad, you wondered if Ren was the reason she had nothing to do, or maybe she was just that boring. 

“Well,” you tried to soothe her, “What do you like to do?” 

She inhaled deeply and looked out at the skyline, “I really enjoyed being in school. Learning, reading, doing something. But I don’t anymore, women in my situation aren’t expected to have those kinds of hobbies.” 

“Situation?” 

“You know,” she looked back at you and dabbed her lash line, “Being married to a powerful man, I’m expected to hold a certain standard.” She sniffled and you resisted the urge to reach across the table until one single rule from the outline stood out in your mind, ‘Under no circumstance are you to soothe her, she is dramatic at times and I don’t need you falling into a trap’. 

A server thankfully interrupted your pity party, leaving your dishes and a quick message about ‘if you need anything else just call’. Rey had seemed to reign herself back in and turned back to you with her trademark smile. 

“What about you?” 

“Oh um,” you paused to bite into your salad, “I don’t really do much. I usually go out to bars and stuff on weekends. Or my friends and I have wine and cheese nights!” You smiled at her, it had been about two weeks since your last meeting. Finn and Rose were super confused when you told them you moved but you convinced them that with your new salary you could afford some new things. You actually were supposed to meet them in a couple of days at your new apartment for drinking. 

“Ugh that sounds so fun,” Rey almost screamed, maybe she was drinking too much. You weren’t sure what her tolerance was but you were sure that Ren probably monitored her drinking. “I used to do that in college with one of my friends.” 

“Oh? Where did you go to college?” 

“The same one as you!” she squealed, “Sorry, I saw on your resume where you went to school. I’m pretty sure we were in the same class.” 

“Oh no shit,” you giggled back at her, you tried to remember if you knew her. The only people you hung around were Finn and Rose, sometimes Poe who had moved across the country after graduating. He was the ambitious one out of the group, he had joined the Air Force before school and became a pilot. 

Rey started giggling uncontrollably, you could feel the Knights start to shift towards her. Especially Vicrul who seemed to be keeping a very sharp eye on her. “Yeah, we both used to hang out with Rose,” she said over her glass. 

You froze. Rose? Your Rose? How did she know her? You were sure Rose didn’t know Rey, and if she had wouldn’t you have known Rey too. Now all the Knights were closing in on you two, you could feel the mood shifting to a topic Ren probably didn’t want you to have. “How… How do you know Rose?” 

“Oh, it was way back when,” she flung her hand out to somehow calm you, “back when I was hooking up with this guy Finn.” 

“I think that’s enough Lady Ren,” Vicrul grunted while reaching for her drink. 

“Hey,” she shouted, “I’m a grown woman Vic. I can drink whatever I want!” She was starting to cause a scene, you turned and noticed other patrons looking your way. And what a sight it was, little Rey holding a half drank cosmo as high as she could away from the Knights. 

Vicrul got closer to her and almost growled, “Don’t make me call him.” 

Rey narrowed her eyes, “Do it, pussy.” 

And then all hell broke loose, Rey had launched from the table, effectively throwing her drink on Vicrul. In her haste she had also thrown the food all over you, your pretty new dress now soiled by the salmon salad you ordered. Ushar had rushed to your side and grabbed you by the shoulders and was attempting to pull you from the scene. But you couldn’t just sit and watch, Rey was sobbing and screaming at Vircul to let go of her, even going as far to bite his arm that corralled her to his chest. You couldn’t help but cry too, this poor woman, she was truly a prisoner. She had so many friends at some point, maybe even was your friend, and then she was thrown into a world she didn’t seem to enjoy with a husband who only cared about her appearance. 

Suddenly everything stopped, the Knights were silent and lined up by the table, aside from Ushar and Vicrul. You swallowed your tears and you heard footsteps. Slow and methodical steps coming towards you. Waves of dread began to fill your stomach while the aura of danger was licking between your legs. You cowered into Ushar’s chest, you didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to be at the end of his wrath. 

“How strange it is,” he boomed from your left side, “that here, in our favorite restaurant, you decide to make a scene.” He stalked towards Rey, slow steps, each one growing louder than the last. He had his hands clasped behind his back and although you couldn’t see his face you knew that it was tense. You could practically hear his jaw popping in and out of place. He cracked his knuckles before bringing his hands up to his neck. “I expected more from you,” he spat out and began to crack his neck. Each pop was like a nail in Rey’s coffin, you couldn’t help the little whimper that rose from your throat which caught his attention. 

Ren whipped around and was in front of you instantly. His fists clenched at his sides and his breathing shallow. He was waiting for you to meet his gaze, almost taunting you to stare back. You gulped and squeezed your eyes shut. You didn’t want this. You didn’t want him to blame you, if he would just calm down you could explain what she had said, no one had told you that she got so emotional when she had cocktails. It wasn’t in the outline briefing he had given you this morning. So really it was his fault. 

“Take her away,” he snarled at Ushar, who suddenly picked you up and rushed you out of the restaurant. Peeking over his shoulder you witnessed Ren closing in on Rey. When the elevator doors shut you hoped that the pained screaming you heard wasn’t what you thought they were. 

The drive back was silent. Neither you nor Ushar said a word. You barely remembered to breathe, you were petrified. How could lunch have gone so wrong so fast? You just wanted to get to know her, get an understanding of who she was. You didn’t think she was going to launch into a speech about how much she hated her life. And what was the whole Finn and Rose thing about? Not once had they mentioned that they knew her, other than when Finn told you about the Ren incident. But you didn’t think that meant Rey and Finn hooked up in college. It was all too familiar and uncomfortable, you needed answers and unfortunately, there was only one person who could give them to you. 

-----

You waited. Paced, bit your nails in anticipation for him to come to you. He hadn’t told you this morning when he would be back, but he always would come around in the evening to drop off food and watch a movie with you. Or give you feedback on something at work, or fuck you on any surface he could find. But he never stayed too long, which should be normal, he did have a wife who would probably be suspicious if he was gone overnight. 

After about 5 hours you had decided that he wasn’t coming. So you stripped down and started a bath, throwing in a black glitter bath bomb that was supposed to help soothe the body and soul. After it was just the right temperature you grabbed a glass of wine and turned on some Netflix to drown out your wandering brain. Sinking in you enjoyed the stillness, you didn’t get this luxury at your old apartment and now you were being spoiled rotten with all these new features. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you could live somewhere like this, or wear the clothes that you had hanging in the closet. You hummed to yourself and started drinking and began to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of Fraiser coming from your laptop. 

You were pulled from your sleep to the sound of a door slamming shut. Followed by grunting which you assumed was someone taking off their shoes, and another series of slamming noises. Guess someone decided to pay you a visit, you groaned and drank some more of your wine, preparing for his royal asshole to grace you with his presence. 

You heard his footsteps coming up the stairs, your master bedroom doors swinging open and closed until the man, the myth, the legend, was now standing in your bathroom. Fully clothed aside from his shoes being gone. “Well hi,” you said to him. 

He grunted at you and made his way into ‘his closet’, which was filled with clothes of his own that he bought on your shopping trip. He reemerged completely naked with a black robe draped over his forearm. 

“Why is the water black,” he grumbled before swinging a leg across from you.

“What do you think you’re doing Ren?” 

“Don’t be difficult Angel. I’ve had a long fucking day,” he snapped at you, “Now is this water going to stain me, or am I good to get in?” he stared at you. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched like he was getting ready to attack his prey. You tried to keep your face neutral, not letting him know that you were still slightly scared of him after the display this afternoon. You slowly scrunched your legs to your chest as a nonverbal way of telling him he could join in. Once you moved he brought both legs in and sank into the tub. 

You both were very lucky that this was a large bath since Ren’s legs took up about 75% of the space in it, leaving you to stretch out on top of him. Your feet placed on his abs while he sunk lower and lower until his head was resting on the lip of the tub. 

“What’s in your glass,” he practically moaned at you with his eyes shut. He looked super uncomfortable but you could tell he was trying really hard to relax. Which seemed to never be his natural state. 

“It’s a Cab*, the one with the lion on it.” 

Ren snatched it out of your hand without even looking and chugged the rest of it. “We’re going to need more of that,” he rolled slightly to his right and pressed an intercom button. 

“Whoever the fuck is downstairs will you bring up the Juggernaut bottle,” he barked into the speaker. Assuming that one of the Knights was going to follow his order. Within minutes one of them came in and gave Ren the bottle which he immediately started chugging from. 

“Ren,” you reached out and pulled the bottle from him, “Are you going to tell me what the fuck happened earlier? Or are we just going to drink?” 

“Can we not do both?” 

You exhaled loudly, trying to get your point across that you needed to talk to him. He groaned and started rubbing his face. “I don’t know what you’re expecting from me. She is my wife and what we do in our personal lives is none of your business.” 

“Are you serious,” you snapped at him, “Ren I am fucking you. You’ve been calling the shots of my life for almost a month, you bought me an apartment, car and new clothes and made me go to lunch with her and now it’s none of my business?” 

He crossed his arms and looked away from you, trying to focus on your laptop even though it was paused from watching too many episodes. 

“Kylo,” you barked, “I’m fucking talking to you.” 

“Don’t you dare call me that,” he yelled, raising a finger at you. 

Bringing the bottle to your lips you waited for him to continue. Interesting that he allows Rey to call him that but not you, this was something you were going to have to explore. 

“Is it because you’re ashamed, Ren,” you cooed at him, “Ashamed that I saw how out of control she is. Or that I know you beat her.” 

Suddenly he was on top of you, his hands around your throat. Teeth snapping in your face like a wild dog. “Don’t you ever accuse me of that,” he seethed and released you enough so you could breathe again, “I’ve never laid a finger on her in my life. You don’t know anything about me little girl.” 

You had dropped the bottle in the tub, the red liquid pouring out and mixing into the black water. Almost like there had been blood spilled between the two of you. You grasped onto his forearms to try and anchor him off of you but were getting nowhere. “That’s hard to believe,” you gasped, “When you’re currently choking me to death.” 

“Oh Angel,” his face softened to a less dangerous one but more one of mischief, “That’s because I know you like it when I’m rough with you.” You inhaled sharply, and Ren pushed you up further against the tub. Effectively pinning you in place while his knees knocked yours to accommodate him. 

“Like right now,” he came closer to you, “I know that your pretty little cunt is sopping because of me. It’s okay to be afraid, I won’t hurt you.” One of his hands dropped into the water, “That much.” 

Suddenly he had you flipped around, on your knees with your chest and face pressed up against the end of the tub. Water sloshing between you two while he pressed his hips into yours. Revealing a once well-hidden erection that was now skimming your folds. He brought one hand down between your legs, lightly petting at you. Humming when he felt your arousal mixed with the water. You moaned and tried to press your hips back into him, desperate for friction. “No, no Angel, you’ve been a bad girl.” 

You froze and felt him line himself up at your entrance, usually he worked you open so it wouldn’t be so painful when he pushed into you, but it was clear that right now Ren wanted you to feel the pain. His other hand came up and gripped to your hair, successfully knotting it in his fist. 

“Tell me, Sweetheart, do you know how long you can hold your breath?” 

You craned your neck to try and look at him, you were obviously confused. 

“Let’s find out.” 

Ren pushed into you and suddenly you were dunked underwater. You thrashed and screamed under the black mess while he started pumping into you. Each thrust was harder than the last, he was determined to make you know how much he could hurt you. You tried to push yourself back up to the surface but he had you pinned, after what felt like hours he pulled you back up and you choked on the water. 

Gasping and gagging you started sobbing while Ren was laughing like the Joker. “I think we can do better than that,” and he had you under the water again, his pace far more crucial, he was chasing a high that he didn’t know he had. The amount of power he held over you now was unbearable. This man, who you had grown to like more and more, was now holding you hostage under the water and the sick part was that you didn’t want him to stop. 

He pulled you back up and pinned your face to the side and thrust in more and more, grunting and groaning at the clenching of your walls around his cock. The hand holding your hip hostage slid down and started rubbing tight circles around your clit causing you to moan. “That feels good doesn’t it Angel, I can feel you, you love it when I fuck you like this.” 

Gagging again you responded, “I do I love it, Ren, please don’t fucking stop.” 

“You want to cum don’t you,” he leaned to your ear and continued his brutal pace, “Cum all over my cock? Even though I almost drowned you?” 

You screamed as his circle grew faster and faster over your nub, you couldn’t help clenching around him. You felt so close to your orgasm, you just needed a little bit more. 

“Tell me you like it, Angel,” he huffed before stopping to take a bite out of your shoulder, “You like it when I control you. You need it don’t you dirty slut, someone to keep you in check.” 

“Yes Ren I love it, please please let me cum,” you begged him. 

“After you cum you’re going to thank me for everything I’ve done for you, do you understand whore? I own you. I own your mouth, your tight little cunt, even your thoughts.” 

You were bucking back into his thrusts, desperately chasing your release, “All yours Ren, please I need it.” 

He stilled his movements and turned your head to try and face him, “Take a deep breath and cum Angel.” 

And you did just that as he dunked you back under the water, pinning you flat against the bottom while his fingers rubbed your clit in sync with his cock. You were clenching and desperately trying to hold your breath until you felt him empty inside you. Hot sticky cum painted your insides as his grip on your loosened, you took the chance to lift out of the water and gasp for air while Ren slumped against you. His chest flush with your back while his cock was still squirting into your tired pussy. 

His arms came around you and pulled you up with him so now you were on top of him while he buried his face into your neck. Lazy and sloppy kisses were placed all over the crook of your neck up towards your jaw, his hands were slowly petting your breasts in a way to calm your breathing. Finally, he took in a deep breath and stood with you clutched to his chest. 

Treating you like you would porcelain he stepped out of the tub and turned to the shower, quickly rinsing the two of you off before leaning you against the wall. You couldn’t even move, your body went into fight or flight every time he shoved you under the water. You were so sure he was going to kill you, but each time he was sure to pull you back up and prepare you for the next blow. It was almost considerate, given the circumstances, that he even let you cum with him. You stared at the man who was washing both of your bodies of the glitter, wine, and cum. He looked so focused on piecing you back together even though he had been the one to break you in the first place. 

He shut the water off and stepped out, quickly drying himself off and getting in his robe before reaching his hand out for yours. 

“Come on Angel, you’re shivering,” he whispered to you, afraid to command you after what had happened. You grabbed his hand and walked out of the shower where he again dried you off and wrapped you in your black robe too. Once you were bundled he picked you up and you wrapped your arms and legs around him, desperate for him to stay with you. 

He brought you to the bedroom, pulling down the sheets with his right hand while still cradling you with his other. Bending over to place you down you squeezed him harder, “Please don’t go,” you whispered in his ear. 

“I’m not going anywhere (Y/N), not anymore.” 

You released him and watched him go back to the bathroom and shut off the lights before coming back and climbing into bed fully naked. Ren came up behind you and started to pull off your robe, kissing your bare skin when it came into contact with the room's cold air. 

“I promise (Y/N), never again” he cooed before pulling you into his embrace and the two of you were lulled to sleep. 

TAGLIST: @finn-ray-nal-beads​ @morby​ @kirah36​ @onlykyloscenes​ @clumsycopy​ @candycanes19​ @desiraypark​ @direnightshade

*Here is our necklace from Tiffany: https://www.tiffany.com/jewelry/necklaces-pendants/elsa-peretti-color-by-the-yard-pendant-62464399/

**Here is the wine we are having, it’s my sister’s favorite red wine and it's honestly not that bad: https://www.wine.com/product/juggernaut-hillside-cabernet-sauvignon-2017/532155?state=CA&s=GoogleBase_CSE_532155_type_Wine_RedWine_CabernetSauvignon_261&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Google_Shopping_Smart_CA_Relaunch&showpromo=true&promo=PSCASE10&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpNr4BRDYARIsAADIx9wTNMJgAuhl1zWgoZEny8NAfa4vYZmIzTH446JIQfJ5NE9upZGPAGgaAk0eEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds#promoBarModal

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 21

The Sergeant sprays me down next and I keep my mouth shut and breathe shallowly through my nose, but the same raw chemical odor still forces its fingers down my throat and makes my guts churn. I cough and the Sergeant gives me a rough smile that says something like ‘grin and bear it, soldier,’ and then he’s done and moving on to Klaus.

Ahead of us is the gate to the copepod barrows, a vast wall of metal set directly into the flesh of the Pit, with one of the ubiquitous submarine-style doors and a host of warnings slathered over the it in bright, eye-catching shades. One warns of hostile arthropods ahead and states that the buddy system is mandatory; another warns that the barrows are not area mapped and to exercise caution; another says that free fire is authorized and encourages rangers within to double-check their ID tags and to make sure they check their targets; a third states in bold letters that it is a felony for both civilians and non-combat-trained park personnel to enter, punishable by a fine of up to $1000, imprisonment, and administrative penalty, if applicable. A fourth states that there is nothing beyond this point worth dying for and practically begs the reader not to enter. The paint on this last example is peeling and the latter half of it looks stained by some kind of ichor.

My heart, which has been residing comfortably in my throat this past hour or so, does an ugly little squeeze and for a moment I feel somewhat faint, but I close my eyes and focus on the pounding in my ears and the feeling passes after a moment. I still have the tingles of anticipation racing up and down my arms, and my hands are quivering, though I can’t tell whether it’s out of fear or out of adrenaline overload.

Elena sneezes again next to me and I look over at her, then lean in. I know I shouldn’t ask, I know it’s practically pointless because the answer is obligatory, but I ask her anyway: “Are – are we going to be okay in there?”

Elena shrugs and looks at me with bleary eyes. “We’ll be fine,” she assures me, but there is an edge of tension in her voice that tells me the real answer isn’t nearly so cut and dried. “We have an…understanding with the copepods. We don’t fuck with them and they don’t fuck with us. Plus the pheromone spray will make us smell really unappetizing.”

“Even when we march right in and bother them?”

“When there’s this many of us they’ll think twice about starting anything.”

I neglect to mention that that cuts both ways. Or any of the other dozen holes in that logic that I can see. What if a copepod isn’t as smart as we are and thinks it can just scuttle up and grab one of us? Then one of us shoots it and they all take that as the signal to go ham on us? How smart are copepods anyway?

I swallow hard and push it out of my mind. Between the pheromone spray that the Sergeant is treating all of us with, including Joker, and Elena’s assurance that they do this all the time and it’s only somewhat dangerous, I am almost able to delude myself into thinking that we’ll be okay.

No, stop that. No negative thinking. These men and women (okay, well, woman) do this for a living and they’re paid very highly for what they do. If they say it’s safe, it’s surely safe.

Alright, says the little voice, whispering from its burrow at the back of my skull, let’s just ignore the fact that everyone has gotten very tight-lipped and anxious the closer we got to this place, let’s just ignore that everyone has triple-checked their rifles while we’ve been standing here, let’s just ignore –

Yes, I think savagely to myself, let’s just ignore all that. This is what you wanted, Roan, isn’t it, exhilaration and dangerous circumstances, right? This is the logical extension of chain-smoking, just more immediate. What would be worse, a death in twenty years of lung cancer or a death right now by disembowelment and then getting eaten alive by an arthropod? If you weren’t stupid enough to believe Thor when he told you that –

Elena squeezes my hand, interrupting my internal monologue, and then the foot-thick reinforced door to the barrows is swinging open at the Sergeant’s hand, and I have no more time for thoughts.

