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kuroopaisen · 4 years

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cause & effect || 8

➵ your work friend, kuroo, has a tiny favour to ask. unfortunately, that favour includes convincing his family that you’re very much in love with him and have been for a while now. let’s just say it’s easier than you’d assumed.

warnings: f!reader, discussion of divorce

wc: 2.2k

m.list | ch. 7 ↞ ch. 8 ↠ ch. 9

“Tetsurou!” His mother calls as he’s a few steps away from the safety of the car.

“Hm?” He only half turns around, not willing to commit to the concept of walking back towards his mother’s house.

“Don’t forget to call.”

“Don’t worry,” you call out, “I’ll remind him.”

She smiles at you, raising a hand. “Thank you, dear.”

You’re rushed into the car before you know it, buckled in next to an exceedingly stressed Kuroo.

The two of you are already leaving later than he would’ve liked, and you can tell he’s desperate to get back to Tokyo.

So are you, honestly. It feels like you didn’t get enough sleep last night, even though you certifiably did.

His mother’s words keep playing over in your head. ‘No chemistry.’ ‘She’s no Ritsuko.’ What did that even mean?

Sure, you might not be his real girlfriend, but you’re kind of pissed that you’re expected to live up to a set of standards you don’t even know about. Maybe you’re a bit too ticked off by the chemistry comment, but ‘no chemistry’ meant you weren’t playing your role well.

And if you were going to do anything during this whole stupid pantomime, it would be playing your part exceptionally.

“You know,” Kuroo begins, clearing his throat and stirring you from your thoughts, “I don’t think I said thank you properly last night.”

You smile, shaking your head. “It’s fine.”

“No, I…” There’s a creak in Kuroo’s voice, an uncertainty. Once, you might have found it unusual. After last night, not anymore. “I really appreciate you listening to me.”

You turn your head towards him, your smile softening.

Kuroo takes a deep breath, his fingers tensing around the steering wheel. He’s not looking at you (rightfully so – his attention should be focused on the road), but his brow is furrowed and his bottom lip juts out ever so slightly.

“I know it sounds dumb,” he says quietly, voice barely louder than the humming of the car, “since they split ages ago, but… I’ve had a hard time believing that… that if I fell in love with someone, it’d last.”

It hurts. Deep and true and harsh.

You know that pain. You’ve felt it.

“That doesn’t sound dumb at all,” you murmur, voice soft as cotton.

“Thanks,” Kuroo chuckles.

Silence falls once more. You let it. If Kuroo needs time, you’re willing to give out. Trying to force things out of someone never did them any good. You wait patiently, watching the road.

“I just…” He sighs after a while, sitting up a little straight. “I don’t know how to let someone in. Not in the way they want, anyway. I just…”

He chews on his lip, brow furrowed as he searches for his next words.

“Because your parents split up?” You offer.

“Mhm,” he nods slowly. “I don’t begrudge them for it or anything… and I know it’s better than forcing themselves to stay in the relationship.”

Ah, the bargaining. You know it well.

You tell yourself that what happened is better than nothing changing at all. But in the process, you forget you’re allowed to grieve. Allowed to be hurt. You push it away, cover it with a tatty veil, tell yourself that it’s wrong to feel anything mildly negative about it.

But that’s how it builds. That’s how it spreads like moss over a stone wall, slow and deliberate and hard to notice at first. But then it’s in all of you – in how you see yourself, in how you see others, in how you love.

“But it’s affected you more than you realised, right?” You ask gently.

Kuroo nods again. He glances at you out the corner of his eye, vaguely suspicious.

“Yeah,” he swallows. “I’ve only begun unpacking it recently.”

“It can take a long time to work through something like that,” you murmur, fiddling with your fingers as you gaze down at your lap.

You’re not sure if you’ve even worked through it all. There are still days when the thought of ‘family’ makes you want to throw up, where the bitterness swallows you whole. Bitterness for them, bitterness towards a society that places filial piety as a key virtue. How are you supposed to fulfil your ‘duty’ as a daughter when you still haven’t forgiven them for leaving you among the wreckage?

Maybe it’s time.

You take a deep breath, lifting your head to gaze out the window. “My parents are divorced, too.”

It’s a half-whispered confession. One you’re not sure if you should make.

You don’t know why it’s so hard to say that. It’s a simple fact – one that’s been written in stone since you were fourteen. And it’s not like Kuroo would judge you for it.

But it’s still difficult. It still feels like a stain that won’t come out.

“Wait, really?” Kuroo’s eyes go wide, glancing between you and the road. “I’m so sorry—”

“What’re you apologising for?” You giggle.

Kuroo opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish. “Well I—I’ve been sitting here complaining about it, and—”

You wave a hand at him.

“It’s fine,” you smile. “I’m not close with either parent, so…”

The mood shifts. Have you made a mistake?

“I’m sorry,” Kuroo says. There’s a painful sincerity in his voice – evidence that he doesn’t know what that’s like.

You’re happy for him. Through it all, at least, he had his dad’s side of the family. It’s something to be grateful for; and while the abandoned child in you feels bitterly jealous at the thought of someone else getting support, you know better than to admonish a parent doing their best to keep their son above water.

“It’s fine,” you say, pressing your lips together and shaking your head. “They’re both overseas for the holidays, actually.”

That’s the real reason you’re able to actually do this whole thing. There’re no parents to visit, no family to make merry with. There are friends you’d like to see, but most of their time was taken up by their own family festivities.

“Wait, really?”

“Mhm,” you nod. “Dad’s gone to Europe with his new partner, and mum’s visiting her new husband’s family in Australia.”

You know that they didn’t need to ask you if you wanted to spend the holidays together. And you don’t expect it. Sometimes weeks go by with no contact, and it’s your fault as much as theirs.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Being along during the holidays is always a reminder that things aren’t as they should be – you don’t have that nice little nuclear family you’re told to want, with parents who love (or at least, tolerate) each other so they can love you.

“I see…” Kuroo murmurs.

“So, you needing someone to stick their neck out for you ended up being pretty convenient,” you grin, trying to lighten the frankly dour atmosphere in the car.

“Where will you be during New Years?” He asks softly. There’s a certain melancholy to his face.

“Alone, at this rate.” You have friends to see, of course, but you know they can’t dedicate all their free time to you – and you’d never ask for that.

But you can’t reason your way out of loneliness, no matter how hard you try. Maybe you weren’t trying hard enough. All you can do is remind yourself that it wouldn’t be forever; the holidays would pass, things would return back to normal, and you won’t be lonely again for another year.

“You can stay with us, if you’d like.”

Kuroo’s voice is so soft. So kind.

It’s enough to make your chest feel all light and funny. Why, you don’t know.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

You’re not sure if you’ll take him up on the offer; you wouldn’t want to impose, and it wasn’t part of your agreement. Not that you’re really sure what’s covered by your agreement. You’re just coasting along, hoping for the best. Hoping you’re helpful.

Silence. A silence that weighs on your shoulders.

Did Kuroo feel… awkward, now he knew you came from a similar situation? Did he feel that he had no right to talk about it the way he was?

That wasn’t what you’d been trying to do at all. You didn’t want to rob him of his voice.

You take a deep breath, clutching your jacket with your hands. “I’m just saying that… I know where you’re coming from,” you swallow. “Kind of.”

Kuroo glances at you out the corner of his eye.

“It’s okay to take your time to work through these sorts of things,” you smile. “God knows I still am.”

He chuckles lightly. A good sign.

“It’s not easy,” you continue, “and I spent a lot of my teen years believing it didn’t affect me, that it hadn’t had that big of an impact, but…” One deep breath. “I used to besmirch the idea of family.”

It feels strange, admitting it out loud. You’d never done that before; not to someone outside of a therapeutic context. Not even your closest friends knew this was how you really felt.

“I didn’t believe in it,” you swallow, “And now I know that’s because of how my parents treated each other.”

