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yolkyeomie · 3 years ago

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Humanity of the Inhuman | Kim Sunwoo

summary — legends are meant for the wild fantasies of the dream world, but when one myth suddenly comes true, you find yourself tangled within its webs of reality.

word count — 4.8k words

pairing — sunwoo x female!reader (ft. x juyeon)

genre — college au, gumiho au

disclaimer — !! light mentions of death, blood, and injury !! this was supposed to be only three parts but because I’m tired I have to put the rest into a part 4 🙂☝🏽

part I | part II | part III | part IV?

It’s been a week since you last saw Sunwoo in your house, and don’t worry it’s for a good reason. The gumiho didn’t just up and leave all of a sudden, he was a little too true to his word when it came to the nine tailed fox honor code.

He was simply doing what he set out to do in the first place: prove that Juyeon was a gumiho out to get you. Though seeing as it’s taken a week so far, there wasn’t a lot of information he was gathering.

It would get a little odd when you would walk into the mythology class the two of you shared and there was Sunwoo sitting in the very back. He wasn’t as close to the point where it would be suspicious but it was close enough to keep an eye on Juyeon. The awkward part was that sometimes you’d feel like the gumiho’s eyes were burning into the back of your head as well.

And yet despite his hard stare, Juyeon didn’t seem to notice at all. The first two days of Sunwoo spying on the two of you was uncomfortable but thanks to the boy’s kind nature, it was as if the gumiho’s presence disappeared completely.

You didn’t even hear the fox bead most of the time and that was your sure fire way of figuring out whether he was truly there or not.

“You wanna be partners?” Juyeon asked, closing the notebook in his hands and the class began to disperse around the two of you. “For the project I mean! Do you wanna be partners for… the project…?”

You thought about it for a moment, you always had a habit of just doing projects on your own ever since you were a child. While yes doing a project with a partner would make it easier and not as heavy of a load on you, you couldn’t stand working with others. There was always someone who decided to be the freeloader yet still got all the markers for the work. Plus, it was just faster to do it on your own.

But Juyeon is a good person, he’s been your class friend since you first stepped in the class. There was no reason for you not to believe he was a bad worker. “Sure why not,” you shrugged, “It would probably lessen the workload on the both of us and I’m sure you’ve got other things to do outside of campus.”

“How’d you know that?” He asked rather quickly, turning to you with rather curious eyes.

“I don’t know, you just seem like a busybody and a sociable guy,” you replied, giving him a half smile as he finally started to grab all of your belongings. “People like you have large friend groups and millions of extracurricular activities to keep themselves occupied.”

“Now I wouldn’t say I’m a busybody,” he tried to counter, his mannerism similar to those of a puppy’s as he spoke, “but you’re right, I do like to hang out with lots of my friends. Being around people is just… so much better than being alone.”

At those words you take a quick glance over toward where Sunwoo sat, though the gumiho was long gone now. If Juyeon liked hanging around people more than being by himself, it must have made it incredibly hard for Sunwoo to follow him around without looking suspicious.

You could just see it now, the gumiho trying to look as ordinary as possible as he practically chased down Juyeon and his abnormally large friend group. The boy lived in the dorms too so there was no way that Sunwoo was getting him completely alone. You almost giggled at the thought of the gumiho struggling.

“So where do you want to meet so we can work on the project?” Juyeon piped up, steering the conversion back to the project. Though the boy sounded a little too excited to be talking about it. “There’s the cafeteria on campus, a pretty decent coffee shop that’s nearby… oh and our homes! You know, my dorm will always be open to you. And Hyunjae will be more than happy to clean up around the place for you as well.”

“How about we just meet at my apartment for now?” You offered, standing up from your seat and urging him to follow suit.

“Really? You want me to go over to your house? Just me alone?”

You nodded your head, a laugh escaping your mouth as you replied,”I mean, yeah? It’s just a project and I trust you enough to—“

“—hey,” the two of you turned your heads, unsure on who was interrupting your conversation in such a fashion. Sunwoo stood behind the two of you with an almost amused grin, playing with his near fluffy hair with one hand and the other shoved deep into the university sweatshirt he wore. You thought he had left already, he must have blended in almost perfectly with his surroundings. “Let me join your group for the project.”

“Huh?” Both of you responded, different levels of shock exposed on your faces. Though Juyeon was the one who kept talking, “I’m sorry, but this is a solo or partner project. You’ll have to find someone else, I don’t know if we are allowed a third…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Sunwoo assured them, giving Juyeon his signature mischievous smile. You think this is the first time that the gumiho has personally interacted with the boy in public. “I’m sure the teacher will be fine with it, aren't I right?”

You both turned to look at your instructor at the front of the class, but the glint of amber yellow amber in his eyes didn’t go unnoticed to you. The teacher was attending to another student, but took a moment to look up and toward the trio that was staring back at him. He smiled at the three of you before nodding his head, “he already asked about groups of three earlier, it’s fine with me! This whole class is either going solo or in pairs and he didn’t want to be alone so this can be a small exception to the rule.”

Juyeon nodded his head in understanding, turning to face Sunwoo again before giving him a compliant half smile. “Whatever authority says goes I guess. If Y/N is okay with it then…,” he glanced at you for a second and you nodded your head, not really wanting to hear the gumiho’s complaints later if you disagreed, “welcome to the group then. I’m Juyeon, by the way. You are…?”

“You can call me Sun,” he answered, replicating the same compliant expression Juyeon had as he introduced himself. “It’ll be a pleasure working with you.”

“If that’s all then I’ll be going now. I’ll call you about times to meet for the project,” Juyeon excused himself, turning to you with his kind gaze and giving you a proper goodbye before grabbing his belongings and making his trek out of the mythology class.

You watched him leave for a moment, making sure that the boy was out of the room completely before turning to the gumiho beside you. “So? A week of following him and he was just your normal human being wasn’t he? So now your next step is to invade his daily life to try and get dirt on him?”

“What I can say, he was a slimy guy to follow,” Sunwoo admitted, moving to sit on the table you had just used as a desk. “Not only am I doing this to keep my eye on him, but I’m also doing this because you willingly invited a gumiho to your house? Now you really need my protection.”

You rolled your eyes at his claims, beginning your own journey off the campus as you replied to Sunwoo, “I told you to prove to me that Juyeon was a gumiho and I still don’t have that information yet. Until you get solid evidence, I’m going to continue to trust him like I’ve done before I met you. Plus! He’s shown no red flags to me and I’m very good at catching red flags.”

“Red flags of human men maybe, but I’m telling you!” Sunwoo argued, following after you closely, “Juyeon is not of this mortal realm and nearly killed me.”

“If Juyeon nearly killed you, how did he not recognize you the moment you asked to be in our group?” You asked him, not only to antagonize the gumiho but because you had a genuine question on the matter.

“If I’m being honest,” Sunwoo thought to himself for a moment, “I don’t know. Just mentioning the sun part of my name should have at least triggered the fight in him, but he took it like a champ…”

“Maybe the gumiho that was chasing you and tried to kill you wasn’t Juyeon,” you suggested, stopping in your tracks and turning to him before he could give you his regular counterclaim, “maybe the gumiho that was following you was just using Juyeon’s appearance as a disguise? Can’t you guys shapeshift? It would make sense that the Juyeon you saw wasn’t the real one.”

Sunwoo only let out a deep sigh, not wanting to consider your words but the logic was a little too strong to just set aside. “That makes sense but… I just can’t agree. I know that Juyeon was the one who attacked me and is targeting you, I just have to find a way to prove it.”

II.

Why did you even offer your apartment to be the meeting place for the project? What type of rose tinted glasses were you hearing in order to make that type of decision?

Because of your horrible decision making, now you were sitting in your living room on the exact couch you nearly crumbled into when Sunwoo had kissed you not even a full week before except the gumiho wasn’t the one sitting next to you. It was Juyeon. Sunwoo was sitting on the floor in front of the two of you, his smug expression was enough to know the thoughts that were running through his head.

“Since the project is about gumihos, we can easily split this up into three parts,” the boy offered, unwillingly becoming the team leader since the unseen tension between you and Sunwoo had left you speechless, “one of us does the presentation, the other person finds images to add to the presentation, and then we split the research into two parts. I was thinking Y/N could do the presentation since you definitely have a better eye than me when it comes to decorating…”

You had practically cut out Juyeon’s voice in your head. You were a little guilty of doing so, but you couldn’t help it! Not when the gumiho’s mischievous stare was burning holes into your head and the memory of you and Sunwoo sharing an intimate moment on replay in your head. You can replay the situation almost scene by scene in your head actually, that’s how ingrained in your mind it was.

It just had been a very prevalent thought in your mind recently because Sunwoo was gone most of the time. But now he’s here, and so is Juyeon.

“I don’t think Y/N wants to do the presentation actually,” Sunwoo intervened, a foxish grin appearing on his face as he offered, ”I think she wants to do the research instead. It looks like she’s got some… things… on her mind.”

“What?” You quicked added, trying not to seem as disoriented as you actually were. “No— it’s fine. I can do the presentation. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Now that you mention it, Sun,” Juyeon nodded, a frown beginning to cross his features as he watched you, “Y/N… you do seem a little out of it.”

“Maybe we should do this another day… don’t we all want to be focused on our project so we can get a good grade? If someone is distracted, we might not do as well as we can do.” Sunwoo continued, lying straight through his teeth as he encouraged Juyeon’s kindness for you.

You wanted to stop him, you wanted to prove to both of them that you were perfectly okay, but that jingle of the fox bead within Sunwoo’s possession seemed to say otherwise. “Sure, let’s meet another day. How does the day after tomorrow sound? It’ll be right after class too.”

“I’m fine with that,” Juyeon agreed and Sunwoo only nodded in response. “I’ll text you the roles I think we should all have later so you can think about what you want to do in advance. Make sure you let Sun know too.”

You all exchanged goodbyes and wanted until Juyeon left first before sitting in complete silence. You were too ashamed of letting the past distract you and Sunwoo was simply enjoying the moment that he had created.

“Well, I guess that’s my cue to go and follow him,” the gumiho exclaimed, rising off the ground and stretching his limbs. “What a busy day today has been. This is the most I’ve done in a while now… maybe I’ve gotten too comfortable just living here—“

You stop him before he can walk past him, your nails threatening to dig into his skin while the other hand is hovering over the conspicuously placed talisman you own. You felt Sunwoo’s skin crawl as soon as he noticed it and gave you his most innocent smile and big baby doll eyes. “Something the matter?”

“Find out if Juyeon is a gumiho, quickly.” You hissed at him, hoping the very obvious threat was getting through that thick skull of his. “Because I don’t know if I could spend another minute on this couch with him in my house knowing damn well we kissed because of your need to be proven right.”

“What can I say!” The gumiho gleefully responded, leaning down towards you and whispering, “being a gumiho makes me a really good kisser. Of course you wouldn’t forget it so easily.”

Sunwoo yelped as you nearly punched him, slapping the talisman onto his cheek and letting go of him. You watched the nine tailed fox grovelled in pain on the ground, wanting to snatch the paper talisman off but not having the ability to touch it in the first place. “Say that again and next time everything in the house will be covered in a talisman!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry okay!” He begged, his true form struggling to tear itself out of his humanoid body. The talisman was doing its job trying to dispel and absorb the evil energy and Sunwoo was doing his best trying to keep himself from going into a withdrawal.

You couldn’t stand to watch him lay there in agony anymore. Sure it was funny for a few seconds since you got your revenge, but as time passed you noticed it was taking a lot more energy than you thought for him to keep himself stable. “Stay still for like two seconds okay? Even though that might be… a little hard for you but… whatever just— hold on!”

You drop to your knees in an instant and tear the talisman off like a bandaid, wincing on Sunwoo’s behalf as you watch him take the deepest breath he possibly could. The gumiho form of him seemed to dissipate almost immediately now that he has control over his power but it only made your mind wander.

If a small talisman months old could cause so much damage to him, you wondered how exactly he could go head to head with a gumiho of a nearly full fox bead. “You’re not like… hurt right? The talisman didn’t leave a scar or something because they looked like it hurt really badly.”

“I… really need that fox bead back.” He spoke in between breaths but that sentence gave you all the information you needed to know. The fox bead was probably the primary source of strength for gumihos, sure without it they were still dangerous but in a state like Sunwoo’s who said his was empty? You might have just reduced him to a killable state.

“I am… so sorry,” you apologized, taking the smallest step back as you watched Sunwoo get off of the ground. “If I knew you were that screwed without your original fox bead I would have never touched you with it. It’s my fault, seriously.”

The gumiho shook his head, “No, you’re fine, don’t worry. It’s the person with my fox bead we have to worry about. I don’t think I truly realized how badly of a situation we’re in right now. If I get proof that Juyeon is a gumiho and he catches me? There is no way you or me will get out of that situation alive.”

III.

And oddly enough, a week has gone by since that incident. No, not a week, a month actually.

You finished your project with Juyeon despite the fact that Sunwoo bailed at the last minute, and you've barely seen him since. He went charging after your mythology class friend to find his fox bead and gather the information you needed to prove his claims so he didn’t go far, it's just… been a moment since you’ve seen him.

You know for a fact that he’s still alive because every so often you’ll hear noises in your house while you're trying to sleep and hear the quite yet familiar tone of Sunwoo’s voice curse. But other than that? You don’t see him. Your life had gone back to normal as if you were never being hunted by a gumiho in the first place, as if you never met Sunwoo in the first place.

You did in fact get rid of that talisman though, just in case he came back and wasn’t watching his step.

“Maybe I just need to get out of the house,” you admitted to yourself, staring aimlessly at the ceiling of your room. “I don’t leave much anymore… Maybe Kevin wants to hang out or something?” You had to admit, you did not realize just how boring your life was outside of being associated with Sunwoo. Your days were nothing but wake up, go to class, come home, and repeat.

You reach for your phone amid the blankets folds, grumbling and mumbling to yourself only to grab a hold of it snatch it away from its prison. It was almost dead but that was your fault, you came in your room and immediately collapsed into the bedsheets without question. Where was your charger? Knowing yourself you probably left it in the living room without thinking, who would have known you were going to get up in the first place?

“It’s nearly midnight, Kevin is probably fast asleep by now,” you concluded, thinking about your words for a moment before a text appeared into your notification bar. “Oh, never mind.”

Though, it wasn’t the usual cryptic text you received from the boy. Actually it wasn’t Kevin at all, but it was Juyeon. The last time he had spoken to you over the phone first was when you blacked out after finding Sunwoo.

With your eyes glued to the bright white screen, you forced yourself out of the bed and practically leaped over to the living room to search for your charger with newfound energy. You reached over to flick the lights on but immediately backtracked when Juyeon started to call instead.

“Juyeon,” you start, trying to sound as normal as possible. “What brings you to my phone number tonight?”

“Can I be honest with you?” He questioned, his breaths sounding as though he was forcing them to be rhythmic and slow. You raise an eyebrow at his soft yet rather serious tone, this wasn’t a Juyeon you usually interacted with. “It’s… kinda important honestly.”

“Of course, we’re friends right? I mean… like class acquaintances… but friends nonetheless,” you agree and you might have mistaken his huff for a slightest scoff for a moment. You choose to point it out whether it was serious or not, “what's with that frustrated tone in your voice? Got an attitude or something?”

“No, no that’s not it,” he quickly countered, “it’s just that every time you say that we’re friends, you always have to mention the fact that we're just college friends. It’s a little bothersome sometimes.”

You raise a brow at his words, falling into the couch as you respond, “I mean… is that not what we are…?”

There was a pause on the other side of the phone and you patiently waited for the boy to give you a reply. Instead, he just jumped to the next topic. Typical conversation tactics of a man. “I have something for you and something to tell you, but it has to be done in person. It would feel right if it was over the phone. I was wondering if you would be free to come by the dorms sometime tomorrow?”

“That’s what you wanted to tell me in the middle of the night?” You teased, almost rolling your eyes at his decisions before answering him. “Sure, I don’t think I'll have any classes that afternoon so it should be fine.”

You could almost hear the smile on Juyeon’s face, “perfect! You have to come okay, no bailing out on me now. I’ll be waiting for you!”

You didn’t even bother answering him, slowly sitting up in your seat as goosebumps began to trail down your arms. “Y/N?” He questioned once he noticed your abnormal silence, “are you okay?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” the boy didn’t even get another word out of his mouth before you hung up on him, staring out the window of your apartment and trying your best to withhold a scream that wanted to escape. There in the corner of your window stood a figure, glowing amber yellow eyes piercing through the glass and staring straight into your soul. Unfortunately for you, you knew that amber yellow tint a little too well from your mythology studies and first hand experience.

Now you were regretting throwing away that talisman.

Though the fear that crept up your throat like bile dissipated within a moment as the light jingle of bells rang in your ear. The fox bead must be nearby, if you can hear it ringing then that means the gumiho was in the area.

You did have to be careful though, just because you could hear the fox bead didn’t necessarily mean that it was Sunwoo. After all, you haven’t seen him for about a month now. Who knows what could have happened to him… but let’s not let dark thoughts cloud the mind, right?

“Sunwoo…?” You hesitated, inching ever so slowly toward the window. You had to be careful, just because you saw a pair of glowing eyes didn't necessarily mean it was the gumiho you had come to know.

The figure didn’t respond though, in fact it barely moved from its position at the window. You stopped in your tracks, ready to run to your room for safety, when it teetered to the side before falling out of the frame. A loud thud could be heard as they fell to the ground and you finally sprung out of your seat to check. Don’t worry though, you were still extremely cautious going about your next actions.

You cracked open the door just slightly, peering your eye through the crevice to scope out the area. You didn’t exactly give yourself enough room to look around though, just barely seeing the moon’s shine on the night sky.

You were just being cautious! What if you need a quick escape back into your house because a gumiho suddenly attacked? You did live alone after all, who were you going to call if you got into trouble? Definitely not the police. Would they even believe you if you said a nine tailed fox was trying to—

“You suck at being stealthy,” your body was pulled across the doorway as the door opened wide, not even giving you a chance to react before you found yourself outside of your apartment. You looked up with a nervous grin on your face to see Sunwoo towering over you. “I’m surprised you haven’t been taken in as a gumiho’s latest feast yet.”

“You’re back,” you stand up tall, completely disregarding the nine tailed fox’s statement to talk about something else. “Where have you been? I mean— I know where you’ve been, don't get me wrong. But you were gone for a month! Any longer and I think I would have forgotten about you completely.”

“I was doing my job was I not?” He smiled, though it wasn’t his usually mischievous grin plastered onto his face. In fact, he looked a little… strained.

The way he was leaning onto the door and holding it steady so he barely had to move a muscle wasn’t helping his case either. “Now I’m back to have a nice comfortable rest, I’ll probably leave again tomorrow though, you know… gotta catch the gumiho!”

“Hold still for me,” you demanded, reaching out for his shirt collar to inspect something .

Sunwoo swiftly dodged your hand, moving away like it was a bullet coming straight for him. “I said hold still.”

“Why? Do we have a problem or something?” The gumiho asked, grabbing a hold of your curious hand this time with his free hand as Sunwoo let out a shameless giggle. “Did you miss me that much? One month away and now you can’t get your hands off of me!”

“I’m not trying to be handsy,” you scowl, pushing the door with your foot and watching Sunwoo stumble about for the loss of his support before taking his shirt collar in your hand, “I can tell your bleeding through your shirt.”

He winced as the fabric skidded against his skin, revealing the very fresh and oozing red blood that was spilling out of scar on his neck. No, it would be undermining the damage if you simply called it a scar. It was more like a wound, a wound that was rich with fresh blood and scaling down from his neck down to his side… who knew how far down it went actually.

That was just one injury you had spotted, but there were probably countless scars and wounds that dotted his skin.

Each one seemed to be of such increasing severity that it was making you nauseous. “How long have you been like this?” You asked, letting go of his shirt to save yourself from a possible black out. You made sure to grab onto Sunwoo’s arm after, seeing as he barely had enough energy to actually stand on his own.

“You’ve been gone for a month, please don’t tell me you’ve been this badly injured for a month,” you demanded, “I know you’re this… this crazy mythical creature and what not but the severity of those wounds… it’s bad, Sunwoo, even worse than when I first found you. You need to go to a hospital.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” the boy tried to reassure you, “I’m a gumiho, remember? I’m going to heal much faster than a mortal ever could so there’s no need to go to a hospital—“

“Sunwoo! Look at yourself!” You practically screech, letting go of him and watching the gumiho cling into your door frame for support. “You are hurt, Sunwoo, heavily, from your neck down. Any sane person, mythical or not, would know that you need to get proper treatment and not rely on my poor first aid knowledge and your resortive abilities!”

“For the last time, Y/N, no means no. I’m not going, everything will heal if you just give me time.” Sunwoo begged, on the verge of throwing a fit like a child at your constant nagging. He leaned up against the doorframe and slid down it with his arms crossed, a pinch of annoyance struggling to stay hidden behind his attitude.

You have to physically hold yourself back from wrapping your hands around his neck and wringing him out like a wet towel. If his wounds didn’t end up killing him then surely you would end up being the gumiho’s demise. “Fine, can you at least tell me why you’re injured and when all of this… happened?”

Sunwoo glanced toward you, resting his head in his hands as he thought about your words for a moment. You can see the usual mischief in his eyes as he did, the audacity of the gumiho to think that he wasn’t going to share this crucial information with you is absurd. “I hope you’re not in love with Juyeon, Y/N,” he told you, his eyes shifting into that amber yellow tint, “because you’re about to get your heart broken.”

You stood there for a moment, unsure of what to make of the gumiho’s words before it hit you. “Oh… you can’t be serious.”