“Stick very close to me,” Elena reminds me, and I nod, not trusting myself to speak. There is a cold sweat along the back of my neck and I ball up the loose rubberized fabric at my thighs to keep my hands from shuddering.

One by one we file into the barrows, and then the Sergeant seals the door behind us, trapping us inside. All around me I hear sounds of slug rifle actions being racked and shells being chambered. I see Euler, just a few feet away, swallowing hard, pressing rarely used buttons on the controller, and see Joker, correspondingly, flash on a pair of headlights and unsling its rifle from around its shoulders, tossing the meter-long gunmetal rod around like it were a toy.

I look around at the barrows and to my immense surprise my initial reaction is disappointment. I guess I had anticipated surroundings even stranger than the rest of the Pit, something really weird to mark that we’re in the part of the map where the optimistic medieval cartographer would draw sea serpents rather than blank space, but the flesh on the inside of the vast stainless surgical-steel retaining wall is just as rugose and squamous and eldritch as the flesh on the outside. If the wall and all of the warning signs plastered rather tackily all over it weren’t in the way you practically wouldn’t be able to tell that you’d crossed over the boundary into The Forbidden Zone.

Here be monsters and so on. None are immediately forthcoming, however, and the Sergeant resumes his spot at the head of the column and takes out the slim palm-pilot-like locator device keyed to the tracker on the crystal and points towards one of the dripping orifices leading deeper within, and where he points we follow.

There’s something meaningful there, I think to myself, as my boots squelch against the vast living floor and my eyes scrape along the edges of the vast living walls and my nose inhales the reek of the vast living space I’m crawling through like a parasite. Because truly there likely is no real meaningful boundary between the barrows and the rest of the Pit, it’s just a place the copepods like to nest. Perhaps it’s got the perfect temperature for them or it has an abundance of food or it has – some other quality that they desire more than other parts. But, I think as I crane my neck back and glare at the wall receding into the darkness behind us, that boundary there certainly wouldn’t have been one they would have picked.

Or perhaps I’m anthropomorphizing too much. Perhaps the copepods wouldn’t have picked anything, perhaps their range is the same as the range of their tinier oceangoing fellows, spreading wherever they might and if the surroundings aren’t suitable to support their life, they die.

I remember Peter’s tale of the copepod that wanted to see the sunlight and wonder, and then fifteen minutes later I see my first copepod and the sight of the massive crustacean shatters whatever pondering introspectiveness that I had summoned to, I realize now, shield me from the brutality I had been anticipating.

The copepod, at any rate, was small, at least according to Elena. I had underestimated their bulk, just based off of Peter’s story. This one was the size, perhaps, of a smallish boat, and streamlined roughly the same, a bulbous cigar-like body tapering at both ends to a tail and to a head, with a pair of reticulated arms terminating in creepy little hands with long grasping fingers. Something about their five-fingered familiarity filled me with dread, and watching the way the copepod cocked its head at us from the warty, encrusted protuberance it had partially emerged from, I thought I could have detected a canniness to it that shattered my half-conceived notion of the copepods as being simply overgrown louses or similar. It was, I realized, sizing us up.

Evidently we were present in numbers large enough to prove unpalatable, for it retreated back into its hole with a squelching noise like a fart and let us be. I breathed out a sigh of relief when it went and Elena squeezed my hand.

My initial impressions were wrong, anyway, because the deeper we go the more the flesh around us seems to crinkle and whorl and shrink down, without really losing any volume or pressing down further against us, without restricting our movement overly compared to the flesh outside. It’s as though this portion of the Pit were, for whatever reason, much older than the rest, although that doesn’t really make any sense, and what I’m seeing are all the assorted wrinkles and liver spots and jaundices that would come from that age. It sags in here, the ceiling bulges downwards and blisters occasionally, wet and fragile-looking and dripping in places. I think I can smell ballast and I discover that that night only – Christ, only a day ago, had imprinted something indelible and Pavlovian into me, for with the smell of the ballast I only felt my knees weaken slightly and my pulse quicken whenever I glanced at Elena, which was frequently.

Encounters with copepods become gradually more common the deeper we press. We see them all over the place, great overgrown louses burrowing amid the flesh, peeking out at us blearily or waving their rotund abdomens as they struggle, pale and phallic, to force themselves into reluctantly elastic orifices. Many times they look at us, eyes like faceted obsidian paperweights sunk in their broad, plated skulls, and I feel the same eerie sense of sizing up that I had noticed before, the same sense of analysis, but not a single one of them even makes a move in our direction.

Two hours in I incline my head closer to Elena and ask her how smart these things are, really, and she shrugs, her shoulder nudging at my chin. “I don’t think anyone really knows,” she says, “but the conventional wisdom is that they’re about as smart as five-year-olds.”

I think about that, really think about it, about what that implies. I remember being five; I was conscious and functional, if a little stupid and naïve. I couldn’t have fended for myself but I was also a soft, coddled human child, not an arthropod the size of a truck. I know cockatoos and dolphins are about as smart as three-year-olds, I know that some cephalopods like cuttlefish are supposed to be rather intelligent as well.

Maybe it’s too much of an abstraction. Saying something is as smart as a five-year-old implies a number of things and invites the listener to imagine various things that are true about five-year-olds that might not necessarily be true about the animal in question. Perhaps a copepod is only as smart as a five-year-old in certain areas, like in recognizing itself in a mirror or foraging for food or in performing certain types of logic puzzles. Perhaps –

“You okay?” Elena asks me, and I realize I’m doing it again, I’m retreating into myself as a sort of anticipatory cringe. The air is electric in here and though nothing has happened so far some deep-seated monkey part of my brain knows that we are in a capital-letter Bad Place with Bad Things in it that want to do Bad Acts to my poor little monkey body, and if I go analytical, if I shove all of my thought into the high-level abstract end of the spectrum maybe it won’t hurt so bad when I’m being eaten alive.

Stop. Here and now, Roan, I tell myself. Psychoanalyze yourself later.

Elena nudges me and repeats herself and I realize with a kind of aching clarity that I am very, perhaps mortally frightened, and when I look at her all that I want, all that I need, on some kind of overpowering molecular level, is for her to hold me very tightly until this is all over. I think my lip even trembles a little, and I can tell from the tiny judder in her eye when it does that she notices. I don’t even have the presence of mind to curl my lip at myself at this effervescent and overly enthusiastic gesture of weakness. I must be losing my touch.

Elena takes a hand off her rifle and knits her gloved fingers awkwardly with mine, and then she does something with her radio and then I can hear her, as close and as clear as if she were inside my helmet with me.

“Roan,” she says, adding quickly that this is one-way only, some sort of ranger trick with the equipment that would take me too long or be too technical to replicate on my end, “I know you’re scared but you’ve been so strong so far and I’m so proud of you. I – “ she says, and then she breaks off for a moment, and I recognize in the silence a kind of precipice that she is dangling off of and she doesn’t know for a moment whether or not to let go or to pull herself back up. I’m smiling, I’m staring at her and I’m smiling and willing her to just tell me, to open up and say whatever it is she wanted to say, to not think for just a moment, but when she speaks again I can see that she brought herself back from it and is taking a more measured approach, she is looking before she leaps, which although reasonable leaves me aching with the desire to hold her, to put my hand to her cheek and tell her that no matter what she wanted to say to me I would have wanted to hear it.

“I am so glad,” she says finally, “that I kissed you, I’m so glad that all of this happened between us, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you down here. I promise.”

And then I reach over and slip my arm around her hip and tug her into me and although I cannot really tell her how I feel without clunking my helmet against hers and yelling I think she gets the idea that I do feel better.

We spend the next half hour or so with her radio still linked up to mine and with her low voice like cool water whispering comforting, sensual things directly into my ears, and though more copepods – or perhaps just a rotating menagerie of the same five or so, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference – come and inspect us warily from a safe distance, clinging to the walls and prodding their heads out of vents as we pass, I manage not to feel too frightened of them.

Elena tells me about herself, about the year she spent in France after she graduated high school and her parents still thought she was going to go to college, about the time she cracked a rib from laughing too hard, about the time that she got into a car accident and it turned out to be an ex-boyfriend that she had rear-ended and they ended up getting back together and he rear-ended her, and she says this last with a lascivious little grin I can hear very clearly and it both makes me picture it and bite my lip a little and makes me snicker because it is the dumbest way to refer to sex that I’ve ever heard, and I realize that it has been far, far too long since I’ve had a friend like this, someone who’s been willing to expose at least a little of their life to me without heavy editing getting in the way. I learn that she drinks but not heavily, that she likes the taste of whiskey but doesn’t like how drunk it gets her, that she tried to smoke a cigarette once and vomited all over her shoes and has never been able to smell cigarette smoke without feeling vaguely nauseous afterwards.

I feel a little jolt of serendipity blossoming in my heart, and I think of the crumpled pack of cigarettes, still half-full, laying in the muck at the bottom of the vent to the ballast bulb.

I learn that she likes jazz music and blues music and that one of her favorite musicians is Dave van Ronk but that she also (she admits with a wry little shake of her head) likes pop music and that she also feels vaguely ashamed of it whenever she looks at the small stack of CDs she keeps with her things back in the barracks. I learn that Fall Out Boy and Green Day have made the list, along with some Coltrane and Louis Armstrong, but also Five Iron Frenzy and Cold War Kids and Florence and the Machine and Queens of the Stone Age and Pearl Jam.

She tells me about how when she was a kid she wanted to be a figure skater and trained for so long and so hard but she didn’t have enough talent to really do it at a meaningful level, and her dream was always to go to the Olympics for it but it was something that she had leave behind, and she had ended up channeling that competitiveness and drive and motivation into diving instead and found that she was good at it, that she was beyond good at it, that she found a freedom there underwater that she hadn’t expected, and she had grabbed it like a quarterback and ran with it until she had ended up here.

She tells me about high school, how she was one of the lacrosse girls, and instantly I ache for her in a way that’s almost palpable, because one of my first real crushes on a girl had been in the senior year of high school, and every day I would walk across the bridge to the cafeteria at the same time that she was coming back with a group of her friends, wearing that blazing maroon and white oversized polo shirts that I found so indelibly attractive, and it had awoke something in me that had apparently decided afterwards to fall back asleep afterwards, with mild snoring in college, until it finally burst out of bed roughly four days ago at 2 PM in the metaphorical afternoon with a panicked look at the alarm clock.

There is a lull in the one-sided conversation for a moment and I look over at her wondering if something is wrong but I catch her staring at me with an abundantly warm look of open fondness on her face that immediately pushes a rising heat into my cheeks and makes me look away quickly.

She tells me that she likes my body, that she knows I think I’m too skinny and frail and what the hell ever else I think is wrong with me but she thinks my face and my big wonky Roman nose is terrifically aesthetic. She loves the little dimples I have just above my ass, and she loves my ass and the way I make a little animal grunting noise in my throat whenever she squeezes or spanks it. She loves the way that I’m so thin that she can wrap both her arms around me and hold me very tight and feel me wriggle against her. She loves the way that I nuzzle against her in my sleep and the way that, occasionally, she’s noticed, I mumble things and give her affectionate, uncoordinated kisses without ever waking up, and then press myself back into her bosom and settle down again.

She loves the way I cry out softly when I cum and dig my nails into her without meaning to, and she loves the way that my tongue knows exactly what to do when I lap at her. She loves how I taste and how I smell and even though it’s been a couple days of hard work and neither of us are particularly fresh as daisies at the present moment she’s loved giving me impromptu baths with wet-wipes so she has another excuse to cup my small breasts and watch my cheeks color when her thumb and forefinger come together on my small, sensitive nipples. She likes the way that I’m more passive than she is, that she gets to take charge, she likes the trust I show her when I do that and she promises to never, ever abuse it. She likes the way that I look at her when her hand is squeezing gently around my throat, the way my mouth drops halfway open and I practically start to pant I want it so bad.

Halfway through this list I had begun to feel embarrassed, but I’ve wrapped all the way around and ended up feeling fuzzy and clear and incredibly, incredibly warm.

She has a whole litany of these things that she loves about me and I end up grinning so widely as she recites them to me, her tone growing slowly more and more pleased as she does so, that I flash a copepod a dazzling smile from about thirty feet away and I amuse myself by imagining that it looks confused as it turns and thrusts itself back into the flesh of the wall.

I wish I had some adequate way to tell her that nobody, not even Thor, has ever done anything like this for me. Nobody’s ever recognized that I was frightened and out of my element and distracted me so organically and effortlessly and unselfconsciously that I didn’t even realize at first, and by the time I did I was too flattered to care. I settle for just holding here there to me and listening to her voice as we pry deeper into the Pit, into the barrows.

With my hand there on the gentle swell of Elena’s hip and the crook of her elbow nestled tight against my side, the rifle clanking lightly in a rhythmic pattern as we walk, it is easy enough to forget that we are all presently in mortal danger.

 * * *

 We’ve stopped now, in the middle of a broad flat chamber that throbs like a drum to a sickly organic beat coming from somewhere below. It feels like walking on a waterbed. The Sergeant is stopped there ahead of us, staring at the locator PDA clutched in his gloved palm with a curious expression that on any lesser man I would categorize as either chagrin or hesitance, but either of those would be frightfully out of place on the Sergeant so I simply assume that it’s some trick of the light bouncing off the glass of the faceplate masking his characteristically immobile face.

I watch as he reaches down to the radio at his waist. “Veret,” he says, his voice faint and crackly in my helmet, “the Big Guy has it.”

He says this improbable phrase with such complete nonchalance that I think initially that I must have misheard him. Then the radio sparks and Makado’s voice, equally grainy, blooms in my ears. “Shit,” she says, dead serious. “Are you sure?”

“Locator’s pointing right to it.”

“I wish we had fucking known –“

“No time,” the Sergeant growls curtly. “Can we go in?”

Dead silence for a moment. It stretches like taffy. I glance over at Elena; she looks concerned, but whatever line Makado is speaking on has overridden the link that Elena had rigged between us. Her lips move softly and then she shakes her head.

“Alright,” Makado says, “go in.”

The Sergeant waits a full fifteen seconds before he acknowledges the order and then gestures to the rest of us and we trundle ahead towards the puckered vent ahead of us. It’s narrow, so narrow that we have to get out the jack again, the lower-powered spare one we had to take from the storage locker in the Listening Station after Slate had disappeared with the big fuck-off heavy-duty hydraulic one strapped to his back.

Poor Slate, I think to myself again, standing there feeling nervous and edgy here at the back of the pack, with only Elena and Joker there to protect me. What if a copepod scoots in, those manic rows of frilled rudders on its sides working overtime, and scoops me up in one of those creepy little hands, big enough to encircle my entire waist in one palm but spindly and altogether too delicate-looking to really embody the force and power I know is lurking behind them?

I consider the copepod behind us just now, thirty feet back and pale in the wan spotlight Joker is casting on it. The robot’s walking backward with inhuman surety, the slug rifle clutched in its metallic hands in a relaxed, low posture, but with the barrel still trained on the enormous arthropod back there with unerring accuracy. I look at the copepod’s massive blunt head and its dark, dark eyes, and it looks at me. It seems as though it had intended to come this way. It’s holding something in one of its hands but it’s tucked up against its body and I can’t really get a good look at it.

The copepod puts one hand out in front of it and pushes off and with a sort of bulky, lumbering grace retreats back out of sight and is gone. I let out a sigh of relief I didn’t realize I was holding.

Elena’s helmet clunks into mine. “It’ll be okay,” she says, a little brusquely, and then she’s gone, marching up to the front at some unseen signal from the Sergeant. Me and Euler are left to trade glances; he looks nervous, but he also always looks nervous.

I feel the temptation to retreat into myself again but I resist it. I grin at Euler, widely, with more carelessness than I really feel, and he frowns at me. He looks as though he’s going to be sick.

“Euler,” I say to him, leaning in a little. “I don’t know about you but this makes me feel alive.”

“Very invigorating,” he agrees after a moment, in a drab tone of voice. His accent’s slipped a little, he’s got a trace of the German coming out in the consonants now.

“You all right?” I ask him, and he shrugs.

“The sooner we can get out of here, the better.”

“What, you’re not a fan of the surroundings?” I ask. I can feel a laugh at the back of my throat. I gesture around us, at the fleshy walls wreathed in shadow. “The scenic views? The locals?” I ask, eyeing the silhouette of a copepod scrambling along the ceiling far in the distance. It appears as nothing more than a great white tick rooting amid the remains of a piece of intestine someone has tossed on the ground in the middle of the night, lit briefly by our flashlights and then winking out of existence again. I experience a brief moment of nausea as the perspective seems to shift around me and I have to blink hard and stare at the floor to regain my bearings.

“We’re going in,” the Sergeant says across the radio. I stand on my tiptoes – not an easy feat in the heavy cleats – and peer ahead. The vent ahead takes a sharp curve to the left and – my breath catches – I can see an eerie, faint green glow emanating from it, the color of will-o-wisps and phosphorescence, the strength of about a hundred fireflies put together and flickering their hardest. It casts crazy shadows over the folds and flaps and moles and wrinkles of flesh on the walls, but we march around the corner just the same. I nearly plough into Fumi; I didn’t realize he’d stopped short, and he reaches back awkwardly and steadies me. Next to me I hear Euler mutter something under his breath in German and I frown and look over at him sharply but he is staring at something ahead of us.

I look ahead and see that we have fanned out into a rough semi-circle, and there in the center of the chamber, peering at us dubiously with an uncannily aggrieved expression on its flat, cracked face, is an absolutely enormous copepod. Its sides and back are scarred and pitted with age and it is missing an eye and a hand, but it has strewn across its tapered, bulldog neck a necklace made from what looks like fishing line and teeth, some of which – I blink, half-convinced I’ve gone insane and am hallucinating – look terribly human.

The copepod is curled over onto its side, and I can see beneath its bulk that it is resting on several animal pelts. Its one remaining hand strokes the fur idly as it watches us, and then it shifts a little, rolls over onto its belly. It raises its head and makes a buzzing, chittering noise that works its way into my bones and sets my teeth on edge, and a few vents on the other side of the organelle widen as two other copepods squeeze their way in. They start to approach us, mouthparts working, but the giant copepod gestures and they fall back towards the walls and simply sit still and watch us.

Behind the giant copepod – oh, of course.

Behind the Big Guy is a pile of what I initially think is trash, but as our lights play over I realize it must be more like treasure. I see more pelts, bits of clothes, disposable cameras, packs of cigarettes, jewelry, fishing rods, a set of tent stakes. I see shoes and shirts and flashlights, little bits and bobs, shiny things, precious things, all arranged in a massive pile there on the throbbing floor of the chamber. I can see a human skull, picked clean of flesh and yellowed a little, peeking out at me quite clearly.

And behind it, partially concealed by all the junk and detritus and cast-off relics that the copepods must have spent years collecting, is an enormous gnarled crystal, spiked as a sea-urchin, glowing with a pale green fire somewhere in its depths. I think for a moment, as I stare deeply into it, that I can see something moving inside of it, but it’s just my imagination. The winking red light of the radio tracker patch someone from the ill-fated science team had slapped onto it flickers wanly at us.