Fights. Pointless bickering. Nothing ever got physical, but bitterness has a way of twisting people up on the inside, leaving them all tattered and miserable. A place where there’s no love at all, only two people running through the tired motions of affection, is no place to raise a child – let alone teach them how to love.

And something else.

“And… and because of how they treated me through the divorce,” you sigh.

It sounds worse when you phrase it like that.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” Kuroo speaks slowly, each word careful and cautious, “what happened?”

You chew on your lip. “Well, there’s the two of them trying to pit me against the other.”

Kuroo groans.

“And I… I don’t know, I felt very neglected,” you swallow, doing your best to ignore the pressure in your chest, the lump in your throat, the way your gut twists. “They were both so focused on sorting themselves out that I got left behind in a lot of ways.”

“How old were you?”

“Oh, I was like… thirteen? Fourteen?” You can’t remember exactly. It’s been so long.

“Shit.”

You laugh. “Yeah, it really wasn’t a good time for it. But… I think that contributed to why I feel a bit distant from my family.”

You sigh, closing your eyes for a moment.

This wasn’t how you’d wanted this conversation to go. This was supposed to be about Kuroo, helping him feel more at peace with what’d happened to him. It wasn’t supposed to be your sob fest.

You open your eyes, looking straight at him. “Look, Tetsurou, it’s okay to take your time. And it’s good that you’re able to identify the causes of your troubles. That’s a great start.” you say as your heart races. Would he find this preachy? Nagging?

He just chuckles, shaking his head. “I just wish I could deal with them.”

“I think you’re doing better than you think you are,” you murmur, resisting the urge to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. “And… if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

Your heart feels like it’s running a damn marathon as he slows to a stop at the red traffic light. Have you overstepped? Are you being annoying? Worse yet, were you being invasive?

Kuroo turns to look at you properly for the first time on the drive.

He’s graced with the softest of smiles, his features much gentler than you’ve ever seen them. You’d almost believe there’s genuine affection in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, reaching over to ruffle your hair.

You pout at him reflexively. You haven’t had your hair ruffled in years.

✧ ✧ ✧

The rest of the drive is quiet. Pleasantly so. Enough’s been said, and you feel no need to fill the silence.

Kuroo doesn’t either.

It’s nice to exist comfortably like this, the car’s heater working overtime as you trundle your way back to Tokyo. You drift in and out of a light sleep, bundled up in your jacket and your coat.

By the time Kuroo parks on your street, you’re ready to crawl into bed and hibernate for the rest of the month.

“Well,” Kuroo sighs. “Thanks again.”

You yawn, stretching your arms as far as the car will let you. “No problem.”

Kuroo wastes no time in getting out of the car and opening your door for you. You grimace as the cold air hits you; maybe you will crawl straight into bed. What better way to spend your day off?

You grab your things and slowly walk yourself to the front of your apartment building. Kuroo accompanies you the whole way.

“I’ll see you soon,” he nods to you as you turn around.

“I look forward to it,” you smile. God forbid, you’re actually excited.

Kuroos eyes light up for a moment. Are his cheeks red from the cold, or something else?

A bubble in your gut and you’re desperate to get inside, away from this confounding, stupidly charming man. You give what you intend to be your final nod, turning to open the door, but—

“Oh,” Kuroo says. “One more thing.”

You turn and tilt your head at him.

Somehow, he makes the stark winter light suit him. He grins. It’s brilliant enough to make you blush.

“Thanks for opening up to me,” he smiles, “I really appreciate it.”

#kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsurou x reader #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo x you #kuroo tetsurou x you #kuroo tetsuro x you #kuroo scenario #kuroo tetsurou scenario #cause and effect by rowan

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nighttimepixels · 4 years

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Two hundred year-old rotten wood decidedly did not make for good, stable footing.

Crimson cursed colorfully as the latest creaking beam, a too-perfect bridge from a higher level, began to give out under her. Quickly abandoning it before it could collapse fully and she could fall another fifty feet, Crimson practically threw herself with a little too much practiced skill to the towering rubble slide that had formed at the bottom of the haphazard shaft of ancient, overgrown buildings and settled earth she'd been making her way down. Keeping her center of gravity low, she skidded down the steep slope as it gave way in a more predictable, rideable manner, jogging off the last few steps as it slowed and evened out.

The distant glow of daylight barely bounced around to help see this deep into the half-buried structures she'd been exploring. The encroaching overhangs of old human architecture, either too spacious or too cramped in her opinion, didn't particularly help, even if she came properly equipped...

... but her usual internal grousing about the finer points faded into background noise as she caught the sound of a creaking door coming from inside the dilapidated structure to her right.

"there ya are," she grinned, sharp grin curling sharper. "'bout time, after ya teased me this whole damn way-"

Despite her bulk and the added weight of her own gear securely buried in the bag slung from her shoulder, she moved quietly through the debris of the half-collapsed structure and past the threshold of one of those strange modular human dwellings she'd been exploring for years now. The light of her flashlight suddenly felt a lot more effective, able to bounce off of closer walls and the gleam of once-shiny human belongings. Old picture frames, metallic knick knacks, the glimmer of some shattered glass here and there...

Inside was hardly in better shape than outside, but there was something decidedly more intense in the atmosphere the moment the doorway was behind her. Darkness clung to the ceilings, the corners, just around bends both her flashlight and the light clipped to her jacket couldn't quite reach...

The shadows were all just a little too dark, and Crimson's bones itched with the familiar feeling of being in a place that didn’t entirely want to be found.

Ghost hunting was a messy business, one she’d been in for years now, though not a lot of monsters were too tempted to venture into the densest sites of human ruins and risk becoming the latest victim of something even their knack for magic had trouble explaining. The remnants of human society that had suddenly ceased to be an unknowable amount of time before monsters had surfaced in the world... well, they were interesting as much as dangerous. She had always been the type to appreciate a good mess, and damn if the very real specters of a species that had since vanished didn't entice her to explore the overgrown and half-buried ruins of the society that had ended without warning.

And this particular spirit she was eyeing the entrance room for a sign of was a hell of a lot more intriguing than the usual angry remnant inclined to drop half a ceiling on her.

... For all the odd quirks of this one, though, the strangest part was that this spirit hadn't clung to one area like most did- no, Crimson had been tracking them for a few days now. Each time she'd sworn she'd finally lost the damned trail, some little wisp of a sound had been picked up by her audio equipment, or there had been that tell-tale sharp chill that had brought icy crystals to an exhale, or her camera had caught the tail of a spectral glow slipping through some wall she hadn't seen a crack in-

There was something to this one. Something that might just throw a damn light on the maddening mystery of what had happened to the humans.

"alright, ghostie, ya guided me this far… what is it you want me to see…?"

#nighttimepixels art #ghosthunting au #oops couldn't help but set the scene a little more #its got a little postapocalypse flavor but the monsters are fine just... surfaced after something unknown happened to the humans #the ruins look nearly centuries old on average if not more... but are they~?

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beastsars · 4 years

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idiomatic | louis (beastars) x carnivore!reader

i wont promise that i’m over this trope, but i think i have fed myself enough to focus on other avenues. a few people sent in some legoshi stuff so that’s my next wip. keep them coming.

as usual, more mature content below. some fun times at the masquerade party.

“and what, pray tell, am i to do about these antlers?”

pursing your lips, you gave the stout head ornaments an accusatory look. those with distinctive marking and other decorative characteristics often had the hardest time concealing their species. it was easy enough to distinguish between herbivore and carnivore but the fun was found in simply not caring.

if your target audience put in enough effort to disguise themselves.

parties like these broke both social and sexual boundaries, allowing people to lose inhibition and act on their baser selves. before you met louis, such environments frequently occupied your time off campus. it helped to stimulate your attraction to the opposite dynamic and eventually bribe your courage to seek out a suitable partner.

bringing him here was symbolic of returning to your roots. it would also show him that he wasn’t alone in his affections. not that the sentiment didn’t already hit close to home.