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butchhamlet · 3 years ago

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OKAY SO I GOT TO SEE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK ANDRE DE SHIELDS KING LEAR YESTERDAY AND IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING SO HERE’S A POST ABOUT THAT

first off here’s the shitty picture i took of the set! the entire thing was set in “a north african nation” (words theirs; in quotes because i don’t want to seem like they named a real one and i just didn’t bother to remember askdfhdskhfds) & the entire cast was people of color! i am staring at this picture thinking about how blurry it is but trust me that it was SO fucking cool... it was visibly gorgeous but also visibly crumbling which. like. foams at the mouth about the symbolism yknow

ALSO the winged thing is the throne! during intermission (which was after 3.6), some crew members took the wings off and laid them down at the back of the set like the whole thing had come apart, and when edmund entered in 5.1 he had a moment of staring out at the audience with his foot up on the top wing

the entire production went hard on drums; there was a note in the program about how the director wanted to center the african setting & also the rhythm; the trumpet herald at the end was replaced by drumming, and during the storm scenes, the drums represented the thunder! (complete with flashing lights for lightning; it was cool as fuck)

& now i’m gonna describe my beat-by-beat staging notes that i scribbled down from where i was sitting in the grass. no attempts to make this coherent bc the show was so fucking good and i just feel insane <3

edmund came out in literal jade-colored glasses which felt like a WONDERFUL character bit

everyone in this cast was so well cast btw and not to be a lesbian but like. the lear sisters. 😳

they cut the cordelia asides in 1.1, which made it slightly harder to get a read on her but also made it slightly more startling when she said “nothing, my lord” (goneril and regan both got up to take a literal microphone from lear, while cordelia didn’t take it when he held it out and literally turned away to face the audience instead)

there were three little stools laid out for each sister to sit on & lear was so infuriated by what cordelia said that he started throwing them around (not at her but close)

and lear never looked particularly Legitimately Threatening (he looked very small, actually; idk how tall andre de shields is lmfao but he definitely looked like an old man), but cordelia flinched near-instinctively when he threw the stools, like this wasn’t the first time

WHEN LEAR LEFT NEAR THE END OF 1.1 GONERIL GOT UP AND SAT IN THE THRONE WHERE HE’D BEEN SITTING AND STAYED THERE WHILE SEEING CORDELIA OFF

she was also the only lear sister in a pantsuit 😳

on that note they were color-coded! goneril was dressed all in purple, regan was orange, and cordelia was pink; all of their households followed this (eg cornwall was orange, oswald was purple), but when cordelia came back in act four, it was in soldiers’ clothes without any pink on her

andre de shields lear was fucking incredible and is anyone surprised about that like he was so good

he did SO much yelling. man has some lungs on him. not even yelling words all the time but a lot of just flat-out yelling (which was alternately funny and distressing depending on the moment)

like in 1.4 he stumbled back in to deliver “50 of my followers at a clap?” heralded by his own flat-out scream which made everyone laugh a little. grandpappy off the shits

EDGAR CAME IN ON A SKATEBOARD WITH HEADPHONES ON AND WHEN HE STOPPED AND LIFTED UP HIS SKATEBOARD SHAKESPEARE’S FACE WAS ON THE BOTTOM

this edgar was so fucking perfect btw like. everything about him. i think he was my favorite part of the show

lear and his knights busted in playing loud music, waving guns, and drinking from beer cans (white claw? idk what it was i’m a weenie). lear was wearing the brightest orange shirt ive ever seen. kent received entry to the group by busting some sick moves to the music despite being an oldass man

the fool was SO fucking funny he interacted w the audience constantly and the entire time (even during the storm scene) he was lugging around a suitcase and a little folding stool

after “have more than thou showest” the audience started clapping and he looked at us and said “not yet”

and then proceeded to deliver the sweet and bitter fool speech as a full-on rap with the audience clapping the beats in after each line

at the end of which he said to us “good job! give yourselves a hand. the king’s mad at y’all now though” and then he turned around and lear had his gun aimed at him and AUDIBLY clicked the safety off and there was a tense second where the fool had to talk him down

GONERIL SLAPPED LEAR AFTER THE BARRENNESS CURSE

1.5 hurt because the fool was VERY clearly trying his best to cheer lear up, like, he kept glancing around for ideas and trying to joke while lear sat pathetically on his folding stool

the stage was outdoors (duh) and there were ramps on either side for the actors to come on and off into the crowd, and when edgar ran off, he sprinted down the ramp, then turned, sprinted BACK, hugged edmund HARD, and then ran off again and around the back of the stage

this was after edmund FULLY punched him in the face on “pardon me” :(

at the end of 2.1 edmund was the last one to file off stage and he turned and gave the audience the cheekiest shrug

edgar tripped and ate shit while he was absolutely tearing around the side of the stage for 2.3 and idk if it was on purpose but it felt in character AKHSDFKHDSSFH

he delivered “poor turlygod! poor tom!” like he was acting, and then looked up and went “that’s something” kind of like he’d just realized

the fool delivered his merlin speech like he was making it up on the fucking spot. “and then the realm of albion...” [PAUSE.] “will come... to great... con-fu-si-on” emphasizing the non-rhyme. same with the non-rhyme of “see’t” / “fee-eet.” then he looked at us and said, “i didn’t write it. ask the author” and scrambled offstage

in 3.3 gloucester hugged edmund! ...and edmund picked his pocket for his key

“nay, he reserved some white flowers in the crook of his elbow, half a pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap, else we’d all been shamed” (im filling in the wording i forgot but that’s near verbatim and i cackled out loud)

(he was, indeed, wearing nothing but some white flowers, a ragged pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap. and a lot of dirt/paint)

when gloucester entered during the hovel scene edgar was skittering across the floor and looked up and the whole set paused as they made EXTENDED eye contact and it hurt INTENSELY

and then edgar snatched gloucester’s flashlight and hurried to the opposite end of the stage to focus entirely and intently on warming his hands over it like a fire and he did not look in gloucester’s direction at all but he got VERY still when gloucester mentioned him

i made an AUDIBLE noise when lear stabbed the fool. like. i knew it was a possible staging but it happened so fast and so viciously that it caught me totally off guard

and edgar got the “i’ll go to bed at noon” line :(

genuinely it is hard to emphasize how perfect this edgar was. how do i kin a character but just one specific version of that character that i saw one time

(intermission happened here!)

while interrogating gloucester, cornwall was very deliberately putting on medical gloves and then he picked up a power drill and my friend and i in the audience looked at each other exactly like the fucking monkey puppet image

however. only one eye went out with the power drill. because regan took the other one out WITH HER NAILS in a fit of rage when her husband was injured. full on stuck her hand into his eye socket

goneril and edmund kissed for a LONG long moment in 4.2. long enough that oswald coughed pointedly. which did not stop or affect them

gloucester tried to pay edgar and edgar immediately turned around and chucked the payment off stage

gloucester used a cane the whole show and he dropped it off the “cliff” before he fell, and edgar swooped down and silently caught it and held it for a moment before he let it clatter to the floor

at this point he was also wearing leggings and like. three mismatched layers of flannels and jackets

lear came out in act four in a tropical dress, white face/chest paint, and a flower/fruit hat

he threw money into the crowd multiple times during his speech, including one point where he specifically leaned over the edge of the stage, motioned at the closest audience member, said, “come here,” and then threw money at them

he also mooned the guards who came to get him

and nearly hugged someone in the crowd while the guards tried to drag his half-tranquilized body away

oswald was so fucking funny for the entire play. so funny. in 1.4 he came in with goneril and pointed at lear with the air of a small child tattling to the teacher; when kent attacked him he fell on the ground whimpering; he came in to kill gloucester a moment before lear left and ducked back into the wings FAST before creeping out again

when the guards brought lear and cordelia in, someone set out the fool’s little folding chair, and cordelia ended up sitting on it during lear’s speech :( felt very my-poor-fool-is-hanged y’know

curan from 2.1 was the captain in 5.1! so he & edmund already had a bit of a relationship established

REGAN THREW HER WINE IN GONERIL’S FACE WHILE THEY FOUGHT OVER EDMUND

edgar and edmund dueled with two swords each

AND WHEN HE WAS INJURED AND ALBANY CALLED THEM BOTH OUT. GONERIL TOOK EDMUND’S SWORD AND WENT AT ALBANY WITH IT AND NEARLY GOT HIM BEFORE RUNNING OFFSTAGE

they cut “yet edmund is beloved” which is always a cardinal sin HOWEVER when he got the news about regan and goneril edmund stabbed himself which. pain and suffering!

much like albany himself, i literally forgot about lear and cordelia because i was so enthralled by gloucester brothers duel like. i was so caught up in the agony of edgar killing edmund that i forgot the other fucking bomb that had to drop and it was like getting bricked in the face

my last note literally reads “cannot believe i forgot abt the other bomb to drop jesus christ i hate this shit ass bitch ass play it really just fucking ends like that huh fuck off”

it was the first time i’ve ever seen live shakespearean theater and it literally could not have been better and i am terminally insane now.

#max.txt #AHHHGHHGHGHGH THIS POST IS SO LONG BUT I NEEDED TO IMMORTALIZE EVERY STAGING BIT I REMEMBERE DBEACUSE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IT WAS SO FUCKING #gOOD IT WAS SO GOOD IT WAS SO GODDAMN GOOD.#MAYBE LEAR IS A GOOD PLAY ACTUALLY. MAYBE SHAKESPEARE CAN WRITE #lear

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raleighcarrera · 4 years ago

Text

falling

platinum | raleigh carrera x mc (cadence dorian)

a little while ago i posted about the idea of a soulmate au where the first words raleigh & cadence say to each other are tattooed on them their whole lives, and this... is that. (for @platinumweekend ❤️)

tags: @choicesarehard ; @empressazura; @emomoustache ; @natesewell ; @zigtheeortega ; @pixeljazzy ; @brycemaloliver ; @grigori-girl ; @dulceghernandez ; @bitchloveskcbaseball ; @withbeautyandrage

~10.5k words | T

the words appear in looping script on his thirteenth birthday, right on time. they curve along the inside of his bicep, innocently punctuated. what’s your name?

“you got lucky,” one of his older cousins tells him, later, when everyone in his family comes by for cake and to ooh and aah over his new tattoo, “you’ll be able to hide that with a shirt or a jacket easily.”

but raleigh sleeps shirtless every night for the next two years, even when it’s cold, so that the words are the last thing he sees with his head pillowed on his arm before he falls asleep, dreaming of the nameless, faceless person who will one day say them, wondering what their voice might sound like when they do.

ii.

she has a more difficult go of it.

being a thirteen year old girl would be miserable enough without the added pressure of the words that practically feel broadcast across her forehead, most of the time. everyone at school teases her constantly and ruthlessly: say something funny, cadence. go on. tell us a joke!

so it’s difficult not to resent the two words scrawled lazily across her collarbone and the person attached to them, especially in the mornings before school when she’s angrily rearranging her neckline and jewelry in the mirror while the bus idles outside.

very funny. she isn’t, really. she’s plenty of things -- determined and passionate and sensitive, definitely, but... no one’s ever found her particularly funny, before.

and no one seems to understand just how much the expectation of having to be funny, one day, is weighing on her, not even her parents, when she finally works up the courage to squeak out, “but how am i supposed to know what i should say?”

her mom laughs indulgently, like she’s already said something funny. her stomach sinks further.

“oh, sweetheart,” she tells her, “don’t worry, it won’t matter. you just will.”

iii.

people ask him about it. a lot.

it gets difficult to keep it a secret as things change around him, but raleigh’s careful to avoid slip-ups and paparazzi photos and he doesn’t say a word about it in interviews, even when he’s asked directly. he’s never seen without short sleeves on, at the very least, and he doesn’t even tell blair and cameron about it.

he sort of wishes he had, though, because as his life turns upside down and he adapts to a new country with a new set of rules and an industry that makes his head spin most of the time it starts to feel more and more confusing, those three words -- what’s your name?

everywhere he goes, thousands of girls blocking the street scream it at him. so how is it possible that whoever’s waiting to meet him doesn’t already know it?

and what does that mean for how the rest of his life is going to turn out?

what if all of this -- the fame and the money and the notoriety -- is fleeting, and he’s only a few short years from being completely washed up and irrelevant? what if the day he’s meant to meet his person is so far away that he’ll be completely out of the spotlight, by then, with sunset skatepark playing reunion tours and him having spent most of his life alone?

it’s a lot of pressure, for someone who’s already working their way through such a serious adjustment, and most of the time it’s dizzying, thinking about the fact that there’s someone out there who’s supposed to be perfect for him, when everyone he meets seems determined to forget every word they know other than yes, so they can suck up to him as much as possible.

his teenage years fly by in a whirlwind of mistakes and regrets. there’s things he would’ve never dreamed would come his way, like world tours and more money than he can count and so many girls who know everything about him before they even sit down to dinner, but there’s more than that, too.

there’s all the ways the industry weakens his trust until it’s gone, all the people who try to use him for what he can do for them, all the times he stumbles until he finally learns to distance himself by cultivating a persona, by leaning into all the expectations of raleigh carrera and creating something so outlandish it doesn’t hurt as much when disaster follows him around because it’s supposed to.

he watches everything that surrounds him turn fake and plastic and puts his energy only into his music, coasting on the rest. the days are less exciting than when he first joined the band at fifteen; he’s a solo artist, now, and most of the time, he’s just trying to get through.

but chaos continues to follow him and eventually his notoriety is inescapable. his first solo album is self-titled and he somehow manages to get a trademark on the word raleigh, as if the name is now more his than anything that ever belonged to the state of north carolina, and part of him sort of expects the words stamped on his arm to change, once he hits one-hundred million followers on his social channels.

they never do, though, and when he’s alone, and the veneer he’s built up for everyone else fades away, he can’t help but to be fascinated by this person who just wants an answer to the question no one else would ever dare ask him.

iv.

college isn’t exactly the fresh start she was hoping it’d be.

she was a loser in high school and things don’t get much better for her even now that she’s with ‘her people’ at a performing arts university she can barely afford, even with two part-time jobs.

shane is across the country at a proper state school with parties and a social life and lots of friends who aren’t her, and she’s failing her improv class, proving that she isn’t actually very funny at all.

boys continue to not notice her and patrons in bars continue to turn away from her one-woman performance, her old acoustic guitar the only constant in a life that feels utterly, unbelievably pointless, most of the time.

it’s like she’s drifting through the days, putting her time in at college in the hopes that it’ll fortify her for what’s next -- her big break, the discovery that’ll get her out of that shitty small town she’s been trying to escape her entire life. she writes hundreds of songs about how lost she feels and hates every single one, dreaming of a time when things might be different and she doesn’t have to second-guess every single one of her decisions.

she doesn’t have much of a love life and tries not to think about that, either.

the person on the other side of those two words stuck on her collarbone is probably looking for someone self-confident, who knows who they are and is comfortable with that. they’re probably expecting to meet someone who has their life together, who, at the very least, has a plan.

they’re probably not expecting a talentless nobody screwup like her, someone who tries as hard as she can yet never seems to make anything work.

things don’t turn around after graduation, either. sure, she manages to find an apartment in a building that’s nice enough and uses the last of her savings on the deposit and trying to furnish it, but it’s only a few weeks of trying and failing to secure a regular paying gig performing before she’s back at smoothie star again, begging for her old job back.

and there’s nothing that makes her feel more like a failure than working the same shifts she had in high school.

as she hums along to the radio on a random tuesday afternoon when the store is dead and there’s nothing to blend, she wonders what mr.-or-mrs. very funny would think if they walked in and saw her here -- twenty-three years old and flat broke, with a dead-end job and a one-bedroom apartment all she has to show for her very expensive and very useless bachelor’s degree.

that, and a notebook full of half-finished songs about relationships she could only ever dream about and an escape from the miserable small town she lives in that feels farther away with every day that passes.

she can’t imagine they’d be very impressed.

raleigh’s life gets monotonous very quickly. the music takes a backseat to the scandals and for a while there’s a predictable pattern of cause trouble, clean up image, rinse and repeat.

there are girls in between the cycles to help him pass the time. some he likes well enough and some he despises, but for the most part his management gives their recommendations and he agrees and makes awkward conversation for an hour or two over brunch until it’s time to go trash something again.

things get particularly bad after one minor cruise ship hijacking incident.

but in his defense, no one ever told him that breaking into the harbor and joy riding was a first-degree felony, worsened by the fact that he’d just so happened to crash the boat into the pier while he was trying to dock it.

at least he’d been sober.

though a monumental fuck up like this felt sort of inevitable; everyone who knew him probably figured it was only a matter of time before he went too far. how could he not when he was always chasing the next high?

still, the image rehab tour that follows is far from what he’d call enjoyable. he has to cut off all his hair and play nice at industry parties and waste time standing around being seen at charity events he winds up just cutting checks for instead of helping out at.

on top of the miserable community service comes the pr bullshit his team so loves -- dozens of tv appearances back-to-back where he’s herded around all day like cattle, in and out of green rooms with crappy coffee and bad catering.

he has no idea that showing up to be a judge on one in a million is going to change his life. hungover and running late, he barely even makes it to the taping of the semi-finals, slinking inside the concert hall in middle-of-nowhere, usa with a headache and some choice words for whoever thought this was the best way to clean up his image.

fortunately, raleigh manages to make his way inside virtually unnoticed. his phone is buzzing angrily in his pocket -- undoubtedly his manager trying to encourage him to hair and makeup or some other absurdity -- but he ignores it in favor of ducking back behind the line near the auditorium doors, only barely catching the last few words of some catty confrontation between two contestants as he goes.

as one of the girls stomps away, he sees the other’s shoulders slump from behind. “guess i’m not making any friends,” she mutters.

it’s clearly said to no one -- not even to herself, really -- yet for some reason, he can’t stop himself from responding. “where i come from, that’s a good thing.”

the girl’s shoulders straighten, but she still doesn’t turn around. “i’m not trying to succeed at the cost of others.”

raleigh smirks, leaning back against the wall beside his guitar case. “you do realize you’re at a competition show, right?”

“of course, but...” her hair ruffles with what sounds like a huff. she’s still not facing him, staring off at where the other girl she’d been talking to had run away. “that doesn’t mean i’m not rooting for everyone here to share their music with the world.”

“what a sweet sentiment,” raleigh drawls sarcastically, almost feeling a little bad for her and her naivety. this poor girl is going to be eaten alive. “it won’t last.”

her body tenses, her shoulders tightening again. he can almost see smoke start to pour from her ears before she spins suddenly on her heel to face him.

whatever sharp retort had been on the tip of her tongue gets swallowed with a blink as soon as their eyes meet. something like electricity crackles in the space between them, strengthening the invisible pull he’d felt when he first stopped behind her. instead, she only asks, “what’s your name?”

vi.

the man in front of her snorts. “very funny.”

a smile tugs at her lips. “very funny, that’s a weird name.” this is unlike her -- the quick comeback, the flirting. usually being face-to-face with a guy as good looking as the one talking to her now made her want to wither away and die, but something about the stranger standing before her sets her instantly at ease. “so, are you gonna tell me, or not?”

now it’s his turn to blink at her. a hand lifts to rub at his jaw. “huh. you really don’t know who i am, do you?”

cadence’s eyes narrow as she assess him. there is something vaguely familiar about that crooked grin, she’s sure of it.

at the very least, it’s an excuse to stare at him, and she does, moving her eyes slowly over the tattoos poking out over his jacket collar, the line of stubble on his sharp jaw, the glint of mischief in his eyes.

her helpless gaping is interrupted by a sudden shrill scream. “oh. my. god! is that raleigh carrera?!”

everything clicks at once. as a wild group of girls corner him, she realizes where she’s seen that smile before -- on just about every tabloid cover known to man, plastered all over convenience stores and the internet with headlines about his latest bender. in fact, she’s pretty sure he was just in the news for something similar -- crashing a yacht or something else ridiculous like that, something that only someone as rich as raleigh carrera could have accomplished.

then she realizes what he’d said to her, as soon as she’d turned to look him in the eyes. very funny.

her heart stops. all she can do is stare wide-eyed at him as he dispels the girls clamoring for a selfie, snapping back to the present when he waves one large hand in front of her face.

“sorry -- what?”

“i said, what’s your name? it only seems fair, now that you know mine, and all.”

“cadence,” she answers numbly, “i’m -- um, i’m used to your hair being longer.”

“cadence,” raleigh repeats, smiling at her, “so you do know who i am.”

“what do the magazines call you again? r&b’s time bomb? puerto rico’s hottest export? you’re kind of notorious.” she blinks at him, then admits, “i’ve heard your songs.”

“seen the tabloid covers too, eh?” the expression on his face suggests he’s almost proud of them.

this is surreal.

“didn’t you crash a yacht or something?” she asks, brain whirring into overdrive as she tries to process what’s happening. he doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, which gives her a moment to gather her thoughts, something that feels impossible when she can’t push the way he’d scoffed very funny out of her mind.

“or something. insurance paid out a couple million in property damage, but...” raleigh trails off, brow suddenly furrowing. he stares at her silently for a beat too long, then slowly turns a dull red. “hey, what’d you say earlier, again?”

cadence wets her dry lips, trying not to panic. stay calm, she silently coaches herself. raleigh carrera is not your long-awaited soulmate and you are not doing this in line to audition for one in a million. “i said -- what’s your name? and then you said...”

oh god, this is happening. her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she fidgets with the neckline of her top, tugging it to the side so raleigh can see the two words on her collarbone.

“very funny,” he mutters, “oh, jesus fucking christ. you can’t be serious.”

“me?” she demands, “you’re the one who --”

“next up,” calls a voice suddenly, cutting sharply through their argument, “contestant #9,276.”

her blood runs cold as she realizes that’s the number she’s wearing pinned to her shirt. she can feel herself start to sweat; how the fuck is she supposed to perform like this? she wants to throw up. why did this have to happen to her now? this was her shot -- her one fucking chance --

“hey, easy.” there’s suddenly two strong hands on either side of her shoulders, and she startles as raleigh stares at her from up close, closer than he was just a moment ago. “relax, okay? you’re gonna be fine. you’ve got this.”

“but --” she starts, then realizes her mind is racing too quickly to even articulate what she wants to say. she settles for shaking her head, eyes wide and panicked. “i can’t just -- oh my god, i’m going to throw up.”

“here,” raleigh directs, “take my guitar. prince gave it to me as a birthday present.”

prince?! she mouths hysterically to herself, as he flips the latch on his case open and pulls out the instrument. “how is this supposed to help me?”

“just trust me,” he says, giving her a gentle nudge towards the auditorium, “now go.”

she does, stumbling forward with the most expensive piece of equipment she’s ever held in her hands in her life alongside her, drawing in a deep breath as she makes her way onto the stage.

she can do this.

everything else will have to come after.

vii.

the thing is -- she’s talented. exceptionally so.

he can tell she’s a little nervous, but maybe that’s just because he’s used to looking out for that sort of thing; he could probably recognize it more easily than the average person would. it probably has nothing to do with who they are, how he notices the nuances in her body language...

her belt is impressive. her voice is stunning, clear and uniquely melodic. his guitar looks spectacular in her hands, and cadence plays it like she’s been practicing on it her entire life.

he tries his best to look nonchalant, feet kicked up onto the seat in front of him, but when she locks eyes with him from the stage he knows he hasn’t succeeded. raleigh’s breath catches, and he stares back at her, transfixed by the way her dainty hands cradle the neck of the guitar and strum the strings, how her lips purse around the long, emotional high note at the end of the song’s chorus.

she’s really very pretty.

he’d probably be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t make him a little bit jealous and uncomfortable, watching how she and avery fawn over each other when she’s finished. he’s probably a much better suited match for her, clean cut and pristine as he is.

he wonders if she’s disappointed that it’s him -- that it’s now, when she’s clearly on the cusp of something great all on her own.

it’s a lot to think about, and so he dips out of the auditorium before she finishes up, rushing outside with his heart pounding. it’s not until he’s halfway through the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket that raleigh starts to relax even an iota, and of course that’s when the stage door he’d left propped swings open wide and cadence’s sneakers hit the asphalt beside his boots.

“uh, you can’t just leave me with this thing,” she says, apropos of nothing, and as he stares at her he realizes she’s talking about his guitar, which she’s holding in one hand like it’s a dead fish. “this costs more than everything in my apartment combined, i’m sure.”

he shakes his head at her, laughing as his fingers flick ash from the cigarette he’s holding. “no way -- you should keep it. you two looked perfect together.”

she hesitates, looking down at the instrument again. he can see in her eyes that she’s torn; it’s obvious she knows the right thing to do is to refuse a generous gift from a stranger, but she wants to keep it, and already his mind is racing as he considers what else he could give her that would excite her like that -- a private flight, a tour of his penthouse, a million dollars.

“are you sure?” cadence asks, without looking at him, and the hesitancy in her voice makes him realize how unsure she really is. she’s the one who’s wondering if he’s disappointed in her.

he licks his suddenly dry lips and drops what’s left of his cigarette to the ground, finding he doesn’t actually need the rest of it, anymore. “positive.”

viii.

they don’t actually get to spend a lot of time together, while she’s filming. she has to focus and it seems like she’s always busy, somehow -- not that she sees raleigh very often in the first place.

the days are spent rehearsing with avery and cramming in as much mentoring as possible, and when she can pull herself away from fiona’s lessons on image to get home at a reasonable hour she collapses into bed pretty much immediately, out like a light from the whirlwind of the day and hardly even aware enough to dream.

but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about him. she does, especially on the rare occasions she manages to catch a glimpse of raleigh walking around in the studio, or on one memorable evening she stays late in the auditorium to bang on the piano keys of the beautiful, enviable baby grand on set and startles to find him leaning in the doorway, watching her play.

it’s all a blur and wildly difficult to process; just when she thinks she has a grip on things she remembers the private moments she’s had with raleigh and her emotions tumble to pieces again as she lets the weight of the implications of what’s going on between them crush her completely.

one moment sticks out on her as being particularly worrisome, insofar as how it bodes for the rest of her life.

it feels like something significant from the moment raleigh offers to help her warm up; they’ve hardly had a moment alone together in days and she still has absolutely no idea how she’s supposed to talk to him or what she should say, but for some reason the conversation flows easily and she hardly has to think about the (no doubt incredibly stupid-sounding) words coming out of her mouth.

“you’re going to kill it,” raleigh says finally, once they’ve worked through all the exercises in his arsenal, “you really don’t need my help.”

never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine someone like him would say something like that to her. “you think?”

“i know it,” he answers confidently, shrugging his shoulders like it’s that simple. “and you should, too.”

there’s a moment of silence where they just stand there staring at each other, ignoring the restless murmuring of the crowd outside that’s waiting for him to slip into his seat at the judge’s table. she’s effortlessly lost in raleigh’s eyes, so fixated on the intensity of his gaze that she doesn’t realize he’s leaning in closer until it’s too late.