The Big Guy spreads its arms. Its mouthparts scuttle over each other for a moment before a hideous, strangled noise emerges from them, but as its croaks and grunts and screeches continue on some part of my brain manages to piece together a pattern out of them, and then I freeze. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my ears and I recognize distantly that my mouth has fallen open.

“What… you want?” the copepod moans at us, and as the Sergeant takes a step forward, his hands empty and outward in an almost supplicating gesture, and begins to speak to it, I feel my insides give an uncomfortable, shocked lurch, like the floor has just opened up beneath us and swallowed us whole, like the pit I’ve fallen into has come alive around me.

Continue with Part 22

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[myarmsaretoolong]

They Look so Pretty When They Bleed

Prompt #10: They Look so Pretty When They Bleed - Blood Loss | Trail of Blood

Word Count: 1235

Warnings: Blood | Needles | Medical Procedures

Synopsis: Tony thought the never-ending meeting with Ross would be the word part of his day, week probably. Then again, he hadn’t expected to be greeted by a trail of blood in the otherwise empty Avengers Facility.

Read Under the Cut | Read on AO3

It had been a long day in the office, and by office, Tony meant the seemingly neverending meeting with Ross he’d been trapped in since seven that morning. He’d been pretty pissed that Rogers snuck into the Raft and broke the Rouge Avengers out and decided to take it out on Tony, interrogating him all day long for any information he had. Not that Tony would give him anything even if he knew.

Twelve hours later, Ross finally gave up and let Tony leave - god how he regretted leaving that man on hold. Tony headed back to the Avengers Facility, back to the place that used to be filled with the now Rouges and now, instead stood a hollow shell haunted by days long past. Vision left earlier in the week, going to Edinburgh to spend some time with Wanda - ‘cause apparently they were a thing now. Even Rhodey was out spending time recovering. It was just Tony, alone, in a building where ghosts hovered at every corner.

He pulled up the driveway and stopped right outside the front door - it’s not like anyone was going to complain about lack of access. With a heavy sigh, Tony stepped out of the car, a feeling of unease brewing deep in his stomach. He didn’t have spidey-sense like the kid, but after eight years of being a superhero you learn to trust your gut. Tony looked around, searching for the source of his tension, but saw nothing except the open door to the Facility.

Oh, hang on. Tony wouldn’t have left it open all day, even if he had Friday would have closed it behind him. So why was it open, swinging gently in the almost non-existent breeze? Now that was the real question. Maybe Rhodey stopped by for a visit, he mused, but if so, why were the lights all off?

Tony crept forward, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible on the tile floor in the foyer. To his horror, it also lit up a drop of blood, bright red against the white tiles. Then another. And another.

“What a way to add to the mystery,” he muttered. “Now,” slowly, he followed the trail, walking just to the side so as not to disturb it, “Tell me your secrets. In or out?” It soon became clear the answer was in. By the door, the trail consisted only of the odd drop here or there, by now the stream was far heavier.

Tony picked up the pace, whoever this blood came from couldn’t be in good shape. Friend or foe, Tony couldn’t take another lost soul on his conscience. Except if it were Ross, he could probably handle that after everything he’d put him through. Shit, what if it was Ross? Someone could’ve got to him after their meeting and he’d come here in search of help, not knowing Tony took the scenic route home to clear his head.

And if he died here, well that would reflect poorly on Tony. He could imagine the headlines; ‘Secretary of State found dead in home of public rival.’ It wouldn’t be hard for a lawyer to argue that Tony had both the means and the motive, all they’d have to do was bring up his less than heroic past. Yeah, he’d be walking straight into a murder charge.

“Ross, if you’re not dead yet I swear I’m going to finish you off,” he whispered. He kept following the ever-growing trail of blood through the darkened hallways he knew like the back of his hand. Straight through the lounge and kitchen area, a crimson handprint staining the orange sofa.

The sharp trill of Tony’s phone echoed through the room, making him jump at the suddenness of the noise. “That was smooth,” he muttered, pulling out his phone and answering without checking the caller ID. “Ross?”

“Uh, no… It’s May.”

Tony pulled the phone from his ear and check, sure enough, May Parker lit up the screen. “So it is, sorry May. It’s just...well, it’s a long story.”

“What was that? I can barely hear you, why are you whispering? Anyway, I just wanted to know if you’d heard from Peter. He didn’t come back from patrol at his normal time.”

The realisation hit Tony like Rogers and Barnes had in that godforsaken Siberian bunker.

“I know, I know. I’m probably overreacting. I just worry, y’know?”

Tony ran at full pelt. All attempt at keeping quiet dropped in favour of sheer speed. “May, I’ve got to go. I call as soon as I can.” He hung up without waiting for an answer. “Peter?” He yelled, praying or a reply. “Kid, c’mon. Where are you?”

His legs burned, fear growing with his every step. Every second passed was another Peter bled out. He skidded around a corner, the blood trail now little less than an elongated puddle. Sprinting on through the darkness, Tony almost didn’t see the body slumped in the corner of the corridor. “Kid?” Tony fell to his knees and tapped Peter’s cheek, trying to wake him up. “Come on, wake up for me. “Fri, get Cho here, now!”

Tony scooped Peter into his arms and ran to the medical bay, his hands and clothes stained red with the kid’s blood. He laid him on one of the beds, yelling for Friday to turn on the lights before searching for the source of the bleeding. “Fuck, kid.” Peter had a stab wound deep in his abdomen. “Fri, how long until Cho gets here?”

“Fifteen minutes, Boss.”

Not to sound cliché, but Peter didn’t have fifteen minutes. In fact, he barely had two judging by the colour of his skin and feeble beat of his pulse under Tony’s fingertips. His eyes flicked over to the storage cabinet stocked full of blood. Given the number of transfusions Tony had had himself, surely he knew how they worked. Right?

It’s not like he had a choice.

He darted across to the cabinet and grabbed a bag of Peter’s blood, double, and then triple, checking the name because for the love of God he was not giving the kid any of Bruce’s radioactive shit. He set up an IV for the blood bag and inserted a needle into the back of Peter’s hand before connecting the two with a plastic tube that looked close enough to the ones used on him.

For a couple of seconds, he watched the blood flow through the tube and into Peter’s body, then raced to find a bandage to make sure that blood stayed inside rather than ending up on the medbay floor. 

After a minute, some of the colour returned to Peter’s cheeks, though he was still shades too pale. Peter gasped a great breath and air and Tony raced to his side, running a hand through his hair and whispering gently. “Hey, kid. Nice to have you back with us.”

“Huh,” Peter slurred. “Wha- Where?”

“It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Doctor Cho’s on her way, she’ll be here any minute.”

Peter seemed to be gaining a little more comprehension with every second. “Urgh,” he sighed, relaxing back into the bed. “Mister Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“I think someone stabbed me.”

“I think so too, kid. You left the evidence all over the compound.”

Peter screwed his eyes shut. “Sorry.”

“No,” Tony cooed. “I don’t care about that. I just care that you’re safe.”

[kittinoir]

Marinette Dupain-Cheng blinked slowly as she woke to the chirping of birds on her balcony. She yawned, stretching as she rolled onto her side. She let her eyes drift closed again as she chased the remnants of a dream, but the more she pursued them, the harder they seemed to recall. 

Mentally shrugging, Marinette let it fade.

“I can’t remember the last time I slept so well,” she murmured. Outside, the birds fell silent. A flutter of anticipation danced through her chest, but then, like her dream, it was gone, slipping through her fingers before she’d even really realized she’d been waiting for a response.

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Marinette reached for her phone. It lit up as she tilted the screen. Three notifications were displayed just below the time. 6:47 am. She sat up as she read the time, then double checked it was am and not pm. Her alarm wasn’t due to go off for almost another 45 minutes. She frowned. Mornings were usually spent rushing, but she just…didn’t feel tired.

A small smile lit her features as she turned her attention to the notifications. 

Reminder: Adrien photoshoot this afternoon at 2 pm

Reminder: Four months to Adrien’s birthday

Reminder: Let the kwamis out to play

Marinette frowned as she read the last notification, and read it again.

“…Kwa…mi…?” The word felt unfamiliar on her tongue. She selected the notification and opened it up. It was set every day for seven pm, right after dinner, but had no additional notes. She didn’t remember setting it. Maybe it was an inside joke between her and Alya, slang for taking a break and remembering to have a little fun. Maybe it was a reminder that constantly got buried under the Adrien reminders. She blushed as she read it again. It would hardly be the first time it happened.

Her thumb hovered over the delete button, but she hesitated. Let the kwamis out to play. Was being the class representative really so stressful she needed a constant reminder to relax?

Marinette saved the notification and locked the phone. Maybe it was. 

She stretched one more time, and then slipped down the ladder to her room. She grinned to herself as she got out fresh towels and headed to the shower, letting day dreams of stumbling into Adrien run through her mind as she got ready to face the day.

***

Marinette had been surprised when she had woken early, but it was hard not to be a little stung when Alya did a double, then triple take as she arrived fifteen minutes before the first bell. Was it really so hard to believe she could be on time? She only lived across the street.

Of course, her teachers had been making that point for years.

“I must still be asleep,” Alya said with a grin, “Because I know I must be dreaming this.”

“Very funny,” Marinette said with a small giggle. “I dunno, I just woke up. Waiting for Nino?”

Alya blushed, averting her eyes. “Lila, actually. She agreed to do another interview for the Ladyblog.”

Frustration, confusion, anger, sorrow, loneliness. They all swirled through Marinette, coalescing into a storm that threatened to overwhelm her. She knew Lila lied, that she had threatened her, but this felt so much worse. She’d never believed Lila could do it, but today the possibility felt all too real, the outrage seemingly without just cause. After all, Marinette had started it…hadn’t she?

Marinette reached out blindly for the one thing she could control, could get an answer for. “The…Ladyblog…?”

“I know you don’t like her, Marinette, but I really hoped you’d be supportive,” Alya said, flicking the charm on her phone nervously. “News outlets are just starting to take me seriously and you know Nadja offered me that internship this summer. Lila’s really helped me out.”

The Ladyblog. Alya’s blog about… Marinette frowned, scouring her brain, but she couldn’t remember. The name rang a bell, but she was coming up empty otherwise.

“Marinette, please,” Alya begged, misinterpreting her frown. “Don’t make me choose.”

“I would never, Alya,” Marinette said, softening as the storm of conflicting emotions finally settled. “I just…Lila’s not what she seems. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Alya finally cracked a small smile. “You had the same reaction to Kagami at first, you know. Maybe you should give Lila a second chance. Stay for the interview.”

Marinette forced a small smile of her own. “Sorry, Al. Remember to double check your sources.”

Alya rolled her eyes but the smile stayed as Marinette slipped away. Her emotions swirled again, but she was ready for them and had an iron grasp on them this time. She shoved them down as she headed for the school and pulled out her phone. She opened the browser and was only a little surprised to find the blog locked in as her home page. A crease appeared between her brows. Why wouldn’t she remember something like…

The thought drifted away, incomplete as the page finished loading. Marinette could feel her fingers tingling as as stared at the picture on the front page of the blog. Alya had pinned it to the top of the page, but the date was several months old. The image depicted a young girl in a red and black suit, her arm stretched out as she seemed to fly across the night sky, the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Ladybug to the rescue!

Marinette became aware of her heart pounding painfully as she read the caption. Her knuckles had gone white around her phone. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t - 

“Hey, Marinette!”

Marinette felt the phone slip through her fingers and clatter against the floor as she whipped around. “A-Adrien.”

Adrien frowned, those impossibly green eyes searching her face as he stooped and collected her phone, handing it back to her. “Are you…ok?”

“Uh, yeah,” Marinette said, taking the phone back. “I was just…reading the latest article on the Ladyblog. It kind of freaked me out?” Was that right? Should it freak her out? She held her breath as she watched for Adrien’s reaction.

He cracked her favourite smile, one she could tell was real and not because some photographer had demanded it. Marinette felt herself melting.

“I get it,” he said, reaching out to give her arm a squeeze. “Hawk Moth has been getting worse, and I know Ladybug and Chat Noir had a close call the other night, but they saved the day. They always do.”

Marinette thought she saw something else flash across his face, something like panic or pain, but it was gone before she could be sure. “Lucky for us,” she said, scrambling again for the right words. “It’s just…hard not to worry sometimes.”

“Hey.” The hand on her arm slid up to her shoulder. Marinette tried not to shiver at the warmth she could feel through her jacket. “They would never let anything happen to you, Marinette.”

“You’re right,” Marinette said, forcing a smile. “I’m worrying about nothing. Um. Are you excited about the photoshoot this afternoon?”

Adrien bit his lip as he dropped his hand. Marinette tried not to let her disappointment show as he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously and leaned in as though they were co-conspiritors. “Would I be letting you down if I said no?”

“Letting me down?”

“I know you’re a fan,” he elaborated, “But…I don’t know, I guess I’d rather be here with you guys. Besides, between you and me, this latest collection isn’t the most exciting.”

“I could go with you,” Marinette blurted. She almost slapped a hand over her mouth, but she decided doing that would be the only thing worse than what she’d already said. “If that would make it better.”

“I don’t want you to miss class for me,” Adrien said. The disappointment in her voice almost broke her heart. “I’ll be fine.”

“I have study hall last period,” Marinette said, “So I wouldn’t really be missing anything, but if you’d rather I didn’t - ”

“No!” Adrien interrupted. “I’d love to have you there, Marinette. Are you…really sure? I won’t lie to you, it’s pretty boring.”

“An inside perspective on the industry would be amazing,” Marinette said, nearly bouncing. “I would just you - IT! I would just love it.”

Adrien laughed, and Marinette wished she could have bottled the sound. “I’ll meet you out here at 2 pm then?”

“2 pm,” Marinette echoed, “Ok.”

“See you in class,” Adrien said with a wave. Marinette watched him disappear down the hall, her heart pounding. Had she been too pushy? Did she sound like a pyscho stalker? Did he think she liked him? Like LIKE liked him? She’d practically invited herself to his shoot; was her cover totally blown?

Marinette blinked, surprised by the familiarity of the feeling and the anxiety it brought with it. Sure, she wanted to tell Adrien on her own terms, when she finally felt it was the right time, but…why did her secret feel like life or death?

Taking a deep breath, Marinette fired off a quick text to Alya to update her on her success. She bit back a smile as she typed, the reality of the afternoon settling in. Did it count as a date if he was working?

Marinette turned to face the school, ready to face the day. It was already a win; nothing else mattered. She snapped open her purse and dropped her phone inside, but paused when she heard it crunch. She frowned, pulling the purse up to her face to peer inside.

A lone macaron sat in the bottom of the bag, broken into two pieces beneath her phone. Marinette frowned as she pulled out the pieces and examined them. The macaron was from her family’s bakery, but it wasn’t wrapped or contained in anything. One of the outer edges had begun to crumble, and Marinette felt her skin crawl, wondering how long it had been in there. She shivered once and tossed the stale dessert in a near by garbage bin, promising to double check her purse more often before bugs or mice found their way to the forgotten food.

[nadiineross]

chlodine band au

abandoned concept 

Already, Nadine feels as if she has retired. Though she has always enjoyed routine, this is something else entirely—monotony.

Every morning she wakes up at the exact same time, drinks the same coffee, rides the same bus to work. Lunch breaks, she takes alone. The street on which she works is designed to appeal to as many people as possible, so everything is generic as it is flashy. When she had first gotten here, she had devised a list of restaurants within a five minute walk which she would try, and she still uses it as a rotation. On Mondays she eats at the American-style diner, Tuesdays are for Indian food, Wednesdays, Mexican, and so on and so forth.

Work is uninspiring and unfulfilling. Head of security in the city’s biggest music hall. The paperwork is dull and the patrols even more so. The only time she feels remotely close to who she was before Shoreline collapsed is when she’s working out at the gym. Even then, it is a poor substitute.

Routine. Simple, straightforward.

Eventually, she might let go of her resentment and learn to be grateful for the fifteen years she had with Shoreline. Now, however, she can’t help but still be bitter, even two years after it had slipped from her fingers. Her father’s doing; he had grown weak and sentimental, and dissolved the company before she could even think to step in for him. He had gone as far as to forbid her from that career and she was nothing if not dutiful as a soldier and as a daughter, even if it angered her to be so.

She hasn’t spoken to him since. She had moved away so she wouldn’t be tempted to continue their never-ending argument, and found her mind-numbing, soul-sucking job working as a cockblock to crowds of groupies when the next big thing deigned to tour in her coastal city.

She had become robotic. She felt as if she were wasting her life away, doing nothing. Though she was not retired according to the official definition of the word, she had been retired from her career as a soldier and, as someone who had cobbled their entire identity around being one, it was as good as true. Retired at 36.

These are the thoughts that plague her every waking moment. It’s not like the job requires of her more than 4 braincells. She has never been good with idle time.

On top of all that, there is a big concert tonight and will be followed by one more the following night. This, she has been dreading in the months that preceded it. The band is native to the city and, no matter what Nadine thinks of them, they are successful enough for the city to treat them as if they were its crown jewels. They aren’t even a real band—there are only two of them. How they coerced anyone to like them with a name like “Drake’s Fortune,” she will never know.

Still, she doesn’t work at The Rolling Stones, isn’t paid to opine, so she keeps it all to herself and does her job: a circuit of the building, double and triple-checking the locks on all the doors, and checking in on all the guards on duty tonight via radio.

As head of security, she doesn’t have a concrete post for the night. It’s more of a rotation, ensuring the gears are in place and well-oiled, at that. Generally, with big concerts like this, she tries to linger near the backstage to stop any zealous fans her subordinates can’t handle on their own. It hasn’t been that bad tonight and even she will admit the music isn’t terrible. But, of course, the band members themselves sound smarmy and obnoxious. From the hall, she hears the lead, Nathan, try to woo the crowd with his boyish charm and she scoffs at it. Sam the drummer and backup singer tags along and she fears she might roll her eyes so hard they become permanently affixed to the back of her head.

Probably, she has just lost her tolerance for people who are unnecessarily loud about how happy they are with their careers. The irony doesn’t escape her, doing what she does. Every other week, a new band or singer parades through town to laugh and scream and flaunt themselves on a stage in fromt of thousands. And she had been tasked with making sure they make it to the next city intact enough to do it all over again.

She misses the rest of the show, called to the entrance, and she is thankful to leave behind the sounds of the brothers Drake. After that, she has to go help out at the backdoor which takes almost an hour to handle. The thick of the crowd has mostly dissipated by the time the clock hits 12:30am and none of the band members had appeared—thank god for that.

It is another hour before she’s finally finished with all her responsibilities. She immediately takes off her uniform top and ties it around her waist, sweat-stained as it is. She has a second tank top and a spare shirt in her office to change into.

It’s on the way back there that she notices she’s lost the only personal affect she takes to work: a bracelet her mother had gifted her at the airport before she’d left for this city. Immediately, she feels a headache coming on.

If her mother found out, she’d be delivered from an early retirement to an early grave.

Bordering on nauseous, she rushes to retrace her steps: backstage, entrance, backdoor. As she’d expected, she comes up empty. Really, what are the odds?