“too bad you’re not about to shed them,” you comment offhandedly, rightfully earning a sharp look of ire. chuffing at the display of pride, you vowed to yourself that you would show the male exactly what such strict dignity led him to lose out on.

patting his muzzle with unveiled condescension, you managed to slip away from his agitated grasp. the deer continued to gripe and moan while you fitted yourself into a choice dress for the evening and prowled the selection of shoes. honestly, the way pursuing beastar felt at ease displaying the less ideal parts of his personality would be endearing if it didn’t possess so much whining.

it hardly mattered. you would give him something else to occupy his attention.

catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you offered the image a self-appreciating wink before stepping out of the closet, one leg protruding ahead of you to show off your finely fitted heels.

“tell me, if i was a herbivore, would you still beg me to bite you?”

the curve of your buttock marked the cut off point of your dress, leaving little to the imagination as the rest of the material hugged your form. this clothing style opted without the aperture to fit a tail, allowing the appendage to swing idly from beneath the depths. it often incited others to perk your mood if only for a brief show.

louis has obviously seen you in less, but the presentation was too pungent with erotic intentions for him to remember anything else. grinning, you permitted his hands to edge the hem of your dress, warm palms marking promises against your thighs.

“and what exactly do you plan to be tonight?” he drawled slowly.

you knew that look. the one that was going to quickly get you out of this dress if you didn’t corral him into his own suit for the night.

pressing a chaste kiss to his nose, you nudged him towards the closet.

“i guess you’ll have to find out.”

you opted to rent out a mask for the evening. this way you could keep your choice hidden for a few moments longer and ideally find something fresh to attend the party in. you had a nice selection at home, but you’d cycled through them enough that somebody would approach you out of familiarity.

upon arriving, you had put louis in the good hands of friends who helpfully escorted him out of your sight and into his own fitting room. but not without complaint as his sputtering curses trailed down the hall.

“he’s a cutie. he yours?”

offering a noncommittal shrug, you settled on a thinner, less intricate mask for the evening. your dress was inviting and memorable enough. in a place like this, it was hard to tell who would challenge a pair.

at the clink of glass against the table, you efficiently down the alcohol and reached for the bottle to chase the burn. sexual prowess aside, you possessed enough restraint to cater accordingly to the opposite disposition. it was more for the eased minds than anything else.

“you’ll have your hands full keeping females and males alike off of him. he’s a built boy. anyone would love to see what he’s packing,” there was a tease to the voice but desire had a place too. you doubted it would take long for subtlety to be washed out. proprietary didn’t exactly have a place here.

polishing off the rest your your drink, you made an effort to pat down any remaining wrinkles before donning your mask. “well, i better get to him quickly then.”

“it’s rather delicate. made of papier mache ,i think. do be careful, it’s borrowed.”

his words of warning were no match for your inquisitive touch, however, as you stretched up against his body to prod against the medium surrounding his antlers.

they’d fashioned him as a moose of all things.

you didn’t know how you hadn’t thought of it. but truly, it was the of the few options available to at least conceal his dominant species. without the stench of alcohol anyone would know he was a herbivore, but at least this way he would abide by the base rules.

the covering of his antlers was more of an addition than part of the mask. the inner workings using his antlers as a statue to hang the camouflage over. it was rather convincing.

when the costume creaked threateningly at your touch, louis’ hand shot up to snag your wrist.

“i said it’s fragile,” he insisted.

the hiss of his voice encouraged your gaze to drop to his mask to give it it’s own appreciation. it was certainly wider than his own face, marginally longer too, to account for the massive beast he was portraying. coupled with his slim but muscled body, even beneath the suit, he was likely to garner some provocative attention. it was a shame you had to break some many hearts openly tonight.

humming an octave lower than your usual voice, you pressed yourself against the male with your arms around his waist. chin propped against his chest, you offered a cheeky grin.

“so what do you think?”

forced to enter from the back due to his identifiable features, he’d wasn’t awarded to opportunity to take in the scenery. the night was young and tame as most of the individuals simply mingled and broke ice. you wondered how long it would take for habits to surface.

“it seems like any other social event,” he muttered distractedly. he was likely trying the mundane task of attempting to unveil species from beneath their masks. everyone fell privy to the game sooner or later.

louis palmed at your side,” more importantly, why do you smell so strongly of intoxication.”

“trade off of being a carnivore, unfortunately. herbivores feel safest when we’re too drunk off our asses to pull rank.” rising to toes you spoke with conspiracy in his ear while your free hand trailed down his midline. “personally, i think they just want to take advantage.”

the male didn’t take too kindly to being groped in public, quickly seizing your other hand as he hissed. “it seems they're not the only ones.”

unable to resist laughing, you let him have the control while it lasted. “baby, you have no idea.”

despite your best efforts, more than a few figures approached you in greeting. without the pleasantries of names, most of the conversation was geared towards speculative tastes and pillars of society. already trained in the practice small talk, louis led more of the conversation than he followed. his strong nature captured a majority of the attention anyway with his passionate disposition towards the arts.

sipping idly at something fruity, you leaned comfortably into his arm as your gaze wandered the party. as the night wore on, it was beginning to grow as more individuals showed up fashionably late. the amount of alcohol had doubled to accommodate as more trays made rounds. they naturally gravitated towards the carnivores more, no one ever having to reach more than an arms length for a glass.

louis laughed earnestly next to you, the pads of his fingers tracing odd shapes on your back as he transitioned smoothly into another topic. he seemed to be handling it all much better than you expected but the real festivities had hardly begun.

the moment the conversation began to veer towards the more illicit ventures of business, you politely excused yourselves to a less occupied corner of the room. dragging louis down by your grip at his elbow, you fell back eagerly into the plush couches.

“you seem to be enjoying yourself at least,” you mentioned as you leaned down to massage the muscle above the cut of your heel. your departure had a dual purpose as you really just need a moment off your feet. as exquisite as your shoes were, they rarely offered much comfort.

you hadn’t even realized that louis hadn’t even acknowledged your response as you switched to the other foot and ultimately debated taking them off while you rested. it certainly wouldn’t be the most unsightly proposition. eyes sliding shut, you leaned back again. maybe a few more drinks would change your mind about your less than ideal clothing choices.

at the sudden tension of muscle beneath you, your gaze snapped open to assess the problem.

“are they?”

from his broken articulation alone, you had an inclination of what was transpiring. you were wondering how long it would take.

humming delightfully from your position curled up against him, you followed his gaze across the room to a pair who decided to take initiative to properly get the get together started. clothing strewn this way and that, the left nothing to the imagination as they rutted against one another.

louis shuddered as your claw teased the fastens of his suit jacket but you didn’t go as far to pry the button from its place. in a situation like this, he was no better than a virgin and likely as easily frightened if approached wrong. not that it would stop you from proding.

“lou, you feel so warm. are you embarrassed?”

unable to help himself, the stag stuttered in his speech.” they’re practically mating in public.”

“ are mating in public,” you chided unhelpfully.

this was nothing new for you to partake in. with each new realization from louis as he experienced your world with naive eyes, it made you head buzz from the thrill of it all. you leaned away from him long enough to snag a floating flute from the hovering attendant. it wasn’t as strong as what you’d knocked down prior but hopefully it would be enough to ease some of the tension from his shoulders.

nibbling at the exposed tuffs of his ears, you prompted him to drink. seemingly grateful for the distraction the male downed the champagne without a second thought.

he really was such a bundle of nerves.

ignoring his startled grapple at your sides, you lifted a leg over his lap and settled on top of him. your body didn’t offer much of a shield, but your weight was enough of a diversion.

by partaking in the drink, he’d solved the mystery of where the mouthpiece of his mask for you. with confidence, you were able to tilt up his head and slot your mouths together. he resists at first, the protest only give you the opening to slide your tongue between his lips.

you moan eagerly and vocally, utilizing your own sounds to drown out the commotion behind you. you capture his bottom lips between your teeth, swallowing the sweet taste of his gasp as you test him by grinding softly. the pinch of his fingers don’t go unnoticed but he doesn’t try to stop it either.

breaking away with a harsh pant of your own, you make a slow effort of loosening the buttons of his jacket, giving him every opportunity to escape the proposition.