“insurance policy,” he mutters, before he kisses her, hands cupping her face gently.

for a split second, she stands frozen, shocked totally still. then, her brain reboots enough to propel her into motion, and cadence gets with the program enough to wind her arms around raleigh’s waist and pull him closer and kiss him back, until her heart’s lurched up into the throat she’d just been warming up, pounding relentlessly.

they make out until the roar of the crowd is deafening -- until it’s impossible not to acknowledge it any longer.

of course raleigh’s a life-ruiningly good kisser. why wouldn’t he be? why should any of this be easy?

it’s only a few simple touches, but raleigh’s mouth leaves her dizzy and lightheaded when she’s supposed to be concentrating on performing, and, independently of the way she’s blinking at him in stupid shock, cadence already knows she’ll never be able to kiss anyone else ever again without thinking about him.

“i have to get out there,” she gasps between desperate presses of their lips against each other, grasping ineffectively at his clothes while his fingers tug her hair out of shape.

“be late,” he suggests, “it always works for me.”

but she’s not him. she’s not like him -- they have nothing in common. they come from different worlds; they’re two completely opposite people.

and yet every minute with raleigh is like coming up for air after being underwater for years, like the knots of guilt and shame and awkward embarrassment she’s carried around for her entire life without understanding why she has them are slowly starting to undo themselves, unlaced by his careful fingers.

they make it out there. eventually.

before she knows it, confetti’s raining down from the ceiling and falling all over her, and she locks eyes with raleigh from across the room to find his lips pulled into a genuinely affectionate grin -- lips that she’d just kissed for the first time a fucking hour ago and, seriously, what is her life now -- his eyes bright and excited.

things just keep getting weirder and weirder, but the way they’re beaming at each other like idiots in a room full of thousands, broadcast on national television, too, makes her think things might be pretty great, too.

ix.

it sort of takes them a long time to getting around to talking about it -- the soulmate thing.

it’s not that he doesn’t try. he does, but she’s got a lot going on, these days: a big move and a new record deal and days filled with songwriting and nights out being seen. he’s still on his image cleanup tour, while she’s at it, so his fake smile stays fixed on his face throughout another boring week of restaurant openings and charity events and talkshow appearances before he finally gets the chance to spend some time with her again.

they text here and there, but nothing pans out until the stars align and they manage to slip out of the back door of a nightclub unnoticed together after a night of dancing too close for the comfort of her publicist while avery and the others cause a commotion at the front entrance to distract the press.

she goes back to his penthouse with him. he can’t remember the last time he brought a girl back to his apartment just to talk, and especially not one who spent the better part of the evening in a sparkly minidress grinding against him.

but here they are.

“so -- how’s the city treating you?” raleigh asks, pouring them both a drink he doesn’t want from the bar cart in the corner of the room for something to do with his hands.

cadence shrugs from where she’s perched on the edge of his sofa, tugging at the hem of her dress. “good, i guess. it’s honestly all kind of overwhelming.”

“yeah,” he nods, passing her one of the glasses in his hands and taking a seat on the ottoman in front of her, close enough to see her face in perfect clarity but still maintaining a distance that he hopes is respectful. “i know what you mean. when i first came here after joining sunset skatepark everything felt so... huge.”

“totally,” cadence answers quickly, nodding in a way that’s almost aggressive. “i mean, there’s so much pressure to deliver an album right away, but i want it to be perfect, and the studio is so different from, like, writing songs in my room at home, and i... i guess i feel kind of homesick, but -- not for my hometown. i hated that place.” there’s hesitancy in her gaze when she asks, “do you know what i mean?”

“yeah,” raleigh says again stupidly, because the truth is -- he knows exactly what she means. cadence has just articulated something he could never quite put into words better than he’d even thought the sentiments to himself. “it’s like... nostalgia for something you don’t even want.”

“exactly,” she breathes emphatically, and then they’re kissing again, and she’s in his lap on the ottoman and he definitely brought her here to talk, for sure, but is it really so terrible if they get a little sidetracked on the way to their destination?

well -- they wind up making out for hours. so, there’s that.

it’s not part of the plan but it’s a hell of a side quest, memorizing the shape and feel of her with his hands while her lips pull every last bit of breath from his lungs, until he’s lightheaded and dizzy in a way no other girl has ever made him, before. it’s to the point where when he finally finds it within himself to push her away, he’s uncharacteristically nervous -- something that’s never happened to him before, not even on the night he lost his virginity.

“i really did ask you over to talk,” he says, voice hoarse.

cadence licks her lips and then beams at him, eyes sparkling. “i know.” she shuffles delicately back onto the couch, lingering in his lap for only a moment before pulling away entirely. he stuffs his hands under his thighs to stop himself from reaching out for her again. “sorry i haven’t been around more.”

“you don’t have to apologize.” raleigh shakes his head. “i should be apologizing to you, i feel like... i should be the one who’s around, to help you with all of this. or at least -- i want to be. i don’t know if i’ll be any good at it.”

he blinks, surprised by his own honesty. he hadn’t meant to say all of that, but the words came up before he was cognizant of them and now they’re out there, and there’s no taking them back -- especially with the way she’s looking at him, all soft and sweet and happy.

“well, you don’t have to be good at it,” cadence murmurs, reaching out for his wrists and tugging his hands free so she can interlock their fingers effortlessly. they fit together like puzzle pieces. “you just have to be you.”

her budding relationship with one of the biggest names in r&b doesn’t have much time to bud at all before it’s rudely plucked from the plant and stepped on.

she finds herself blinking at fiona in confusion as the words take some time to process. “you want me to do what?”

xi.

raleigh balks at his manager, shaking his head emphatically. “no,” he spits out, “absolutely not.”

xii.

“cadence, it’s not a big deal,” fiona tells her, very nearly rolling her eyes. “everyone does it. you go on a few dates, play up the relationship for some photos, social media eats it up -- boom, you’re a star.”

“i don’t know,” she answers hesitantly, mind drifting back to the photographers that have already been following her around, screaming about avery when she ducks into the car with him. things with raleigh are... new, and complicated, and do they really need to add public scrutiny into the mix as well? “i just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“it’s a great idea,” fiona sighs, shaking her head. “all our focus groups agree. the label thinks it’s best, what with your single taking so long to put out.” she opens her mouth to protest -- it’s not like she’s dragging her feet on purpose -- but barely has a second to get a word out before fiona continues, “besides, raleigh does this all the time.”

her teeth bite at her bottom lip uncertainly. “he does?”

“of course. chantal clearwater? she was a pictagram model when they met, and now she’s opening shows at paris fashion week. it’s just business.”

it’s not, though. it could never be just anything, for reasons no one else knows about except the two of them, for reasons she’ll never tell. “well... what did raleigh say about it?”

xiii.

“i said no, frank.” he’s annoyed, now, and his manager knows it, raleigh’s arms folded across his chest and his eyes set into a glare. “n. o. no.”

“and i hear you, but is it really the end of the world? she’s exactly what we’re going for, and i know you already get along --”

“which is exactly why i don’t want to do this. so pick someone else. anyone else.” he’s not going to let his label turn her into one of the girls he has to be seen with for fake photos and mutually beneficial positive press.

for so many years, he’s watched people fake feelings and use each other -- willingly participated in the using himself, too, more times than he can count. he never cared about any of it before.

but being with cadence doesn’t feel fake, and he doesn’t ever want it to. and he knows that if he agrees to this, everything he enjoys about spending time with her will disappear in favor of the ugly, plastic decay that’s eaten away at so many of his personal and professional relationships before. organic, genuine time with her will become strolls near celebrity hotspots, angling just right to help the cameras get the perfect shot. he’ll show up to support her at shows because her publicist called him, and their time together will become some manufactured narrative meant to push their labels’ agenda, until six months down the line they don’t even recognize themselves or what might’ve been if they’d done things a different way.

“look, there isn’t anyone else. her team’s already agreed to it, and i’ve got brunch set up for sunday. all you have to do is play nice for two fucking months, raleigh. is that so impossible for you?”

yes. already he feels a deep-seated desire to go somewhere and break something, to tear through the flower beds in central park with his motorcycle and wink at the cameras when they catch up to him.

instead, he storms out of the office he’s in, and into the sunlight, tugging the hood on his jacket up and melting into the crowd on the corner so he can be as anonymous as possible when he picks up his phone and calls cadence.

“hey raleigh,” she chirps as soon as she picks up, sounding far too cheerful for someone who’s likely had an equally as miserable early morning meeting on a friday. “guessing you heard the news?”

“can’t i just call you to say hi?” he grumbles, ducking his head as he strolls through the intersection with the mob of people crowded along fifth ave, turning down the next side street so he’s alone again, with no one following, just like that.

“well, you can,” she teases, and some of the anger he’s carrying around with him fades, dissipating into nothing and evaporating like smoke. “but you’re not.”

“no, i’m not,” he agrees with a sigh, shaking his head. “you sound surprisingly cool with it, though.”

“should i not be?” cadence laughs, but he can detect a thread of nervousness in her tone. “i already want to hang out with you. we have the same friends and work in the same industry. we’re... probably going to go on dates anyway, so... how hard can this be?”

god. she has absolutely no idea. part of him thinks it’d be cruel to burst her bubble, but he should warn her, shouldn’t he?

she sounds so optimistic about it, though. it’s hard to feel anything but hopeful when her voice turns up like that at the end. in the back of his mind, there’s a voice that’s not his suggesting maybe this time, things will be different.

surely he knows better than to think something as ridiculous as that, though, right?

“well, i guess it’ll be interesting, at least,” he muses, slowing his steps by the entrance to the subway.

he’s going to lose his signal just as soon as he heads underground, and he’s not quite ready for that, yet.

xiv.

time with raleigh flies by.

it doesn’t feel like they’re fake-dating -- they do everything she hopes he’d want to do with her anyway, like go out to eat at fancy restaurants and take walks through the park and bounce melodies for songs off of each other, facetiming late at night from their apartments or on the days he visits her and micah in the studio.

he’s by her side for the release of her first single, and her first music video, and through it all, raleigh plays the role of the doting partner perfectly, holding her purse on the red carpet and feeding her paella at a strategically-placed outdoor table and fetching her coffee order when she’s too busy to stop writing for even just five minutes.

in the blink of an eye, it’s time to put out her album -- just like that.

raleigh’s perfectly charming through that process, too. he shows up on time, says all the right things, and keeps a drink in her hand all evening long, so that when she’s finally done making the rounds and can enjoy herself after the entertainment and the networking and the schmoozing she’s giggly and touchy, doing her best to steal him away from the crowd.

“what were your other relationships like?” she asks, half expecting him to brush her off, though he’s always indulged her before. they’ve never really gotten this personal. “fake or... otherwise.”

“they’ve all been fake,” he shrugs, “and i can say with confidence that you’re the best one i’ve ever had.”

“really?” cadence smiles, chin propped up on her hand as she leans over the bar. “be honest. what did you really think, when you realized it was me?”

“what?” he asks, pushing the empty rocks glass in his hands around on the bar top, “you mean this thing?” he gestures at his arm, covered in expensive, custom tom ford, and the tattoo laying innocently beneath it.

“uh huh,” she confirms, “‘cause i was totally like oh shit.”

raleigh laughs, loud and wild, the sound swallowed up by the noise of the party around them. no one nearby is paying them even an ounce of attention, and it’s fun, to be anonymous at her own party, invisible to everyone in the room except for him. “i can imagine. i wouldn’t want to be stuck with me either.”

cadence shakes her head -- that’s not what she’d meant. but before she can protest, he rolls his glass between his palms and thoughtfully continues, “i guess i was a little surprised. it felt like i’d been waiting forever to meet you, so part of me was like, fuck, we’re doing this now? and i never thought it’d be someone so...”

“boring?” she suggests, eyebrows arching when raleigh’s expression immediately twists into one of disagreement, his nose scrunching up with distaste.

“no,” he huffs, “so... good, i guess.” she stares at him as he reaches for one of the waiting tequila shots on the bar, pulling it away from the line he’d set up for the crowd he’d been with before she’d tugged him to the side to talk, leaving the drinks untouched. raleigh knocks the shot back -- no salt, no lime. he’s had twice as many drinks as she has, and she’s definitely feeling them -- she has no idea how he’s even still upright, no worse for wear other than a few slurred words here and there. “but you just are. it’s like every song i’ve ever written was about you, and i just didn’t know it yet.”

the noise of the party fades in favor of the pounding of her heart, loud like a kick drum in her ears. she bites her lip and stares at him, watching as raleigh shakes his head at himself, dazed. “you okay?” she asks quietly, leaning in a little across the bar.

raleigh’s quiet for so long she has to wonder whether or not he actually heard her. just as she clears her throat and opens her mouth to repeat herself even louder, he nods, reaching across the bar and squeezing her hand before dragging her back over to the line of tequila shots waiting for them to enjoy.

the night is a blur after that, and there’s patches of the evening that are fuzzy in her memory the next morning, but she knows she’ll never forget the gentle kiss goodnight raleigh gives her when he helps her stumble into the car back to her apartment at dawn.

xv.

things go really well, until they don’t.

they have a blissful six months together with more fun than he’s ever had with anyone. slowly, he learns every single thing about cadence and returns her openness with honesty of his own -- honesty that feels strange and unfamiliar but weirdly thrilling, in a way, made easier every time one of his stories pulls a laugh or smile from her.

it seems unnatural, having a honeymoon period that goes on for so long. in the entire time they’re dating, he doesn’t destroy a single thing -- doesn’t even want to, which is the weirdest part of it all.

there are some moments that catch him completely off guard. more than a few times, he hardly even recognizes himself, she turns him into such a different person.

he doesn’t hate it, though -- just the opposite, in fact. raleigh realizes he’s really starting to like the carefree, far from jaded person he is when he’s with her, though it only hits him for real when he’s watching her storm away from him on liberty island, eyes fixed on the angry sway of her hips.

he stews on it on the long ride back to his penthouse; the game had, admittedly, been starting to wear on him. but he’d gone along with it because it was supposed to benefit her -- he’d agreed to the stupid public breakup and following the rules and not seeing cadence in public for the foreseeable future because it was what she wanted, and -- frankly, it felt like a stupid fucking decision.

not that it lasts long. he starts texting her just as soon as he’s done washing electralite out of his hair and doesn’t make it more than twenty minutes when they first see each other again at the moda gala before he’s sneaking off with her, ducking under the velvet rope that demarcates the planetarium as ‘off limits’ with her hand tucked neatly in his.

“maybe this is better,” cadence muses between sips of her drink, her eyes on one of the stupid glass exhibits he couldn’t possibly care less about. “now we can just be together -- no pressure. our relationship is ours again.”

their relationship. is that what this is? they’ve spent a lot of time talking about who they are and what they like and don’t like, kissing and touching and holding hands. throughout it all, he’s done his best not to buy into the ‘soulmate’ bullshit too heavily, but over the last few months it’s been hard to deny that there’s a reason he was meant to meet her, that she’s been changing him from the inside out.

“what’s on your mind?” she asks, turning towards him with an open look of genuine curiosity on her face, like she really wants to know.

“it’s nothing,” raleigh answers at first, reflexively, like he has so many times before. no one has ever really wanted to know. but cadence’s eyebrows arch, and she waits, patiently silent, and then the words tumble out of him. “it’s just that -- my whole life, i’ve watched other people use each other. so many people are just interested in the concept of celebrity status. so i played the game. never trusting anyone.”

he shrugs. a hand lifts to rub his jaw, and he looks back to meet her gaze just in time to see the little smile playing at her lips, like she already knows what he’s about to say. “but it’s different, with you. you make me not want to be that person anymore. when i’m with you, it’s the only time i feel anything real.”

“raleigh,” she murmurs, her expression flickering before her face does something that cracks his chest wide open. her eyes go all shiny and sparkly and her cheeks crease with a grin, and the way she laughs is so ridiculously joyful the hand he has stuffed in his pocket curls into a fist to stop him from doing something stupid. “i feel the same way. i just... this whole thing, i know it doesn’t always -- work out, but... with you i really want it to. i’ve never felt this way before about anyone, and i think...”

there’s a pause as her lips purse thoughtfully, and then she says the words that make it impossible for him to do anything but close the distance between them and kiss her over and over again: “i think even without this tattoo it’d be you, anytime, anywhere.”

xvi.

being raleigh carrera’s (real, confirmed, 100%-authentic) girlfriend feels almost too good to be true.

raleigh is... everything she never knew she wanted in a boyfriend, wrapped up into one tall, dark and handsome package, with a loud, goofy laugh and a deep, sexy voice that sends a shiver down her spine whenever his mouth so much as lingers near her ear for too long.

it turns out that, despite their differing status in the industry and her initial assumptions that they came from two completely different worlds, they’re actually on the same page about pretty much everything. she finds that the pressure of the word she’d held in such high regard for so long -- soulmate -- disappears entirely where he’s concerned because being with raleigh is just fun.

there’s motorcycle rides and boat trips and hours up late talking about everything and nothing; facetime calls with his mom and shopping trips where the stores are kept open late for them so they can shop alone, in an empty boutique, like every teen movie she’d ever watched growing up.

there’s late nights in the studio and either of their apartments where they both noodle around on their guitars and improvise half-hearted duets, content to just work in the same orbit as each other for as long as possible.

raleigh’s texting one night on the couch in her living room when she plucks out the melody to who i’ll be on her old acoustic, sitting on the floor in front of the tv.

he looks up before the first verse is over. “what’s that one? it sounds good.”

“oh -- just a song i wrote in college,” cadence hums, already downplaying it as she lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “i got stuck, never finished it. ellis made me sell the progress for some other writer to finish.”

he frowns, pushing up onto his elbow. his phone is tossed carelessly somewhere among the couch cushions. “why?”

“because i was taking too long with the odyssey,” she sighs. “it was kind of my only option. it’s weird, though -- thinking about someone singing something that was so personal to me.”

“play me what you had so far,” he says, and so she does, hesitating for only a second before strumming the chords, singing the lines she had slowly.

when she’s done, she looks up to find that raleigh’s slid to the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees as he leans in as close as he can get with the coffee table in his way. “okay -- that was beautiful. you should finish it.”

she shakes her head, setting her guitar down. “i can’t. they already sold it. and even if i wanted to... i don’t know how it ends.”

raleigh’s legs spread in invitation and she stands to walk around to the couch, slipping into his lap and leaning back against his chest. his hands are tender as he rubs them across her shoulders, sliding up her back before one lifts to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear, his pointer finger pushing her glasses up her nose affectionately. “maybe one day you can write something else with the same theme,” he suggests, and she tries her best to smile even though it feels like a dream lost, somehow -- a ridiculous thought, given that she pretty much has everything she ever wanted, but the way she feels all the same.

“maybe,” she sighs, the kiss he drops to her forehead a bandaid on a wound that’s been doing its best to heal for what feels like her entire life.

xvii.

he’s never brought a date to the vinyls before.

there’s been plenty of after parties he’s stumbled out of with a girl on his arm, sure, but cadence is the first person to sit by his side during the ceremony, and he’s surprised by how much he likes having her next to him.

then again, he’s self aware enough to realize he’d like being pretty much anywhere, with her.

still -- the awards are a lot less boring with her around to kiss and stroke his hair and make snide commentary about the rest of the attendees with, and when she squeezes his hand goodbye to rush backstage and get ready for her performance he misses her instantly.

what happens next makes him endlessly regretful of the fact that he’s not backstage with her.

he rushes around just as soon as he can, pushing his way through security and frantically scrambling technical assistants to find her exactly where he thought he might, between ellis knight and fiona, looking lost with her head in her hands.

she seems equal parts broken and pissed in a way that tugs at his heartstrings and makes him a little bit proud. raleigh shoves through the crowd to get to her and slips an arm around her waist. he’s only caught the tail end of the conversation they’re all having, but he knows enough to know that “you can’t bench her. that’s bull.”

ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter how much they stomp their feet. she’s under contract, their hands are tied, and he walks away seething at the unfairness of it all, this shitty industry that’s turned on her when all she ever wanted to do was make music.

she cries in the car back to her apartment to pack her things. there’s no way he’s letting her go home to iowa or idaho or indiana without him, and he barks at his team over the phone until they agree to move his appearances around so he can make that happen, his free hand clasped tightly in hers until he physically has to let her go so she can unlock her front door with trembling fingers.

cadence tosses clothes haphazardly onto the bed and he silently and precisely moves to folds each piece for her, until she gives up and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, defeated.

wide eyes filled with tears lock onto his, and he watches her bottom lip wobble before she says, “you really don’t have to do this. come with me, i mean. i know i messed up, and -- you have so much else going on. i don’t expect you to --”

“i’m coming,” he states firmly, setting the sweatpants in his hand down and stepping closer to her, sitting beside cadence on her bed. “what happened tonight was fucked up, cadence -- it shouldn’t have happened at all. i’m not going to let you go through this alone.”

“but --”

“but nothing,” he says, and before the words have even left his mouth she’s falling into his arms with a soft sound of gratitude, mashing her face into his chest as she sniffles.

“thank you,” cadence mumbles, sounding so unsure of herself it makes him wonder if she’s ever had anyone show up for her when it mattered most before, or if that’s yet another thing they unfortunately have in common.

xviii.

raleigh tries his best to cheer her up, but it’s still hard, feeling like she’s let the entire world down. her fans. herself.

there’s something embarrassing about showing raleigh her apartment back home and the person she was before she met him -- all the places she felt most uncertain and where she experienced some her worst self-doubt, the room that still has the smoothie star apron hung up in the closet.

but there’s also something exciting, about being totally off the grid with him. no one knows they’re here and there’s no paparazzi waiting to snap photos of them -- especially given the fact that they don’t leave her building for the first three days she spends moping around while raleigh orders all the takeout he can get his hands on.

it sort of reminds her of when they first met, and there was nothing to do but learn about each other, though now there’s a familiarity to him she relies on, a unique raleigh-ness that feels more like home than this shitty apartment ever did.

still, she struggles, and the weight of the world doesn’t let up until zadie shows up with her fanmail and avery does his best to make her smile with a beach trip and some fancy new toys and a day in the sun with a drink in her hand.

eventually it’s just her and raleigh again, out by the fire after everyone else has gone to bed. her stomach is full of s’mores and her cheeks hurt from smiling for the first time in weeks, and it’s a shock when she realizes she feels content, even after everything that’s happened -- almost as though things will all work out for the better no matter what happens next.

“oh my god,” she gasps suddenly, cutting off what raleigh had been saying as her eyes light up and she hastens to stand. “i’ve gotta -- i need to -- oh my god.”

just like that, she knows how her song ends.

recording it is a process, but raleigh calls in some favors and gets them studio time and agrees to be featured on the song even though she knows he’s still working through a sound change that he feels unsure about.

but it means a lot to her, having him crammed in the booth at her side, singing into the same mic. they sound almost unbelievably good together, too, raleigh’s harmonies on the words that finally resolve that lost feeling she’s been harboring her entire life making something deep within her wriggle up happily, wagging its proverbial tail.

the fact that raleigh remains by her side throughout the entire fight with her label, the long nights of despair agonizing over what her next move is going to be and even the moment where they decide to break into indio, of all places, means more to her than she can ever say. she feels markedly less nervous about the entire thing every time she turns her head to the side and sees him, right there next to her -- right where he’s been this entire time -- smiling encouragingly and squeezing her hand hard in his.

though it’s not until they’re up at the top of the ferris wheel that she realizes how precious what she has really is. it’s not until he looks her dead in the eye and says, with that same soft earnestness he’s awarded her since they first met at the one in a million auditions that feel quite literally like a hundred years ago, “cadence, everything you want is on the other side of fear. and i want you to have everything you want,” that she truly understands that’s what between them is special and rare.

not because of any tattoos, or any preconceived destiny. not because of who they are and their status and the fact that people take pictures of them when they’re out in public together.

but because of this -- all these real moments of genuine connection they’ve been fortunate enough to share since fate threw them into each other’s paths.