Sighing, she turns back to the backdoor and begins to unlock it. It’s then when it swings open from the inside; Nadine has to jerk back to avoid getting slammed in the face. A woman comes stumbling out, cursing as she misses the step down into the back alley. She’s in a red shirt, tight and cut just above her bellybutton, and a pair of what looks to Nadine like fashionable, upscale cargo pants. In her hand, she holds a phone which she had obviously been watching instead of her step.

Nadine scowls. “Hey, watch it.”

The woman spins around, a look of surprise flashing across her face. “Sorry.” Then, she squints at Nadine, under the neon lights, and her look of remorse fades into curiosity, and mischief, and an infuriating arrogance. “Hey there.”

Nadine only glares and makes for the door. The woman raises an eyebrow and steps in her way.

“I’m not sure you’re allowed back there, love,” the woman drawls, leaning too close into Nadine’s personal space. Ordinarily, Nadine would’ve put this woman in her place instantly, but the confidence and her apparent access to the backdoor leads her to believe she might be with the Drakes in some capacity. She isn’t interested in losing her job over this. “But I’ll be happy to show you to where you are very much welcome.”

Oh, she thinks Nadine is a groupie. She closes her eyes and tries not to fly off the handle. “Christ, I don’t know who you are but I work here and I’m not in the mood for this.”

To her credit, the woman takes it in stride. She sticks her hand out. “Chloe Frazer, touring member. I play bass.”

Nadine stares at her hand. Stares at the wrist attached to her hand. Stares at the bracelet looped around the wrist.

Slowly, Chloe’s smile fades and she drops her hand. “Look, are you lost?”

“Am I— I’m the head of fucking security,” Nadine barks out, near trembling with rage. “And you’re wearing my fucking bracelet, and you’re in my fucking way, and you’re wearing my fucking bracelet!”

Chloe steps back at the sheer outrage in Nadine’s voice.

“Well?!” Nadine thunders.

Sheepishly, Chloe takes the bracelet off and holds it out to Nadine— she snatches it back and tightens it hard enough to maybe cut off circulation.

Chloe clears her throat. “Hey, uh, I found it. I was going to bring it to lost and found.”

Nadine scowls. “Funny, I’ve worked here for ages and I’ve never heard of the back alley lost and found. Must’ve slipped my notice.”

“Actually, the thing is, I was going to make a call first—”

“Save it.”

And Nadine wrenches the door open and slams it shut behind her, and storms her way through the building with a glower so biting she thinks she spots Nathan Drake ducking behind a crate to get out of her way. As it should be.

note: so basically im incapable of giving either of them occupations that arent treasure hunting so it wouldve turned out chloes an eccentric well off treasure hunter who also plays bass sometimes for her friends cos she’s a hot girl and nadine, unhappy w her career, is offered a job by chloe (see: tll) but this is only after nadine n chloe hv been dating for a while:) i dont like this enough to continue it but here ya go

[gore-hovnd]

Jack loses his medication and starts showing symptoms of a mental disorder during a mission, he becomes violent and Brock wanna stops him without hurting him.

Temper Tantrum

Only fifteen minutes in and Brock was pretty sure that airports were among some of the worst places on the planet. And this was coming from a guy who’d been in active war zones. It was loud,⁠—even that early in the morning⁠—their flight wasn’t going to leave for another two hours, and somehow everything was sticky. 

“Why couldn’t we just take the quinjet, again?” He yawned, trying and failing miserably to keep the whine from his voice. His commander looked back to Brock over his newspaper with a quirked brow and a smirk on his face that said, ‘is it really that bad?’

It was Commander Marcus Diaz’s final mission with STRIKE Team Alpha and he had one last lesson he wanted to teach Brock and his chosen Second in Command, Jack Rollins. 

“It’s an espionage mission, Rumlow. If we raise too much suspicion with an out of country aircraft, our target could go into hiding before we can get the information we want.” Diaz said patiently, as if Brock hadn’t asked the same question on two other occasions. 

Anxiety coursed through his veins, forcing his leg to bounce as they waited at the gatehouse. Somewhere behind him there was a baby crying and the only thing he could think of was that he’d lose his mind if they were on the same flight as that thing. Brock wasn’t opposed to people having kids, so long as the little crotch goblins stayed away from him. Even at his accomplished thirty five years of age, he wasn’t ready for kids. Wasn’t sure if he ever would be. So it was a good thing he was with Jack because that eliminated any and all possibilities of an “accident” happening. 

Glancing over, he watched as Jack fiddled with the hem of his sweatshirt, nervous energy seeming to radiate off of him in waves. And like responding to a signal from a beacon, Brock felt called to calm his partner. Leaning back in his chair, Brock quietly hooked one of his legs over Jack’s, ignoring it when the other glanced over at him but it seemed to settle him all the same. The two of them sat like that for the rest of the time they had to wait. 

Another thing for him to hate about airports was having to sit on the tarmac for another three hours with little to nothing to do because of “adverse weather conditions.” He could only scroll through his phone for so long without getting bored and instead, found himself asking Jack to read to him. Which Jack did happily.

Once the flight finally took off, Jack got drowsy rather quickly. He always did during transport, whether it be by car or quinjet, and Brock found that to be one of the most adorable things ever. But that left Brock with little to do. Diaz, of course, was booked in a first class seat that left the two lower ranking agents stuck in economy. It took everything in him not to smash his head through the window while having to deal with squealing toddlers and an obnoxious woman who was apparently able to complain about anything. 

By the time their flight landed and they pushed their way into yet another airport, they found themselves dealing with a rush period and getting out seemed to be just as hellish as getting in. He really wasn’t looking forward to the flight home on Sunday. 

Finding their bags was hard enough, the three of them standing at the claim for another thirty minutes just so they could stand outside for another hour waiting for the car to come pick them up. Brock thought that things would finally smoothen out at the hotel, but of course they didn’t. Because the second he stepped out of the bathroom he was hit with another strike of bad luck. 

“My lithium isn’t in here.” Jack said, a mild note of panic in his voice. Approaching, Brock tugged the backpack his way and dug through it himself. The two of them double then triple checked. But it wasn’t there. Emptying it all out, placing all of the contents neatly on the hotel bed for the fourth time, Brock sighed, running a hand through his hair as he shifted his weight to his right side. 

“You sure you packed it?” He asked and Jack just eyed him with frustration. 

“You know I did, you checked four times.” Jack grumbled and Brock found himself wrapping an arm around his partner’s shoulders, pulling Jack’s head to rest against his shoulder. 

“I know I did,” He murmured into Jack’s hair, thinking about what he was supposed to do. Jack needed his medication. It regulated his mood, kept him from exploding like a hot glass filled with cold water. The thought crossed his mind to update Diaz on the situation but he quickly decided against it. He was going to be the commander soon and Diaz wouldn’t be there to fix the things that went wrong. Brock knew he’d have to do it himself. So with a determined huff, he pulled Jack away to look at him. “We’re gonna take care of this, alright? Two days. We got it, you’ll be fine.” 

There was a moment of silence that past where they stared at each other, a weariness in Jack’s eyes as he glanced back down to the empty backpack. Brock leaned over to pick up the remaining pill bottle, holding it between them as his hand slid down to rest comfortably against the back of Jack’s neck. 

“You trust me?” Brock asked. 

“Always.” Jack said automatically. The two of them had been through this song and dance plenty of times to know the outcome. But they went through it again anyways because it never failed to reassure both of them, no matter how many times they’d done it. 

“Good. It’ll be fine, you’ll take the Prozac for now, we’ll call your doctor first thing when we get home.” He said with a curt nod. Situations like those always called for Brock to take the lead. Jack was still just a kid. Just barely into his late twenties, only been on the STRIKE team for a year before Brock was told he’d been promoted. Jack had a lot to learn, a lot to be afraid of. Brock had to be the one to guide them through while Jack figured out how to handle these kinds of things. And so far, their system worked well for them. 

That night, Jack took his pill and things seemed to be relatively normal up until right after breakfast. Diaz was going over the briefing again, making sure they were all on the same page with how they’d be approaching their target. 

“I don’t want either of you interacting with the target at all,” Diaz specified just as he had when the mission had first been brought up to them. “You��re here for learning, nothing else. So just try to-”

“Be unobtrusive, yeah we got it.” Jack growled low, the snap in his voice unlike anything Brock was used to. 

“Jack,” Brock warned, being met with intense green eyes that felt like they were boring holes into his skull. Swallowing hard he glanced up to Diaz who was looking at him with a stern look of expectation and all he could do was cough out a nervous laugh. 

“He’s jus’ tired. Won’t happen again, sir.” He promised and Diaz nodded, continuing his briefing. All the while, Brock could see Jack clenching and unclenching his jaw, like he was gearing up for a fight. 

As the trio of them headed out the door he couldn’t stop himself from asking if Jack had taken his medication that morning, unsatisfied as he watched Jack nod. But there wasn’t really anything else they could do, he couldn’t take a double dosage, it would likely do more harm than good. They’d just have to muddle through the day. 

Meeting up with the target was simple enough, Diaz using a cover as some scientist. He paid Brock and Jack no mind, prodding the man with simple questions at first, likely to get his guard down. As they stood, Brock could see Jack’s breathing level out into something shallow, rapid as he glanced around, trying to keep his attention from focusing on anything in particular. His hands were shoved in his pockets, his chest puffed up in an aggressive way. All it would take was one off handed comment. One ever so generously supplied by their lovely target. 

“What’s with the big guy?” the target scoffed, his accent painting his words in an almost incomprehensible way. Diaz seemed to falter, glancing to Jack for a moment before brushing it off. 

“Resting bitch face, you know how it is.” He tried to laugh off, gaining a laugh from the target. 

“He’d bitch for me, that’s for sure.” 

And that was it, that was all it took for Jack to snap. Brock didn’t understand the slur of Russian that left Jack’s mouth as he shoved the man into the ground but he didn’t need to to know that it was nothing but a flurry of threats that Jack most likely intended to fulfill. 

‘God fucking dammit!’ Brock’s thoughts screamed as he rushed forward, grabbing onto Jack’s raised fist. It took a minute for Brock to get Jack’s arm behind his back, his wrist between his shoulders, but he did it. Working his arm around Jack’s throat, Brock pulled his SIC back with as much strength as he was able. The hold was loose enough that Jack could probably get out of it if he was really trying to which was a definite weakness on Brock’s part. But he couldn’t bring himself to dislocate Jack’s shoulder or do anything that would actually hurt him. 

“Rollins, back to the car, now. ” Brock barked, his usual cool demeanor falling away as he shoved Jack toward aforementioned vehicle. Jack stared at him with a look of hurt, of confusion. But when Brock mouthed a silent ‘please,’ Jack did as he was told all the same. Brock followed suit, the two of them sitting in the back seat without a word.

Silence laid over them in the form of a thick tension as they waited for their commander to return, hopefully being able to patch things up with the target. Brock could see the two of them laughing together before Diaz returned to the car so he figured things were just fucking peachy which confused him. Usually a high risk man such as their target wouldn’t be so easy to calm down, at least, not from his experience. But he brushed it off, much more concerned with the earful he knew they’d be getting from Diaz. 

And damn, was it a good one. Jack didn’t fuck up often, but damn when he did it sure was a spectacle. Diaz was harping on them for a good two hours before he declared that he was going for a drink, that he’d decide on a punishment for Rollins at a later date. And then he just left the two of them alone to sit in the hotel room and stew in their thoughts. 

Jack had been quiet the whole time, staring at his hands in his lap. At first he still looked angry, like he was almost ready to fight again. But as time went on, regret blanketed his features and eventually, he looked up to Brock with those big, green, puppy dog eyes that just told him there was a guilty apology waiting at the tip of his tongue. Before he got the chance to say it, Brock pulled Jack into his arms, shushing him quickly as a bevy of ‘I’m sorry’s’ fell from Jack’s lips. 

“Hey, you’re okay, Jack. I gotcha, baby.” Brock sighed in his ear. Jack had a vice grip on the back of Brock’s shirt, to the point where he could’ve sworn he heard the fabric straining. But all he could do was focus on Jack. “Whatever happens, I’ll exonerate it. Okay? You’re gonna be okay, I promise.” 

With these words, Jack pulled back from him. His arms were shaking, eyes already reddened and dewy with tears that Jack refused to let fall. He shook his head and Brock stared at him, confused. 

“What if I fucked this up for you?” He asked, his broken voice hitched with remorse. Brock couldn’t keep himself from smiling a bit. 

“I’ll be fine,” Brock assured, pushing a few strands of stray hair from Jack’s eyes. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll take care’a both of us.”

Jack nodded, running a hand over his eyes as he calmed himself down. Somehow, he managed to get Jack to agree to take a shower and he sat there with his own devices, trying to figure out just how he would see his promise through. If Diaz reported Jack’s outburst to the higher ups, shit could hit the fan extremely quickly. Even in a commander’s position, he wouldn’t be able to do anything if someone higher than him ordered for Jack’s termination. Brock shuddered at the word. If they worked for anyone but HYDRA that thought wouldn’t be quite as scary. But sadly, they didn’t and even worse, it was. 

Just then, the door opened and Brock instinctively caught the object that was tossed to him. Turning the little pill bottle over in his hands he immediately glanced up to look at Diaz. 

“You took it?” He asked, thumbing over the label that read lithium: 900mg. Diaz shrugged a shoulder. Anger and confusion fused to create an awful bastard in his gut as he glared at his commander.

“You did good today, Rumlow.” Diaz said with a sigh, leaning against the doorframe and flicking his head toward the closed bathroom door. “On your mission.” 

“My mi-” He cut himself off, standing up and almost posturing the man. “I thought this was espionage. Gathering intel? The fuck does fuckin’ with Jack’s head have anythin’ to do with that?” 

Diaz only chuckled at the growl in Brock’s voice, shaking his head. Brock still wasn’t understanding. 

“It was a set-up, Rumlow.” Diaz finally said, readjusting his stance. “With high risk agents, such as Rollins, we need to know you can handle a situation quickly and efficiently. And you did. You really thought we were worried you wouldn’t be able to finesse information from a target?” 

Brock wished he could share Diaz’s amusement but he couldn’t, still confused on why they’d go through so much shit. He knew he could handle Jack, in every way, shape, and form. Meds or not, didn’t make a difference. Brock knew Jack, trusted him. Had it been him talking to the target, Jack would’ve never gotten involved. He shook his head again, shifting almost uncomfortably when Diaz placed a hand on his shoulder. 

“Rollins is a valuable asset to the team. The two of you together are nothin’ short of unstoppable and we wanna keep you together but, we had to be sure you could manage your team.” Diaz sighed before straightening up. Brock nodded, still discomforted by how easily they’d played this off as a real mission. “Good to know you can do just that, Commander Rumlow.” 

With a wink and a mock salute, Diaz made his exit into his own room and Brock was left standing, alone. A small huff of relief left him. 

He’d be able to keep his promise after all. He and Jack would be just fine. 

[vyraxhaalas]

Hello, my old Tumblr blog. Haven’t used you in a while. But Twitter is getting increasingly difficult to look at with the way my mental state’s been lately, and I want to write about something that I definitely would not be able to fit within 280 characters.

I’m quiet and Tired™ almost all the time anyway, so I don’t know how obvious it’s been, but something pretty traumatic happened to me in November. I’m still getting hit with aftershocks and probably will be for a while.

The gist: I was in my first car accident in November, it affected me deeply, and things haven’t yet been sorted out.

I don’t expect anyone to read the ten-thousand-character write-up I spent this morning getting out of my head, but if you want to, here it is:

So.

It's mid-November. Daylight hours are short now, so I've been habitually leaving work as early as possible so I can avoid rush-hour freeway traffic in the dark. But I can't do that today. A bunch of work has gotten piled up—I don't know how; other people were supposed to be handling some of the stuff, but it didn't get handled—and it needs to get done today. So I stay an hour overtime to make sure we meet our deadlines. It's dark when I leave, and it's started to rain. This will be the first night this year, actually, in which I’ve had to drive home in the dark.

My usual route home involves getting on I-405 and then almost immediately getting off it again to get onto WA-520. Soon after my lane joins WA-520, it turns into an HOV lane. I'm a single driver; I need to get out of the lane. And I don't have very long to do it before the HOV lane starts and I could be fined for being in it.

Changing lanes is the worst part of driving. Doing it in the dark, in the rain, during rush hour, and on a freeway is about the worst it gets. I turn on my blinker before I even move to leave my lane, and I leave it on while I check and double-check and triple-check that the lane I'm trying to get into is clear. It looks clear. I start to change lanes. I take half a second to check my blind spot one last time as I make the transition. I look back out in front of me and realize traffic is suddenly at a dead stop. I slam on my brakes. I am not fast enough.

At 5:52 p.m. on November 19, 2019, I lose the ability to say I'm a driver who's never been involved in a car accident as the front of my '05 Celica—my baby, my life-blood—slams into the back of a 2019 Volkswagen Atlas.

It's dark and it's raining and I'm in the middle of a freeway and cars are still moving by on both sides of me. The Atlas makes it to the shoulder. My car won't move. It's dark and it's raining and I'm in the middle of a freeway and cars are still moving by on both sides of me and my car will not move. I stumble through a 911 call, and then I just have to sit there in the middle of a freeway and hope I don't end up causing more accidents behind me, which could potentially involve someone rear-ending me.

Every moment feels like an eternity, so I don't know how long it actually took for the highway truck to show up to assist. All I remember, really, is how I didn't have power steering anymore and how crushing it felt that my car needed to be pushed off the road and how scared I was of how much damage it would take for the engine to be knocked out like it was.

The police report says the officer arrived at 6:10 p.m., less than twenty minutes after the collision. I'm not sure I believe it. The officer arrives, and she's decent enough as she explains that I'm by default at fault in this case and that I'm getting served with a ticket. It's hard to tell if the tiny bit of sympathy was real or just a practiced response to dealing with a woman who's clearly shaken and has obviously been crying, but I appreciate it. I don't appreciate that the law says someone must be ticketed. I'm notorious for bothering family members by leaving “too much” space between me and the vehicle in front of me, so despite the officer's gentle delivery, getting a ticket for “following too close” still feels like a kick in the teeth on top of the evisceration that is the knowledge of the state of my car.

Since I don't have a dashcam to figure out what actually went wrong and I drive a Hot Wheels car that you would look at and guess is never driven below the speed limit, I assume everyone else involved—the officer, the other driver, everyone who had to deal with my dead car blocking a freeway lane for a few minutes—believes that I'm a reckless idiot.

The officer calls a tow truck for me, and soon she and the Atlas are gone. It's just me then, sitting in my dead car on the shoulder of WA-520 while other cars zip by at freeway speeds less then ten feet away. I fill the time by being on the phone with family members who were probably five or ten minutes away half an hour ago, but now I won't be home until sometime around 8:00. The tow-truck guy is really pleasant, though. I appreciate that (and how he tries to give me a discount for, I guess, also being pleasant to deal with; his boss doesn't allow it, but it was still a nice gesture), so I make sure to give him a big tip. He says I bought him dinner, and I hope I did.

I take the next day off work, both because I'm still rattled as hell and because I need to get my car on the path to being drivable again. I send pictures to my insurance, and they estimate at around $3,000, which is fine, because I have collision insurance. My cost will only be my max deductible of $1,000, and then my car will be fixed, and everything will be okay again. I have a phone conversation with a guy from my insurance who gets blindsided by how much of my claim I've already handled, reading off parts of his script that involve things I already did and then laughing and apologizing as he realizes that. He says that he hears about accidents of the sort I described happening all the time and agrees it's unfortunate but unavoidable that I was declared at fault.