“this is why i brought you here, lou.”

his grip at your hips pulsed like a heartbeat, fluctuating in intensity as he traded glances between you and the moving bodies around you. it generally only took one couple to take the plunge for the others to follow suit.

the wide room was starting to truly burst with life, coating the walls with a lustful aura. masks of all shapes and sizes engaging in causal conversation while observing the unhurried fucking of others as if in a pristine museum.

you let him keep the jacket on to give him some sort of protection, still mindful of his frazzled psych as you left chaste kisses along his neck.

“what? so i’d fuck you in public?” learning from his dramatic prose on stage, louis seemed to be snatching at all of his talents to compose himself. you snatched yet another flute of something more colorful this time, tipping against his lips without warning to bring his attention back to your small corner.

“not that . if you pay attention, you’d see they aren’t unlike us.”

latching your lips back to his throat, you mouthed your words as the glass trembled against his.

“see that ox and flamingo over there? the first is a mountain goat, i can’t pinpoint the species but i recognize the stance. and the pretty little thing he has bent over the banister, a lynx- see, there’s her cute little tail wagging.” your nose traces his jaw. “herbivores and carnivores sharing heated passion without ostracization. it’s not just a kink, louis, it’s a lifestyle.”

you can see the moment the clarity parts the clouds of his cognition. gone is the speculation as he comes to terms with the hidden intentions of your invitation. it was rare that you did anything subtly with him, he often having ot maintain propriety.

there were obviously other factors staked against either of you going public with your relationship, the most prominent lighting a slow spark toward the eventual dissolution of your arrangement. but he had never really thought past his own adoration of you. by now it was beyond the scope of just the sexual nature/ yet without positive societal examples,, he was often left scrambling with labeling his feelings.

while this-gathering to say the least- wasn’t the best example to base his own experiences on as he took it all in, it wasn’t hard to see where the stark black and white began to blur.

leave it to you to utilize the most extreme to make a point.

louis surprised you then by breaking his inner monologue and fitting his hand against the smooth column of your throat. his hold much more self-assured than before. the gradual change shot straight to your core as you wriggled.

“but you didn’t answer me.” the hold pulls your mouth away as he forcefully captures your attention this time. there is no doubt that most of his valor is a product of the mask, no different than the one he wears on stage. but your relative appreciate drew together more likeness between the two than you were willing to admit. louis always put so much effort in commanding an audience that he rarely was able to admire how effortlessly he was able to do so with you.

“a lot a pretty words when the truth of it all was just that you wanted to bring me here to make a show out of yourself.” louis felt his own arousal spike as the truth of the statement struck him as well. “you want them all to see how much you love to take it from a herbivore.”

you answer with a hasty nod, breathing hitching under the restraint you’d functioned with until now. “please, lou. dominate me.”

it doesn’t take you long to adopt your shameless nature, hips undulating and grinding your core against his swelling erection. you still try to appeal to louis more kept disposition though, sliding close and sliding your hand between the gap to rub friction circles against the junction of his pants.

unable to resist teasing, you press the pad of your thumb against the tented head. “what a bad boy you’re being lou lou too. and you always accuse me of being the dirty slut.”

despite the natural restriction of his vocals, louis manages to growl, a flash of ire behind the mask. you arch as his hand wiggles under your dress, easily finishing your soiled undergarments and tucking them to the side. he slides two fingers home to the third knuckle without preamble.

“look at you, you’re even wetter than when we’re at home. you say this was for me, but look how shameless you are.” he starts to pump them in and out slowly, and you answer with a voluntary roll of your hips. he was right. you were desperate for him but the hardly changed given the setting or audience.

squeezing his shoulder for balance, you melt into a purring moan as his fingers curl within your depths. it takes more effort than it should to break your own trace to escape the pleasure enough to fumble with his zipper. louis exhales a long shuddering breath as your fingers close around him. you’re both ready without the threat of prematurity, riding on the exhilaration of the environment.

a shuddering sigh shatters the tension building within your throat as he replaces his fingers with his cock, dragging you down to take every inch of him until you’re sitting at the base. he doesn’t even reprimand you when you instinctively reach for his antlers, the thin paper crinkling under your touch as rotate you himself to ride the stuff arousal.

you were vaguely aware of your small circle being encroached on by observing parties. more grateful than anything that louis appeared to be more focused on you than their presence- a choked gasp scrambled from your lips as he brought you down in forceful thrust, a keen whine following.

when you tried to find his gaze, you found that it wasn’t even on you. the glassy haze flickering behind you around the room, holding a lazy challenge to any and every figure. it fed into the thrill to know he was getting off on the audience as much as you were.

louis pace was sloppy, but expected given the mixed influence of alcohol, your body and room around him. it all came together in the thickest mixture of lust either of you had had the privilege of sharing.

“you’re so beautiful. the world deserves to see you like this.”

a hasty nod of agreement is all you can manage, because the weight of his grounding hips and pounding thrusts are tearing away your grip on reality. you feel a piece of the mache tear away with your claws as you shudder around the drag of his cock as it sends you spiraling into release.

louis rides your aftershocks, succumbing to your quaking thighs and fluttering walls as you both collapse beneath the weight of your combined climax.

you fall forward against his chest, hiding all evidence of your joining as you soak in the thick musk. around you bodies shift again, their muttered compliment sticking to your body as they transition to the next showing. the two of you stay like that for a long moment, rising off the expansion of the others chest as you slowly collect yourselves.

curling your face into the side of his neck, you lapped gently, snickering when he twitched you’re life within your depths. pressing a kiss there you eventually manage to prop yourself up again.

“well the night’s still young and i see you’re up for another round. let’s give them their moneys worth.”

#beastars x reader #louis beastars x reader #beastars headcanon #beastars imagines

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lurkerwithcomputer · 3 years

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WIP Thursday

Nah, that doesn't roll of the tongue the same, does it? A day late I may be, but here's a WIP that's slowly progressing. Some teenage Kouta/Eri, with LoV !Eri.

The rain pours down, turning the dark night blurry as water runs down the window. He can kinda appreciate how the city looks, beyond his window, like one of those moody urban paintings Aunt Shino is probably tired of him putting up in his room. She's one to talk, with the traditional-style paintings of mountains and forests on every surface.

There's a knock on his window and the creak of the outside air duct. He looks over to see a very familiar face looking back. White hair glistens from the inside of her dripping hood. Her jacket might be water-resistant, but it's not a raincoat. It's not meant for what's coming down, but at least it isn't cold outside.

He hops to his feet and yanks the window open.

Fuck, I'm glad Aunt Shino's not home tonight.

"Eri? Holy shit, come in, you're soaked! Just hold on..."

He reaches out with his Quirk, to grasp the water that's dripping off her before it can get all over his floor. Controlling water is trickier than just spraying water with his Quirk, especially when he has to pull it out of fabric, but it doesn't take him that long to have a blob of water suspended between his hands. It floats in the air, jiggling like a dirty gray amoeba of rainwater and gunk. He shoves it out the window, in the same motion as he slams it shut. Free of his control, the water blob drops out of sight.

"Motherfucker!"

Eri looks up, smirking, from wiping her feet with a rag - he keeps them in his room and says it's for wiping junk food off his fingers, which isn't a lie. Technically.

The muffled, snarling yell from below, in the alley under his window, is vaguely familiar. Kouta's heard that voice somewhere before, but his recognition runs dry tonight. Eri's slightly cracked giggling tilts him over, from trying to place the voice to laughing until he can't breathe. Although, he does feel a little bad for whoever just got soaked.

"Oh shit, Dabi's gonna bitch about that for days!" she wheezes.

His laughter stops cold, along with his blood in his veins. Eri seems unconcerned by this piece of information, still giggling.