“raleigh, i love you.” the words are said easily, not a moment’s hesitation behind them.

just before she crosses over in the cart to kiss him until they’re both breathless, raleigh gifts her the brightest smile he has and says, “i love you, too.”

xix.

the night is a blur from the moment he first takes the stage with his old bandmates to when he finally finds himself alone with cadence in a rundown old motel a few miles out from the festival in the desert.

he can’t recall ever being so happy, so of course he doesn’t remember every agonizing detail of the evening, though he does know he doesn’t feel the need to have a single beer with cadence around, twirling barefoot in the grass and giggling when she leads him up to the room they’ve borrowed.

afterwards, when they’re sitting on the roof together in the blanket they dragged off the bed, he reflects on the wild year they’ve had with her in his arms, fingertips tracing the delicate very funny scrawled across cadence’s collarbone.

he feels... free. completely liberated. like there’s absolutely nothing and no one that can get to him, now, like he’s untouchable, like he doesn’t care about a single thing that happens after today and how perfect things have been.

“i think i’m actually freer than i’ve ever been,” he muses, where his lips are pressed into her hair, “i can take my sound in any direction i want.”

“i’m so happy for you, raleigh,” cadence returns genuinely, tilting her head back so he can see her upside-down smile.

his arms tighten around her. “i’m so excited for what you’re gonna be doing, too. i’m excited for us.”

“yeah,” she sighs, “who knows what’s next, right? now that ellis let me out of my deal...”

he can hear the thread of worry undercutting the words. he shakes his head, hands rubbing up and down her arms. “you can worry about that tomorrow. for tonight, just enjoy the comeback. what you did out there was amazing.”

“what we did,” she corrects, and he blinks up the stars as he realizes she’s right -- they’re a we now. he’s part of a we again, after being on his own for so long.

the phrases bounce around in his head, unfamiliar and foreign. me and my girlfriend, he thinks to himself, cadence and i. we’re going to be late. we’ll be away that weekend. we just started watching that show. we, we, we.

“what we did was amazing,” raleigh amends, the words slow to come out but feeling right all the same. “whatever we do next will be amazing.”

“absolutely,” cadence confirms, with conviction, like it’s something she believes wholeheartedly.

and though he has no idea what to expect or what it might be, a large part of him is inclined to agree with her -- she’s been right about everything else so far.

xx.

one year later, she’s finishing a set in berlin, the last stop on a sprawling european tour that had taken she, avery, micah and raleigh across the continent for dozens of performances to sold-out crowds of thousands screaming her lyrics back to her.

if her contract with overknight had been a dream come true, signing to wilshere records is heaven incarnate. cadence’s trip through the u.k. with her new label is proof enough, and the chance to meet new fans with new stories to share that she could connect with is one she’s taken to with enthusiasm, the experience made all the sweeter by the fact that her favorite people get to be by her side throughout it all.

berlin’s crowd is one of the best, and she fully expects to end the tour on a high note, head banging to the last few notes of ‘knockout’ before raleigh’s planned entrance for the last song of the night, so they can sing the duet that’s closed out every show they’ve had on the tour together.

when he struts out with his guitar, waving and grinning at the crowd, she can’t stop herself from smiling stupidly at him, just like she does every time she sees him join her on stage, every time she realizes that this is their life, that this is something they do every night, now.

though her grin falters when raleigh pauses in front of his microphone and asks, “berlin, do you mind if i talk a little bit before i start the song? no? cool, because i’ve got an important question to ask.”

her eyes widen. cadence’s mouth drops open and doesn’t close throughout the entire speech raleigh gives her, even though thousands of people in the crowd are filming every moment of her gaping like an idiot, snapping close-ups of her shocked face.

the arena practically vibrates with screams when he drops to his knee, popping the box in his hand open so she can see the giant diamond ring nestled inside of it.

“so?” raleigh asks, and cadence can just barely hear him in her in-ears with the way her heart is beating frantically up into her throat, as wild as the crowd’s raging around them and then some. “whaddya say, babe? will you marry me?”

as if the answer could ever be anything but yes. she nods, laughing as she launches herself into his arm for a kiss that’s too grand to be given on stage, though that’s hardly going to stop her -- not tonight, at least. tonight, she’s okay with the whole world watching their every move, just one more time.

“oh, i don’t know if it’s going to fit,” raleigh jokes as the ring slides easily onto her left hand, amping up the theatrics for the fans still watching them avidly, even up in the cheap seats.

cadence rolls her eyes playfully at him. “very funny,” she praises, and the grin he offers her in return is so loving -- so knowing, with the secret that only the two of them share and every weird piece of their history included in it -- that it takes everything she has to shove him away so they can perform instead of dragging him down to the floor to kiss him over and over again.

clumsily, she flubs a few notes of love who i’ll be on her guitar. from across the stage, between the bridge and the chorus, raleigh jeers, “someone hasn’t learned to play with the extra weight on their left hand, yet, i see,” and when she flips him off while belting out the last lines of the verse, his raucous laughter is all the harmony the final few bars of the song needs.

#platinumweekend #platinum #raleigh carrera #raleigh carrera x mc #cadence dorian #raleigh x mc #raleigh x cadence #myfic #long post #well. this sure took me a long time DFJGHDFJHGDFJKGH so i hope you guys like it !! it was kind of a new style for me 😳

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alreadyblondenow · 4 years ago

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Johnny x reader // SMUT, angst, fluff, virgin!reader Summary: Every single part of you changed when you met Johnny. He’s a sweet responsible man who takes care of you even though he’s completely aware that you can take care of yourself. Even so, you let him because he gives you warmth that you can’t give yourself. Word count: 3k Warnings: Virginity loss, swearing, explicit mature themes, virginity kink?, corruption Note: If some words were misplaced, I apologise in advance. Half assed proofread hehe I’ll edit tomorrow im so sleepy. If you read already, Im sending you love. And thanks for putting up with shit hihi

You remember being a good daughter during high school. How you manage to have a high GPA just so you could make your parents proud and go to a nice college.

And when you got in to your dream college, you remember doing everything right during your those four years. Studied harder than ever and almost broke your back from staying up in front of your computer to finish your thesis. It was always about doing the right thing, staying on track, keeping out from trouble, always so sure what to do next after accomplishing the another. Until you met Johnny. It was the first time you felt so dumb and stupidly in love.

“Baby its not even in yet” you were sure that Johnny’s cock was inside already because the stretch hurts. It hurts so bad you can’t breath properly. “It fucking hurts.”

Johnny let out a giggle, kissing your breast while being half inside you, “Baby it supposed to hurt you’re a virgin” he’s clearly enjoying teasing you underneath him and savouring the tightness of your pussy for the first time. “My virgin” kissing you a little too sweet and soft even though he’s cock is making your eyes teary. He pushes in again slowly with your consent and fucks you slow, then fast when he sees you relaxing already.

“Johnny wait - it really fucking hurts baby” you pant asking for more time. “Okay okay, Im going slow again, sorry. I thought-“ and he fucks you slowly again, kissing your neck and collarbones.

When the pain was gone, Johnny feels good inside you. You let a string of curses, kissing and bitting him almost covering his face with spit. With a steady and deep pace you were slowly getting why people love having sex. “Still hurting?” Johnny already knew the answer but he wanted to hear it from you. “Not anymore? Hmm. My virgin girlfriend?” you hum at the pet name he calls you. What a weird thing to call you, you thought. But you love it.

Drowned by lust and pleasure, you didn’t notice Johnny was picking up his pace. He’s to experienced for a virgin like you. The both of you can only groan and moan from the feeling you give each other. Exchanging kisses and bites to show affection and appreciation.

“Ugh you’re almost there now aren’t you?” Johnny asked in between fucking you faster than before but not enough to wreck you. “Feels good now yeah?” he grabs you legs and puts it closer to your chest for a new angle.

“Baby - You fuck good” you gulp, trying to help yourself speak while he fucks you with the new angle. “Is this what I’m missing for months now?” and theres Johnny’s smirk again

“Im afraid so baby, Im afraid so”

You whine when he slowed down his pace. “Do you mind if I play a bit?” you didn’t gave him an answer but Johnny proceeds anyway. He knew you’re at the edge already and being the experienced one between the two of you, he wants to have fun and make the best out of this moment. Unexpectedly you earned long and hard stripes of lick on your cunt that made you closed your eyes shut and yell at him.

Johnny is so amused seeing you so fucked up for the first time. Without a warning he pushes inside you again and fucks you with the same pace as earlier. He noticed your eyebrows furrow and your lips parted letting out sounds so sweet for him.

“I think I found you sweet spot baby” you couldn’t agree more.

“Am I fucking you good huh? Am I fucking you right?” only gasps and moans comes out from your mouth.

“You have to show me baby. You have to cum” but that’s the problem, you knew you have this weird feeling in your abdomen that you somehow can’t let go off. Finally having the strength to talk back, latching on his arms and moving you head from side to side, “I’m trying to let go baby - fuck give me time” but being the dominant that he says he is, Johnny is losing patience and you don’t know what to do. “Aren’t I fucking you good? Why aren’t you cuming yet huh?”

And just as you though the knotting in your abdomen couldn’t get worse, it did. But this time you knew what you want. “Fuck baby! More” to your surprise, he didn’t fucked you faster but he fucked you harder instead. You didn’t know it will give you the same satisfaction that you were craving for just seconds ago before he delivered hard thrusts. He felt your pussy clench and that’s enough for Johnny to make the both of you cum together.

“There you go. You like it rough huh okay I’ll do better next round” Thrust. Thrust. Thrust. You can feel his hips slapping on your skin and you finally felt that sweet release that he was asking for. You cum before him and he chased his orgasm by fucking you faster, he didn’t know that made you overstimulated. “You’re okay, sshh. You’re okay.”

He removes the condom and helped you come down your high. Massaging everything he can as a form of apology, “sorry for being rough” he kisses your shoulders and you encircled your arms around him.

“I got a boyfriend that can fuck that good?” forcing a smile trying to fight the exhaustion. Johnny blushed by your sudden compliment making his eyes small. When you pull him for a hug, his body is warm and sweaty but he surprisingly still smells good. That day you asked Johnny to keep on fucking you until you learn how to be confident on having sex with him. For you, Johnny was the prefect person to help you say goodbye to your innocence.

Every single part of you changed when you met Johnny. He’s a sweet responsible man who takes care of you even though he’s completely aware that you can take care of yourself. Even so, you let him because he gives you warmth that you can’t give yourself.

He completely changed your uptight personality and introduced you to thrills and excitement. You never felt so alive after giving up that perfect image of you that you try to maintain.

He made you crave for pleasure and lust that he’s willing to give as long as you let him love you unconditionally and you give the same in return. Of course you love Johnny. He taught you that love shouldn’t always be perfect and that it could be a lot more complicated sometimes. Which is true. You always thought love should be perfect and it’s always about marriage and having kids. And you want none of that. For the first time in your life you don’t want to follow the life your parents want you to have.

Johnny is balls deep in your pussy, panties to the side and fucking you good on the dinner table. The man couldn’t get his hands off of your perfect figure. The room is full of moans and the sound of the table rocking back and forth from Johnny’s thrusts.

“What if we get married?” Johnny blurted out.

That doesn’t sound right. “Ah!” still catching your breath gasping and wanting more but what you heard made your head dizzy. “Johnny, I need you to get off”

“What- why? What did I do?” you got down from the table grabbing your satin shorts on the floor, wearing it again. You see Johnny putting his cock back in his boxer briefs and putting his pants on. “Is it because of what I just said? Im sorry I didn’t mean to. Lets just forget about it okay?”

“The fact that you already considered it Johnny... you will continuously think about it then someday you’re going to ask me again and again” you crossed your arms and sat across the table.

“What?” he scoffed. “Didn’t you think that someday we will get married? Didn’t that crossed your mind! Isn’t that the goal? Isn’t that our goal!”

“Don’t shout. And no. Thats the last thing that I want. And see, thats what Ive been saying. Once you thought about the M word, you will never stop thinking about it ever again” there was a few minutes of silence, you knew you’re gonna tear up the moment you talk again. But he has to hear your part, he has the right to know what you want.

“Getting... “ your voice already cracked. “Having kids, settling down all of it. You don’t know how those things work Johnny, they’re suffocating. The weight of the responsibilities is unbearable”

“So you’re saying a life with me is something bad that will change your life completely” he wanted you to look at him but you can’t, “So what? Were just gonna fuck like teenagers until were 40? You sound like you’re going to leave me one day.”

“I don’t know. Its just… its not me Johnny”

“Or maybe you just don’t love me enough y/n” he pushed his hair back leaning on the table and staring you down with cold eyes, “clearly were not on the same page anymore.”

“Thats not true”

He doesn’t say a word. He gets his jacket and kissed you on your cheeks. You can’t watch him leave because it will hurt you so much. But when you heard your door close gently, suddenly you felt so weak and cold.

The next day you asked him to go grab breakfast with you before you two go to work. Not knowing how to fix this, you still tried to reach up to him. Maybe you just got lucky that he didn’t want to pry on what happened yesterday and everything seemed fine during breakfast. From there on Johnny stopped talking about what he wants to happen in the future. Not bringing up the M word again, he’s not asking you random baby names anymore, no more IKEA window shopping for your future shared apartment. And quite frankly you miss it. Without Johnny being hopeful like that, your relationship seems dull.

You try to bring the old him back by asking him to go IKEA shopping with you. He agreed but he was quiet the whole time. He just talks whenever you asked him something.

You caught him looking at this couple who was checking furnitures together, his eyes full of envy and you can see right through him.

When you got home, you placed the bags on top of the table and went straight to the bathroom to cry. Constantly blaming yourself for not wanting the same thing as Johnny wants and for ruining the relationship you have. You grabbed a towel from the basket and you bit it to filter your screams. If you thought he didn’t hear any of your sobs and screams, you’re wrong. He’s waiting for you on the other side of the door crying his eyes out too.

Knowing that he’s outside waiting for you, you tried forming your words and forcing yourself to speak. “B-baby, I just cant provide the things you want in life anymore. You’re hurt, Im hurt. And we cant fix it because we don’t want the same things anymore. I can’t force myself to marry you and have kids when I don’t want to. And You don’t have to stop wanting and dreaming to have a family just because I don’t want to. Johnny, I think this is where it ends” You told him he could leave you and there will be no hard feelings. The breakup was somehow peaceful, no screaming and yelling like what you thought it would be. Maybe you just love each other that much but it’s still not enough.

After breaking up with Johnny, you went back home and help your sister plan her wedding. Although the two of you has very different views when it comes to marriage, you loved seeing your sister happy and excited to be married. During the wedding your sister shared the news that she’s already seven weeks pregnant and you couldn’t be more happier and the day became even more eventful because of the little angel. That day, you saw your sister’s husband tear up while she was walking down the aisle. That day, you heard your sister’s husband shout “I’m going to be a father!” You can’t help but think about how happy Johnny must be if he become someone’s husband and how happy he could be when he finally become a father.

After months and months of waiting, you finally met the little angel. An angel that changed your life. You don’t know what happened to you but meeting the little angel changed your perception in life. Yours sister’s baby was a miracle to many people, you included. Seeing how happy your sister and her husband with the baby made you realise that bringing life into this world can give you genuine happiness. You loved your niece unconditionally, showered him with every love you could possibly give and turns out you’re good with kids.

Another wedding is bound to happen, a little rushed and unplanned but you do know the couple loved each other. You knew you could possibly ran into Johnny during the wedding and you did. He looked fine as always, almost made every bridesmaid craving for him.

“All right! calling all the single ladies, it’s time for bride to throw her bouquet”

You were sure you’re sitting far from the bride not bothering to even get up and participate. You were also sure that you will never going to catch it even if you made an effort. But somehow you wanted it to come to you, near enough and catch it with both arms for Johnny. And it did. It landed on your lap. You scoffed looking at the beautiful flowers, smelling it to make it less awkward.

When the party started, everyone was almost drunk enough to care whose wedding it is. Laughter and giggles everywhere. You were alone, enjoying a whole bottle of champagne all by yourself.

“Mind if you tell who’s the lucky guy?” not turning your head back to look, that voice is familiar enough for you to know who it is.

“So happy to see you here Johnny” instead of giving him a hug you gave him a toast. Looking at each other’s fingers. Johnny checks your finger for any sign of an engagement ring and you checking his fingers for a wedding ring.

None. You answered his question to make the situation less awkward, “Just got lucky” you let out a small giggle. “The bride pretty much threw it far. And it just so happens that I’m sitting far enough for it to land on my lap” you both laughed, happy that you’re able to see each other again. Happy to have the chance to see each other’s eyes again without tears in it.

“How about you? Who’s the lucky girl?” Johnny laughs and downed the remaining alcohol from his glass.

“Still you”

You didn’t expect him to be straightforward but you’re happy about it. That night Johnny brought you to his new apartment and you had sex on his couch, on his bedroom floor and on his bed. The next morning you were welcomed back to Johnny’s life again with all smiles, kisses and a lot of orgasms he almost ran out of condoms.

For the past couple of months you and Johnny were busy catching up with all the years you spent apart and slowly building a more established relationship. Your life couldn’t be more happier.

“Baby Im home. And Im tired” you heard him drop his keys at the table near the door, of course he made his way to the kitchen first. Feeling his arms encircled around your waist, “I’m almost done with making dinner” you gave him a kiss and he made his way to the living room. Then you heard him shout, you slowly put down the hot pot and hurried yourself to Johnny.

“Oh my gosh! Who are you?” Johnny is pointing at your sister’s baby crawling around in the living room, playing with his toys.

“Gosh you scared me. T-thats my sister’s baby. I need to babysit tonight hope you don’t mind”

“Oh! I don’t mind… Come here you little ball of sunshine, lets play” and Johnny came crawling around the living room trying to catch the energetic baby. You giggle at the sight of Johnny crawling around. He’s so tall and big.

“Johnny, I thought you’re tired…”

“Nope. Not anymore”

When you’re both in bed with the baby in between the two of you, Johnny cant stop looking after the kid, humming lullabies and patting his small legs making him sleep deeper.

“Johnny a lot of things changed when we were apart. I started to love kids and actually looking forward on having one someday” you looked at him, “or some…” you whispered carefully not to wake the sleeping angel. He chuckled lightly, pushing his hair back “I know” he whispered back. He pats his side of the bed, gesturing you to lay beside him. He puts a pillow next to the sleeping kid so he can still roll around the bed safely.

Johnny pulled you close to him, hovering his leg on yours. He feels warm as always. “For how long?” you asked out of curiosity. “since we got back together. You constantly talk about having our own house someday whenever we watch lifestyle network. And, you constantly ask me to fuck you raw” You were both trying not to laugh so hard cover each others mouths. Before you two close your eyes, Johnny told you he liked the idea of the two of you whispering “Whispering is good. Can’t wait to have more whispering moments with you.”

The next day your sister came in really early, Johnny was still sleeping. You told her how he took care of the baby and that he was the one who babysit the whole night playing and taking care of him. “tell Johnny I said thank you. And please, make your own baby” you can’t believe your sister just told you to have your own baby already. “Okay okay. Get out already before you wake him up. I love you, drive safe”

When you came back to the bed with Johnny, he kissed you good morning completely aware that the baby is already with your sister. “I’m gonna miss the little guy” eyes still closed he’s still whispering so you played along. “Well, we can always make our own little guy” and that woke Johnny up hovering you and showering you with wet kisses. He’s so heavy but you’d rather let him crush you than being away from him again.

“Just so you know I want three kids. Two boys one girl” he says with a big smile while drawing circles around your tummy. “You do realise thats three different educations…” he chuckled and showered your exposed tummy with kisses making you tickle and whine.

“I know, thats why were gonna save like crazy before having them” he finally kissed you on the lips.

“I like that plan Johnny Seo you sound even more sexier. Lets be sure everything is fine and settled when they enter this world”

“And completely change our lives” he can’t stop rubbing your tummy, “I love how we’re compromising now. I never want to yell at you ever again. Not now, not ever. Definitely not in front our children”

You catch his hand and interlock your fingers with his, “I never want that to happen too baby” Johnny came closer to you, kissing you deeply. “Baby why are we whispering?”

you feel his hands creep inside your shorts, teasing your clothed clit and you let out a soft moan, biting his lips. “I don’t know... practicing to be quiet maybe?” He chuckles in between kisses.

“You going to marry me now?”

“Yes Johnny, I will”

................................................. Masterlist

#nct-writers #neowritingsnet #cznnet #nct smut #nct johnny #johhny seo #nct fluff #nct angst #nctfic #nct scenarios #smut fic #smut #johnny seo smut #nct #kpop fic #nct imagines

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fromthedeskofelizabeththird · 4 years ago

Text

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader, eventual polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: Gen

Trigger Warnings: Referenced child abuse, blood

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 4/16 (all chapters)

You were scared of a lot of things: bugs, dark places, ghosts, drowning and more. Your friends often joked that you were a wimp and you’d bever been inclined to disagree.

There was one thing, however, that scared you above all others. It sent shivers down your spine and left your legs wobbling from under you.

It was the door to your father’s home office.

Your father was a prosecutor and a pretty notorious one at that, famous for the number of guilty verdicts he had achieved over the years. He had an incredible advantage, of course- the same lie detection quirk that he had passed onto you. He spent most of his evenings alternating between his work and home offices, going over the details of cases and preparing for a never ending stream of plaintiffs.

His home office was a near perfect replica of the one in the city, complete with a golden name plaque on the door. You passed it every day, multiple times a day, and each time broke out in goosebumps as if the door watched you in turn.

It wasn’t only the plaintiffs your father needed to find guilty.

Your father was not in the least bit conservative with his quirk. You spent many an afternoon there, jaw clenched and skin crawling at his line of questioning.

Tell me… why were you late?

Tell me… how long did you study?

Tell me… who were you with?

You hated being left so exposed and, in retrospect, you weren’t in the least bit surprised that you ended up vanilla instead of habanero, desperately seeking a simple married life.

The anxiety of standing outside of your father’s home office stayed with you into adulthood, even now that you had your own home. You had started to believe it no longer had an effect on you; that you no longer remembered how it felt.

As you stood outside of the hospital door, though, you remembered clearly.

Hand trembling, you reached up to knock.

━

SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER

“Maybe if I move it that way…”

You scrolled through your calendar and let out a sigh at the appointments already there.

“No good, no good.”

You sat back in your chair and stretched, popping your shoulders and wiggling your toes.

“Maybe…”

You had a moment of inspiration, only to groan and click out of the window.

With the sports festival around the corner, your schedule was on the verge of taking a beating. Between modifying your office hours to make appointments with students to discuss their offers, to making room for counselling for those suffering disappointment, to keeping your usual appointments and open office hours, you were starting to consider bringing a futon and moving into your office for the foreseeable future. You’d known it was going to be a tight squeeze, but hadn’t counted on it being this bad.

You logged out of your computer and climbed out of your chair, giving your back a quick rub before leaving your office. You needed an IV of coffee, but a cup would have to do.

You were still thinking about your itinerary as you passed the 1-A classroom. Normally, between Kirishima, Bakugo and Iida, you heard the classroom long before you passed it. Today, though, it was silent and you peered through the window.

You’d heard that they were going on a trip with Thirteen to the USJ for specialist training and, if their empty desks were anything to go by, had already left. You had taken a tour of the facility during your initial induction and it had taken everything you had to keep your jaw from hitting the ground. You knew that UA was well funded, but it didn’t really sink in until then.

You wondered how they were getting on. Had Bakugou destroyed anything yet? Had Midoriya broken any of his bones?

You were still considering it as you passed the faculty lounge, dragged out of your thoughts by the sound of voices within. It sounded like the principal, though you weren’t sure who he was speaking to. You wondered if it was a private conversation and you should come back another time.

You knocked a couple of times before peeping around the door.

“Sorry,” you said, “am I interrupting?”

You really had heard the principal and he appeared to be sharing tea with All Might.

You weren’t sure you would ever be prepared for the sight of All Might in his skinnier form. Like most youngsters of your generation, you had watched his heroic acts in awe. You hadn’t known he was going to join the faculty at the time of your own job application and still found your heart racing whenever you passed him in the corridors.

You had signed eighteen different nondisclosure agreements after successfully taking on the job at UA, of which well over half related to the Symbol of Peace. You knew that he had been injured very badly and was losing his strength at an alarming rate. Even so, it was difficult to adjust to the reality.

“Ah, (Name), come in, come in,” said Principal Nezu, “we were just sharing a cup of tea, would you like some?”