I'm feeling a little bit better about things at this point. The view to having my car back seems clear. I just need to find a trustworthy collision-repair shop. I get a recommendation from my mechanic, and we get my car dropped off with the recommended shop. They say they have a backlog and won't be able to start until the end of December, but I'd rather wait than get a bad repair, so that's fine. They also say that they might be able to start taking a look at it earlier if some time opens up before then.

Around 10:00 a.m. on December 17 (which, funnily enough, is the third Tuesday of the month, just like the day of the accident), I pull out my phone while I'm at work. I don't even remember why at this point. I'm distracted away from whatever I was going to do by a notification that I have a missed called from my insurance. I think, “Oh, maybe the shop has been able to get started earlier than expected.” I get up from my desk and get into one of the noise-insulated booths strewn around the office that people can use to make phone calls. As I open up my missed calls, I see that the caller ID is not listed as just the name of my insurance, as it was on the notification. It's listed as “State Farm Total Loss.”

So now my mental state is completely shot. While I'm at work. At 10:00 a.m. I have to play phone tag and try very hard not to cry throughout my work day. At the end of that day, all I know is that State Farm will pay out about $5,000, but the total repair estimate is now “over $10,000.” I don't have any idea by how much, so I spend most of my day being terrified that it'll be not just “over” $10,000 but way over. I'm amazed I didn't go cry in a bathroom for fifteen minutes. (Instead I did that in the driver's seat of the truck I'm borrowing from a family member immediately after parking in the driveway at home.)

I call the repair shop after I manage to stop crying and get out of the truck. The final estimate is around $11,000. I tell them to go ahead with repairs. I think about how lucky I am that I have the ability to drop about $6,000 on car repairs. I think about how guilty I feel about how “privileged” I am to be able to drop $6,000 on car repairs. I remember how I was told soon after the accident by family members and a guy at the repair shop that I probably would have avoided the accident entirely had I reacted half a second faster, and I think about how bitter that tastes.

Things seem settled once again until I open some mail on the last day of my holiday break and discover that when a car is declared totaled by insurance, the state of Washington treats the car as if it's been destroyed, regardless of whether you repair it or not. Not only has my car's registration been canceled but so has its title. I'll have to redo the entire process of titling and registering my car before I can drive it again. It would have been nice if State Farm had warned me this was coming. I'm so tired.

On top of it all, it feels stupid to be so attached to a car, as if by virtue of it being an inanimate object I'm not “allowed” to be as attached to it as people get to a beloved longtime pet. Sometimes I feel like a bad person for wanting to drive a car at all, because of all the bad things associated with the American lifestyle of everyone owning and driving cars. But I'm a thousand-percent serious when I say that I was stuck crying for, like, fifteen minutes this morning, nearly two months after the accident, just because I was looking over the paperwork associated with things I still need to handle in regards to getting my car back.

Having to read the words “total loss” again. Know that my car currently is illegal to drive even if it were repaired. “Please see the enclosed notice of options available to you regarding the Insurance Destroyed Vehicle.” Looking at my car's title and thinking about having to write “TOTALED” along with the “date of loss” across it before I “surrender” it for “destruction.”

I feel stupid even posting this, because I expect people to read it and go “That's all? It's just a car. And you're wasting money fixing it—money you're lucky to have when a lot of people don't.”

But I've had this car nearly half my life. It saw me through the hardest times I've ever had. It is freedom, autonomy, escape mechanism, comfort zone. I've had breakdowns in grocery-store parking lots in this car. It's, like, a third of who am I. I feel like part of my soul has been missing since the evening of November 19, 2019, and I have been constantly two negative thoughts away from crying since then. I’m able to drive the stretch of road the accident occurred on, but rarely without at least feeling the urge to tear up. Hell, I can’t even drive the truck I’m borrowing without the experience being depressing simply because it’s not my car.

I don’t know how to end this off, because there’s no pretty pink bow to wrap it all up in yet. Things seem like they’ll turn out okay in the end, but it’s not the end yet, so who knows. I’ll just have to get through it, whatever happens. So, there you go, I guess. That's what's been going on with me lately.

[violetsmoak]

Tabula Rasa [4/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183281/chapters/47927632

Blanket Disclaimer:

Summary: Tim and Jason have known they are soulmates for years, though neither has said anything about it. Tim thinks Jason doesn’t know, and is just trying to live with it. Jason thinks Tim knows but doesn’t care, which is fine with him, he thinks the soulmate thing is a crock anyway. But one night, a minor mishap forces them to confront the issue head-on, leading to a series of events no one could have predicted.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: #a lie #bright vivid colors #enemies to lovers #i’ll protect you # secret identity #soulbond #soulmark tattoo #soulmate aversion

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

Jason’s body moves before his mind catches up, prompting him to drag them both to one side and out of any easy line of fire. There’s a small alley several yards away, and he does his best to get there without jarring the man in his arms. Tim’s eyes are wide in shock and pain, body crumpled and limp. Jason’s brain is numb as it scrambles to understand what just happened.

Tim’s been shot. Tim’s been shot in the head.

There are screams from the other passersby on the street, people running and scattering like rats. It’s the middle of the day, but shootings aren’t out of place here; people know how to take cover. They also know not to relinquish that cover to help someone down by a bullet.

Even a Wayne.

Especially a Wayne. 

No one wants to provide another target to whoever’s decided to shoot up Crime Alley.

Except, Jason notes dimly, there hasn’t been another gunshot.

Maybe whoever it is won’t waste bullets when there’s no target.

Jason’s fingers are slick with blood, slipping against Tim’s neck as he looks for a pulse. It’s there, though weak, and Jason shifts automatically, angling him upright to keep him from choking on his own blood.

As he does his best to use his hands to staunch the bleeding, he snarls, “Don’t…you…dare…” 

Jason can’t remove his fingers to tap his comm; several seconds pass before he can nudge his ear hard enough with his shoulder to turn it on.

(He’s beyond thankful he put it back in when he returned to Gotham—doesn’t want to think how this could go if he hadn’t.)

“Drake’s been shot,” he barks when the telltale static hiss informs him, someone, somewhere is on the line. “GSW to the head, get a fuckin’ bus to Park Row and West.”

“En route,” he hears Batman growl immediately, followed by a series of horrified exclamations from other Bats.

Batgirl and Signal, he thinks, but he honestly isn’t paying attention to any of the entreaties over the line anymore. He’s too busy monitoring Tim’s condition, counting the younger man’s breaths, and the pauses in between. They seem like they’re getting longer. He tells himself it’s Tim, using that absurd Bat training to slow his breathing, but he knows better.

“Stay awake,” he orders. Tim’s breathing is wet and choked, and his eyes roll like he’s on the verge of unconsciousness. “Come on, you’ve never taken anything I’ve said seriously before, don’t you dare start with this.”

It’s the longest three minutes of his life, but then Batman is there, looming over them both. People across the street are staring—Batman doesn’t show up in daylight as much as Gotham’s other vigilantes do. Robin lurks at his side, normally dark skin pale as he regards Tim with a clenched jaw. For once, the kid has no smart-ass comments.

Instead, he moves forward and makes a gesture as if he intends to take Tim’s weight from Jason, who shakes his head sharply.

“I’ve got him,” he snaps. “If we move him more than we need to he could bleed out. Go check those rooftops across the street. Look for evidence of a sniper, any clue about what fucker did this.”

For a wonder, Robin doesn’t even argue; he’s gone between one blink and the next.

“The ambulance will be here in another minute, and Dr. Thompkins is on the way to Gotham General,” Batman says. Of course; brain injury is more than she can handle in her clinic. “What. Happened.”

“High-velocity bullet entered from the back of the head,” Jason says, automatically switching into report mode. “Based on the angle it was—”

“That’s not what I meant. What were you doing here?”

It’s not a question, and the tone is almost accusing; Jason recoils as if slapped. Only practice keeps his hands immobile on Tim’s wound.

“This is my fucking neighborhood!”

“And normally you avoid Tim. What were you doing with him?”

“Exactly what are you implying?”

There’s no answer as the ambulance arrives, two technicians jumping out and hurrying over to Tim. Another unloads a stretcher and gear, which they start to set up. Batman vanishes and Jason focusses all his attention on whatever the techs are telling him as they work on Tim.

He’s not sure how long it is before they finally lift Tim out of his arms. Suddenly Dick is there, dressed in colorful tropical clothing too ridiculous for February, bare arms and legs chapped from what appears to have been a frantic ride on a motorcycle.

“I thought you were in Hawaii,” he thinks he says; thankfully, Dick isn’t paying attention.

“Tim? Oh my God, Tim! What happened?!”

“Sniper,” Jason says as the paramedics hurry the still form of the youngest former Robin into the back of the ambulance.

“I’m coming with him,” Dick announces, already climbing into the vehicle with the techs.

“Sir, you can’t—”

“I’m his brother, and I’m a cop,” he snaps. “And if none of that matters to you, my father’s fucking Bruce Wayne. You’ll never work again if you don’t get my little brother to the hospital now!”

The doors slam shut, and the ambulance tears around the corner. Jason remains standing in the middle of the street, blood still soaking his clothing as the crowd of onlookers grows.

“What about you?” a voice asks, and Jason jumps when he notices that Robin has returned.

“Did you find anything?” he responds, ignoring the question.

“Nothing.”

“What?” Jason snaps, glowering down at the thirteen-year-old. “That’s not possible.”

No sign of a sniper my ass. There must be something. Even fucking Deadshot leaves evidence.

“I know how to survey a scene, Todd, and there was nothing—where are you going?”

“Somewhere I can make a damn difference,” Jason retorts, already stalking away.

“I’m coming with—”

“Batman needs you more than I do, kid.”

He doesn’t wait to see if Damian listens, too intent on running far and as fast as he can. He won’t wait around to answer questions from the cops, could still be a target—

How the fuck did I become a target, to begin with? How did they figure me out?

He heads for Byron Avenue, keeping close to the buildings and out of open space that might prompt another attack, then ducks into the subway station. Besides his safe houses, he has several caches all around the city with spare gear and basic medical kits.

After double and triple-checking that he isn’t being followed, he heads for a storm drain where he’s stashed a waterproof bag with everything he needs. There he changes into his helmet and gear, leaving the blood-soaked hoodie and jeans behind.

Returning to the scene of the shooting, Jason makes his own investigation of the rooftops. The building he thinks was the sniper’s nest provides an excellent vantage point. Down on the pavement, he can see the drying puddle of Tim’s blood—but it’s as Damian said. There is no sign of a shooter—no footprints, hair, bullet casings.

So, whoever this is got wise since the last time, or…

His thoughts stutter, interrupted by the memory of Tim’s wide-eyed stare and he swears.

That’s not going to help find the fucker who did this.

He refocuses, tries to put himself in the sniper’s position. What would he do once he didn’t hit his target?

Honestly, he’d have kept shooting, so why didn’t this guy? Unless Tim was the target—which is possible, but unlikely. Red Hood’s the one that’s had some kind of silent war declared on him. The last time Jason checked the only major grudge against Red Robin from someone who knows his identity was Ra’s al-Ghul.

And he has a gigantic, creepy crush of Tim’s brain, so probably not going to risk breaking it.

Jason’s thinking in circles now and it makes him want to punch something—so he does. The wall doesn’t give, and he’s sure he sprained one of his knuckles, but the pain focuses him.

“He’s gonna be okay.”

Jason jerks around, hand flying to his hip holster as Signal appears beside him. “Christ, kid, don’t sneak up on me today.”

“O says he’s in surgery,” Duke goes on as if he didn’t almost get shot. “They had him in the operating room within fifteen minutes of him getting shot. You did a good job of keeping him stable.”

“If I’d been doing a good job, I’d have noticed some asshole taking a shot at us,” Jason growls. A moment later it dawns on him why Signal is here. “Did he send you to read the area?”

Duke nods and surveys the rooftop. “This the place?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty damn,” Jason replies. “A bullet’s trajectory doesn’t lie.”

“Point.”

“So what can you see?”

“Gimme a minute, it’s not like a switch I can just flip,” Duke retorts. He takes a few steps toward the edge of the building and stands still for a moment. Jason recognizes his posture as one of the standing meditative stances Bruce uses.

It’s several long minutes, where the only change is Duke’s breathing becoming a little more labored and his shoulders tensing a bit.

“Okay, I think…I think I got something,” he says, cocking to his head to one side as if he’s listening to something Jason can’t hear. “Yeah, there was definitely someone here—set the gun up here—” He waves a hand over the edge without touching it. “—but that’s it.”

“What.” Jason narrows his eyes.

Duke’s shoulders relax as if in defeat. “Exactly what it sounds like. I can’t tell anything, man.”

His frustration matches Jason’s. “You just said you saw someone.”

“I did. But whoever they are, they’re dressed all in black, wearing a balaclava and visor. Average height, average build—I guess more on the athletic side? I can’t even tell if they’re male or female. Could be government, could be a new mask, could be ninjas for all I know.”

“In my experience, ninja favor swords and shuriken instead of high-caliber sniper rifles.”

“Hah.” Duke pauses, and when Jason remains silent, tilts his head to one said. “Wait. You’re not kidding.”

Jason doesn’t answer, instead takes out his grapple gun and shoots a line to rappel down the side of the building.

“You’re welcome,” he hears Duke mutter behind him.

Jason needs information, and none of his people are talking to him right now. He could contact Oracle, but—no, probably with the Family right now, if Dick’s here already.

But she’s also protective as hell, so she’ll be working this even if she’s in waiting to find out if Tim’s…

Jason’s brain stalls again, the image of Tim in his arms, the stickiness of the blood, expression resigned after what Jason says—

Against his will, against his attempts to keep busy, his brain seems keen to remind him that his soulmate was just shot in front of him. That he very well might die—could be dead already.

“Yeah, well, my life would have been a lot easier if you didn’t exist!”

Suddenly it’s of dire importance that he finds out how Tim’s doing.

Gambling on Dick’s presence signifying a fortuitous early return of the honeymooners, he flicks through the channels on his comm until it gets to Oracle’s frequency.

“Is he…?”

“Are you coming to the hospital?” she interrupts, her regular voice sharp in his ear.

“Don’t think I’d be very welcome there.”

“B isn’t here. He’s been doing the same thing as you. It’s why he sent Signal your way while he tracks down possible witnesses.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? That’s his kid in there!”

“When have you ever known him to sit around and wring his hands when something like this happens?” 

Jason growls at that.

“Listen, I get why you might not want to come. But you should. It would make Dick feel better at least. He’s a wreck and needs his siblings right now.”

“Cass and the brat aren’t there already?”

“They are. But you’re his brother too.”

He snorts.

“Don’t give me that. He is. And Tim is too.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, why do you have to be so difficult!” Barbara snaps. “Pull your head out of your ass for once in your life and be here for your family. Gotham General, Room 1602. If you don’t show up at least once, I’ll load viruses in all of your tech for the next year.”

There’s a definitive click that closes the conversation.

Jason scowls into the distance.

She would, too.

Another ten minutes of debating with himself, and he heads toward the hospital.

⁂

Jason can’t bring himself to enter the hospital, to sit around with the rest of the Family and pretend that he’s one of them. Not with Bruce’s cold question ringing in his ears.

“What were you doing?”

Still, he brings up the floor plans to the building on the screen in his helmet, uses it to pinpoint where Tim is. He climbs the nearest fire escape and fixes a grapnel to the window outside the conference room that has become an impromptu private waiting room for the Wayne family.

They’re all there, talking in hushed voices like it’s already Tim’s funeral. The undercurrent of tension and fear is so tangible it permeates the walls of the building. It sounds like even Bruce is there now, and Jason wonders if Barbara threatened him, too.

Jason’s got his microphones tuned into the sound inside and can hear every whisper. None of it is relevant to Tim’s condition, so he ignores most of it.

“Okay, you harpy, I’m here,” he mutters into his comm, digging with his free hand into his pocket for. “But I ain’t comin’ in, so don’t push it.”

The words it’s a start flash across his screen, and he rolls his eyes as he fits the cigarette to his lips.

Jason stays there for what seems like hours, hanging along the wall like a living shadow and smoking like a chimney. When his hand is empty, he’s not staring at it, watching his soulmark as it fades in and out of existence. He’s never focused so much on the eddying patterns of color before, or what they mean.

He’s also not sure if he’s relieved or terrified to realize he has a more accurate idea of Tim’s condition than the Family waiting on updates.

It feels like forever before there’s movement inside, bodies jumping to standing, and the sound of a door opening. Jason presses closer to the window, his entire body rigid in anticipation. It’s Doc Thompkins greeting them.

Instantly, everyone is clamoring around her.

“Is he okay?”

“How much longer will the surgery take?”

“Will he be alright—”

“He will be out of surgery soon,” Thompkins says, cutting everyone’s questions. “And as of right now, his odds are as good as they can be.”

There’s a collective sigh of relief; Blondie gives a half-sob and Alfred murmurs a prayer of gratitude under his breath. Something in Jason’s chest, which he hadn’t noticed has been clenched since he processed the fact that Tim was shot, loosens.

“The bullet went through clean,” Thompkins continues, “and it didn’t stay in the brain, which has kept the damage minimal. From what Tim’s neurosurgeon Dr. Scherr described, it entered from the back and exited the front, traveling the length of the left hemisphere. He’s still extracting the skull fragments from the brain matter and dealing with the other injuries to his head, but otherwise, Tim should be out of surgery soon.”

Dick makes a choked noise, and Bruce begins, “The team working on him—”

“Have all been vetted,” Thompkins assures him. “I have complete trust in their discretion. And I will continue to monitor him myself once I finish updating you.”

A collective wave of relief settles across the room.

“He’s not out of the woods yet,” Thompkins warns. “The surgeon had to remove part of his skull to allow for swelling without compression. It will need to remain open for a while. They’ll keep him in an induced coma for some time to allow his brain to rest.”

“How long will that be?” Blondie asks.

“They won’t replace the piece of the skull until they’re sure there are no bacteria from the bullet remaining, which could be awhile. As for the coma, that will depend on him. It will last as long as it needs to last.”

“But he’s…he’ll live?” Dick asks.

“That remains to be seen,” the woman sighs. “A person’s chances of survival depend on the areas of the brain that struck, the velocity of the bullet, whether the bullet exits the brain.” Jason hears a shift of clothing, no doubt something like a shrug. “I can say this, it’s a good thing it passed only through the left hemisphere; if it had been both, the damage would be worse, if not fatal.”

“I don’t understand,” Cass says. “He is…okay. But not.”

“The brain can sometimes tolerate losing one half,” Bruce explains to her, though his voice does not sound as optimistic as that news might call for. “Sometimes.”

“The bullet didn’t touch the brain stem or the thalamus and missed the major blood vessels, the ventricles…that’s good news,” Thompkins says. “As for the bad news…”

“The left side of the brain controls language and speech.”

“Exactly. So, in the coming days, he’ll be under observation and when he wakes up, we’ll see if he’s able to process anything.” Thompkins sighs. “I won’t lie to you. His recovery process will be a long one.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time for one of us,” Dick says, trying to sound hopeful.