"Dabi? That Dabi? Did I just fuck up real bad?"

"Relax, Kouta, he's not gonna do anything except be saltier than usual."

He's not entirely reassured, but he'll take Eri's word for it. She shrugs out of her Quirk-dried jacket and Kouta feels a whole new wave of concern wash over him. Her forearms are viciously scabby, scratched to hell like she's shoved her arms into a blender made of fingernails. Her own fingernails, to be precise. Her permanent eyebags have gone deep enough to hide a body or two in them. He knows what she looks like when she's stressed out.

Yeah, she needs this. Those meat-grinder arms don't lie.

"What do you wanna do?"

"Watch something mindless, eat junk food... and sit really close to you. It's that kinda night and that kinda week."

After getting hot pockets, a big bowl of chips, some peach soda, and plugging his laptop into his big screen, this is honestly shaping up to be pretty relaxing. They sit on his bed with a heap of pillows behind them. The crumbs they're gonna get on his blankets are Future Kouta's problem. He leans back against her, because even though he's filled out and grown some muscle, she's grown taller instead. She wraps her arms around his ribs and rests her chin on his shoulder. He swears that a darkly metallic tang rises off her ragged forearms.

His brain chooses that moment to change his attention from the re-runs of an old knife-making show to being very aware of Eri. The way he can feel her body heat through her worn-thin T-shirt. The way she's soft against his back, despite how lean she looks. He's a teenager and he likes her. Yes, that kind of likes her. Sue him.

She brings one hand up to play with his hair.

And her hands are nice. Even if most people's definition of "nice hands" doesn't include scars and callouses, mine does.

Her hand in his hair brings her forearm right up next to his face. Where he can see her scars in too-close detail, old ghost-pale needle marks and methodical, even cut lines. Where he can feel the roughness of her raw, fresh scabbing, and the metallic scent of her self-injuries seeps into his nose. This close he can see something else, beneath more layers of old scars than someone their age should have. Etched on her skin like a fingerprint are pearly, geometric swirls, like Damascus steel, like a pattern-weld.

He shakes off the rather disturbing concept of pattern-welded skin as her other hand joins the first in his hair.

As her touch on his scalp grows firmer he melts into her, and she in turn melts into the pile of pillows, until both of them are far enough back to be staring at the ceiling instead of the screen. He's too deep in the sensations of being close to her to register the sound of the show as anything more than background noise. Her breathing, soft and steady, and slowing as she relaxes too. Her warmth, soaking into him through worn-out fabric. The rub and scratch of her fingers on his scalp, soothing him, melting him further. Her scent, vanilla and lime shampoo, and the dried blood from her arms.

He wonders, distantly, if not being bothered by that particular scent says something about him.

There's an impulse that's been building up while her arm has been right next to his face, next to his lips. It's grown like drops feed into trickles, give rise to rivers, come spilling forth as waterfalls.

He presses a kiss to her pale, scarred and scabby skin, on the underside of her arm. It gives him warm tingles, even as it stains his lips with the taste of stale, sour salt and iron. Above and over his shoulder, there's an inquisitive hum, and her quiet, low, raspy voice. An odd voice for a teenage girl, but it's easy on his ears, like the sound of surf on sand.

"Hmmm. Hey, do that again," she says, soft but eager in a way that's hard to place.

He does, again and again, and the slow-drip buildup of salted rust in his mouth is surprisingly heady, when mixed with the slow scratch of her fingers on his scalp. It's only when he loses track of how many kisses he's left, that he realizes he's tracing the lines of her scars and scabs, rubbery and rough on his lips. Eri's breath ghosts over his neck as she hums again, deeper, from her chest.

Dry, chapped skin presses against the spot where his neck meets his shoulder. He can feel her lips curl up into a smile.

There's a sudden warm pinch.

He flinches and shivers, but not in a bad way - his face heats up and his pulse quickens.

"Um. Did you just bite me?"

"Was it bad?"

"It wasn't bad. Just... a surprise. But I think I like it," Kouta replies, and if his face didn't feel too warm before, it does now.

Eri gives that raspy giggle he's grown to like so much, the one that flows over his ears like the swish of waves. Her lips brush the back of his shoulder again, and one hand leaves his hair to pull the neck of his t-shirt aside. He can't help but lean into the sensations - the texture of her scarred, calloused fingers, the scrape of her teeth, her chapped lips, the warmth of her mouth on him.

He works his way up her arm, trailing kisses, until he has to shift position. It pulls Eri's mouth away from the back of his neck, where he's sure there will be plenty of incriminating hickeys, and a few bite marks, later.

He rolls over to face her, eye to eye. She wordlessly leans back into the side of his neck, chapped lips meeting skin, fingers tangling in his hair again. He follows suit, and her neck goes from cool and damp with residual rainwater, to warm and damp with a hint of her sweat, and probably his saliva, given the hickeys he's leaving.

"Mmmmm... this is much better than stewing," she mumbles from just below his ear.

That takes him out of things just a little, but... but it's probably good that she seems ready to spill whatever's stressing her out.

He sucks one last mark, in the middle of her throat, right above her collarbones, and then rolls off her. He looks her in the eye, briefly, and something flows between them, even if neither knows what.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"I... well. Yeah. It's really Not Okay. I'm Not Okay over it."

Eri sucks in a breath.

"Kouta, they," she swallows audibly and her eyes turn wet, "The HPSC is trying to pressure the government to turn off power and water in neighborhoods that refuse their authority."

His blood flows like ice water in his veins, even as aimless fury boils in his chest. No, not aimless - but where is he gonna point it when society itself is what he's angry at?

Too big of a target. Like I'm trying to defeat an elephant with a sharpened popsicle stick.

He knew something was up - Aunt Shino has been making some dark expressions when she thinks she's alone, and when she got drunk last week she ranted a lot about the HPSC being "disgraceful bastards" without actually saying much about what's going on.

Now that he knows what the problem is, Kouta's pretty sure his choice of words is closer to "Extremely Fucked Up".

His more immediate problem is that he's got no idea what the fuck to say to Eri right now. Comfort has never been his strong suit, for all his experience with being scared and hurt, angry and alone. What he does understand is feeling the need to immediately do something about it.

Eri answers this question for him.

"That's not the really fucked up part," she says, and even though her voice is quiet he can hear her seethe, "it's that they've already started doing it."

"I don't know what to say to that," he says, because he might as well be honest, "That it's horrible, they shouldn't be doing this, I hope it makes human rights people step up their game, that it makes me despise society even more..."

A thought that's been bubbling up slowly, the more he's gotten to know her, washes over him now.

"I guess I get where villains are coming from. The ones who look at society and want to burn it all down, I mean," he says.

Eri stares at him, her eyebags made more prominent by how her blood-red eyes widen.

#lurker writes #WIP #LoV Eri #eri #izumi kouta

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ilikewrite · 5 years

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After - The Society FanFic Part 3

Sorry guys, this is going to be a long one!

Grizz wakes to the sound of a boiling kettle. For a split second, he believes he’s home. His mum is making her breakfast and that he’s late for school. Then reality comes flooding back as he’s greeted with the family photos of Cassandra and Allie hanging on the wall. His clothes are crumpled in a pile on the floor, whilst his blanket has been flung to the side. Clearly, he’d been tossing and turning all night. He sighs, unable to find the strength to sit up. He didn’t really remember falling asleep. He lay down and now he’s awake and it’s the next day.