You wanted coffee, but Nezu had already started to pour.

“Of course,” you said, closing the door behind you and taking a seat.

“You got here just in time,” said Nezu, pushing your cup across the coffee table. “We were discussing the fundamentals of teaching.”

“That sounds interesting,” you said, taking a sip of tea. “You must have a lot of insight.”

All Might twitched beside you, visibly restless. You wondered how long Nezu had been talking.

“Apologies,” he said, setting down his cup, “I should get going. I’ve already rested for far too long.”

He got up and walked towards the door, taking a deep breath before transforming into the muscular form the world knew and loved.

You would never get used to that either.

“So, (Name),” said Principal Nezu, “how are you finding the school? I trust you’ve had support from our staff?”

“Everyone’s been really kind,” you said. “I know they’re busy with their own workloads this term, but they’ve had so much time for me.”

You wrapped your hands around your cup, warmth flooding your fingers. You wanted to explain how grateful you were for the opportunity -that not so long ago your life had been falling apart- but you never got the chance, for the door to the lounge flew open and a student stormed inside.

“Principal Nezu! Something terrible has happened!”

It was Iida from 1-A, dressed in his hero costume and visibly out of breath. Your blood ran cold and you glanced across at Nezu, who had gotten to his feet.

“USJ...there’s been an invasion at USJ! Please help!”

Nezu’s response to the matter was swift and efficient. He turned to you, visibly transformed from the mild mannered principal who had offered you a cup of tea.

“(Name),” he said. “I’m going to gather everyone available. I need you to liaise with the authorities.”

“Of course,” you said, setting aside your tea and whipping out your phone.

“Meet us there,” he said as you began to dial.

“S-sir?”

You weren’t a pro hero; what possible use could you be?

━

His intentions soon became clear.

While your colleagues rushed into the danger zone, you stayed behind with the police, hitching a ride with Tsukauchi to the station once the area was secure.

Time was of the essence. You had read enough crime statistics to know that villain attacks very often came in waves, making the next few hours crucial to the safety of UA. Having a human lie detector on hand during the interrogations was more than a little bit useful.

You only wished you could concentrate.

Everything you knew about the incident came straight from Tsukauchi, so even though you had never actually seen the full extent of the carnage, you knew enough for your imagination to run wild.

You knew that the students had escaped with minor injuries and, while Shouta was badly hurt, he wasn’t dead. You couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially since the only image of the incident you had seen was that of his goggles broken on the floor.

You sat beside Tsukauchi in the interrogation room, silent as they brought in prisoner after prisoner. You only spoke to activate your quirk; only dragged yourself out of your contemplations to ask the same set of questions.

Three hours later, you knew only fractionally more than you did to begin with. The villains you’d caught were blatant throwaways, with no knowledge at all of the man they’d followed into battle or a greater scheme. They’d all wanted to take a shot at the symbol of peace and had no idea how close they had come to succeeding.

“Are you going to be alright?” Tsukauchi asked as interrogations came to a close.

You knew you must have looked a mess, popping aspirin and pinching the bridge of your nose.

“I’ll be fine,” you said, “honestly.”

“I’ll organise a car to take you to UA,” he said, but you shook your head.

“No, no that’s okay. I need to go somewhere first.”

━

Technically, you had two places to go first.

You stopped by the police station washroom to freshen up, leaning over the sink as the migraine set in. You pinched the bridge of your nose and watched as it began to bleed.

You weren’t used to using your quirk for such a long period of time and had almost certainly overdone it. The bleeding began to slow and you switched on the tap, washing away the blood on your face before plugging your nostrils with tissue paper. Unfortunately, you had still managed to bleed on your collar.

Just your luck that you would use your quirk too much on the day you decided to wear your new white blouse. You cursed at your reflection, trying and failing to adjust your shirt in such a way that it wasn’t noticeable.

Even now, you couldn’t concentrate.

You had never crossed paths with so many villains in one day. You had watched your father cross examine witnesses and plaintiffs many, many times, but had never been in his shoes. You hated it.

You knew exactly how they felt when you activated your quirk, recognised the squirming as it crawled through their skin. Part of you had enjoyed it, knowing that their discomfort in that moment did not compare to the violence they had inflicted on others.

Shouta.

The violence they had inflicted on Shouta.

He was a hero, you told yourself. He had signed up to fight those very same villains.

Even so, you hated them for it in ways you’d never hated a villain before.

You thought back to your training and took a deep breath.

“This is normal,” you whispered. “This is normal. This is a negative emotional response to a distressing situation. This is normal, we’ll move on.”

You took another deep breath, but your heart still rattled.

What is it that’s bothering me?

You reached into your purse for your makeup, painting away the shock for now at least.

We can work through that later.

━

PRESENT

And so, there you were, standing outside of Shouta’s room in the hospital.

They’d put him under the care of one of the best doctors in Musutafu, who assured you that surgery had been a success and his life was not in danger. There was a high chance his quirk would be affected by the damage to his orbital floor but even that was lucky, all things considered.

You tapped at the door and let yourself inside, taking in the calm and quiet of the room. Shouta was tucked up in bed and connected to numerous monitors, their steady beeps breaking the silence. You closed the door behind you and crept over to the bed, taking in the bandages that covered almost every inch of his body.

You had always known that heroes risked death and worse on a daily basis but had never seen it in person. You didn’t know how to feel about seeing him bloodied and broken. You had seen this man naked; you’d held onto the arms that a villain had broken. Did it always feel this personal?

You took a seat next to his bed, taking note of exactly how much of him was covered in bandages. You wouldn’t have known it was him if you hadn’t been told otherwise.

You didn't know what you had expected to find at the hospital, only that it would give you closure.

Why, then, did you still feel so uneasy?

You recalled his words from only recently, after you had given him a faceful of pepper spray.

Why would you try and confront a villain without help? You could have gotten yourself killed.

You need to be more rational in these things. Running head on into danger gets people killed.

Why hadn’t he followed his own advice?

Truthfully, you knew exactly why.

He had been well aware of the danger, but made the call anyway. He had analysed the situation and prioritised the lives and safety of his students over his own. It was the right thing to do and the rational part of you knew that, but you didn’t feel very rational right then.

You had to report back to Nezu; had to adjust your schedule ready for trauma counselling. You weren’t the only one who had been exposed to an unprecedented amount of villains that day. 1-A had almost certainly seen too much too soon.

You knew you had to leave, yet felt guilty as you got to your feet.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, hoping that your words would reach him through the anesthesia. “I have to go...but I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

You promised yourself that you’d skip lunch if you had to.

“See you,” you said, leaning over to kiss his forehead as if on autopilot.

Your heart skipped a beat once you realised what you’d done.

Oh God, what were you thinking?

You reached into your purse for your chapstick as you left the room, so focused on painting away the kiss that you didn’t notice his fingers twitch.

#aizawa x reader #eraserhead x reader #shouta aizawa #aizawa shouta #boku no hero academia #habanero

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years ago

Note

if you’re still doing those: edward iv / elizabeth woodville for the ship bingo 🕊x

I’m so sorry, this whole past week has been one massive mental breakdown and I have been finding it incredibly hard to do anything besides uni assignments and writing. Also, I have a lot to say about these two so I didn’t want to half-ass it.

Some Comments:

I don’t know if I told you this but this used to be my OTP, like years ago when I first got into this era and did not think/know much about Clarence and the others. But now it’s no longer the case and that’s not necessarily because it got replaced by gisabel per se but because I’ve always found it extremely hard to reconcile myself with the infidelity aspect. Even when I was more childish I felt a bit dissapointed in the fact that he didn’t appoint her (or Anthony) regent, like obviously now I understand why it was to an extent untenable politically, but back then my younger mind just saw it as ‘he trusted his brother more’, which kind of threw a wrench. So much for the ‘it’s complicated’ square. The problem with long marriages is that the delicious aspect tends to wane, and that can’t be helped in a 20 year long marriage! But obviously the 1464-1470 years taken into isolation... well... it was the epitome of delicious, sexual and romantic. You might find me pointing this out wierd given that I didn’t make the same remarks on Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor who were also a pretty long marriage, it’s just that... in my mind they kind of stagnate age-wise even as they advance past their twenties because the whole narrative (historical and fictional) around them focuses on the first years of their union and the tribulations, whereas Edward and Elizabeth have a presence way past that as they were after all monarchs and never at one point left to live a quiet life and were no longer chronicled - so in that way they age before our eyes. And with that age you see the infidelity issue get worse, together with Edward’s greater promotion of Gloucester, his drinking, eating etc issues and it starts painting a sad image into my mind of like idk a love that at one point stopped being what it once was and could never again be - like the embers burning out? This turns the what could have been a obbsessive unhealthiness borne from passion into another caused by disillusionment? I don’t put too much stock into this, personally I feel the change in Edward was caused by other external factors and not Elizabeth herself eg Warwick and Clarence’s betrayals and deaths, the massive burden of fixing the previous administration’s mess etc. Nevertheless, Elizabeth on her own did not seem to be enough to drag him out of it and prevent some of his unhealthy habits. I do realise it’s a bit too much to ask for though.

Nevertheless, I do see them as soulmates, she seemed like one of the only people who could keep up with him in will and wit (though Jane Shore seemed quite a competitor in this regard) I’m not the type of person who thinks Edward was dominated by his lust, and I think based on that venetian letter (you know the Ziglio one XD) and the fact that it said that Edward loved her for a long time before marrying her, it was clearly a decision from the heart not the *ahem* codpiece. Also a part of the soulmate/star-crossed trope is the whole ‘they defied all odds, they withstood opposition’, and Liz and Big Ed are famously that. I would totally read fic for this but surprisingly there aren’t many! I honestly don’t know how come?? Like yes they do appear in a lot of histfics and the like, but apart from TWQ they are never the central focus, and even there we don’t get enough of them (which really irritates me). Some write me some!! I am intrigued by the pairing but extremely picky when it comes to how they are written because I have particular headcanons which I am fairly wedded to but do not expect they will be abided by. More in the pragraph below.

The Ship:

I absolutely can not stand portrayals of Elizabeth Woodville as a golddigger, much less some Marilyn Monroe type of bimbo. We know the type of beauty she had... a chronicler called her an excellent but solemn (or sthing like that) beauty where York in his letters to her for the marriage of Sir Hugh complemented her deep sorrowful look or such. She was a pious, economical woman who took her queenship extremely seriously and led a cultivated court, patronised literature and may have also written a poem herself (you know the one about Venus we spoke about). She was years older than Edward and on top of that a widow with two children of her own. I want to see that dynamic! I want to especially see how she drew Edward away from Warwick’s influences in order to put him on the path he was angling for: the statute of livery 1463 and the new sumptuary laws (that most famously restricted the length of piked shoes to 3 inches hhh) are very indicative of a king who (even before meeting her) wanted to install a strong centralised monarchy with a monopoly on violence and its laws. Not because of some rapaciousness on her part but because her and her family believed in him, experienced the exequies of war and wanted to put a stop to it. I want her to love Edward for putting an end to people like Warwick who caused all her family’s (and the gentry class as a whole) misfortunes and struggles, and in a way feel like she provided him with not only a circle of people who would help him realise this but also with a sort of family to soften the personal blow that he felt when part of his birth family betrayed him. I love the father-in-law becomes surrogate father trope (as I think you can tell) and I like to see Earl Rivers as that for him, hell you can take it even further and make Jacquetta as some sort of mother-figure for him as opposed to Cecily who apparently scorned the marriage and at that time seemed to side more heavily with George. I like to think under her influence she empowered him to act more ruthlessly in pursuit of his goal, but at the same time I think that while certain things were good in the long-term eg Clarence’s execution, (maybe Desmond’s??) they may have had a toll on the relationship later on. I headcanon Elizabeth as tragically hardened by the loss of her brother and father at Edgecoat and I think that may also have thrown a bit of a wrench into their love, given how she was faced with the violent consequences of being queen and afterwards with how Warwick and co. went free and she lost her chance of vengeance. I don’t think they were ever out of love though, especially judging by how she continued to be pregnant up to 3 years short of his death and the absolute trust he put in her. But I headcanon his attachment to Jane Shore as him seeking the light-hearted wit and lively banter that Elizabeth slowly started losing as the years went on and she became less vivacious and a tad more calculating and icy. I headcanon them as having a rift when it came to dealing with problems: she would keep on with her ministrations whereas he would just want to engage in escapisms. But the thing with the infidelity is that one should keep in mind that during that period relations would have to stop once the woman started showing, so Edward having affairs should not be read into too much tbh, perhaps it was more a type of addiction on his part like drinking and eating was - like all part of an excessive Epicureanism which he adopted to relieve himself of his stresses and sorrows (and boy were there many!), so not something that necessarily indicated he grew tired of her or whatever. Maybe she understood that and that’s why she didn’t make a fuss? But then again, the fact that there wasn’t complete faithfulness remains a personal impediment for me with this ship :// that’s just me personally.

Also the discussion we had about Mélusine and the alchemical elements and Edward IV’s own interest in such (which was used as ammunition for George when he accused Edward of engaging in dark arts to corrupt his subjects XD... yes I know très ironique)... made me headcanon him and Elizabeth bonding over this, and perhaps seeing their union as somewhat quite mystical. It would be something so interesting to explore and I think it’s a real shame that people nowadays recoil everytime they hear the word ‘Woodville’ and ‘Mélusine’ put together which is a shame because when handled delicately it could turn into something beautiful and it was certainly not a PG invention!

Also... those two have some bitchin’ fannart!

So yes, this was quite the stream of consciousness... but I do have a lot of thoughts for this couple! They were my OTP for the longest time after all.

#🍷❤️#ship bingo #thank you for asking darling #sorry for the delay x #I do enjoy doing those sm tho haha #a welcome break from the strict world of academics #elizabeth woodville #edward iv #elizabeth woodville x edward iv #the wars of the roses

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theories-just-for-funzies · 4 years ago

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“What’s the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends? Tell them your darkest secret, because if you tell them, and they decide they’d rather not know... You can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.”

This is the second post I’m making about BBC Sherlock S4 (or anything about any fandom, really). You can find the first one here, the topic is almost the same. I’m really slow in writing down my theories in a way that is comprehensible by others, so I’m sorry if i don’t have a lot for the moment. Read this with the knowledge that I firmly believe in TJLC as explained by Rebekah on YouTube, and that S4 is not real as we see it, but is telling us what we need to know before they release S5 (or the special if that’ll come first) through unusual ways, TJLC style.

I think here Culverton smith is mirroring the writers, and his friends are the viewers. During the whole scene we have TONS of mirrored shots in the windows, most of it infact. In all of the previous seasons mirrors and character shots in mirrors were there to signal “hey this character is currently mirroring this other thing”, so idk it might be even this time??

Faith when she’s still drugged and tries to remember something about the conference, the first shot of her that we see, she’s in a mirror, even the desk reflect her image. Wander which part of the audience Faith is mirroring? Yeah, you guessed it. The tjlc fandom. The ones that analyze things. The ones that are questioning.

And the nurses? Idk, I’ve never seen a nurse that’s just putting an IV wearing a mask (unless under special circumstances of course), it never happens even when you’re taking blood samples, it just doesn’t ring right to me. So, who are the nurses? They’re people working for Culverton, they know what’s happening, they know what the solution is and what it does, they know how to administrate it, but they leave the room in the moment of confession. The nurses are mirroring BBC Sherlock’s crew.

If you’ve never worked on a set let me tell you: nobody, apart from the smallest possible amount of selected people, knows the whole picture, they can’t risk it, usually it’s just the writers, the producers, and most f the times the main actor; everyone else just knows the smallest informations to do their single job of adjusting the lights or hair for that single scene just like it’s written in their schedule.

So the crew knows partially what they’re doing, but they can’t speak, because their mouth is covered.

I’m thinking this is exactly the reason of S4. S4 is the memory drug. Everything made sense till now, tjlc was more and more evident, it was extremely obvious to everyone that johnlock was an actual thing, i mean just look at the sign of three, MY MOM THOUGHT THEY WERE CANONICALLY IN LOVE BEFORE I EVEN DID (at the time the fandom wasn’t the greatest so I avoided pretty much anything that wasn’t fan fictions or fan art, and just thought it was queer bait). Everything was super clever and well made. And then S4 came. A cheap Hollywood movie where nothing made sense and with john and sherlock great platonic friendship. And it was the last season so how could you not except what they already gave you and still want more, right?

Wrong. S4 is either complete bullshit or a distortion of what actually happens.

Culverton say that he can’t say his darkest secret because he can’t take it back, yet he does tell, and he does take it back.

The show does say that sherlock and john love each other (and are still pining) but S4 takes that back. You want the distorted version? Ok. Sherlock does explicitly says the words “i love you” in S4 to Molly in a physical mirror, a character’s mirror for John, whose description of the coffin perfectly fits John. The show does say that the writers aren’t stupid and aren’t making a tv show that’s just a blockbuster action movie, with cheap Hollywood effects and made up physic laws. Yet S4 takes that back.

The whole thing they kept saying in earlier seasons about “making history of television” and “making unprecedented things”? What unprecedented things? That was extreamely cheap cinematic, with really poor writings and a rip off of James Bond and classic horror movies. Nothing about S4 was memorable or relevant.

They already said everything they had to say (for the moment) but then they couldn’t leave the public waiting for another 6 years before S5 with all that hope and knowledge. Especially considering the fandom suspected even the phone\heart metaphor before ASiB even aired. Leave those people with the tiniest hope and you’d find your plans stripped naked for everyone to see in less than half of that hiatus. That’s really not Moffat style, he needs to give you hope, rip your heart open, surprise you leaving you gasping, only then he can make another plot twist and make everything super beautiful again and making you crying because it’s too many emotions.

So they said their things before S4, the fans that were still not sold on johnlock or didn’t want it canon were the friends who would rather not know, they went on with the brain washing of S4, and said “ok, we’re done here, nothing else to see, the show is finished, good night”. But just as with Faith’s story you can reconstruct if not all, part of what happened; because i don’t know if you noticed, but S4 doesn’t have a lot of plot holes, it is one single gigantic plot hole.

But what happens if they kill everyone just like Culverton Smith said? What happens if they make S4 so bad and destroy everything they said up until now with the show itself? What happens if the same people that were able to decode everything suddenly lost any faith because they were let down so much they just let the fandom die, and there was no one left to analyze what they were actually saying?

Everyone would forget all about TJLC and about how clever of a show it was. They would erase the whole show from people’s memories, letting it pass by like any other show that’s there to fill your Sunday evening.

Also there’s another thing that doesn’t sit right with me, although i don’t have any proof backing this up and am not sure of what I’m saying, it’s basically just speculation, but still. TD12 package:

obviously this drug doesn’t exist, the only thing i came across with that name is a percussion sound module, you’re welcome to make your own theories with this informations since i know absolutely nothing about music technology and am not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to music theories or clues.

I presume TD12 it’s something along the line of saline solution, since Sherlock made that replacement himself later in the episde, my research (because i also have no knowledge about medical stuff) told me that saline solution has en expiration time of roughly 2 years. On the package we see that the expiration’s date is October 2018, so counting back, assuming Culverton got the drug shortly before doing his speach, the scene takes place somewhere around October 2016. Wander what happened in October 2016?

On BBC Sherlock official YouTube channel they release just one video: Sherlock Series 4 release date. Now. You might say I’m looking a little to much into it, but if you go check the release dates of the other YouTube videos you would see that they usually don’t post just one video per month, that’s the only one around that time period. Idk if you ask me it’s a lot of strange coincidences.

Anyway, in the scene he then says “these drip feeds will keep the drug in your blood streams at exactly the right levels. Nothing that is happening to you now will stay with you for more than a few minutes. I’m afraid that some of the memories you’ve had up to this point might also be... corrupted.”.

So the victims starting now, will continue to take the drug for the next idk 30 minutes???? But apparently some of the events preceding that moment can be “corrupted”. Translated: everything starting from October 2016 is fucked up because of the drug, not only that, but also some things from before that. I’m guessing the “drips” would be the little occasional posts or news??

Might I add the information that in December 2018 the escape room Sherlock the game is now opened? Like, i know it’s not October, maybe I’m just looking where i want to look, but... I genuinely don’t know, that’s why I’m sharing things, so that people with a more objective point of view can come and say to me “hey you’re not making any sense, what the fuck are you talking about”.

And overall, I’m not native English speaker, but I don’t think you say “corrupted” when talking about human memories. It sounds more something used in the context of digital memories, usually it’s files that gets corrupted, not human brain memories.

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squeeneyart · 4 years ago

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Breathe in the Salt - Chapter 5

AO3

Beta reader was @thesnadger!

Some thoughts on where to go next.

Martin is as helpful as he can be.

Their business finished, Jon and Martin exchanged a friendly “See you tomorrow” and went their separate ways. Jon turned on his heel and took the first turn out of sight. Martin, still holding his groceries, pressed his head against a nearby building and said under his breath, “God, you’re predictable. Smiles at you once and you’re done for. Must be a record.”

It had been a nice smile, though. Maybe at some point he would get to see a non-nervous one, the kind where the person’s face seems to open up like- No, he was not going to fall into poetic daydreaming, not this soon. Good lord.

He stood up straight, fixing his hair and checking for any witnesses. With the coast clear, he started the long walk home. It was fine. Martin wasn’t a complete idiot. He would accept the good news that Jon didn’t despise him and would roll with it, trying his best not to muck it up with more stupid mistakes. Then, with either their time used up or the investigation completed, all three of them would be gone.

The thought struck him hard, and Martin almost stumbled from the emotional whiplash. It had been, what, a day and a half? Surely not long enough to miss them that much, especially the person who had only just started being nice to him ten minutes ago. But Martin knew himself better than that.

Jon had been nice, just as Tim and Sasha had been nice, and he was going to miss the company when they had to leave. It was natural to feel sad about it, he told himself, but eventually their leaving would be a relief. The one-sided affection would have no room for hoping or growing otherwise. At the same time, he might as well enjoy the company of interesting people. Interesting people who wanted to help him, even! Jon had said he’d wanted to work together to figure things out, so that’s what Martin would try to do.

As long as it didn’t get him fired. As long as nothing they did fucked over any chance of employment. As long as his place of work didn’t eat him out of a hunger for vengeance.

Pushing those sour thoughts deep into the back of his consciousness, Martin focused on the morning’s events the rest of the way home. Plans of action formed in his mind, most of them related to the task at hand, a few needing to be waved away as wishful thinking. There was work to be done.

It took quite a bit of digging through crumpled and disorganized paperwork he’d saved from many unsuccessful attempts at employment, but after lunch, Martin sat on his bed with his original work contract. At the bottom was the signature of Peter Lukas, and in the bottom left corner was the stamped Lukas family crest, which Martin had seen every day on a small plaque adorning the lighthouse interior, right over his desk.

It was a simple and rather generic image of a black and white shield, framed by an albatross and a laughably inaccurate seal that Martin couldn’t help but gawk at years after he’d first seen it. He wondered if the artist responsible had had to work with someone telling them what a seal looked like from memory or if the family just hadn’t cared too much for accuracy. Based on the strange ideas Peter would spout at times of how the ocean worked, Martin would bet on the latter. Maybe the whole family was just like that?

Either way, it was equal parts ridiculous and unnerving as it lurked over Martin’s shoulder during the work day but didn’t have much use to him otherwise. He was no expert on symbolism and there was nothing he could see that would relate the crest to the task at hand.

Martin leafed through the work contract, glazing over benefits and salary before stopping on the section labeled “Employee Assignments and Other Expected Duties”.

“Sec. III. The employee agrees to the following non-exhaustive list of duties:

-Be present at the premises between the hours of 6 am and 4 pm, Monday through Friday, including lunch break. -Complete bookkeeping for the employer, Mr. Peter Lukas, using materials delivered to the premises on Monday morning. Delivery will always be completed by the employee's set arrival time at 6am. If nothing is delivered, contact the main house for further instruction to procure materials. -Clean the interior of the premises at regular intervals, including the main entrance, bathroom, kitchen, and upper floors. -Between the hours of 6 am and 4 pm, complete the maintenance list of the top floor (see Sec. IV). This must be completed once every day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday, between the hours of 6 am and 4 pm. There is a zero-tolerance policy for lack of completion. -Inform unexpected visitors of the proper procedure for scheduling a paid tour of the premises (See Sec. V) -Accept packages and sign for if necessary.