“When can we see him?” Blondie wants to know.

“As requested, a private room is being set up for him. Once he’s brought in, you can go see him one at a time. He won’t be awake for a while, though.”

It’s as promising a prognosis as it can be, and Jason decides that the kid’s in good hands. He’s met Barbara’s ultimatum, and he’s assuaged any minor concern he might have about Tim. There’s nothing else for him to do here.

Jason turns away from the window and releases the grip on his grapple to allow him to rappel down the wall.

Back to the drawing board, he decides. Maybe if he looks at the scene from a different vantage point, he’ll get some inspiration. Track down any witnesses and if Batman hasn’t scared the piss out of them yet, ask his own questions.

It’s time to put the fear of Red Hood back into the hearts of the criminal underworld.

⁂

Two weeks later, as Jason numbly stares up at the fiery remnants of his last safe house in Gotham, he realizes it might be time to go underground.

Every day since Tim’s shooting, it’s been another attack on him, either with his boltholes' destruction or the people on his payroll turning on him. The word is out that he’s got a price in his head, and everyone’s trying to collect.

The smart thing would be to leave Gotham for a bit, regroup and plan his bloody answer for his latest challenger in the shadows. But Jason’s always had a stubborn streak. If a soulmate crisis can’t keep him out of his city, some upstart trying to take over the Gotham underworld won’t do it either.

But until he can get a better understanding of what’s going on, he’s putting more and more people in danger. Two of the working girls were attacked since the first safe house was bombed. And there’s that horrible, needling sense that what happened to Tim was because of Jason that won’t go away.

No one’s going to work with Red Hood right now, and it’s too dangerous to start asking questions outside of the mask. Especially if someone has a vague description of him in mind.

But he has a plan.

Unfortunately, the plan requires Red Hood to die for a little while.

It’s easy to find a body to stick in the ruins of his safe house. He’s got an in at the morgue and his pick of John Does for the right price—someone of his height and build. The most difficult bit is transporting the body and wrestling it into his spare gear and a helmet.

And then he disappears; grabs a go-bag from another cache (those haven’t been found, which is at least one thing going right), sneaks through sewers and backstreets to avoid being followed. He’s been switching motels every day—sometimes twice a day—and paying in cash, so if anyone’s watching his online presence they can’t track him that way.

A trip to an outlet mall in Otisburg provides him a new wardrobe (one that more closely resembles something Bruce might wear, albeit at a lower price and quality). After the last stop in a pharmacy, he’s got everything he needs to bleach his hair and tint it closer to his natural shade; he’s stopped shaving, so the stubble will eventually grow in a matching color. Finally, he takes a page out of Superman’s book and adds a thick-rimmed pair of glasses.

He frowns at himself in the cheap mirror of his temporary room, unable to see anything of himself in the reflection.

I look like a douchebag grad student.

It’s time to begin the next part of his plan, but he finds himself hesitating. His eyes stray to the mark on his hand, which he’s looked at more in the past two weeks than every year since it appeared on his skin.

Tim’s still alive, but there hasn’t been any news on that front. Nothing mentioned in the news beyond replays of someone’s shoddy cellphone recording the shooting. He’s looked that footage over from every angle, hoping to find a clue in it as to the identity of the shooter, but there’s nothing to find.

He hasn’t run into another cape for two weeks now. Though he’s heard snatches of conversation on the comms suggesting they’re still around, he suspects it’s not in full force. If things are dire, that would explain the lack of vigilante activity in the city right now.

Jason sits on the decision for another two hours before deciding to bite the bullet and head to the hospital. He should at least check in once more before going into hiding.

(Not because he’s worried about Tim beyond the cursory sense of not wanting him to be dead.)

Alfred is the first to see him as he ambles through the door, eyes widening imperceptibly. “Master Jason.”

The words cause an immediate reaction. He didn’t tell anyone he was coming, figuring they’d tell him not to bother or call security on him. As such, the sudden rise in tension as he shuffles into the room is understandable.

Steph sits bolt upright from where she was lying head in Cass’s lap, and Babs mouth draws into a thin line, though she gives him a nod. Duke pushes off from the nearby wall, uncrosses his arms like he’s ready to throw down if something goes wrong. Dick, though, seems lost, stumbling from his chair and over to Jason, looking torn between hugging him or shaking him.

Bruce and Damian are nowhere in sight, for which he is both grateful and a bit resentful.

There’s no way they went on patrol tonight, is there?

And then there’s Tim. Lying in the hospital bed, bandaged and bundled into something like a hockey helmet, his usually pale skin impossibly white. Jason can see the veins beneath it even from this distance. He looks so much smaller and weaker than Jason remembers him being.

He has the bizarre urge to check his pulse again, just to feel it beating, even as the monitor he’s hooked up to beeps out a steady rhythm.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Steph demands though Cass reaches out to squeeze her hand. She shakes her head at her soulmate and then looks up at Jason with a small, encouraging smile.

“He is here. For Tim.”

There’s a sharp stab of fear just then, that Cass might know. That any or all of them might, but like Tim, just never mentioned it. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for the Bats to keep something from him to protect one of their own.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

He shifts his weight, ready to step back into the hallway, but Dick seems to come to a decision then. He envelops Jason in a sudden hug which makes him tense up and clench his fists so he doesn’t reflexively punch him.

“Thank you,” Dick breaths, pressing his head against Jason’s shoulder. “You kept him alive. If it weren’t for you…”

“Don’t go thanking me yet,” Jason dismisses, pulling away. “He’s still in a fuckin’ coma.”

“But he could be dead,” Dick says, not seeming bothered by Jason’s rejection. “You saved him.”

Or got him shot in the first place.

As inaccurate as Dick’s sentiments might be, they do the job of diffusing the tension; everyone relaxes, and Alfred gets up from his chair to greet Jason. He doesn’t hug him, but in an uncharacteristic touchiness, squeezes his shoulder.

“I can only echo Master Richard’s sentiments,” he says, and then considers Jason. His mouth quirks in a smile at his hair. “And that is a look I have not seen in many years.”

It takes a moment before Jason understands, and then he shifts in something like embarrassment. “Yeah, well, it’s only temporary.”

“A shame. Do you know how many chemicals and carcinogens are in those awful dyes you continue to use?”

“I think at this point, cancer is the last thing that’s going to kill me,” Jason replies dryly.

“Should have known he was a ginger,” Steph mutters not quite under her breath. “It’s the lack of soul that should have given it away.”

“Want to run that one by me again?” Barbara asks lightly, but there’s a dangerous glint in her eyes.

“I already know you don’t have a soul, boss lady,” Steph replies. “Not with how many times you’ve sent me into Gotham’s sewers. You’re Beelzebub as far as I’m concerned.”

“Steph, knock it off,” Dick says.

“I’m just saying, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I mean, he was dead, who knows what kind of Hell STD he might have picked up.”

“He’s here to check on Tim, not pick a fight.”

“I don’t know, I could probably use one,” Jason replies thoughtfully.

Steph bares her teeth. “Me too.”

“You will do no such thing. Either of you,” Alfred pronounces, in the voice that even Batman doesn’t argue with. “Master Richard, perhaps you might update our new arrival as to Master Timothy’s condition? If only to stave off any further bloodshed?”

Jason and Steph both slump, chastised, but Dick is already nodding.

“The first two or three days were hard,” he says, motioning for Jason to come further into the room. “They woke him every few hours to check for responsiveness, and he was able to make some noise, which the neurologist said was a good sign. But then the third day the swelling got really bad. They were worried they’d have to go for another surgery to relieve the pressure, but it went down on its own.” 

“The neurosurgeon says we won’t know if that caused any other damage until he fully wakes up,” Barbara adds.

“The next day they reduced to sedation to see if he could breathe on his own, which he could,” Dick goes on. “They had to put him back on at the time, but Leslie says the fact he had the ability so early in the healing process is a good sign.”

“Then the day after, when they changed his bandages, he opened his eyes.”

“Was he okay?” Jason asks before he can stop himself, eyes flitting to Tim and back.

Dick shakes his head sadly. “He couldn’t see anything. The doctors tested that first thing, and nothing. He was trying to speak, though, and kept choking around the tube in his throat. They had to put him under again.”

“Shit.”

“That was last Tuesday. Friday they decided to check his breathing again, and that time they brought him in for a tracheotomy to give him a smaller ventilator tube. They want him to get used to breathing on his own again, slowly. Then on Sunday, they fixed the damage around his eye-socket.”

“As much as they could, I guess,” Steph adds with a sigh, settling back against Cass. “He’s going to have a scar there even if he gets reconstructive surgery.”

“Luckily we have no need to create a cover story for that scenario,” Alfred says. “The press has been airing the news about the shooting for two weeks now.”

“He has been shot. Twice. In the last year,” Cass points out. “Big news for them.”

“I think Vicki Vale might actually be crouched in a corner somewhere in the hospital live-tweeting the whole thing,” Steph complains.

“She is not,” Alfred snorts. “Master Bruce gave explicit orders that the hospital would be losing significant financial contribution if his family’s privacy was not prioritized at this time.”

“Must be nice to own the world, huh?”

“They downgraded his condition from critical to serious this Tuesday. We’ve all just been hanging out here in case he wakes up,” Dick concludes, and he seems exhausted after going through all of that.

“No one’s out there?” Jason asks, jerking his head toward the city beyond Tim’s room window.

“Everyone takes shifts. B and R were on tonight, but they should be back soo—”

“What is this?”

Everyone turns to face Bruce, who looms in the doorway, brows drawing downward; there’s some swelling in his jaw that even make-up can’t quite cover, no doubt a souvenir from tonight’s patrol. Behind him is a petite nurse and Damian, who peeks around his father’s bulk and imitates his scowl.

“Todd. What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Wayne, is there a problem?” the nurse considers the sudden tension in the room, and then frowns at Jason. “Young man, only family should be in here right now.”

“I was just leaving,” Jason says. It’s easier to run than to explain that, technically, he’s family, even if Jason Todd Wayne has been dead for years. He doesn’t belong here anyhow.

But then Dick, the fucker, opens his goddamn mouth.

“He is family,” he insists, shooting Bruce a warning look. “J—Todd lives with Tim. It’s not exactly a matter of public record, though, so we’d appreciate your discretion.”

The nurse blinks and then understanding passes across her face. “I apologize, I didn’t know you were partners. I’ve never seen you here in the past two weeks.”

There’s a note of reproach there.

Jason almost swallows his tongue at the implication, wanting to deny it immediately, but the look on her face is full-on judgment. And he kind of wants to put her in her place.

“Stationed in Syria. Manbij,” he tells her with a glare. “Only just got approved for leave.”

As expected, she flinches. “Oh. I see. Well, thank you for your service.”

And she makes herself scarce as if worried she’s going to put her foot in it again.

Damian snorts, unimpressed. “Really, Todd? Impersonating a veteran?”

“Fuck you, we’re all veterans in one way or another.”

“Language,” Alfred reminds, and motions them all inside, “And if we might take this discussion away from prying ears?”

Bruce lets himself be guided in, still watching Jason with the air of someone waiting for a bomb to go off. Jason shoots Dick a glare. “You couldn’t have come up with a better story?”

“It’s more believable than you being Bruce’s dead adopted son that got resurrected in a pit of green goo. Or were you hoping to make an Oliver Queen style comeback?”

Jason has nothing to say to that, but eventually manages an uncomfortable, “Point.”

“Mazel tov.”

And there’s a shadow of a grin there, an attempt at humor in the face of the dark situation they’ve all found themselves in.

Though he probably wouldn’t find it as funny if he knew the truth.

“Isn’t there something you want to say to Jason, Bruce?” Barbara prompts, tone hard.

There’s a pause, and then the older man’s frown eases the slightest bit.

“The life-saving measures you employed were integral to Tim’s survival.” His shoulders lose some of their tension, then. “Thank you, Jay.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to acknowledge it, to say ‘you’re welcome’, and accept the praise. But the idea he might be responsible for Tim even being here keeps him from getting the words past his lips.

“I need a cigarette,” he says, and heads for the door.

“Wait, Jason, you don’t have to—” Dick begins.

“Cool your jets, Dickhead, I’m coming back,” he mutters. “I just need some air.”

“You know you just completely contradicted yourself, right?” Damian points out.

“You’re staying?” Dick asks, hopeful.

Jason has been lying, but there’s something desperate on Dick’s face. He remembers what Barbara said, about Dick needing his siblings right now. And the last time he outright rejected someone they ended up getting shot.

His eyes flick back to Tim, the image of blood and wide blue eyes flashing in his mind.

“Yeah,” he sighs and mentally postpones his plans. “Yeah, I guess so.”

⁂

It’s two more days of waiting before Tim wakes up.

Early Saturday morning, Dr. Scherr and Dr. Thompkins announce that his condition has once more been updated, from serious to good. It’s decided to wake him up to check his functionality.

The private room is big enough to accommodate everyone, but they hang back quietly against the wall as the doctors go about bringing him out of the coma. Bruce parks himself beside Tim’s bedside, holding his hand, while Alfred takes up space behind him as the nurse injects something into Tim’s IV.

It feels almost like everyone is holding their breath waiting for him to regain consciousness.

There are several minutes of silence before the eye that isn’t bandaged flutters and droops open. The blue is dulled by the medication, but the shade is exactly the one that’s been haunting Jason’s thoughts since the shooting.

“Good morning, Timothy,” Dr. Scherr says with a small smile. “You’ve been asleep for a while. Can you understand me?”

Tim groans.

“No, don’t try to speak. You have a tube right now that’s been helping you breathe. We’re going to take it out, in a moment. But for now, just blink once for ‘yes’, two for ‘no’. Understand?”

Tim’s eye droops closed and then slowly opens again.

“That’s great,” Scherr says, and then turns to Bruce. “He has some comprehension. This is an excellent sign.”

Bruce leans forward. “It’s good to see you awake, Tim. We’ve all been very worried.”

Tim’s brow wrinkles as he stares at Bruce, eye blank, and he squints into the distance at the group of people gathered in chairs along the wall.

“Do you remember what happened to you?” Dr. Thompkins prompts, drawing Tim’s attention to her. It’s a slow process, and she has to repeat the question once he focuses on her again.

Two agonizingly slow blinks.

Thompkins and Scherr look concerned, but continue on, asking a series of simple questions and asking if he can move certain parts of his body. There is an astounding number of negative responses that have them exchanging grim looks with Bruce.

“Tim, do you know who we are?” Bruce says at last, wary.

He receives a pained look in response like Tim is trying his best to recall, but the information isn’t there. At last, he blinks twice.

Alfred makes a sound like he’s been punched, Bruce’s expression darkens, and the others give varied noises of dismay.

He doesn’t remember anyone. Fuck, that’s not good.

Worse, Tim appears aware of this failing. The monitor on his heart is beginning to speed up, and his breathing becomes choked.

“What’s going on?” Dick asks, voice strained.

“Tim? Tim, are you okay?” Steph clamors. “Can we get you anything?”

“He has a tube down his throat, Brown, you really think he’s going to answer you?”

“Shut up, gremlin, it’s the thought that counts!”

“Perhaps you should all take a step back,” Thompkins suggests. “This is stressful enough for him.”

“He doesn’t recognize us,” Bruce states, having caught the same thing Jason did. “I want to see the chart. Exactly what parts of the brain were compromised?”

“This isn’t your company, Bruce, you can’t order people around, I don’t care how much money—”

“Would you guys knock it off?” Jason speaks up in irritation, taking a few steps forward. “You’re freakin’ him out.”

Tim’s good eye darts in the direction of Jason, and there’s a moment of non-recognition that hits him a little harder than he would have thought. Then Tim frowns, attention going to his right hand, where the fingers have begun to twitch.

And in front of everyone, his wrist suddenly explodes with swirling blooms of red and gold knotwork. The colors travel along his forearm and almost all the way up to his shoulder and beneath the cotton of his hospital gown.

Jason experiences the corresponding heat in his left as his own mark reacts and shoves his hand in his pocket, hoping no one notices.

No such luck.

While everyone else is focussed on Tim, the bedridden young man is zeroed in on Jason. His drugged gaze seemingly instantly drawn to the color, something like recognition flickers within his eyes. When he looks at Jason again, there’s an unmistakable glimmer of hope. His mouth parts, like he wants to speak. He can’t quite shape the words, though, beyond a raspy moan at the back of his throat.

It’s clear, though, what he’s trying to say, and everyone is now glancing from Tim to Jason in confusion. Except for Bruce, whose face is awash with conflicting emotions: shock, dismay, and concern.

Of course, he saw it.

“Is this true?” he asks Jason, eyes piercing.

“Is what true?” Dick wants to know; he’s confused and worried, and there’s a hint of protective anger there.

Everyone is staring at him now. Jason can’t help the sudden swell of panic, imitating a deer in the headlights as everyone in the family is suddenly laser-focused on him.

He could lie.

His mark is still covered, Tim’s the only one who saw it in full, Bruce is only guessing. Jason could deny it and back out of the room and not come back. Everyone might be happier if he did that, and it would keep the peace; keep them off his back about it.

But Tim looks so small and lost there, unable to recognize anyone there. Right now, he’s completely alone but for Jason.

And isn’t that fucked up?

He squares his shoulders, deciding that he’s gotten used to doling out the blunt honesty by now, hang the consequences. And for everything else’s he done, lying outright about being Tim’s soulmate is very different from pretending not to know. It’s wrong somehow, in the same way selling drugs to kids is wrong.

“Yeah,” he says, though the word cracks in his throat and he has to clear it, say it louder, “Yeah, I am.”

“Bullshit,” Steph says automatically, disbelief and anger evident in the snap of her eyes.

“Miss Stephanie Alfred chides, but it sounds vague, like a reflex instead of actual admonition.

And it’s that more than anything that gets Jason tugging off his glove and rolling up his sleeve. Everyone else can look at him however they want, but he doesn’t want Alfred to think he’s the type of person to joke or lie about this. 

There are murmurs from all around as everyone watches his mark blossom across his exposed skin, moving in the same manner as Tim’s—reaching out for its mate.

Tim’s mouth twitches, like he’s trying to smile, but can’t quite manage it. Then his eyes blink a few times, slowing, before closing completely.

“What’s happening?” Jason demands. Did he do something to mess him up again?

“It’s alright,” Thompkins says. “It’s a lot of energy for him to expend, even for short times, and the sedatives are still in his system. He’ll wake up sporadically until he kicks them.

“…Right.”

“Can we come back to the fact that Todd’s his soulmate?” Damian points out. “I think that’s more of a cause for concern.”

“I can’t believe it. You’re actually…” Dick falters, looking like he’s trying to reconcile bits of knowledge together like pieces of two different puzzles.

“I don’t understand,” the nurse says, having watched the exchange from her spot beside Tim’s IV stand. “You implied before that they lived together—how could you not know?”

“They just started seeing each other,” Barbara speaks up from her corner, only the tiniest hesitation before the lie. “I guess they didn’t want to tell us yet. I mean, Bruce and…Todd don’t get along.”

“Well, you had better get over that quickly,” the nurse states, frowning at Bruce. “Because as now, that young man has more right to be here than any of you.” She turns to face Jason. “Timothy’s under a lot of stress right now, you don’t want him picking up on yours too. You want anyone here gone, I’ll get them out of here.”