He can hear the creaks throughout the house as others wake up and move about. Whoever is in the kitchen in shuffling their feet, closing cupboards as quietly as possible, making sure not to disturb anyone. It seems that no one else has left their rooms. What time was it? It’s daylight outside and with it being late in the year it must mean that it was quite late. He pats himself down, trying to find where he put his phone. Nothing. He scans the room and finds it on the coffee table. He debates the effort of reaching for it but knows that after yesterday, it’s probably best he check it. Sore and stiff, he grabs his phone and is immediately greeted with messages from The Guard and Harry. His stomach drops. The Guard were mostly welcoming him home, mentioning something to do with Campbell. The thought of that boy turns his stomach. How, after everything they knew about him, did they trust him? He notices Campbell’s name popping up in The Guards chat. He switches to Harry’s message, hoping it will lift his spirits. He knew it wouldn’t, and it didn’t. It was asking him and the others to come to meet them today to discuss the land they found. Grizz didn’t want to tell them shit. He went out under Allie’s plan. Allie had a plan for when they found land, these two didn’t. They’re going to feel in over their heads. In high school, Harry revealed in popularity, feeling important, being rich. He was nice enough, funny and liked to have a laugh but when it came to the world, he lived in a bubble. He liked to be the sun, the people around him are planets to him. When this world happened, Grizz knew he has struggled, struggled to understand that the rules from before do not apply the same here. The societal aspects of life that Harry had always enjoyed were thrown out the window. There was no time for it. Right now, it’s about survival and once we survive, we can thrive. Once we have a working community in place, Harry could go about trying to be a pompous twat again. Grizz ignored the message. He’ll get back to them later. He wants to see Allie, Will, Luke and… His heart skips a beat. Sam., He needs to see Sam. He doesn’t want to see Harry or Lexie until he’s spoken to everyone else. However, he knows that to get to some of these people he’ll have to see Lexie and Harry first. He groans.

Gwen pops up, head peering over the sofa staring down at him. He falls off the sofa. “Oh my god! I’m sorry!” Grizz sits up, rubbing his face. Gwen holds out a coffee. He takes it, purely to wake himself up a little. Gwen’s hair is slightly wet, she’s wearing a dressing gown that doesn’t quite fit her properly. Grizz hears the low hum of the washing machine. If he’d known a wash was going to be put on, he’d have given them his- “I put your other clothes in the wash, you should have something clean to wear today.” Oh. He smiles his appreciation. She moves to sit on the chair whilst Grizz slumps back onto the sofa. “So, what are we doing today?” The truth, Grizz didn’t know. He didn’t know what to tell her, or anyone else for that matter. However, he knew the others wanted to know his thoughts, wanted him to make this decision.

“Lexie and Harry want to meet to discuss the new land we’ve found.” Gwen nods, watching the steam from her coffee billow up into the air. It’s an uncomfortable thought having Lexie and Harry as the new Mayors. They’d grown used to Allie and her rules, but I guess, there had been Cassandra before as well. Grizz knew that had been different though. Allie had led the community for months and through so much more than what Cassandra had done. He hadn’t grown accustomed to Cassandra the way he had with Allie’s rule. Grizz was curious at Gwen’s uncomfortableness however, she wasn’t exactly Allie’s number one fan. He would have considered her to fall before Lexie rather than Allie. Gwen would be one of the ones he thought to love the change in the throne. Perhaps, it's due to the way they had entered the town yesterday. If it’d been less of a mob, with Allie and Will not in custody, maybe she would be more willing to be following Lexie. “Are you fine with what I said last night?” He cautious, neither of them are looking at each other. It’s obvious that the town essentially has two fractions. What they’re essentially doing right now is telling half-truths to protect themselves, to protect their own ideas. “You know, the plan of what we’ll tell people?” Gwen takes a moment, sipping the coffee silently before finally meeting Grizz’s gaze.

“Yes.” She pauses, contemplating her next sentence. “I think it’s the best option for now. The town doesn’t seem as stable as before.” Grizz nods in agreement. There was never comfortable stability in this town but the atmosphere in the air now is similar to that after the murder of Cassandra. It is unsettling. “Do you believe what they’re saying about Allie and Will?” She’s quiet, unsure of herself, of what she is saying. Grizz had to admit, he had no idea what they were saying about Allie and Will. He still had no idea what was going on.

The texts messages flash across his eyes and he picks his phone up again, Gwen raises an eyebrow. He scans through The Guard’s chat and see’s Luke’s message of Allie and Will being arrested for voter fraud. He laughs. Are they serious? Is Luke serious? Voter Fraud or not, the level of viciousness the crowd showed clearly suggested a more complex issue that Lexie and Harry were exploiting. Any idiot could see that. He passes, well, maybe not. Maybe because they’ve been away, their heads are clear of the propaganda that has happened during the election. Gwen’s watching him curiously, waiting for him to answer. He slumps, downing the coffee.

“No. I don’t believe it.” She nods and he continues. “She has made many difficult decisions, has helped establish some order, some sort of normal and made mistakes but I do not believe this.” He waves his hands about, frustrated with the community, his peers. “I think people don’t realise that no matter who is in charge, the hard work will continue, the hard work, confusion and life continues. Allie and Will were not the cause of that but Lexie and Harry are making them the scapegoats.” Gwen looks down, biting her lip. He gets it, she, like everyone else, have, at some point, been frustrated with the monotonous and prison-like feel of this place but that’s what needs to be done right now, that’s life now. They let themselves drift into silence for a bit. Gwen continues to sip her coffee, whilst Grizz plays with his now empty mug.

Helena enters the room, dressed, coat hanging off her shoulders. Her face is not pleased. She doesn’t bother to take her shoes or jacket off, instead strides towards Grizz. His eyebrows raise at the attitude emitting off her. “You all missed breakfast. A few of the workers who are not out of their minds are coming with any leftovers.” Both Gwen and Grizz stare, unable to give an answer, more seems to be going on with Helena but Grizz knows that she won’t share unless it’s on her terms. “Grizz, Harry said you haven’t messaged him back yet.” Grizz huffs, Helena rolls her eyes. “I know. But this is life now. We can’t help anyone if all our allies are behind bars.” Grizz shifts, uncomfortable at the thought. He doesn’t like the idea of being trapped. He wouldn’t be able to cope with such a thing; he wonders if Allie and Will feel the same. Grizz chucks his phone at Helena, she catches it with ease, he’s impressed.

“Tell them we’ll talk once I’ve seen Allie and Will. Alone.” It’s a bold move. He’s hoping their need for information is great enough he can speak to them, but Helena’s face hardens at his idea.

“Don’t be idiotic Grizz. That’s how we got here.” Not true. They came here on mystical busses that transported us to another plane of existence. Regardless, he knows Helena is right. Going straight in with a defensive attitude will lead to conflict. They need to play this smart, whether he has the patience for it or not.

“You know my thoughts. I said them last night. Tell them I’ll meet with them this afternoon. 3 o’clock.” He shrugs. He knows he wants to put this off for as long as possible to try and get his story straight but also so he can go to the hospital and see Sam. Since waking up, he’d put the thoughts of Sam to the back of his mind. It had been a constant hum in the back of his mind. When they first entered back into the town, he knew all he wanted to do was see Sam but that’s clearly not going to be so easy.

“3 is a bit late.” Helena is unsure as keeping them waiting all day will seem suspicious like he’s planning something but Grizz shoots her a look telling that on this, he will not compromise. “At least give me a reason for the time.”

“I’m visiting Sam, Becca and the baby. My group need to recuperate a little longer. Add what you like. You’re in charge of my phone now.” He didn’t mean to sound so demanding and exasperated but he was already done with all of the shit. It’s been six months of shit and just when things were on the up for him, this whole thing comes crashing down.

“I’m not your lackey. I have business at the church and my own responsibilities.” Yet she types the message, anyway and pockets his phone. “You’ve said you’ll be at the church at 3. I expect you to show up Grizz.” She walks to the kitchen, sorting through some stuff. Grizz glances over his shoulder and see’s the others have made their way down and were all relaxing. No one seemed happy but they certainly weren’t emitting the same energy as before. Grizz sighs, standing. He better get ready if he is planning on a trip to the hospital first. Gwen stands with him. He raises his eyebrows at her.

“I’m coming too. Moral support.” Grizz smiles and nods. It would probably be best. It’s going to be a long day.