Martin looked over the list, biting his cheek. He’d grown lax on staying until 4pm, but with Peter’s general lack of awareness, it had never come up. Otherwise, the duties seemed in line with what he remembered. He looked down to Section IV.

“As referred to in Sec. III, the employee will complete the following tasks during the hours of 6 am and 4 pm every day, including Saturday and Sunday:”

Following this was the list he had long ago written down and taped to his desk. There were no details relating to the purpose of each task, just procedure. He’d kept to the instructions consistently, every switch flipped and seemingly-pointless button pressed, though he’d been very close to missing the 4pm mark on several occasions because of the dreaded walk to the top. This list, again, wasn’t much help. He went over the document a few times then set it aside and flopped onto his back, scattering some loose papers to the floor.

He’d need to find some other angle. Research was a non-starter for him without experience, and as far as his town knowledge was concerned, it wasn’t wrong to call him forgetful in that area as well. It was likely he’d have to accept his part as an amateur tour guide. It didn’t feel like enough, but starting Monday, he’d be back to working and have no time to help anyway, unless their work somehow kept them late into the night.

Jon had been nice with all the working-together talk, but Martin knew he wouldn’t be of much use at all. If he wanted to be helpful, he should begin prepping for dinner.

As evening turned to night, Martin and his mother sat at the dining room table in silence, interrupted only by the light clinking of plates and utensils as they finished the pan-fried chicken and vegetables in front of them. Weekends were always better meal days, always leaving Martin feeling more satisfied with his cooking with all the time he had to focus on it. His mother showed no greater signs of enjoyment than eating without complaint.

“Mum, can I ask you something?” Martin ran his thumb against the smooth metal of his fork. “It’s about work.”

Martin’s mother paused from eating another bite of her meal. “What is it?” she asked, frowning.

Swallowing hard, Martin said, “How much have you had to deal with the Lukas family? There’s this research project being completed and it’s involving a lot of history, so I thought since you’ve lived here so long-”

“Long enough, yes.” Martin could see her nostril twitch. “They came in long before I did and will most likely stay until the fish run out. Otherwise, I kept to my business and they kept to theirs. No reason to get involved with people who wouldn’t bother walking down the hills on foot.”

“Right, it’s just-”

“I don’t feel like talking, Martin,” she said, her voice cracking slightly at his name. “My throat is too sore.”

“Right. Okay, I’ll get you some more water.” He picked up her glass to refill and bit back any other questions. Next to the sink was his mother’s pill case with the current day’s compartment still full. “We’ll get your meds done now, then. Should help a bit.” His mother didn’t respond, having already returned to her dinner.

Afterwards, she requested to step outside. “The night air is good for my lungs,” she argued as a matter of fact, and with no way to dissuade her, Martin completed their little ritual of walking out the door and standing in the fog-filled night in silence, his own face covered in an old scarf. His eyes watered in the dry, salty gale, and he wondered how much time it had taken for his mother to withstand the sting without any tears.

By mid-morning the next day, Martin had finished his duties upstairs. Sitting at the table, he listened to the group’s progress from after he had left them the day before. Spread across the table were photocopies of what looked like legal documents, some of the bare spots between them filled with used mugs of varying sizes.

“We weren’t able to stay there for long before it closed, but we were able to look up some records at the library yesterday,” Sasha explained, sifting through the papers. “Not a terrible archive, all things considered. We’re going to head there again tomorrow morning for a more in-depth look. We didn’t even get to looking for details on the construction of this place.”

“But!” Tim waved one of the copies above his head. “We did get some info on the Lukases themselves. Current residents in town, major stakeholders, that kind of stuff. And-” He pressed the sheet close to Martin’s face. It was a copy (of a copy) of a newspaper article featuring the lighthouse, with some figures standing at the entrance, including one Peter Lukas. “Martin, d’you know anything about the person who worked here before you? He’s one of the younger ones in the family, standing on the left.”

Martin scratched the back of his neck, squinting at the photo. “A bit? Evan Lukas, he was really nice from what I’d heard.”

Tim frowned, lowering his arm. “‘Was’?”

“Yeah, he passed away before I started working here. Peter said it was some heart thing. Runs in the family.” Tim slumped. “Sorry! I’m surprised the records didn’t say so. It was a pretty big deal, really shook people. It made the front page, though I never read the details.”

“Did you ever meet him?” Jon asked, tapping on the rim of his empty mug.

“Sort of? We went to school around the same time and were only a few years apart, which was weird since you wouldn’t expect him to go to a state school with a family like that? Anyway, that was years ago, but even after that you’d hear about him. He was gone for a while, actually, but somehow he ended up in this old place a few years back and, well, y’know.” Martin rubbed his hands.

“Hmmm.” Tim leaned back in his chair, flipping a pencil between his fingers. “Okay, well, that’s one person we probably can’t talk to outside of spookier means. Is there anyone who knew him well?”

Pausing for a moment, Martin said, “I think… no, yeah, he was engaged, but his fiancée left town pretty soon after he died. Don’t know anything about her except she wasn’t a local.” Silence stretched over them as Tim sat in his disappointment

“Well, shit,” Tim let out in an overblown sigh. Sasha patted Tim’s shoulder in sympathy. He grinned at her. “That’s all I’ve got, then. Time to call it a day?” he asked, earning himself a pinch on the ear.

“We’ll just have to go over the items we have until tomorrow,” Jon said, his sigh brimming with exhaustion. “Who knows, we might’ve missed something the first time. Before that, Martin, who was the person we missed yesterday? Would they be worth talking to?”

Hesitating, Martin responded, “Maybe? But if you’ve already got a way to look up historical stuff, it might be better to skip this one.” Jon raised an eyebrow at him and his stomach dropped at the attention.

“It’s just, he’s an eccentric person, difficult to track down, and while he knows the Lukas family pretty well, it’s only because their families do business. His family, the Fairchilds, they’re not a huge family in this town, but this guy, Simon, he’s, well. He’s this small, old man, right?” Martin tapped his foot, looking for something to say to end his babbling. “And you know the cliff behind the lighthouse? It’s got at least 150 meters straight down to sea?” The three nodded, and Martin smiled, his brows furrowed.

“Years ago, he dove right off the damned thing.”

Tim gaped over the railing, his breath floating over the edge. Sasha and Jon gaped slightly less, and from a safer distance, though that didn’t seem to save Jon from the effects of the harsh, cold wind that sent him shivering through a nothing of a windbreaker. Far below the cliff’s edge, down past the wind-worn rock and smattering of trees, through a thin layer of fog that cradled the seaside, there waited an incredibly harsh landing of sea and stone.

“But there’s a fuckload of rocks down there?” Tim sputtered.

Martin kept his gaze straight forward. “Yeah.”

“And even if he just hit water, I mean-”

“Made it out just fine.”

“And you were thinking of just skipping this guy? I don’t care if he’s unhelpful, I want to see if he can fly or something.” Tim stepped from the safety rails, giving one a good pat.

Sasha crossed her arms, eyeing the drop. “Do you know where we can find him?”

Martin scratched his face. “Most of the time he comes here to see Peter for business. Peter absolutely hates it since it’s usually out of nowhere, and Simon always claims he does it because he likes surprises, but I think he just likes to be irritating. Otherwise…” Turning to look at the lighthouse, Martin said, “I do know where Simon lives, and while I can’t guarantee he’ll want to speak to you about anything specific, he definitely loves to talk.”

“Is there anything he’s said to you about the Lukas family? Or the building?” Jon looked at Martin intently, clearly doing his best to not shiver.. “Anything that might’ve seemed like nothing more than gossip or reminiscing?”

With Jon staring at him, Martin’s brain sputtered to a stop. “I-I don’t think so? Like I said, he’s eccentric, so it’s hard to pick apart anything he says as being sincere or as a joke. He told me he was once a firebreather, and I still don’t know if I believe him. Sorry, I know that’s not super helpful.” Martin rubbed the back of his neck.

Jon relaxed his gaze, his corner of his mouth quirking down just a little. “It’s all right. If we can get a hold of him, we’ll ask him some simple questions and hopefully sift through any confusion. Right now, we can all stop giving ourselves vertigo and get back inside. It’s freezing out here.” Jon made a show of shoving his hands under his arms and walked back to the lighthouse.

“Poor guy’s circulation is shot, honestly. Could get hypothermia walking into a basement,” Tim teased behind his hand, not bothering to lower his voice as he leaned toward Sasha and Martin.

“Ha. Very funny.” Jon sent a withering glare over his shoulder and slipped indoors. They followed him back inside, and while the other three sat to discuss possible interview questions, Martin got another round of tea going. He had to have some of those to-go paper coffee cups somewhere in these cupboards, but no amount of looking revealed them. Instead, he managed to find one lonely travel mug and contemplated his options.

Would it be too obvious? Would Jon consider it him joining in on the teasing? At the thought of Jon stubbornly standing outside in a too-thin jacket, Martin resigned himself to whatever reaction he would receive. Either way, he'd get something warm in Jon’s hands so the little pang in his chest would go away.

When Martin brought him the mug, Jon looked suspicious but didn’t complain.

#tma #the magnus archives #breathe in the salt #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #sasha james #timothy stoker #peter lukas #jonmartin #fanfic #au fanfic #selkie au

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eduardo-andale-lets-go · 4 years ago

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Alright we gotta accept that we’ve entered a new phase of the fandom and we aint getting the same traction as before, but we’re ALIVE and we’RE GONNA KEEP IT THAT WAY OKAY.

And ONE WAY to do that is to support creators. I’ve seen the rec lists and I think I need to update it with some new good ones. Obviously these aren’t the only ones but these are the immediate fics that I remember because they’re 1) SO fUcking Good and 2) the most recent that I’ve read.

Absolutely nobody asked for this but its here now so you have to deal with that by reading all of this. Suffice to say, if anyone has fic recs please don’t be afraid to add them as I will be updating this as I see fit.

1. Baby, I’m Counting On You by PuddingTown

Summary: When Richie Tozier breezes back into his hometown of Derry, Maine, he’s expecting to see familiar faces. Of course, he’s not expecting to see an old flame chasing around a baby. With a million questions, nowhere to go, and a help wanted ad for a nannying job, he finds himself at the doorstep of Eddie Kaspbrak.

Comment: this is a 119k long fic of sweet, sweet longing and domestic bliss doused with simmering angst. You will LOVE this repentant Richie in that he actually does work for it (lesson!), and its not the darkest fic out there cause—BABY! THERE’S A BABY IN HERE AND STEVIE IS THE BEST BABY CHARACTER OUT THERE OKAY! SO IF YOU WANT SOME CUTE BABY FICS HERE IT IS, ITS HERE, ITS HERE ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS CLICK AND READ AND LOVE IT!

Its also celebrity/singer Richie and drag queen/mechanic eddie and if that aint enough for ya I don’t know what else.

Status: Complete!

2. Toucha Toucha Toucha Touch Me by Mere_Mortifer » @mere-mortifer

Summary: “Who the fuck are you?” Eddie exclaims before he can stop himself, and the man turns to face him with a shriek. "I have a dog, you know? He’s like half wolf or something, if you don’t get the fuck out my apartment I’ll tell him to attack!” The man, incredibly, laughs again, this time less hysterical and more plainly awkward. “Yeah, uh, about that…”

Or: Eddie brings a stray dog home. Turns out, it's a werewolf.

Comment: this is an 11k fic of nothing but good pacing, gOOD smut, and great characterization! And please, do not worry, Richie is human when they have sex here or else I wouldn’t have clicked xD

Status: One shot

3. Predicament Bondage by dgalerab » @dgalerab

Summary: When Richie is cast in an irreverent sexually charged comedy, Bev suggests he do "research" with Eddie, a professional Dom.

Only problem is: Richie's still in the closet.

Comment: alRIGHT. THIs one I’ve been so excited for every chapter. Its not done yet but the updates are pretty reliable. The sexual tension, the professional dom eddie, the sweet, soft Richie—its all so good.

Status: Ongoing

4. greetings from stardust by hippieluna @hippieluna

Summary: A few days ago just an ounce of Richie's attention was almost too much to bear. Now, he feels engulfed in it — hot tickling flames that spread from his chest to his fingers when their wrists touch between the seats of the car. It hurts when Richie looks at him and it hurts when he looks away. Funny how much clearer things get when there aren't any distractions.

Comment: ITS! A! ROAD! TRIP! FIC! FULL! OF! NOTHING! BUT! YEARNING! AND! SMUT! I’ve read many a kinky/hard core fics in my time here in the reddie tags, its been filthy, its been fun, but hippieluna writes sweet, fresh smut in a refreshing way! The pacing, the underlying tensions, the necessary misunderstandings, the understandable insecurities—its never boring nor annoying! The pining is so, so good. Sometimes, I could hear music just from the way hippieluna writes and it’s a fucking adventure alright! The sceneries, the mood—if this was a color, it would be if the setting sun, with all its orange and red and purple and pink were reflected in a clear lake. It. Beautiful. The way Eddie just sees Richie—ya’ll, if you want some fresh pining material here it is. Status: Completed!

5. come to me feathered and frayed by Lvslie»

Summary: “You are—free,” he continues, haltingly. His narrow chest is heaving. “Are you happy?”

The frightful, intimate acuity of the question undoes Richie’s volition—he’s disarmed. He stares into the other’s wide eyes, knowing his own to be just as revealing. At length, he swallows.

“No,” he admits instead, softly. “No, I am not.”

[Or; a late 19th century AU inspired by Maurice and Age of Innocence]

Comment: THIS! This took me so fucking long to read cause I had to acclimate my reading prowess. This one reads like classical books I swear to god, but like, so so so worth it. The imagery brings me to Italy, even though I don’t know most of the words cause ive never been to Italy and we don’t have those kinds of architecture but like going to google images and then reading it back- worth it for the mood that it gave me. If greetings from the stardust was the setting sun this one was like sitting in a greenhouse and seeing the reflected green all around. Like sitting on a turtle as it waddles through the water. Very calming, sometimes tumultuous in the repressed department, but somehow overall soothing. Maybe its because of the narrative voice, so if you love fancy and eloquent narratives this is the one for you!

Status: Completed!

6. i've lived and died a hundred times by bughead

Summary: In a rare moment of genuinity, Eddie whispers, “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

Eddie and Richie's souls are connected, and they've met millions of times throughout history.

(or, some souls are just meant to meet, one way or another)

Comment: HO HO HO HO HO—HoooOOOOO. If I could HUG a fic—I WOULD SLAP IT FIRST, FEMALE MAIN CHARACTER IN A YA MOVIE STYLE, BEFORE HUGGING IT. Holy SHIT DUDE. Where do I START? Okay so first of all this is 6k, might be the shortest of my recs right now, but fucking hell did it pack a fucking punch. This has everything I LOVE and WANT in a fic! The mood is somber in that it deals with reincarnations and the wonders of connection. Richie and Eddie’s souls meet each other at various points in history and ive been making teary eyes the rest of the fic. Its just—if the last fic was a turtle on water, this one is floating in the sky, falling a couple miles and then floating again. It leaves you with some kind of feeling—a tug, a yearning (HA THIS WORD.) and a need for closure. And you—you get it, that closure, but it still leaves an impression. Like a warm hand on my elbow, kind of sweaty, large, but comforting. I loved this so much.

#IT #IT fic recs #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #fanfiction #reddie #will add more #please if you have new fic recs add it here #if you wanna promote your fic do it here too #we're all here to celebrate and support creators-- each other!#use this as a homebase for new fics cause by god the new fics dont get enough traction even if they deserve it #reblog this please im begging yall

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chanbangblog · 5 years ago

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ive only felt religion when ive lied with you- 10

A/N: (smut, Chan x reader, Canon compliant, fan/idol)

You fell down on the bed in your room and let the impact knock the air out of you as you stared up at the ceiling. You were back in your room, well, yours and Robyn’s room that apparently neither of you had slept in, what a waste of money that had been for Chris to pay for.

You had texted Robyn, but hadn’t gotten a response. You were mildly worried but not too badly yet, you trusted Jisung, you knew she was safe with him. But Minho was pretty drunk when you left the rooftop so you couldn’t imagine what her night had entailed. You were dying to hear about it the more you thought about it, actually.

You needed a distraction, something, anything to get your mind to stop turning at a million miles per minute. You pulled out your phone, avoiding Youtube this time and went to Netflix, you had a couple kdramas pulled up on there but you didn’t want anything close to romantic. So you went to the horror section and picked the first movie you saw.

You rolled over on your stomach and set your phone in front of you, but two minutes into the movie you realized you were not going to be able to focus at all. Your mind was too occupied, and there was one person in every single thought.

“Ughhhhh!” you screamed dramatically, slamming your phone down on the bed.

What is wrong with me? Why did I do this? How can this end well? This is just like the Avengers, over a billion different scenarios and only one where you could win.

But you didn’t even know what winning was anymore.

Okay so I like him, a lot. But what is the goal here? Do I want to date him? Impossible. See him everyday? Impossible. Why is everything so fucking impossible?

You really didn’t want to cry, not again, but your thoughts were threatening to overwhelm you. You wanted to call your mom, or a friend or just anyone and tell them what was going on and ask for advice, but you couldn’t. It made the situation just seemed that much more fucked.

Right when you were on the verge of giving in and having a good cry you heard someone at the door.

Robyn walked in in last night’s clothes as well, looking thoroughly exasperated. She typically only looked like this after you started telling her one of your stories or being particularly annoying, so you decided to wait to ask for advice. You made eye contact with her as she entered the room and smiled.

She froze where she was standing, eyes growing wide, “he’s crazy,” she said simply.

“I’m sorry, who?” you asked.

“Lee Minho, Lee Know, whatever you want to call that yahoo” she said, making hand gestures that had you on the verge of chuckling.

“What do you mean? What happened?” you questioned, quickly becoming amused by this.

“What I mean is, after finishing the alcohol that you and Chris so graciously left for him to drink, he started—“ you cut her off there.

“We didn’t leave him anything though?” you said, confused.

“Are you kidding me?! He said Chris told him to drink your alcohol or it would go to waste!” Robyn exclaimed, throwing her hands up.

You couldn’t help it, you were chuckling at this point, “It sounds like he just needed an excuse to keep drinking because you all were trying to cut him off.” You speculated, as it seemed to click in Robyn’s mind.

“The audacity of that man! The nerve! I cannot wait to tell Jisung this!” She said, moving to sit on the bed in a huff.

“Okay so keep going,” you urged her, “why are you so pissed?” You were really invested in this story now.

“Why am I so pissed? Why? Okay, let’s start with the fact that he started a hand stand competition on the roof to see how far each of them could walk on their hands. On concrete! While they were drunk! It was an injury waiting to happen! Then he decided to organize a wrestling tournament with the maknae line, drew a bracket and everything!” you were laughing so hard you had tears in your eyes at this point, just the mental image you were getting from this was hilarious.

“By the time we got him inside and to his room it was 2 in the morning. We put him in bed but every time we would go to leave he would follow us and try to go with us. So we just let him come with us to Jisung’s room because we couldn’t trust him not to wander about the hotel.” She explained, and tears really were falling now, “So we tried to put him in bed in Jisung’s room but he kept saying he wanted to party. He went to the bathroom and me and Jisung were trying to plan how to get him to go to sleep when we heard a crash. We go in the bathroom and Minho had fallen in the floor and was laughing and was covered in shaving cream, he had written ‘lee know #1 rapper’ on the mirror in shaving cream!”

“No! No he did not!” you cried out between bits of laughter, this was the best story you had ever heard.

“Oh yes, I assure you, he did.” Robyn said, looking so unamused, “So we took his shirt off to try to clean him up and he ran down the hall and to the maknae’s room shirtless! And brought them back to our room to do karaoke! They were singing Day6 and GOT7 songs until 3am!”

“Oh my god Robyn, I’m dying, so then did you get him to go to sleep?” you asked, still cracking up laughing at the mental image of drunk Minho tormenting Robyn and Jisung.

“Well, we got some clean clothes on him and tried to get him to go back to his room but he said he wanted to stay with me and Jisung, I was so tired at that point, I just didn’t care. I tried to sleep on the couch but he said he would cry if I didn’t sleep in the bed. So I tried to sleep by Jisung but he said he wanted to sleep in the middle, so I got on the other side and he grabbed me and Jisung and hugged both of us to his sides, said we were in a ‘cuddle puddle’ and passed out.” Robyn finally finished.

“That is…the best story I have ever heard.” You said, laugher coming to an end, thankfully because your abs were starting to hurt.

“Yeah, try living it, he’s like the Tasmanian devil.” Robyn said, waving you off.

“But you stayed and took care of him, that must mean you care,” you said winking at her.

She huffed and crossed her arms, “Of course I care about the little psychopath but I told him, next time me and Jisung are the ones getting drunk and he can take care of us!”

“And what did he say?” you pressed.

“He said okay and that he would,” she added slowly, “and then he went and got me a coffee and served it to me in bed.”

She was blushing, and you were eating this up.

***

Going to a concert after sleeping with Chris was weirder than you thought it would be.

And you already thought it was going to be pretty fucking weird.

You and Robyn spent the day taking a much needed nap and then getting ready for the concert. Chris had sent your tickets to your phone and somehow you weren’t surprised when you arrived to the venue and found out they were P1 tickets.

“Shit this means we get group photo with them,” Robyn had mused.

“That’s sure to be a good time.” You smirked back.

Watching Chris, well all of them really, on stage after being so close with them was so weird. It was similar to the feeling you had at the airport. The feeling of being totally in over your head.

Watching his body rolls, the beads of sweat running down his face, the way his arm and leg muscles clenched. It just had your mind racing back to the times he did this in your most intimate moments. It was a whole new experience, one that left your head swimming.

Hearing him talk to his fans, telling them how much he meant to them, how Stay is his everything, pretty much had you gushing. It was like seeing your partner hold a baby for the first, it pretty much made your heart explode and you melt into a puddle. Because you knew everything he was saying was true, he meant every word, he had such a beautiful heart.

And all of it could be ripped away because of what he was doing with you.

The thought turned your stomach.

The concert, as always, was over too soon and you were corralled like a herd of cattle with other fans into a line for group photo.

“I wonder if they expected us to actually do this part,” you whispered to Robyn.

“Well shit I’m doing it, it’ll be fun,” Robyn whispered back, grabbing your hand reassuringly.

“But won’t it be kind of awkward?” you asked.

“I mean, it would be, but that’s why we make it funny.” She said, smiling.

You liked where she was going with this.

You walked in and there were ten chairs lined up in front of the nine members. Chris was on the far end of the room and his eyes lit up and he started laughing when he saw you. You speed walked over to him, trying not to draw attention to him. The staff was rushing everyone to sit down as you reached him.

Once again you felt that confidence you had felt at the first concert with his eyes on you.

“OMG! Bang Chan! I can’t believe I’m meeting you!” you said as you took your seat, “Can we do a hand heart?!” you moved your hand behind you so you could make half a heart. Chris was so busy laughing at your antics he barely got a word in.

“Yeah no problem,” he said, just before the camera went off he raised his hand to complete the heart. “It was nice to meet you” he said, eyes full of laughter.

“You too,” you said, while being shooed away by staff and you, somehow by an act of god, bit your lip. He saw it and you swore his eyes darkened.

Tonight will be fun.

#stray kids smut #stray kids x reader #stray kids fic #stray kids fics #bang chan smut #bang chan x reader #bang chan fic #skz smut #skz fics

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dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

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Dragon Dancer IV: Breaking Point

Two Executive department officers sat in front of me. The agent, a man who had a substantial bald spot despite his apparent youth, placed a tablet on the table. “This is the video we’re about to show to the School Board who are meeting as we speak.”

Anjou was still hanging on to life by a thread, but in this video he was healthy and strong as ever in a corridor of the library three days ago. The video was time stamped 2:42 am.

Anjou was alone walking towards the elevator to the ice cellar at the end of the hall holding the black card that would give him access. I never saw the attack or the attacker. I only saw Anjou stop in his tracks. He asked. “Is that you?”

By then, the black card had disappeared from his hand.

Anjou looked down at his jacket. A thin line of blood was slowly spreading over his fine bespoke suit before breaking open and covering the front of his shirt in red. He fell to his knees, then face down, where the blood continued outward, staining the carpet.