Jason can’t hold back the choked laughter at the idea of the four-foot-nothing nurse looking at Bruce like she’ll kneecap him if he questions her.

And wouldn’t that be a trip? Insisting everyone leave because by some ridiculous twist of fate he’s connected to Tim more than anyone else is? Normally, he’d get a kick out of the power he’s suddenly got.

Today, it feels hollow.

“No. No, they stay,” he says after a breath. “They’re his family.”

Another almost unnoticeable release of tension in the room, like they all expected him to kick them out after all.

I’m not that much of an asshole.

The nurse nods, eyes softening in something like respect or approval, and turns to leave. “Well, if there’s anything, you call me. Just ask for Judy”

When she’s gone, Jason forces him to look up at Bruce at last. The man’s expression is dark, looking more like Batman than Bruce Wayne, and it’s directed at him.

Should have taken my chance on the streets…

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

This blog isn’t my primary, so my reblogs don’t show up very well. As such, please reblog the fic, otherwise not a lot of people are going to see it :)

<3 Violet

[themadlostgirl]

NDY AU (7)

*One more part after this and then the AU mini fic is done!*

Pairing: Reader x Peter Pan

Warnings: language, brief assault

It was about two weeks of preparing and Peter fixing up his old truck before we were ready to go. At school Peter and I agreed to meet at the town border. I’d get on ahead and then he’d come by with the truck and we would be out of this town. So that night I double checked my bag, put a goodbye note on my dresser for mom and dad, and snuck out of the house.

I walked through the town towards the border. I was pretty nervous but excited that we were really doing this. I got to the town line where a sign bidding you farewell to Storybrooke sat and waited for Peter to show up.

After waiting fifteen minutes I texted him if he was going to be here soon.

No reply.

Half an hour and I tried a couple more texts.

No reply.

After an hour I had called him twice.

Straight to voicemail.

I sat and waited on the cold pavement calling and texting but he never answered. When I saw the sun start to peek through the trees, my eyes too heavy to cry, I shuffled back to my house.

Peter never showed.

I kept calling and texting Peter trying to figure out why he never showed up. He never answered though. I figured I could finally corner him at school but he didn’t show up there either. He had disappeared completely.

After a week of radio silence I started to worry. There was no reason that Peter would ignore me like this. Something must have happened to him. It was the only explanation. It had to be.

After school one day I went around town looking for him. I stopped in every shop and restaurant, I walked along the beach, old abandoned buildings, I hiked through as much of the forest as I could, stopped by the trailer but he wasn’t there. Where on earth could he be?

The only other place I could think he could be would be at his house. My stomach churned at the thought of having to go back there. But if something was wrong, if Peter’s dad hurt him...oh god. What if that was it? What if his dad hurt him? What if he found out about us running away together and did something horrible to Peter?

I was tired and it was getting dark out but I couldn’t rest now. I forced my legs to run as I raced to Peter’s house. I was lungs burned and my legs ached as I climbed the rotted porch stairs.

“Peter!” I pounded on the door, “Peter!”

The door opened but it wasn’t Peter. “What the fuck do you want?” His dad slurred. The smell of booze made my eyes water.

“Is Peter here?”

“That little shit hasn’t been home all day.” he grumbled, “Now fuck off.”

“Damn it,” I leaned against the porch bannister. He has to be here.

An idea popped into my head. I didn’t like it but if Peter was in there and couldn’t get out because of this asshole then I owed it to him to try. I took a deep breath and forced my way into the house pushing past Peter’s dad.

“Peter!” I yelled as I made break for the stairs.

“Hey!” his dad stormed after me and grabbed my arm, “Who the fuck...oh wait a second...”

“Let go of me!” I tried to pull away but he only held me tighter.

“You’re Pete’s whore...” he pulled me closer, “The pretty one that smells nice…”

“Let me go!” I kicked at him but he wasn’t fazed.

“C’mere girl,” he started to drag me away from the stairs and towards the living room. The old TV was playing some old western movie, beer bottles and cigarette butts littered any and all nearby surfaces. “If you’re gonna spread your legs for someone you might as well do it for a real man.”

“NO!” I screamed. I tripled my efforts punching, kicking, scratching, anything I could do to try and get free. “Let me go!”

My vision went red and I was able to kick him hard enough to get some distance between us. I grabbed a beer bottle off one of the tables and swung it at his head. He caught my wrist wrenching it painfully making me drop the bottle.

“Fucking bitch!” He shoved me and I flew back against the wall, my head banging off the paneling with a loud thud. The impact made my head throb and tears started to leak from my eyes. “Not so fierce now are you…” his dad whispered against my ear.

“No...please no…” I pleaded. His grubby hands running along my sides made me feel like I would never be clean again. I wanted to shove him away, fight, do something but the pain in my head only increased when I tried to move.

“HEY!” He was yanked off me and I dropped to the ground. I looked up just in time to see Peter’s dad go spiraling down to the ground. Behind him was Peter holding a plank of wood and murder in his eyes.

“Peter…” I started crying again but this time it was tears of joy.

“I got you, pet,” He pulled me up off the ground, “Are you hurt? What did he do?”

“Shoved me into a wall...hit my head…” the room was still spinning, “It hurts…”

“It’s okay now,” he hugged me, “I’ll protect you.”

There was a small grunt from the ground and Peter turned his attention to the blob of human excrement crouched on the floor. “The fuck…” he looked at us, “You fucking--”

CRACK!

Peter nailed him again with the plank of wood. “No!” Peter shouted, “You do not look at her! You do not touch her! You don’t even think about her again you bastard!”

CRACK!

“I’ll fucking kill you, old man! I’ll kill you if I see you anywhere near her ever again!”

“Peter--”

CRACK!

“You stay away from her!”

“Peter…” I squeezed his arm, “Please, I want out of here.”

“Right, sorry,” he dropped the plank and guided me out of the house. We went back down the driveway. We stopped at the intersection and he pulled me into him hugging me tightly. “Are you alright? How’s your head?”

“Still hurts.”

“Feeling nauseous? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“No. Three fingers.” I leaned my body further into him, “Kinda dizzy though.”

“Should get you to the hospital and make sure you don’t have a concussion. I told you never to come back here. Now look what’s happened.” He started shuffling down the road but I refused to budge. “Y/N? Pet, we need to get you to the hospital.”

“Where were you?” Rage, relief, betrayal, and guilt battled in my mind. “Why didn’t you come to the town line? I waited there for hours.”

He looked away from me unable to meet my eyes. I pounded on his chest as if that would make me feel better. “Why weren’t you there! Why’d you disappear! You don’t answer my calls. You stopped coming to school. I was worried out of my mind that something terrible might have happened to you.”

“Pet, please,” he grabbed my arms, “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“No! I want to know why you left!” My dizziness was getting worse but I didn’t care. I wanted answers. “Why, Peter? I thought--I thought--”

“I’m sorry,” He wiped the tears from my cheeks, “I am so sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean for all this to happen.”

“Peter…”

“I was going to go. I was packed, I had the keys to the truck, I was all ready to ditch this town with you. Then I ran into your dad. He told me that he knew we were planning to run away together that night. He convinced me that I was going to ruin your life if we left together. That you deserved better and he was right. Look what’s happened to you since we started dating. You’re getting in trouble at school, with your family, you almost got raped by my bastard of a dad! None of this is good!”

“I will admit that it has been rough. But it has been so good too. I wouldn’t trade our time together for anything in the world.” I sniffed, “You would?”

“Dammit, Y/N, of course not! You know how much you mean to me but I got scared. I didn’t want the years to go by and for you to realize one day, while we’re living out of some crappy apartment working dead end jobs just to get by, that you didn’t want this life. That I was meant to be a small moment in the whole of your life. Nothing more.”

“Now you listen to me.” I pointed a finger in his face, “That is not your decision to make. Maybe things don’t work out. Maybe this relationship is meant to be touch and go but that’s something we have to figure out together. It can’t just be you deciding I’ll be better off without you and then cutting all connection off with me. All we have is what we want to do right now. Right now all I want is to be with you. If that’s what you want too then what is the problem?”

“You’d still want me? After I tried to cut you out of my life? After everything that’s happened? You still want to be with me?”

“Yes.”

“If your parents find out about us--”

“What are they gonna do? It’s not like it is illegal for us to date. If they don’t like it then that’s there problem. I’m not hiding anymore. They can forbid me, they can ground me, they can threaten me or you all they want but there is nothing they can do to keep us apart if we want to be together.”

“My fearless girl,” he pressed a kiss to my forehead, “You’re great, you know that?”

“Hell yeah I do.” I smirked. “Now let’s get to the freaking hospital. My head is killing me.”

“Sure thing.” he sat me down on the ground, “Stay here for a minute. I’m gonna run back and get the truck. It’s going to take too long on foot.”

Peter took off back down the road. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to walk all the way to the hospital but I wish he didn’t need to leave me alone. Without any distractions the pain was settling over me more solidly. Aside from my head my wrists also hurt from where Peter’s dad grabbed me. The thought of what he would have done made me want to be sick. Or maybe I was actually going to be sick.

The sound of the truck pulling up made me smile. Peter helped me in and we started speeding to the hospital. At some point I had to tell him to pull over so I could puke. It was an old truck and all the bumps from the back road weren’t helping.

Once we got to the hospital they took me back to check my head. Unfortunately they also called my parents. I knew there was no way to avoid it but I still wish I could have faced them about Peter under better circumstances. When they walked in though I reached for Peter’s hand and gripped it tightly.

“You!” Dad growled when he saw Peter, “I told you to stay away from Y/N! Now look at her! In the hospital with a concussion! You get out of here! You leave and if I see you anywhere near her again--”

“Dad, stop!” I snapped at him.

“Sweetheart, don’t over exert yourself.” mom took the place on my other side.

“No! I have to say this.” I took a deep breath and met his steely gaze, “I like Peter. A lot. When I’m with him I am happy. In the few months that we’ve been dating it feels like we’ve known each other for years. I want to be with him and him with me. I know you don’t like him but it won’t stop us from seeing each other. You can ground me, take me out of school, lock me up like I’m freaking Rapunzel but it isn’t going to stop this.”

“Y/N, you’re seriously injured and not thinking clearly.” Dad’s voice was calm but ice cold. I could tell he was trying his best to hold back the hell he wanted to unleash.

“No. I know exactly what I’m doing, dad. I’m not asking you to like him. I’m not asking for you to approve. All I want is for you and mom both to let me have this. I’m not looking for your permission but I don’t want you to impede us seeing one another either.”

“This is insane. You are a child. You know nothing of actual relationships. You’re just dating him to spite us. I would have thought you were better than to have a rebellious phase.”

“Did you not listen to a word I said? I care about Peter! I want to be with him because I like him, I like who I am around him. The whole world gets a little brighter whenever we’re together. My relationship with him has nothing to do with you.”

“If I may interject here a moment,” Peter piped up and I swear the death glare dad sent him could have leveled a city. But still Peter stood tall. “I know how this looks. I know what you think of me. But I really do care about your daughter. She means the world to me and the last thing I would ever want is for her to get hurt. I know I’m not good enough for her but when I see her smile and I know I’m the reason behind it...I start to think that I am. All we want is for you to tolerate our relationship. That is all. Because just like she won’t give up on me neither will I give up on her.”

Dad looked between the two of us before storming out of the hospital room. Mom sighed and ran after him. I pulled Peter down next to me. “That could have gone better.”

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (8)

[cuddleslutloki]

thor/reader prompt: after a car accident, a young man follows a narrow road that winds up the mountain, desperate for shelter. it's a long, slipping, frigid walk, and he's drunk with hypothermia when he stumbles onto a wooden porch, collapsing to his knees and then his side when the heavy front door swings open, and a hulking, bearded man finds him. kneeling by him with a worried frown and touching at his frostbitten cheeks with his knuckles before scooping him up and carrying him to the fire

i got so carried away. thor and trans male reader, afab language & vaginal sex. this is 100% a rough draft, not edited at all, just an exercise in self-indulgence lol

Dad always said to keep a blanket in your car. He always told you to have a nice, heavy blanket just in case you broke down, but did you listen? Of course not.

Road flares and a flash light? Yeah. Salt? Yeah. A tire iron and jumpers? Yeah. A blanket to keep you from actually freezing to death in the middle of fucking February? Well that would just be practical, wouldn’t it? So of course you don’t have one.

No cell reception this far out, of course. It’s been almost fifteen miles since the last town and it’s at least thirty before the next. This is the boonies if you’ve ever seen it. You’re pretty sure you’re the only person on this damned road, even.

Three hours. That’s how long it’s been since you broke down. You’ve counted. You’ve played your games on your phone and wasted an eighth of a tank of gas that you can’t afford to waste keeping yourself warm and your phone charged. At least when your tire blew out it didn’t sent you into a tree, but without a spare you’re fucked. The donut in the trunk is seven years old, so it won’t work. Even if it had air, the rubber is definitely dry-rotted by now. You can’t limp down the mountain on your rim. Forget even just having to buy a new one, if you hit one patch of ice you’ll be dead.

Snow falls heavier and heavier by the second. Do you stay? Do you wait and hope you have enough gas to stay warm? Can you even sleep like this?

You turn your car back on and check the clock. Eleven thirty-seven. Shit. No one’s going to come down the road right now, and if they did who knows what kind of potential serial killer it’ll be. Best case scenario is a truck driver who isn’t behind on their route and could get you to a pilot station down the highway.

You hit seek on your radio until static becomes voice. A nice, perky woman is peeping at you cheerfully like it’s not almost tomorrow.

“We’re heading for a level three snow advisory, folks. Stay inside and off the roads. If you’re out driving you will be subject to a ticket and potentially a fine. The salt trucks and plows won’t be out until tomorrow morning, so get inside and get in quick, this blizzard is set to break records.”

Well. Fuck.

You can limp into the woods, maybe, just roll off into the gravel shoulder so you don’t get buried and knocked off the mountain by a damn snow plow. Your car hates you, you know this, you put it in drive anyway. The rim is scraping the pavement, an awful metallic sound that makes your stomach lurch and your throat tighten, but you didn’t come this far to just turn back around. Going back isn’t an option.

Just a few meters down the road is a wide bit of shoulder, like one of those observation areas back by ocean where people can pull off and take a moment to break up the monotony. Except this one is next to dense, dark mountain forest, and right at the back the trees break apart. There’s a trail illuminated in your headlights, visible between every few seconds as your wipers push fresh snow off your windshield.

You frown as you pull up to it and put your card back in park, leaving it on a moment so the heating can run. The temperature outside is dropping. It’s already well below freezing and the wind is picking up with an ominous howl. Staying in your car isn’t an option either, it seems.

The radio is static again, that sweet spot of reception lost now that you moved fifty feet down the road. You grab your phone and sigh at the little empty triangle mocking you over your lack of signal. Maybe the trail leads to a cabin or a lodge. It’s probably one of those retreats rich people take and this is some back way in for people’s rowdy sons who sneak out of a stuffy dinner.

Can’t be worse than freezing to death in your car. You grab your backpack off the floor of the passenger side and start shoving everything into it. All of the snacks, your waters, even the bottle of whiskey you snagged before you ran out of the house with a screaming voice at your back telling you to stay gone. Gladly.

There’s so little, you realize. Barely anything and you grabbed everything you cared about when you left. Birth certificate, two journals, three little soft-cover books, some old pictures, and a birthday card from grandma. How is there nothing?

You know how. 

You make sure it’s all there, double and triple checking, then you empty the glove box of all of your important documents for the car just in case some maniac steals it in the middle of the snow storm.

The temperature is dropping further. Your clothes aren’t made for this weather. Getting out of the car is the worst idea, you know, but there’s a path. You’ll go a little ways up and if you don’t find anything then you’ll come back.

You cut the engine off and take a breath. This isn’t the end.

The wind rips into you as soon as you open the door. You sling your bag onto your back and stand up, shut the door, lock the car and arm the alarm. Not that it matters, but the habit and that little beep beep is a comfort. It’s normal.

You’re shivering already, you have to move. At least you’re wearing your boots. The few inches of snow that have already fallen crunch beneath your feet as you approach the path. You quickly pull the flashlight out and click it on. The moon is hidden behind heavy clouds and there aren’t any street lights up here. Well, this was why dad put you in boy scouts, right? Not that you made it very far. Kissing the scout master’s son didn’t make a good impression. At least he was cute.

The snow isn’t falling as heavily inside the treeline, even without their leaves the branches of the trees are so thick they shield you. You can follow the path easily. It’s well-worn and defined even when covered with snow. The flakes sparkle where your flashlight hits and you smile to yourself. The forest is pretty right now, and so quiet. This is better than where you were. 

It’s an easy hike at first, especially since you’ve been walking and hiking so much recently, so you barely realize how far you’ve gone until you turn around and notice that your old tracks are being filled in with snow down the way. The storm has picked up and the light from your flashlight doesn’t reach far enough to see if you’re close to your car or not. You know you’re not. You’ve gone too far already.

You pull your phone out of your pocket and your stomach drops, a new chill rising in your bones. Twelve twenty-four. Shit. Almost an hour of walking. With as bad as the storm is you’re not sure if you can go back. If that’s what you should do or if you should keep moving. It’s so cold. You’re not shivering.

You’re not shivering.

You should be shivering. Why aren’t you shivering?

You can’t go back. 

You turn toward the path, you think, and you start moving. If you move, then you’ll get your body temperature up, you just have to make sure you don’t start sweating.

Something slips under your boot and you fall to your knees, your flashlight flies out of your hand and rolls down into the snow, its light lost when it lands. The fabric of your gloves is soaked and you can’t feel your fingers to know if you’ve even found the damn thing or if you’re hitting a tree root. Snow is melting into your jeans. If you don’t get up now then you might not get up at all.

You force yourself standing and squint into the darkness. The trail continues on ahead of you, but it’s hard to tell if you’re still following it. Trees line either side, but the trail was narrow to begin with that you wonder if you’ve gone off after stepping to one side when you ran into a tree.

Why did you get out of your car? Why didn’t you just stay?

Why is it getting hot?

You unzip your jacket and take off your gloves. It’s so warm, it doesn’t make sense.

Another tree hits your boot, the trunk of this one thick, so big it almost doesn’t seem real. You walk around it and stop. Light. There’s light coming from a cabin.

You stumble toward it, falling against a tree. Why is your backpack so heavy?

A wide, welcoming porch stretches out in front of you and you trip on one of the steps, then crawl up to the door. You beat your hand against it and don’t think about the fact that you can’t feel it happening.

It opens a second later and a heatwave rolls over you, makes you feel a little sick.

Two big, hot hands grab you under your arms and haul you inside. Not a rich-people retreat.

“What?” A voice says.

Oh, you said that out loud.

Two soft blue eyes meet yours, brows furrowed as they look over you. “Fuck, hey, come on.”

The world slips away.

You’re at the beach suddenly, and it’s snowing. The sky is purple and there’s a stampede of corgis running across the ocean. It’s the annual migration, you realize.

You need to take notes. No one’s seen this in forever.

You don’t even realize you’d fallen asleep until you’re awake again. There are blankets wrapped around you and panic seizes you until you open your eyes and realize only the corgis were a dream. Yesterday happened. You left.