Gwen and Grizz left the others in Helena’s care. They agreed to be as vague about the trip as possible and help Helena at the church until they knew what to do next. No one was happy but it was better than nothing.

Grizz is nervous. His stomach is swirling and his hear is beating faster than it had when he’d asked Sam to kiss him. Gwen has suggested they stop off at one of the shops to get a present. The town was eerily empty. Those they did meet greeted them but didn’t do much else. He got the sense that those who support Lexie knew that Grizz didn’t. There is a children’s shop that has lain empty and untouched for months. No one thought to go near it, there had been no reason too. They weren’t babies or children. But now there is a reason.

They picked up as much as they could fit into a rucksack. Once Becca and the baby were discharged, he imagines rules about commodities will start to be put in place. It’s not going to be long before currency is introduced into the town, but for now, they can raid this shop and give them enough for a good start.

Grizz didn’t hate Becca and he certainly didn’t hate the baby. If anything, he was jealous that they have Sam. He’s definitely got mixed feelings about everything. He likes Sam but this whole situation is complicated. He doesn’t understand how they could work things out. Sam has a baby. That changes everything. Regardless, Grizz knew that right now he wanted to see him. He knows things are different now and he doesn’t want to be some secret in Sam’s closet, so he’ll keep his distance after today. But for today he wants to see him.

“What if the baby’s ugly?” Grizz’s eyes shift to Gwen as she babbles next to him. She’s surprisingly lifting his mood. She’s not asking him anything deep or personal, she’s just talking nonsense. It’s a nice change. “Like what if it’s really ugly.”

“It’s not going to be ugly.” Grizz sighs.

“All babies look like old men.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yeah, they do.” He laughs at her insistence on the matter. They continue to discuss what babies truly look like when they’re first born. It eases Grizz’s stomach slightly, they were just visiting friends. Their friend had a baby. That’s all. He and Sam don’t have any history. There’s nothing- He sees the hospital and falters in his step. Gwen doesn’t notice and he’s easily able to catch up with her. The nerves were back and firing through his body. This is going to be awkward.

Gordie is walking through the front door as the approach. He jumps as Gwen calls out to him. There’s a wry smile on his face. Ever since Cassandra’s death, he had never been the same. However, Gordie always tried his best to figure the puzzles out, make things better but he needs the right people around him for him to fully thrive. Allie let him have the autonomy, checked in on him and had meetings but left Gordie to be able to investigate and solve in his own way. Will Lexie and Harry allow the same?

“Can we see them now?” Grizz manages to hide his extreme nervousness for uncertainty. He just sounds like he’s unsure if now is the right time instead of the-man-I-fancy-just-had-a-baby-with-his-best-friend nervous.

“Uh, yeah, yeah!” They start to make their way in when Gordie turns on them and holds up his hands. His face is slightly contorted as he’s sorting out the wording of his next sentence in his head. “Just one thing uh,” he pauses, pursing his lips. Gwen and Grizz look at each other and then back to Gordie, waiting. “Can we not mention the whole Allie, Will thing?” Their mouths drop.

“Do they not know!?” Grizz’s voice comes across a little aggressive as Gordie flinches slightly. He straightens up, “Sorry, but what the fuck?” Gordie smiles slightly accepting the apology.

“Well, Sam knows but Becca doesn’t. We explained to Sam last night, but we just want some normalcy for Becca and Eden until we think she’s ready to head home.” He holds his breath, eyes flicking to both of their faces, trying to gather what they’re thinking. No one says anything, he lets out a breath and focuses on Grizz. “Sam was worried about you.” His heart squeezes. His mouth his suddenly very dry and struggles for words so instead, he just raises an eyebrow. “We didn’t explain things well last night, so it made it sound like you were hurt or something and then with the whole Allie and Will stuff, it just got a bit stressful, so he’ll be relieved to see at least one of you is fine.” He had been worried about him? The thought sends butterflies flying through his stomach and he desperately just wants to stride past Gordie right now, but he has to keep his cool.

“You guys need to work on your wording.” Gordie flashes a nervous smile before turning and allowing them through.

He can hear the faint cries in the distance. Gwen and Gordie have sped up, excitement filling Gwen. Grizz however, finds himself slowing. His limbs, chest and head heavy. He can hear the baby. She’s real. This is real. The cries quieten and he can hear the murmurs of voices, he assumes Kelly and Becca.

They turn a corner and Gwen squeals seeing the baby. She rushes forward with Becca’s face lighting up at the sight of them. Sam is laughing at Gwen’s rushed talking, his eyebrows raised trying to understand what she’s saying, it is too fast for him pick up on everything. That’s when he turns. Everything in Grizz’s world stops. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to say. Sam’s frozen too. Their last moment together playing on repeat in his head. The worry he’d felt as Grizz had wandered off into the unknown, afraid he’d never see that face again. The others haven’t noticed their sudden stillness. Becca is the first to address Grizz, she smiles brightly as she makes eye contact with him. “Grizz! Gwen says Allie and Will couldn’t make it because of election issues. Is everything okay?” He shakes his head, his hair falling in front of his face. As he pushes it back, he regains his composure and smiles.

“Honestly, I’m still trying to settle back in, I’m not sure what’s going on.” It’s the truth. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on. Becca nods pleased with the answer. Grizz awkward holds out the rucksack. Gwen rolls her eyes whilst the others just stare at him. “Uh. Gifts.” Becca looks to Sam to take it from Grizz but notices his malfunctioning brain and instead turns to Kelly.

“Sorry about him, I kept waking him up through the night. Just because he can’t hear, he thinks he can get away without having sleepless nights. Not on my watch.” Grizz emits a rather forced and nervous laugh. Gwen eyes him strangely as Kelly takes the bag off him. Gwen is given the baby. “Be careful.”

“I’ve got this, I used to babysit the neighbour’s kids.” In a rather hushed and cooed voice, she addresses the innocent child. “Hi, Eden. Aren’t you adorable?” She sits in a chair cooing at the child. Grizz’s eyes wander over to her. Eden, a fitting name. A pure untouched soul surrounded by chaos. She is beautiful. And so small. She makes a soft baby noise. Grizz could only describe it as a soft pop, nothing crazy but he finds himself smiling. This baby is going to be loved by everyone. He hadn’t realised he’d moved towards them until his hand was reaching out towards the child. He gently shakes her hand. Her fingers for a moment grasp his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Eden.” His voice cracks slight as he finds himself overwhelmed with emotion. So soft and warm and small. Such a fragile human. They have to do whatever it takes to protect this child.

A tear rolls down Sam’s face. Becca tugs at his top. “Are you okay?” She signs, not wanting to draw attention to the sudden emotional mess her friend had become. He nods. She frowns but doesn’t push the matter. Wiping the tears away, Sam finally finds his legs and walks around the bed. Grizz turns at the sound of footsteps and finds himself embraced by Sam. He doesn’t hesitate and pulls him in closer, their heads buried deep into each other’s shoulders. The grip each other tight and if they didn’t have a crowd both of them would have kissed the other by now. For a moment, it is just them. Grizz can smell the disinfectant and baby smell off Sam. Not his usual scent but all the same it was weirdly comforting whilst Sam basked in Grizz’s musk, the clean air from outside clung to him like he’s clinging to him now. Gwen breaks their moment.

“I didn’t get a welcome like that.” Her sarcastic tone is followed by a laugh. “No, I didn’t, did I, Eden? Clearly, your parents have favourites. It’s like they forgot I went away too!” The baby voice she puts on breaks the tension in the room. Becca is eyeing them suspiciously but seems to let it slide as she watches Gwen with Eden, both laughing at Gwen’s ridiculous voice. Gordie has returned with notes, pulling Kelly aside. Sam and Grizz break apart but still hold onto each other, making sure they don’t disappear. Grizz is the first to let go and he sees a flash of panic across Sam’s eyes for a second, but he’d been practising this and wanted to do it.