I turned away from the images. “What do you want me to say? This means nothing to me. I told you. I don’t know where Mingfei is, and I don’t think he did it.”

I’d been imprisoned in a home that wasn’t mine, in a world that had vanished the love of my life, pursued my best friend like a criminal, and now turned its greedy, hungry eyes on me.

“Mingfei sacrificed for you. He sacrificed his life!” I hissed at them. He had killed Dragon Lords, Dragon Lords who’s human forms he knew personally as friends, by sacrificing his own life in exchange for the power to do so. And he’d kept it all a secret, letting others have the credit.

And this is how they repay him.

The other man spoke. “Lu Mingfei’s Soul Skill is unknown. We have no idea what he’s capable of. You established the Club known as Club - S... and it’s byline is “The S is for Secrets”. There are only two members of Club S... you and Mingfei.”

“We gave a thorough search of the entire premises. But it appears you never kept any records of what these secrets are. There’s not so much as a file cabinet in Norton Hall.”

I glowered at them. “So?”

He gave an incredulous laugh. “What do you mean ‘so’? By your own admission you’re withholding information from this investigation!”

“This isn’t an investigation. This is a witch hunt!” I shot back. “I told you again and again. I don’t know where he is, he would never kill the principal or steal the dragon skeleton and he doesn’t work with dragons!”

“Mrs. Lu...”

“Don’t call me, Mrs. Lu! My name is Mrs. Meixiu Chu! Which I’ve told you more than once!”

“Okay...” The Executive Agents stood up. “Then I’m afraid there won’t be much we can do for either of you. What the School Board decides, it decides.” They walked out of the the apartment, shutting the door and locking it.

I sat on the couch, trembling uncontrollably. “Johann... I’m so scared...”

I stood up, pacing, rocking back and forth. They always wanted to get ahold of me from day one. They would probably take Ru’Yi away, imprison me and only let me out if I agreed to their genetic tampering. I would be completely at their mercy.

From the start, no one wanted Johann and I together. We’d gone behind their backs and gotten married. Then we’d had a child. The only one standing between me and them was Anjou.

Now Anjou was gone.

They were going to take my daughter... and they were going to take me.

Unless I ran.

I was under constant surveillance. The Restriction on Soul Skills was still in place. I wouldn’t be able to physically outrun them but there was one thing I still had: Mingfei’s Bugatti Veyron. He kept the keys under the front seat. He never drove the car and occasionally he would need to turn it on for a few minutes to maintain the engine and the battery. Plus, I knew he was activated by voice, so long as the keys were in range.

I walked into the kitchen and I started eating and drinking. I would need my strength. Sugar for fast reserves. I grabbed apples on the counter and ate three of them. It was cold outside. I would have to think of somewhere to run.

Paris... no, there were many agents in Paris. Japan? I knew people in Japan. I’d fought alongside them. Chisei was no longer the Patriarch, but I had his swords. Would they have mercy on me? I shook my head. “No.”

I couldn’t trust anyone. They were all part of the same massive monster that was the Secret Society of Dragonslayers.

I swallowed hard, feeling what I just ate try to rise up again in my throat. I took a deep breath.

I heard Johann’s voice in my mind. “ Enemies will read your eyes. When faced with danger, don’t rehearse what you’re going to do, adapt to the circumstances as they come.”

I had to calm down. I took a deep breath and let it out.

I looked at the dishes in the sink. I turned and began setting them in the dishwasher.

Then I started to clean the refrigerator. I kept my mind firmly in the present, cleaning. About a half an hour passed and my panic somewhat subsided.

And then the door opened again. I turned to look. “Gosh will you learn to kno-”

Executive Department officers walked through the door one after another. I counted. Six. Seven. Eight.

“Carli Lu.” The one at the head of them addressed me, a muscular woman armed with two pistols.

“That’s not my name.” I whispered weakly.

She ignored me.

“Your Husband Mingfei Lu is under suspicion of attacking Principal Anjou, stealing the skeleton of Constantine, and kidnapping the Gattuso lady Chen Moutong.”

“What?!”

“And just now, in the past few minutes, the skeleton of Norton was stolen from the Vault watched over by the Gattuso Family. The theft resulted in the death of Frost Gattuso.”

My chest rose and fell in rapid whistling breaths.

“He is accused of treason against the Secret Society. As a result, we were ordered to take you into custody... however... The new acting head of the Gattuso, Caesar Gattuso is showing you consideration as a mother.”

“He’s asked us to put you on a plane to his estate in Italy. He promises to treat you kindly until this affair is sorted out.”

I willed myself to be calm. “Sorted out? You’re going to kill him.”

“He’s wanted for questioning.” She corrected me. “There is a lot of evidence pointing to him. But at this point, we only want to talk to him.”

They were lying. Even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t believe a word he said because they didn’t believe me.

“May I... have a moment to calm down?”

The woman turned to the other officers some of whom left the apartment, but most only moved further into the apartment one going to the door, another moving to the living room window.

They were cutting off my escape.

She smiled at me, but there was no warmth or kindness there. “Take all the time you need.”

“I’ll... I’ll go get my daughter.”

I turned and walked out of the kitchen. The woman followed me close behind as I walked into Ru’Yi’s room. The baby was lying in her crib in her little frog onesie. I looked down at her and then at the hilt of Spider Fang that was lying just behind the crib beyond the mattress.

I thrust my hand down, gripped the smooth leather and whirled, slamming the scabbard against the woman’s temple. She staggered back, hand reaching for her pistol. I swept the scabbard again, this time striking her throat. Gagging, her hand instinctively left the pistol to clutch her neck. I reached down for her gun and grabbed it. Firing, once! Twice!

As she fell against the wall instantly unconscious. The footsteps of the other agents pounded toward the door.

I kicked it closed. A frigg bullet whizzed by my face and I pressed against the wall in time to avoid a hail of them coming through the door, shattering the window on the far side of the room. I rushed over to Ru’Yi, who was wailing now, startled by the noise. I scooped her up, tucking Spiderfang and Tongzi into my belt and fired round after round at the door.

There was a tree just outside the window.

I tucked Ru’Yi tight against me, ran diving out the shattered glass. Hot pain ran a long line down my back and I cried out even as I reached for the nearest limb and hung there just long enough to break my fall. Then I fell down to the landscaping.

Blood was running down my back in a hot stream as men came around the corner, pointing their pistols until they saw Ru’Yi in my arms. They didn’t fire. I turned and ran toward the garage.

“Cut her off! Cut her off!” They were yelling, drawing closer. But I had the advantage of surprise.

I slammed my shoulder into the door, knocking it open. I shouted. “Carli Lu!” The Bugatti, one of the fastest cars in the world, roared to life like a demon. I slammed my hand against garage door opener and swung open the driver’s side door as it began to rise, agonizingly slowly.

The agents rushed into the garage, saw me go for the car and fired at the tires. But frigg bullets were not equipped to puncture tires.

The Veyron peeled out of the garage, nearly flattening a foolish agent who tried to shoot me through the windshield.

My back hurt so much but I couldn’t stop. I had to get out of the range of the Soul Skill Restriction.

Cassell sat on top of high hills. The alchemy matrix extending the Soul Skill that suppressed draconic speech could only go out so far from the ground. I pushed the pedal to the floor, reaching 100 mph, then 125, going up to where the hill peaked.

“Hold on baby.” I clutched Ru’Yi to myself, crying as we approached a sheer drop off, going 150 mph.

I opened the door as the car flew straight off the cliff. It soared horizontally for several yards until its nose tipped downward.

At that moment, I jumped, reaching out, hoping that the last few feet I could get away from the College would be the last few feet I needed.

I squeezed my eyes shut and visualized the trees of Chizuru in full bloom of March, willing myself there.

#Dragon Dancer #Mingfei Lu #Johann Chu #Caesar Gattuso #Nono #anjou #Dragon Raja #Fanfiction #Writing

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what-is-your-plan-today · 5 years ago

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Stark Spangled Banner Ch17: I'm Not Going Anywhere

Summary: Katie keeps vigil at Steve’s bedside and in full protective ‘dad’ mode, Tony engages the Stark Industry lawyers when the UN Senate comes calling. But the Winter Soldier has gone back into the shadows, taking one of Steve’s only living ties to his past with him. And no one has a clue where he’s gone...

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

Warnings:Violence, bad language words, angst and smut (NSFW) NO UNDER 18s thanks.

Tag list is open- ping me an Ask

Stark Spangled Banner Masterlist

“He’s panicking…let me talk to him.” her voice was soft but full of authority.

Then a familiar hand closed over the one that he held over the mask on his face and she gently spoke to him.

“Shhhh…” her other hand ran over his forehead. “ Baby, you’re in an ambulance. Try and stay calm, ok?”

And then his eyes focused, just for a second. The panic that had hit him dissipated as her face filled his vision and he gripped her hand, not wanting her to leave him.

“I’m not going anywhere…” she said gently, “I promise.”

And he believed her. He felt himself relax and fell back against the bed and his eyes closed again, the last thing he heard and felt was her…

Steve’s hand was still tight around Katie’s when they arrived in the emergency room. She went in with the paramedics taking Steve in charge and as they escorted Steve into the operating room, the realization that she finally had to let go of him crushed her. The same doctor who had taken care of Fury and her in the warehouse approached her with a nod, and she was suddenly extremely thankful that Nick Fury had as many fingers in as many pies as he did. It was an overwhelming relief to see a face she knew she could trust.

"Miss. Stark, I need you to leave the room, please. I'll take care of him from here." He put his hand on her shoulder to support his point and dropped his voice. “I promise. Fury’s orders”

Ignoring the urge to argue she let go and took a step back, her eyes still focused on the body of Steve lying on the stretcher.

"Heart's rate climbing, doctor!" Announced one of the nurses. Katie could still see her soldier’s face disfiguring and the slight raising of his eyebrow and clench of his hand if he were trying to hold on to something. She let out a sob as she realised he was looking for her because she had left him, after promising she wouldn’t, and then the double doors of the operating room closed. Finding herself now alone and completely helpless, her limbs began to clench and she was suddenly very aware she was trembling. Then, it was as if someone had tightened a band around her chest, leaving her panting for air as her vision became more and more obscured by tears of panic. She caught herself against the nearest wall before feeling her legs give way. She managed to lift them into a bent position, before bringing her arms around them so she could hide her head on her lap as her throat felt like it had completely closed. She concentrated on Steve's images floating around her brain, his touch, his kisses, how he held her, made love to her, the feeling of his laughter, his eyes, all their moments together.

We could get married if you want…

His face as he had spoken those words, the look she hadn’t been able to place suddenly registered in her brain. He had been hopeful. She closed her eyes trying to hold on to that memory. Eventually, she felt her throat begin to open again allowing her to take a deep breath, then the tightness in her chest and lungs eased and finally her brain. The hiss of silence in her ears was replaced by the usual murmur of a hospital and she could once again feel the sensations coming back along her limbs. She loosened her arms around her legs and lifted her head to lean against the wall.

She had no idea how long she sat there. Minutes, hours…it all blurred into one as she focussed her attention on the doors he had been taken through. Eventually, her little bubble was invaded by a familiar figure hovering over her before Natasha slid to the floor, legs lying in front of her.

“Any news on how he is?" she asked.

"They're still treating him, as far as I know." Katie said, sighing impatiently and anxiously.

Natasha nodded briefly in acknowledgment before turning to look at her friend. "And you? How are you holding up?"

Katie turned to face her, but didn’t answer as Sam's familiar voice cut across the corridor.

"Katie! Natasha!" Sam hastened to join them, letting Katie take in his civilian change of clothes. He was bruised too, but overall, he looked ok. "How is he doing? Any news?"

Natasha took it upon herself to answer Sam. Meanwhile, Katie finally decided to get up from her position against the wall. The sudden movement and the long time spent in an identical position made her stagger a little. Sam hastily raised his hands to catch her.

“I brought you a change of clothes.” Nat spoke gently as she too stood up. “…but I can’t stay…I’m already being summonsed for questioning, but Hill and I are going to do our best to keep your names out of it, both of you.”

“Frankly Nat, at this moment I couldn’t give a fuck about what my name is dragged into.” Katie said, a little more harshly than she had intended. She sighed “Sorry…”

“It’s ok.” Nat said, her green eyes catching Katie’s “Look, call me as soon as there’s news.”

She nodded “Can you call Tony for me? He’s already tried ringing but I can’t bring myself to try and explain.”

“Sure.” She nodded. In a rare sign of affection she pulled Katie into a hug, before she headed off up the corridor.

“Katie…” Sam said gently “There’s a waiting room down there...”

She shook her head “No, I’m staying here…”

“Look.” Sam reasoned “You need to get a proper rest. You got shot yourself yesterday, remember? Come on, you’re no good to Steve if you aint in top fighting form.”

Katie gave in and let Sam escort her to the waiting room where the two of them sat in silence. It was around four o'clock in the afternoon, some 4 hours after they had arrived when the SHIELD doctor made an appearance. Katie was currently half-lying with her head against Sam's shoulder as Sam was changing the annoying channels of the hospital TV every ten seconds.

"Miss. Stark?”

Sam turned off the television almost immediately while Katie was already on her feet in impatience.

"Yeah?"

"Sorry it’s taken so long but there was a few complications...”

“Complications?” Katie frowned “He’s got the damned serum coursing through his DNA, it’s supposed to help him heal...” “And it did, meaning the wounds had started to heal over which caused us a bit of an issue but he’s of theatre and the surgery was a success.”

“So he’s gonna be ok?” Sam asked and the Doctor nodded.

“He lost a lot of blood but he should be fine.”

Katie let out a sob and covered her face with her hands, relief flooding every cell in her body as Sam wrapped an arm round her.

“We’ve moved him into his own room and it will be a while before he regains consciousness, how long we can’t say.” the doctor continued gently, before looking round and then back to her, his voice lowering “We have an armed guard on his door, Fury’s orders, but you two can stay with him.”

He beckoned for them to follow him through the corridors of the hospital. "He's doing very well, all things considered." He said stopping in front of a door. “He is heavily sedated to ensure he rests as he was quite agitated but now it's just a case of letting the serum work its magic.”

“Thank you…” Katie said to him before she turned to the door and a hand gently touched her arm. She looked up and did a double take as she saw Evans stood there.

“Hey Nova…”

“Evans…” she said, her voice a whisper as he pulled her into a hug. “You…”

“No, I’m not HYDRA, probably the only one in STRIKE who wasn’t.” he said, and she stepped back to look at him noticing the shiny fresh bruise adorning his right cheek and the split in his upper lip. “I swear I had no idea…it all started smelling a bit funky when they told us Cap was public enemy number one, and then when I heard his voice on that PA…I’m sorry I didn’t try to find you, help sooner…”

Katie shook her head as the ginger Texan man wiped at his eyes with the heel of his palm.

“None of us knew Paul.” she said softly, and the use of his first name made him look at her, and she was swept back into his arms again.

“How is he?” he asked as she stepped back, nodding to the room.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep ya.” he smiled and she gently squeezed his am.

“I don’t want anyone in here without my say so.” she said. Evans jerked his head to show he understood and she gave him a tight smile as she pushed the door open and stepped into the room, Sam following.

The sight in front of her made fresh tears spring into her eyes and she swallowed as she silently took in Steve's condition. He was lying, asleep, in his bed with whilst IV's and monitors recorded his vitals. He had stitches in several places on his face, nasty bruises around his left eye and jawline, and a huge swelling along the same eye that was likely to prevent him from seeing properly for a while. Overall, he was a mess.

"Katie-"

"I'm fine." she interrupted Sam quickly in a hoarse voice, slightly tinged with her desire to cry. She took a shaky breath as she could hear Steve's steady heartbeat reaching her ears. "I just need a minute."

She slowly made her way to one of the chairs by the bed, settling down without looking away from Steve as she reached up to take one of his hands. It was colder than she could ever remember him being.

"Hey, Soldier." she breathed in a shaking voice before pressing her lips to his bruised knuckles as she held his large hand in both of hers. For a moment, she thought she felt his hand contract in recognition but when she looked down he showed no signs of being awake. "I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m here, like I promised."

The next few hours Sam and Katie stayed in the room with him and eventually Katie had to concede she really needed to clean up. She looked around for the bag which Nat had brought her some clothes in and stood up, grabbing it from where it sat by the door.

“I’m need the bathroom.” she said to Sam. He nodded “I won’t be long.”

She headed down the corridor and entered the ladies restroom, leaning over the sink. She glanced at the mirror, her eyes were red, face was dirty, hands still full of Steve’s blood and she looked all in all like a right mess. She set about washing her hands, her face and anything else that she could before she stepped into a cubicle and peeled off the SHIELD cat suit she had been wearing under her Nova Suit. Dressing in the jeans and top that Nat had packed, she was also touched to the point of more tears to see she’d packed her some deodorant, a set of face wipes, dry shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste and a hairbrush. By the time Katie had finished she looked almost normal.

Katie pinged Nat a message to thank her and fill her in on the news that Steve was going to be ok and one came back almost immediately

Thank God, and you’re welcome. I just spoke to Tony. He’s on his way back from Australia as we speak, he’d already set off after seeing the news. He told me to tell you to call him, ASAP.

So she did.

“Jesus Kiddo!” he exclaimed when he answered, “I’ve been so worried…how are you? How’s Cap?”

“He’s stable…still out of it but...” she said, tears at hearing her brother’s voice trickled down her cheek.

“I’ve had Pepper call the hospital, anything you or he needs…anything…” he said gently “and she’s working to keep the press off your back.”

“Thanks. Where abouts are you?” she asked

“Approaching Singapore airspace. I’ll be there as soon as I can, I promise sweetie .

“’kay…” she said gently

“Love you Kiddo, he’s strong…he’ll be fine.”

“So everyone keeps saying.” she said, the sob catching in her throat.

Tony sighed "Look, this is Rogers we’re talking about. He’s as stubborn as you are."

“I know.”

“Chin up, see you soon. Call me if there’s any news, ok?”

But there wasn’t. Katie sent Sam home in the early hours of the morning but her vigil never wavered. Doctors and nurses bustled in throughout the night. Steve’s vitals were improving but he still didn’t wake up.

It was around 10 am when Sam returned. Steve had been moved into a bigger, nicer room courtesy of Pepper’s discussions with the hospital. The new guard who had relieved Evans for a shift stopped him immediately until Katie popped her head out of the door and told him it was ok. After he had frisked Sam he walked in, holding out a bag containing a sub.

“You’re an angel.” Katie said as she tore into it, unaware how long it was since she had eaten something.

The two of them ate as they watched the news reports on the TV in the corner of the bright room. They spoke of the Helicarriers, HYDRA's plot having integrated the governmental organization as well as the impending investigation. Katie watched the footage of her and Sam whizzing around the sky, and listened as they had even rebuffed Steve's message for more effect. The attack was all the world was talking about and all the news was focused on Steve’s recovery and the repercussions of his actions.

“The identity of the Avenger Supernova has until today remained a mystery but the rumours are beginning to amass than it is none other than Katie Stark…” one of the news readers was saying “the sister of Iron Man and girlfriend of Captain America…”

Katie didn’t even flinch. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t find out anyway, as soon as those files they had dumped on the internet became common knowledge it was going to blow up, plus, it was pretty obvious now anyway. What was annoying her however, was that it was as if they blamed them, in particular Steve, for doing what was right.

4 hours later just as Sam had left again, Katie heard a commotion outside the doors to the room and she stood up.

“You know me right? Tony Stark, my sister is in there…”

“Sir, I’m under instructions not to…”

“It’s ok Davies…” Katie stepped out of the room and spoke to the guard “he’s good…”

Davies sighed “Mr Stark…I’m gonna have to search you then…” he relented.

Tony shrugged and held his arms out, once he’d been patted down he shot Davies a contemptuous look and he entered the room. No sooner had he done that Katie was in his arms, sobbing.

“Shhhhh Kiddo…” Tony gently stroked her hair as she pressed her face into his chest, his familiar aftershave and touch reminding her of all the times he’d soothed her before when she was upset.

“I’m so glad you’re here…”

Tony stepped back to look at her “Nat said you got shot.”

“I did, but I’m ok, see.” she shifted her top to show him the patch that was over her wound, which was healing well.

“Sounds like you’ve been having a bit of fun without me.” Tony sniffed, “Its ok, I’m not really hurt. Well, maybe just a little. JARVIS is in a whole heap of trouble for not telling me by the way…”

“I told him not to, you were in Australia, Tones.” Katie said gently “Besides, this was all a bit crazy. There wasn’t really time, if we had waited for you to get back it would have been too late…and you could have been in danger and…” She looked over at Steve, his face was still a mess “look at him Tony…”

Her brother placed his arm around his sister and squeezed. “He’s gonna be fine.”

Katie lay her head on Tony’s shoulders as they sat down, his hand gently stroking over her hair, not once trying to get her to leave as he knew she wouldn’t. She’d burst randomly into tears again when she’d told him her car was now buried in the wreck of the Triskelion. It was a lump of metal, not something that mattered, but Tony understood. She was letting everything out, and he simply sat with her and soothed her, informing her that the car was ready for being changed anyway.

“But I like my car.” She sniffed.

“Kiddo, it’s almost 9 years old. I got you that for your 21st.”

“And that’s why I like it.” she said.

Tony had to chuckle, that’s what she was like. Sentimental. It was the gesture behind gifts that mattered to her, not the value. He’d brought her up that way to value money, even though they had it in abundance, and he was fiercely proud of the woman she had grown to be. Humble in many ways that he wasn’t.

“You know he asked me to move in with him.” Katie spoke again, breaking the silence after a minute or so.

“Before marriage?” he teased, “Well, well, well.”

She snorted a laugh “That’s what I said. And he turned round and told me we could get married if I wanted.”

Tony stiffened slightly before he looked down at her.

“And do you want?”

She nodded “Of course I do. Only I told him to ask me again with a big diamond.” she sniffed again before sobbing “We both laughed but why did I say that? I don’t need a fucking ring, or-”

“Hey, hey…” Tony gently took her face in both his hands “You just said it yourself. You both laughed. That’s what you two do. You know each other inside out, he won’t have taken it as anything but what it was, a joke...he knows you love him. Everyone does. Frankly it’s hard not to, it’s sickening”

She gave a wet laugh and Tony wiped at her cheeks with his thumbs.

“He’s gonna move into mine.” she said, smiling, as they both settled down again, her head on his shoulder. “His place is too small and full of bullet holes and…blood.”

“Sensible” he smiled, pulling her closer.

At one point during the night Pepper called, filling them both in on the fact that Natasha was to be summonsed to the UN for a hearing and that they wanted Katie there too, her secret identity as an Avenger was well and truly busted.

“Get the lawyers onto it.” Tony said simply, glancing at Katie who was now asleep, across a makeshift bed consisting of 4 plastic chairs from around the room, head laying on his lap As his hand gently smoothed her hair, his need to protect her boiled fiercely within him. “She’s not going anywhere…certainly not yet. Oh, and I need you to get hold of Happy. I have a couple of jobs for him…

The next morning Sam arrived back at 9 am, as did Evans. Tony headed off to Katie’s apartment to check no one had been there, and to take the opportunity to get changed, cleaned up and make a few business calls, promising to bring her another change of clothes back when she declined to go with him for fear of missing Steve waking up. She had noticed that morning the bruises were starting to fade from an angry red/purple to a bluey green purple already. The doctors checking his vitals told her that his recovery was progressing rapidly as expected, but still, she wouldn’t be happy until he was conscious. She’d long since turned off the TV, the reports pissing her off so, instead Sam produced a set of speakers and plugged his Iphone in, the pair of them listening to music. Katie felt her eyes going heavy again, due to the lack of sleep, and she apologised to Sam right before she drifted under...

*****

Every single inch of Steve’s body hurt. His mouth felt like sandpaper, his head was full of cotton wool, his eyes hurt as the colours flashed in front of them. He screwed his eyes further shut against the painful light that still assaulted him through his closed eyelids. as he took a moment to breathe, steadying himself as soft music flooded his ears. It wasn’t something he had heard before but it was pleasant, soulful, jazz-like. His head stopped spinning and he felt brave enough to crack an eye open. He glanced round the room, puzzled slightly. He was in a hospital. Then he remembered. The Hellicarriers, Bucky, and the last thing he had seen before blacking out, his girl. He rememberd being very cold, and wet, but she had been there. And she still was, at the side of his bed, head laying against Sam’s shoulder.