Then you almost died.

“You’re awake?” A deep voice asks from your back. “I made breakfast. You need to eat.”

Your entire body is sore when you roll over, but at least you’re alive to feel it. The man from last night is standing in the doorway of the bedroom you’re in. He’s… massive. That’s the only word for it. He’s leaning against the door frame and the top of his head is still almost touching. Whoever built the cabin didn’t build it for giants.

He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. You’re staring. Right.

“Hi,” you begin, “I’m sorry I showed up like that.”

A small smile curls one end of his mouth. “Half dead from hypothermia telling me my house wasn’t a retreat for rich people?”

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, hoping maybe the other half of your death will catch up to you now. “Oh my god.”

He laughs, warm and amused. “Don’t worry about it, I’m just glad you didn’t die in my living room.”

You look at him and hope your smile is more grateful than sheepish, but then he chuckles and you give up. 

“You said breakfast?” You try.

He nods and jerks his head to one side. “Eggs, bacon, some toast. Hearty food that you need after your hike up here.”

You offer another smile and swing your legs out, grimacing at the pain in your thighs, your abdomen, basically anything that can move on you hurts right now. Your hands look fine, though, which is all you could hope for. Wait.

“These aren’t my clothes.” You say slowly.

The shirt is a simple flannel button down and it’s huge on you. A tent. You’ve never been a very big guy, but this shirt makes you feel like a child. The pants aren’t yours either. Fleece-line sweatpants, nice and soft, with the drawstring pulled out about as far as it can be and tied into a bow.

Your dashing rescuer and rubs the back of his neck and gives a tight smile. “Your clothes were soaked, I couldn’t leave them on. I checked your bag, but… you, uh, don’t have much.”

Right. You don’t. Everything you own is either in a storage unit or in your backpack and your car. A blown tire wasn’t part of your plan.

You pull at the end of the rolled up sleeve and laugh. “These are yours?”

He nods. “Everything here is mine.”

“Well,” you say as you stand, “at least I didn’t have to rescue you from the snow. I don’t think my clothes would fit you.”

He laughs, shoulders shaking and eyes crinkling. A thick, golden beard covers his jaw and catches a few strands of his long, hair where it’s fallen out of a braid. Is this guy for real?

You follow him out of the room and down the hall. There’s a bathroom off to the side you see your clothes have been tossed over the top of a sliding glass door to dry.

The smell of bacon makes your stomach growl, and you’re glad to sit a little two-seater table next to a window. It’s still snowing. There’s a dusting of snow at the bottom of the window and you’re not sure if it’s been caught by the sill or if the snow really is that deep. You look further outside and your mouth drops open. There are feet of snow on the ground. You’re stuck.

He sets a plate down in front of you with a glass of apple juice, then grabs his own food and sits across from you.

“Guess I’m stuck here for a while,” you say quietly.

He nods. “The storm is supposed to continue into tonight.”

You shove an entire piece of bacon into your mouth, then another, then a bite of egg. Eating like you’re starving is your normal, but it hasn’t been this bad in a while. Your stomach is still growling as you eat and you’d be embarrassed if you weren’t so hungry.

He glances at you as he eats his own food much more slowly than you inhale yours. Within a few minutes all of your food is gone, then the apple juice.

“You want more?” He asks.

You shake your head. “No, I’ll wait about ten minutes and see if I’m still hungry. Don’t want to make myself sick.”

He nods. “Good idea. I’m Thor, by the way.”

You startle and realize you’ve slept in this man’s house, you’re wearing his clothes, but you never introduced yourself. Your name falls from your tongue easily and he nods.

“I saw your license when I was looking through your bag. Wanted to make sure you were eighteen at least.” He says.

Reasonable. You’d think the same thing if someone who looked as young as you look collapsed on the ground with nothing but a backpack that didn’t even have a change of clothes. That’s the kind of dumb shit first-time runaways do. Third timers? Not as much.

“Right, of course. Sorry,” you say, mentally kicking yourself as you do, “um, thank you, by the way. I didn’t realize how far I’d gone into the woods until it was too late. I didn’t know if staying in my car would’ve been better, I just… one of my tires blew out and my spare is so old it’s probably rotted. It’s just been…”

“A rough week?” He finishes, voice soft. 

You nod and he smiles and lets out a breath through his nose. He’s been somewhere similar, you think, somewhere as difficult as this. Running away a third time in two years like some dumb teenager and not a man in his early twenties.

“Honestly,” you start, “more than a week. A lot more. I was on my way to the coast.”

“Family?” He asks.

You scoff. “Hope not.”

He makes a noise and his eyebrows shoot up a second. “I know that feeling.”

Relief sits soft in your chest the same way it always does when someone understands.

“So, you live here?” Enough of your personal baggage.

He nods. “Most of the time. I have another house a couple states over. This was my dad’s, he left it to me.”

The way he says it tells you it was left a while ago, an absence he’s used to now. You know that feeling.

You swallow and rub your hands together, comforted that you can even feel them. “So, how are we going to pass the time while we wait to be snowed in even worse?”

…

“Oh, bullshit!” You screech.

“I’m serious! My brother just kept talking and talking until the guy just handed over the keys to this Lexus and we drove off, but the owner was right behind us and he started running after us screaming. I was so drunk that I pissed myself when I started laughing. Then Loki started laughing and trying to look back, but he was the one driving, so he crashed into a parked Maserati and we had to run for it. Our father was…” Thor falls quiet a moment, some of the light in his eyes dying, “it was a fun night. We’re much more responsible now. Well, I am. And he only steals things he won’t be caught stealing, so it’s an improvement.”

You shake your head and pull your legs up higher, tucking your feet under you. The couch is huge and soft, and there are enough plush wool blankets to make another entire bed out of. There’s only one bedroom here, and it’s Thor’s. He let you take it last night because he’s probably the kindest person you’ve ever met.

“What about you?” He asks, his smile a bit loose from the shots of whiskey you did together after dinner.

You shrug, then a memory flashes and you laugh. “Alright, yeah, I have one. When I was sixteen I followed my cousin to bible camp.”

“Bible camp? This is going to be awful, isn’t it?” Thor rests his head on his hand and you feel heat bloom in your stomach.

You laugh through your nerves and nod. “It was a sleep-away camp and I was excited to be out of my house for a couple weeks, even though you really couldn’t pay me to give a shit about the bible and all that.”

Thor nods, a lingering smile showing slight crows feet in the corners of his eyes. He’s so gorgeous and this is so not the time to be hitting on him, but when have you made good decisions?

“As teenagers we were supposed to help the councilors out with the really little kids, which was cool because it meant that our curfew was the latest. My cousin always went off to smoke weed before bed, but there was this guy, definitely too old for me, but he was sweet. I had a huge crush, and he knew it, and he didn’t return it but he was nice about it, y’know? So I knew I couldn’t do anything with him and I was sad and dumb, so I grabbed one of the other boys in my age group and we snuck into the craft supply room and he got me off with his mouth and everything was fine, but then as soon as I got on my knees and had his dick in my mouth my crush found us,” you remember the way the door swung open and the light was nearly blinding.

Thor’s eyebrows shoot up and he smiles open-mouthed and crooked. “What did he do?”

“He was frozen, and the guy I was blowing was frozen, and reality hadn’t really hit me, so I started sucking—”

“No,” Thor’s eyes are wide and his smile turns shocked.

You nod and look off toward the ceiling, then roll your eyes back to Thor. “Yep. My crush slammed the door shut and went running, and the noise drew the attention of all the other adults, so we had to run for it back to our cabin.”

Thor laughs and scrubs a hand down his face. “At bible camp.”

“At bible camp. The rest of the week all of the lessons were about remaining chaste.” You chuckle and lick your lips slowly, your tongue sliding slowly over your bottom lip when Thor’s eyes dart down to the movement.

“Did you remain chaste?” He asks, voice deep and smooth, then he clears his throat.

You shake your head. “No, I felt bad that the guy didn’t get off, so I sucked his dick on one of the trails during a hike.”

Thor looks at your mouth again, then off toward the wood burning stove. It’s making the entire cabin warm by itself with just a fan to push the air around. The snow is starting to slow down, but it’s still falling. Thor’s radio has more range than your car, so you listened to the weather earlier just long enough to hear them say the storm will end around midnight.

You look off toward the hall, then back to Thor. “So who takes the bed tonight?”

He shrugs. “I was going to give it to you, since you’re my guest.”

You smile and reach up to scratch the back of your neck where sweat is beading up at your hairline. “Such a gentleman.”

Thor smiled and laughs through his nose. “I try to be.”

He’s looking at your neck, and his eyes dart down to your collar bone, then back up to your mouth, finally back up to your eyes.

“You’re not always a gentleman, are you?” You tilt your head and smile at him, the same smile that always gets you into trouble you can’t talk your way out of.

His eyes turn dark where he looks at you, and his chest rises on a deep breath. “I suppose it depends on what you think a gentleman does.”

You’re still wearing his clothes from that morning with nothing beneath. The buttons slide open easily. He’s worn this shirt often, you can tell. His eyes track the movements of your fingers as you slowly open the shirt until it falls off of you. You can feel the breeze coming from the fan by the stove, the air so warm it feel soothing as it brushes over you.

Thor’s jaw ticks as he looks at you, and he adjust as he sits, scooting away from the arm of the couch. It’s all the invitation you need to move and straddle his thick thighs. You’re still sore, but you can tolerate the pain if it means having him touch you. He grabs your hips and squeezes, then slides his hands up your sides to squeeze where you’re soft over the muscle you’ve built.

How long has it been since someone’s made you wet? Fuck, you can’t even remember, but you can feel it starting, that familiar heat settling deep in your core. You remember now how much you’ve always hated feeling empty.

You lean in and bump your nose against his, biting your lip as he rubs your back.

“We don’t have to,” he whispers, “you don’t owe me.”

You smile and kiss him, moaning when he presses back, opens up to you, sucks your tongue and pulls you in close. His cock is starting to fill, you can feel it pressing up against you between the layers of fleece that separate you.

You press down and rub your clit on the thick line of him, groaning at how soft everything feels except where he’s hard. He gasps and presses back, rolls his hips as much as the position allows and starts a rhythm. As big as he looks he feels so much bigger under you now. No man you’ve ever been with has been this thick, this warm. Thor grabs your ass and guides you, grinds you into his cock and looks up at you with half-lidded eyes.

Pleasure sings inside you, sweet and warm, already building too soon. Life has been too hectic for the last few months, you haven’t even wanted to get off, and it feels like your body is making up for lost time. There’s nothing happening here except the silence of the snow falling and the loud breaths the two of you pant against each other’s open mouths.

“I’m gonna cum.” Your voice is quiet, barely there.

The pressure is coiling tight, pooling low, it feels good to use him. He smiles ducks his head to fix his mouth to your neck. Your eyes roll into your head, the ticklish pleasure of it something no one has done for you in so long. Thor scrapes his teeth across your pounding pulse and you grind down harder, chasing your own need with rough snaps of your hips and little broken moans.

You cuss and whisper his name, rub your clit down harder and tangle one hand into his hair, hoping maybe there’ll be a mark left from the way he sucks on your skin.

You’re clenching on nothing, so wet that it’s got to be soaking through your pants and his. Your belly and ass jiggle and his fingers dig in harder. He growls and bites you and you hold your breath.

Your clit is throbbing, you’re so hard and so ready, you need him, you want him to fill you up and pin you down, make you forget that you ever planned to keep running, keep you here—

“Fuck!” You fall limp in his arms, shaking and hips jerking as you cum.

He hugs you close and kisses up your neck until he’s kissing the hinge of your jaw.

You giggle and let your head fall back to give him more room.

“There’s a drawer in the coffee table,” he says, beard scraping on you, “it has condoms.”

You lean back and he holds just tight enough to keep you from falling as you reach into the drawer he mentioned and grab a magnum. Definitely a need and not just an ego boost for himself.

He smiles up at you as you hold it, then strips his shirt off. You moan without meaning to and he smirks. There’s soft hair covering his chest and belly, which is so soft that it makes you ache. The thick muscle that makes up his body is covered in a layer of fat that you want to sink your teeth into.

You hand him the condom, then crawl off of his lap and lay down on the couch. It’s long enough that he can sleep comfortably, so it’s definitely big enough for him to fuck you properly.

You both remove your pants and you’re stuck when you see his cock. He’s uncut and his foreskin makes your mouth water. God your fingers would probably barely close around him he’s so goddamn thick. You spread your legs, hooking one over the back of the couch, and he groans, then reaches over and slides two fingers into you.

It’s good, so good, and his fingers are so thick that they feel satisfying, but you know having his dick inside you is going to be so much better. Thor adds a third finger and hits your g-spot, rubs up on it when you shudder and clench on him while his thumb rubs on your over-sensitive clit.

Then he pulls his fingers out and sucks them clean. Your heart trips in your chest and your stomach flips. Fuck.

He rips the condom open with his teeth and slides it on, then moves to kneel between your legs. You fold yourself in half so your knees are almost touching your shoulders. Thor rubs his cock up and down to spread your slick around. The way he teases is so sweet. You might not be able to cum again just yet, but it doesn’t matter. You want to feel him cum inside you, to know the way his cock jumps when he’s filling that condom up nice and full.

Thor leans forward and presses a kiss to your ankle, then slides in nice and slow. There’s a little burn and you bite your lip and groan from it. He’s taking slow, deep breaths above you, eyes falling shut and brows furrowed as inch after inch of him stretches you out until he hits the deepest part of you and has to stop.

Maybe you can cum again. 

You lower your legs enough to wrap them around his waist and hold on tight when he starts fucking you with long, hard thrusts. He pulls out and fills you right back up, rolling his hips until your gasping and clutching his shoulders. Rough, low groans fall from his mouth on every breath and you close your eyes as you listen to him. It’s like thunder in the middle of the snow storm.

He leans down and buries his face in your neck and starts snapping his hips faster and faster. You move with him as much as you can, rubbing your clit on him while he shoves that ridiculous cock into you. Fuck, you want him in your ass next.

“God, Thor, fuck!” You hike your legs up his side and dig your nails into his skin.

The pleasure of him inside you and on top of you is sharp. You feel safe here, absurdly, pressed down under his bulk with his breath making your neck slick and the fire roaring off to the side.

You’re trembling beneath him, whimpering at the constant pressure on your clit and then he changes the angle of his hips, hits you just right, and your eyes roll into your head and you’re cumming again, hard and euphoric. Laughter bubbles up in your throat and Thor is growling at you, snapping his hips so hard that he’s sending you up toward the arm of the couch.

He grunts your name and cusses, then buries himself deep and you moan low and dirty when you feel his dick throbbing inside you. You grind against each other a moment, then both still as he fills the condom and begins to soften.

Thor pulls back enough to look down at you, his eyes a little hazy with pleasure. You probably look the same. He smiles and it’s so raw that your first instinct is to just kiss him. So you do.

He makes a soft, breathy noise and slips free of you, but doesn’t move to take the condom off just yet. Instead, he stays as as he is, letting his weight anchor you while you suck his lower lip then release it.

The breeze coming from the fan is still warm, but your skin is slick with sweat and you shiver a bit at it. Thor chuckles and presses a quick kiss to your forehead, then stands up. You wrap yourself in one of the blankets and snuggle in while he moves around somewhere behind the couch.

A moment later he’s back, naked and soft and spent. He smiles.

“Why don’t we both take the bed tonight?” His voice is smooth and gentle.

You grin and hope the storm doesn’t end at midnight.

[elvendork-evans]

The Visit - Part 1

(I apologise if the spacing is weird, I don’t know why tumblr does that. This is set in the summer between the Marauders’ 6th and 7th year. Enjoy!)

It had been a quiet evening at the O’Briens Tea Rooms, and Lily was thankful for it. Her usual flock of elderly customers had eaten their fill by lunch time, and apart from the occasional passer-by fancying a macaroon, she’d spent the remainder of the day relatively unbothered. Sat at the desk with a mug of tea, she opened the notebook in front of her and leafed through the letters it housed fondly.

James’ letters were kept separate, tucked neatly at the very back. Lily refused to admit it to herself, but it wasn’t just the wizarding world she missed; it was one wizard in particular. She’d worried how their ‘relationship’ would fair over the holidays and hadn’t allowed herself to hope for anything, but...James had been wonderful. They wrote every other day; he’d send her her favourite sweets from Honeydukes, and she’d send back CD’s for him and Sirius to listen to. It was easy, almost as if they’d been this way their whole lives.

Lily read over Mary’s most recent letter, triple checking the information she already knew for the fourth time. She and Marlene would be arriving by portkey at 8 o clock, landing in the small woods about fifteen minutes away from Lily’s house.

Smiling, she closed the notebook and stashed it back in her bag. The shop was mostly closed up, and she was excited to get home, so when April gave her the nod to sign out, she almost sprinted to the small office at the back of the tea room.

“April, you’re an angel, thank you- I’ll see you on Friday?” Lily bubbled as she fought her way into her coat. April laughed, and placed a large white box on the counter.

“Sure will, Hun. Here,” she pushed the box toward Lily, who gasped as she opened it. A delightful assortment of cakes and pastries had been assembled, including the lemon meringue tart that Lily was particularly fond of.

“Oh, you are the best!” Lily cried, darting around the counter to pull April into a grateful squeeze.

“Have fun with your friends, petal.” April offered warmly, patting her on the back. Lily took the box carefully and made her way toward the door, blowing April a kiss with her departing wave.

* * *

By 6:45, Lily’s patience had evaporated. She’d hardly touched the lasagne her mum had made, and was almost vibrating with the excitement of seeing her friends. Even Petunia’s pointed absence couldn’t dampen her spirits, though she’d made it very clear that she would not be amicable. Lily didn’t care; she’d spent almost a month under Petunia’s upturned nose at this point, and if she was honest with herself, her sister’s coldness stopped stinging years ago.

Lily abandoned the presence of eating and sat on the bay windowsill, watching eagerly for any flicker of light from the distant woods.

Mrs Evans watched her from the bottom of the stairs. It made her sad, at times, that she had missed the little changes that were fully fledged by the time Lily came back home for the holidays. She knew where every line and expression on Petunia’s face had come from, but Lily, who had always been such an open book, was getting harder to read with each school year.

“Lily, dear, why don’t you go and double check everything is ready in the spare room?” Mrs Evans suggested as she climbed the stairs, resting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Lily leant into the touch, still watching out the window.

“Marls and Mary said they don’t mind if we put the camp beds up in my room.” Lily said. Mrs Evans smiled to herself.

“Well watching the woods isn’t going to make them appear quicker, the Portkey is at 8:02. I know you’re magic darling, but you can’t control that.” Mrs Evans laughed, tapping Lily into motion.

“Come on, I want to make the best first impression with your friends.”

Lily reluctantly pulled her gaze away from the window, smiling as she headed up the stairs.

“You’ve already met them!” She complained, but her tone was good natured. Mrs Evans watched her dart into the spare room, her happiness infectious. Her eyes landed on the locked door formally labelled ‘Petunia’, and her smile took on a sad weight. Petunia had been shutting Lily out for years, but she seemed to be the one it was hurting the most.

Hogwarts had made one of her daughters, and ruined the other.