"On your left." he managed to croak out. Katie’s head jerked up from its resting place and they both glanced over at the bed where Steve was led. He smiled groggily before his head rolled to the side, flush back against the pillow and he closed his eyes once more.

Katie jumped up, and settled on the side of his bed, gently stroking his face.

“’M so tired sweetheart…” he managed to mumble as she dropped a kiss to his forehead. He managed a small smile, but his eyes stayed shut.

“Then sleep.” she said softly, the relief flooding her system that he was with them, albeit not totally, but he was with them. She gently smoothed his hair, and kept that up until she could tell he was back asleep.

She turned to Sam who gave her a smile. “Lazy bastard.”

A few minutes later a nurse popped her head round the door. Katie smiled and told her about him waking up briefly and she nodded, checking the readings. “That’s a good sign.” she beamed, “His body will be drained, serum or no serum so him resting is part of the natural recovery process. When he comes round fully, come find me and we’ll get the doctor back.”

An hour or so later, the mood in Steve’s room was considerably lighter given his waking up before. Katie, Sam and Evans, who was leaning in the open doorway, were mid a playful discussion as to whether or not Voldemort could take Darth Vader in a fight. (Katie had started this whole thing after calling Evans “Ron Weasley with a rifle” on her way back from the bathroom) and were just about to dive into the whole schematics on Magic vs The Force when a voice spoke from the bed.

“What the hell are you 3 talking about?” Steve grumbled playfully and Katie’s head jerked up to see his eyes watching her and she was beyond happy to see they were full of their usual warmth, the warmth he had whenever he looked at her.

"Hey!" Katie breathed in relief as she stood up and moved closer to him, settling on the edge of his bed.

“Hey Doll.” he smiled as she took his hand, her fingers snaking into his. His eyes flickered to Evans, taking in the man’s various bruises and he frowned.

“Got in a bit of a fight with Rollins.” Evans drawled with a nod, and Steve let out the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. He wasn’t HYDRA. “He didn’t take kindly to me threatening to test out the whole ‘cut one head off, two more shall take its place’ theory on him.”

Steve gave a small huff of a laugh before he winced slightly at the movement and Evans nodded to him once more, before allowing the door to shut, returning to his post. Steve’s eyes fell on Sam who raised an eyebrow at him.

“You know, having a building dropped on my head wasn’t part of the job description” he said drily.

Steve’s smile spread a bit further before he gently lifted his head up off the pillow, looking around before grimacing at the throbbing that filled each bone in his body "How long was I out?"

"43 hours and 37 minutes if you don’t count the last hour you’ve been resting." Katie said gently, glancing up at the clock on the wall as she settled on the side of the bed. Ah, yes, Steve’s brain vaguely registered he’d woken up before, made some quip of some sorts… “Not that I’ve been counting…” Katie finished and he smiled again, giving her hand a squeeze.

"Which isn't that bad considering how you looked when you got here." Sam added jokingly.

"Sam." Katie reprimanded gently, looking at him.

"Alright," He relented standing from his chair and holding his hands up, with a smirk. "I'll go get that hot nurse, give you guys a minute."

"Utter dog." she said, the pair of them watching as he left the room and she turned to face Steve, tears in her eyes.

“You scared me…” she said, gently.

“Sorry.” He said, looking at her, and he was. He hated seeing her upset. There was a moment’s pause before he decided he had to know. "What happened after… did we?"

"SHIELD’s gone, Alexander Pierce is dead. Fury shot him. And as far as Hydra, everyone major that was involved at the Treskellion is either captured or dead.” she paused, not sure if she should be telling him the full scale of what had gone down. Not whilst he was still recovering.

“What is it?” he frowned and she knew she wouldn’t be able to fob him off.

“Nat dumping the files on the internet means my identity as Nova is probably blown wide open. There goes our quiet life.”

“Nothing about our life is quiet.” he said a soft chuckle rising in his chest.

She grinned “True. Gonna be a lot of other shit to mop up though, The Treskellion was the tip of the iceberg. All the main SHIELD bases fell. America, Canada, Europe.”

Steve nodded along then asked the question he was almost afraid to hear the answer to. “Any news on Bucky?

"He's gone." Katie told him sadly. “I’m sorry Steve."

She looked down at the bedsheets and Steve frowned. What did she have to be sorry for? So he asked her.

“I know how much he meant to you.” she answered. “And I think he remembered you. He pulled you out of the river, told me to get help.” she continued to explain about their short exchange on the river bank and Steve listened, unable to stop the hopeful feeling spreading in his chest. Maybe there was a chance for Bucky after all, they just needed to find him. Katie watched him, and he smiled at her.

“I’m glad you spoke to him.” he said, and then a cheeky glint flashed in his eyes “Still think all the girls in Brooklyn were dumbasses for hanging off his arm and not mine?”

She gave a bark of a laugh and leaned down towards his face, rubbing her nose against his “Always.” she whispered, before giving him a soft quick peck on the lips.

******

Tony arrived back an hour or so later. He was genuinely pleased to see Steve awake and after gently grasping the soldier’s hand between both of his in a friendly, brotherly, gesture he sat down and delivered some interesting news.

“So Goth Pirate called me.” He said, leaning back in his seat “He sounded amazingly well for a dead guy.”

“Fury called you?” Steve frowned

“Yeah. He’s laying low, you know, on account of being dead and he wants to hand control of the Avengers over to us, Cap.”

Steve frowned, before he lay his head back on his pillow. He knew the Avengers would be needed again, especially now with SHIELD gone. He turned to Tony who nodded.

“I think that’s the right thing to do, for us to take control” The billionaire spoke and Steve nodded.

“I suppose, but there’s something I gotta do first.”

“Yeah, recover.” Sam said, drawing a faint smile from Steve but Katie knew full well he didn’t mean that. He was intending to go after Bucky.

They spent the rest of the afternoon making idle chit chat with Tony, who was already planning on further renovating the tower to house the Avengers full time in the wake of Fury’s news. Steve, Katie was pleased to see, was enthusiastic about the plans and listened, looking at the various ideas Tony showed him on the tablet. However, now that Steve was awake, the nurses seemed to be a little more reluctant to allow everyone to stay and at about 6pm one of them politely suggested that Sam and Tony should be making their way home.

“You do know I’m paying for this, right?” Tony quipped at her. She shot him a look which made him visibly recoil and he turned to Katie pulling a face as he stood up.

“I’ve gotta get back to New York anyway.” He said gently, pulling his sister into a hug “lawyers to speak to…new suits to build seeing as you blew yours up…”

“I needed to send up a signal.” she shrugged as he looked at her reproachfully.

“And I gotta tidy my flat.” Sam groaned “Someone trashed it.”

“You’re welcome to stay at mine if you want, for as long as you need “ Katie said, as Steve let out a sigh and began to mumble an apology which Sam waved away.

“It’s fine man, I was thinking of moving anyway.”

“Speaking of moving…” Tony said, looking at Steve then Katie as he fished in his pockets for something “I’ve had Happy organise to clear your apartment Cap, now you two are shacking up together. He’s gonna have it sent to yours Kiddo, save you a job. Oh and I figured you might need this.” he tossed Katie a set of keys. She glanced down at them, her eyebrow raised.

“Brought over from my personal collection.” he said, looking at her and she smiled at her brother “It’s the Q5. Try not to bury this one under a sky-scraper.”

“Thank you.” she whispered, giving him another hug, slipping the keys into her pocket. “I love you Tone.”

“Obviously, because I’m the best big brother in the world…” he said, hugging her tight, and Steve nodded to him, thanking him with a look which Tony acknowledged with a sharp incline of his head in the soldiers direction.

As the two men left, Steve raised his right arm to bid them goodbye and the pair of them headed off down the corridor, chatting away animatedly. Katie watched them go before turning to Steve, who was yawning like a lion.

“You ok?” she asked.

“I just don’t remember the last time I was this tired…or in as much pain”

"Do you want me to get the nurse, up your pain relief?"

"No." he yawned again, he hated how it made the room spin "Think I'm gonna sleep."

She teased gently. “Again?”

He smiled and looked at her, he didn’t want her to go. He needed her. “Will…will you stay?” he asked, tentatively “Until I fall asleep, that is?”

“I’m not leaving you.” she said, cutting him off and dropping a kiss to his forehead as she climbed onto the bed next to him “I’ll be here when you go to sleep, and here when you wake up.”

“You don’t need to stay all night. You must be exhausted, you should go home and get some sleep.”

“I’m fine…” she said, looking at him, before her body betrayed her and she too let out a huge yawn which she tried to stifle. He raised an eyebrow.

“Please honey, you need some rest too remember?” he looked at her

“No.” she said, simply “I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve shook his head. She really was obtuse at times.

“What?”

“Nothing…” he said, laying his head back on the pillow a grin flashing across his face. “Just remembering what a stubborn, pain in the-“

“If you wanna get out of here any time soon, then I wouldn’t finish that sentence…”she said, her eyebrow raised.

“Miss Stark is that a threat?” he looked at her, a smile curling further across his face

“It’s a promise…” she said, leaning over to kiss him gently. “Now go to sleep.”

*******

Steve was discharged from the hospital the next afternoon, the doctors having no reason to keep him any longer since he healed so quickly, though a cheeky nurse did warn that it wouldn't be wise for him to engage in any strenuous activity, with a pointed look in Katie’s direction who merely rolled her eyes, a small smirk playing on her face.

They arrived back to Katie’s, no theirs, a little after 4 in the afternoon. Steve was dying for a hot shower, and a shave, despite Katie’s protests that she liked the stubble he had sprouted, and whilst he was under the scalding hot waterfall, Katie headed into the kitchen to grab a drink. As she opened the fridge for a bottle of water she wasn’t surprised it was fully stocked including a few bottles of expensive pinot grigio and some beer. There was a note stuck to one of the bottles, in Tony’s handwriting.

Couldn’t have you both coming home to an empty fridge now, could I?

Whatever it is he’s ‘got to do’, I know you’ll follow. So keep safe, stay in touch, and if you need help…you know where to find a good team.

T xxx

She read the note over again and smiled to herself. It was times like this that her brother always came through for her. She fired him a quick text message to thank him before she headed up to the bedroom to see if Steve was hungry.

“Hey love, just wanted to know…” the words died in her mouth at the sight of him, his upper body was flecked with droplets of water from the shower. The knife wound on his shoulder had faded to nothing but a fresh, pink scar and the bruises he sported were all starting to turn yellow now apart from one stubborn one on the right side of his ribcage that was still a mass of purple. But it was the round circle of scar tissue that stood out, on the left side of his lower abdomen, angry and red, where the bullet that had done the most damage had exited that caught her attention. Her mouth went dry and suddenly her eyes were misting over as it hit her exactly how close she had come to losing him. Quite simply, she wasn’t sure she could cope without him now, which scared her as she’d always been fiercely independent.

“Hey…” he said, swiftly stepping forward, his hands cupping her face as he saw her face crumple “Sweetheart, I’m fine…”

“I know, I know but…” she said, sniffing. “I almost lost you and I couldn’t bear it if that happened…”

“Well you didn’t.” he said, gently, “Gonna take more than that to get rid of me.”

His lips brushed hers, the lightest of touches but it set every single nerve end she had into over drive with desire. As her breath hitched she felt him grin against her mouth before he kissed her, slightly harder this time, parting her lips with his tongue. He pulled her close, moving his hands up to the small of her back, pressing her into him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, running the fingers of one hand through his hair while the others lingered at the base of his skull, holding him to her. They stayed like that for what felt like forever, the kiss growing in intensity, hunger, until Katie felt him hard against her stomach and her face was raw from the stubble that he hadn’t shaved yet.

“The doctor said you had to take it easy…” she whispered into the space between them as they each worked to steady our breathing

“Yeah…” he said, slowly moving her backwards, "But, what do they know?”

“Ermm a lot.” she snorted.

“You need proof that I'm all healed?"

“Depends on what proof you’re talking about…” she grinned as he dropped his hands to her ass, reaching down as if to lift her but she stopped him, hands on his wrists.

“Steve, your ribs…”

“For once in your life will you shut up and just do as you’re told…” he said, looking down at her. She was about to argue, about to tell him no, but as he looked at her, his eyes alive with desire she knew it was pointless.

“Yes, Captain…” she murmured as his lips crashed onto hers, but he didn’t try and lift her again, instead he backed her up the short few strides, before the back of her knees hit the side of the bed and she dropped back onto it.

"I’ll take it easy…" he whispered as he crawled over the top of her, sliding his hand up her jersey dress and into the waistband of her leggings and knickers, slowly sinking two fingers into her warm, wet depth. She let out a soft moan, open mouth grazing his neck as he felt her clench around him. "Easy," he repeated before her mouth hungrily claimed his again. He moved his hands to reach down and they parted just long enough so he could pull her dress up over her head. His eyes automatically darted to the bullet wound on her left shoulder, that hadn’t healed half as fast as his, the stitches weren’t due out for another week

“I hate that you got hurt…” he muttered, slipping one bra strap down, then the other, before she arched her back allowing him to reach round and undo the clasp before he discarded it to the floor. His lips travelled across her collar bone and up her neck, drawing a soft groan from her lips as his stubble scraped her skin and once more his fingers claimed her. She writhed with pleasure at his strokes and he groaned gently, his lips working on the spot under her ear. He moved away for a second, to rid himself of the towel and crawled over her so that she was led flat, his hands pulling at the side of her black leggings, removing them along with her panties easily. He positioned himself over her, his tongue dipping into her mouth before he pushed into her, making her shudder slightly. His hands were on either side of her face, caressing her cheek and jaw as he kissed her again, rocking his hips as opposed to thrusting, the contact not breaking for a second. He dropped his head to her neck, his lips gently brushing her ear as he let out a groan, his hips grinding against hers.

It was soft, it was gentle, it was intimate, not rushed and she cried out his name loudly when her orgasm took her, her thighs closing around him. He was consumed completely by her, and he followed her over the edge, a loud moan rumbling in his throat. God he loved this woman with every single inch of his body.

“One day…” he mumbled, his lips brushing her ear. “I’m going to ask you properly.”

She understood what he meant. Smiling she looked at him, not a shred of hesitation on her face as her lips met his and she whispered into the kiss, “One day, I’m going to say yes.”

He couldn’t help the huge grin that spread across his face as he kissed her again, noses sliding carefully against one another to avoid aggravating any bruises before he rolled over pulling her to him, her words reverberating around his head.

I’m going to say yes.

His hand gently carded through her hair as he felt her relax into him and he dropped a kiss to the top of her head.

I’m going to say yes.

*****

The flashes of the photographers and the hustle and bustle of the audience were invasive. 4 days had passed since they had taken down SHIELD/Hydra and despite the best attempts of the lawyers that Tony had instructed on both hers and Natasha’s behalf, they had been summonsed to Capitol Hill.

What pissed Katie off the most wasn’t the attention (that she hated) it was the fact they were being held accountable when they had done the right thing. Natasha felt the same, but the pair of them remained professional and unaffected by the staging of the conference before them. They both moved to the fingerprint reader before returning to their appointed places to answer their questions. Nat’s hair was as usual smoothed and perfectly capped on her shoulders, Katie’s was twisted back in a bun. Katie's face still bore the bruises she had gotten from Rumlow, which were turning and fading and she probably could have covered them better but she’d chosen not to, simply to make a point.

“Miss Stark, you know Captain Rogers the best out of anyone in this room. Why do you believe he felt the need to take down our intelligence service?"

Katie wanted to laugh; it was such a stupid question to open with. But the serious look on his face told her he was serious.

"Taking down SHIELD was the morally right thing to do. If we hadn't stopped that launch over twenty million people would be dead." she said seriously. The congressman eyed her before jotting down something on his notepad.

The questioning continued from there. Not many people in the room were sympathetic to all that they had been through. In fact, Katie would go as far as to suggest that most were trying to find a weak spot or a way for them to trip them up. An hour in and it felt like they were going round in circles. Katie was getting pissed off. Besides her Nat shifted slightly, crossing her arms over her chest, the two women resisting the urge to look at one another.

"Why is there no news from Captain Rogers?" asked one of the men of the congress.

That was when Katie lost it. She turned to the front taking a deep breath as she looked up at the ceiling with annoyance, the eye roll she had been fighting came fully as she glanced back at the moron who had been speaking “I don't know what else to say.” she spoke, her tone laced with sarcasm. “Maybe the fact he almost died might have something to do with it. That said, I think the new rock in the middle of the Potomac speaks for him in this case."

"Perhaps he can explain to us how he hopes this country will ensure its national security because you have dismantled our intelligence services." The Congressman insisted reproachfully.

This time it was Natasha that spoke, her attitude ringing across the room, she was pissed as well.

"What information?" She asked angrily. "Hydra sold you lies."

"Lies that you took care to spread." The Congressman reminded, pointing at her with a knowing look. Natasha narrowed her lips to his allusion but it was Katie that answered, the final threads of her self-control finally snapping.

“Ste- Captain Rogers, sacrificed everything to save the lives of millions of people when he took that airship down into the ice over 70 years ago.” she leant forward “Not to mention the fact that my dad, Howard Stark, the co-founder of SHIELD also worked against Hydra in the war.” she took a breath and looked at Natasha “Agent Romanoff was almost killed by Hydra’s most deadly assassin on a mission 5 years ago. And more to the fact, 2 years ago we fought, side by side as part of the Avengers to keep the world and its people safe. And you’re seriously suggesting now that we would knowingly put those same people in danger?”

“Passionate speech Miss Stark, or should we call you Nova…” he said, making her snort and look away “And perhaps you’re right, maybe you didn’t know…but Agent Romanoff…” he turned to Natasha “It happens that a few in the commission have the feeling that, given your state of service for our country and against it, your place is more in a penitentiary than in a senatorial commission."

Katie looked at Nat who took a deep breath, clearly collecting her thoughts before answering with confidence. "You’re not gonna put me in jail." She paused for the dramatic effect before letting a small smirk curl the corner of her pink lips as she glanced at a Katie before looking at the front again "You’re not gonna put any of us in jail." She arched a mocking eyebrow as she kept eye contact with the congressman. "You know why?"

"Please enlighten us." He replied snidely.

"Because you need us." Katie answered for her. “With SHIELD gone, the world needs the Avengers more than ever.”

Natasha smiled gently and continued “Miss Stark is right. Yes, the world is vulnerable. And we're partly responsible, but we're also the most qualified to defend it. So you want to throw us in prison? Go ahead” she shrugged “You know where to find us."

With that she gently touched Katie’s shoulder and she rose gracefully from her seat, Katie following her. The pair of them turned to face the hordes of press, all of them were shoving microphones and cameras into their faces whilst they moved to the doors and pushed their way through the throng of people.

“Move aside please…” Happy was in his element, arm round Katie as he cleared a path to the SUV, where he opened the door to allow them to slide in. He pulled away from the kerb and sped off.

“We’ll head to Miss Romanoff’s first… then I’ll drop you home Kiddo.”

“Happy, what would I do without you?” Katie smiled at him. She turned to Nat who was looking out of the window.

“You ok?”

She shrugged “Could be worse.”

“So, what’s next for you?” she asked.

“Gonna take a bit of time out.” she said vaguely, shrugging “You?”

“Steve wants to track Bucky down.” Katie sighed “Although I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.”

She didn’t reply. They rode in silence until they reached her condo and Katie turned to her.

“Nat.”

She looked at Katie, her green eyes locking onto her friend’s.

“Don’t be a stranger. Come over this week, we can get takeout and make fun out of Steve, just like normal.”

She smiled and reached across the seats, giving her a hug. “I’d like that.”

****

The days following the hearing were peaceful as Steve and Katie mostly lounged at home, unpacking some of his things that Happy had sent over. They binge watched shows, cooked, went for walks and then one night Sam and Natasha dropped in for take-out and a few beers. Sam made sure he congratulated Katie and Natasha on them both basically telling the Government to kiss their asses.

“It was the best thing I’ve seen on TV in years!” he gleefully said, as Steve dropped a kiss to the side of Katie's head. In contrast, Steve had hated seeing both her and Nat getting grilled. He’d offered to go himself but both girls had insisted they could handle it, and he should keep his head down for the foreseeable. It was the one thing that Katie knew she could do to protect him.

It was as Natasha was leaving that Steve pulled her to one side and asked her if she could get any of her old contacts to dig up any information on Bucky. Katie pretended she wasn’t listening to the conversation, but she heard every word as Natasha tried to warn him that it wasn’t a good idea, but, stubborn as ever, Steve insisted so she nodded, and promised to do what she could.

And now, almost 2 weeks later, they were stood in a graveyard. Katie supposed there were stranger places to meet up with your dead-not-dead ex-boss…

“Funny, most people need a Medium or a Ouija board to speak to dead people.” Sam quipped as Fury approached them.

“I see dead people…” Katie replied in an almost perfect impression of the Kid from The Sixth Sense, causing Sam to snort and Steve to chastise the pair of them for acting like a pair of school children in a graveyard.

“Sorry Dad…” Katie rolled her eyes and he shot her a disapproving look which she met with an equally sassy one of her own, and Steve looked away before he laughed at her.

"So, you've experienced this sort of thing before." said Fury, drawing up behind the 3.

"You get used to it," said Steve, looking down at the grave stone with Fury's name on it, placed over an empty, buried coffin.

Katie slipped her hand into his, gently squeezing it.

"We've been data mining Hydra's files. Looks like a lot of rats didn't go down with the ship," said Fury, He was standing by Katie’s side, staring down at his own tombstone, with sunglasses on and a hoodie over his head and he looked up at Steve "I'm headed to Europe tonight. Wanted to ask if you'd come."

"There's something I gotta do first," Steve responded, simply.

“I assume you gotta do it too?” Fury looked at Katie. She shrugged.

"How about you, Wilson? Could use a man with your ability," said Fury, turning his gaze to Sam.

"I'm more of a soldier than a spy," responded Sam.

"Alright then," he said instead, shaking Sam's hand before going over to shake Steve's. "If anybody asks for me, tell them they can find me right here." He said shaking Katie’s hand last.

"You should be honoured," said Natasha's voice from behind the three of them, making them turn around to see her walking up to them while Fury himself was already walking away in the opposite direction. "That's about as close as he gets to saying 'thank you'."

"Not going with him?" Katie asked.

"No," she sang coming to a stop, keeping her hands behind her back.

"Not staying here," Steve concluded.

"Nah…" she drew out the reply. "I blew all my covers, I gotta go figure out a new one."

"That could take some time," Katie raised an eyebrow.

"I'm counting on it.” She smirked, turning to Steve. “That thing you asked for; called in a few favours from Kiev."

As she removed her hands from behind her back, she revealed a brown folder, which Steve took staring down at it with a contemplative expression.

"Be careful Steve," she added, repeating her warning and he looked at her, nodding. "You may not want to pull on that thread."

"Take care of yourself." Katie said, looking at her, before giving her a quick hug. "I think I'm going to miss you, just a little bit."

"Only a little?" Natasha teased right back. "I'll miss you too."

She turned to leave and Katie gently reached over to tilt the file down so she could see it, wincing at the photo of Bucky in some kind of cryo-stasis. Steve looked at her, his eyes giving away his sadness and she gently ran her hand up his arm.

“I’m not sure I want you involved in this.” he looked down at her and she rolled her eyes.

“We live together you ass.” she said sternly “And we’re in this now, the both of us. I’m not going anywhere.”

She felt like she had been saying that a lot recently, and she had. But she wanted him to understand, nothing that happened could and would ever tear them apart.

As Sam approached Steve closed the folder, but the man had already seen it. He shot a look up to the sky, his eyes locking on Katie’s and she gave him a quick look which was almost sympathetic as she registered Sam’s frustration. It didn’t go unnoticed by Steve either, he knew this could be opening a whole can of worms, or a ‘bucket of vipers’ as Katie had said the other night, but he had to try. He owed it to Bucky.

"You're going after him aren’t you?" Sam asked.

"You don't have to come with us." Steve responded

“I know.” Sam said, before a smirk crossed his face. "When do we start?"