“I told you I’d see you soon.” He mouths robotically whilst signing the gist of what he’s saying. Sam’s smile widens and a small laugh break from him. Grizz isn’t sure if this is because he did it right or he did it wrong. “Did I get it wrong again?” He turns to Becca who’s laughing as well. “I did, didn’t I? I’m trying!” Becca carries on a laugh and goes to sign when Sam cuts her off.

“No, you got it right, just a bit messy.” Sam and Becca exchange a look suggesting that he had gotten it wrong, but they didn’t want to tell him. Grizz is unsure of what to do now. He knows what he wants to do but it’s inappropriate.

“Well, are you going to open the presents or not? Grizz and I spent ages this morning picking stuff out.” Gwen’s exasperated tone helps move things along and Grizz swears she mouth you’re welcome to him as the attention is taken off him. Had she figured it out? No, Grizz is too good at playing it cool for her to have done that.

Sam settles back in his seat and Becca starts going through the rucksack. There are plenty of things in there that Grizz has no idea what they’re called but Becca squeals and shows them off to Sam super excited so he’s happy she’s enjoying them. There’s a pang in his stomach as he watches them interact, knowing that this was Sam’s life now. This is his family. And that this was Grizz, on the outside. The thing he hates and loves about Sam is his love and loyalty towards the ones he cares about. Grizz would never want it but Sam would never give up on his family, no matter how much he wanted Grizz. Sam would be loyal and staring at Eden now, Grizz wouldn’t want it any other way, no matter how much it hurt him.

They get to the end of the rucksack, Becca has said thank you over and over again but honestly, these would have gone to waste without Becca and Eden so it’s no problem. Gwen passes Eden seamlessly back over to Becca and jumps up from the seat. “Your go.” Gwen beams at him. Grizz confused just looks around at everyone. Becca is smiling at him, nodding. Then he realises.

“Oh, no. No. It’s fine. I’ll break her.” He holds up his hands standing back a little. Gwen, however, pushes Grizz into the chair. He has no choice in the matter apparently. Becca guides his arms as he takes Eden. She’s heavier than he expected but still feels like nothing in his arms. He’s never been so still. Becca and Gwen giggle as they watch him awkward hold her. “Is that good? Is she safe? I’m not hurting her right?”

“You’re doing fine.” Sam smiles as he says it. Grizz and Sam lock eyes and smile. This is weird but sweet. Eden makes a noise and he looks down at her. Her eyes are identical to Becca’s. She truly is a beautiful soul. Grizz’s heart is melting.

“She’s so small.” He gives another nervous laugh. This is slowly becoming his normal laugh at this rate. Everyone laughs alongside him. Eden starts to cry. He panics. “What did I do? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. No, don’t cry. I’m sorry. Help” He looks up to the laughing crowd. Becca takes Eden off him and hushes her slightly, letting her suck on her pinkie. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she just needs to be fed.” Becca looks at Sam, who nods. Gwen picks up the signal that it was time for them to go. She picks up the empty rucksack, hugging Becca and saying bye to the baby. Grizz gives a somewhat awkward half hug to Becca, afraid he’ll make the baby cry once more. Becca rolls her eyes. “You’ll see them out?” Sam nods. He shuts the curtain behind them as they head.

As they pass the desk, Grizz stops. Gordie raises his head, stopping the discussion he and Kelly were having. “We need to talk tonight. Can you come to Allie’s around 7? After dinner?” He nods. “I’m meeting Lexie and Harry this afternoon. I’ll debrief you later.” Kelly goes to speak but Grizz walks off. He doesn’t want to get into this right now. He needs to prepare for the meeting. He’s seen Sam. He’s made sure he's fine. Now it’s time to get back into the real world and try and sort it.

He reaches the door where Sam is standing waiting, breathing deeply taking in the fresh air. Gwen is nowhere to be seen. Grizz takes a moment to just watch Sam. His eyes are shut and if he didn’t know he was deaf, he’d be sure he’s listening to the world. Maybe he’s listening to what he thinks it sounds like? Is that a stupid idea? Grizz isn’t sure.

Sensing something, Sam turns to find a concerned Grizz staring at him. “Gwen needed a pee.” He nods but still doesn’t move closer. This is the first time they’ve been alone in a while. There’s a tension between them, he’s unsure if it’s a good thing or bad. Grizz walks closer to him, standing next to him. Sam hasn’t taken his eyes off him. They’re incredibly close.

“The book was helpful.” He’s whispering. Something about right now is making everything he’s doing so loud. This right here needs to be contained. Just being here with Sam, alone, needs to be contained. Sam reaches up and touches his cheek, wiping a tear away. He was crying again. It really had been an emotional few days. Sam leans forward, standing on his tip toes, and kisses Grizz. It’s a gentle kiss, reminiscent of their first one. Grizz leans into it and Sam can feel his longing bubbling through him. It’s Grizz, however, that’s the first to pull back. He looks down, sniffing, not wanting to make eye contact with Sam, not wanting to say what needs to be said. Eventually, he looks up so Sam can read his lips. With certain words signed, Grizz bites the bullet and says what needs to be said. “I needed to see you. I really want you but you have a family. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t give to be with you but breaking up a family? No. I won’t do it. I care about you too much to make you do that.” Sam’s heart cracks with every word Grizz says but he understands and knows that ultimately he’s right. He made a commitment to Becca, to her, their, child. Biological or not, Eden is his and he needs to be there for her right now. That doesn’t mean this doesn’t hurt like hell. “I know you care about me, but you have to put everything you feel about me aside. I’m not being the hidden guy, I’m not…” He chokes, unable to speak anymore without crying his eyes out and he didn’t want Gwen to pop up and see that something is wrong. “Sam.” It’s all he can say. There’s enough emotion in that word to break a thousand hearts. There’s such a sad longing there. All they’d wanted was someone to share their life with, someone to see the best in them, someone to hold. Yet it was the wrong place and wrong time. A cliché but the truth.

“I wish it wasn’t this way.” Sam’s quiet words hit Grizz hard. He feels the air leave his lungs and the tears prick at his eyes. Much like his own anguish, Sam mirrors the emotions. They were sacrificing all of it before it could really begin but they know it’ll be worth it for the pure and innocent child that needs to be protected and cared for. Grizz rests his forehead against Sam’s, eyes shut, breathing in time with one another. Once more their lips touch, a final kiss. Goodbye.

They hear the door open. The two fly apart. Sam shuffling his feet, staring at them, hastily wiping a tear away. Whilst Grizz turns around, staring up into the clouds squinted as if he’d seen something, wiping his tears away too.

“I didn’t realise how long we were there. If we don’t leave now we’ll be late for…” Gwen trails off looking between the two. Eyebrows both raised, she is about to question it when Grizz locks eyes with her. She shuts her mouth.

‘Late for what?” Sam’s voice is hoarser than usual and Grizz has a feeling he’d rather just sign right now until his voice recovers but he didn’t have Becca to translate. Grizz glares at Gwen, who holds up her hands in defence. He swings his head towards Sam.

“A meeting with Lexie and Harry.” Sam’s face hardens. “Hey. Before you think anything, I originally didn’t want to meet with them until I’d seen Allie and Will but Helena pointed out that making demands could just throw more of us into the dog house, or wine cellar.” Gwen perked up at the subject of wine, Grizz gives her another glare. “Look, we’re going to be vague. I’m mainly going to ask about Allie and Will to see if we’re able to see them.” He lowers his voice slightly. “I’m not on their side.”

“What if they get angry and arrest you to?” Grizz had thought about it. He didn’t think it would happen, Lexie had seen how the town had reacted to Allie and Will’s arrest. He hopes she knows if she were to arrest more people, they’d think of it as a witch hunt and more than likely turn on her. He’s relying on her being smart enough to see these things. She was smart enough to run a smear campaign, she’ll be smart enough to see all this.

“I’d like to see them try” He gives a small laugh but Sam’s continued concerning gaze burrows deep and he leans a little close, hand on his forearm. He squeezes it. “It’s not going to happen.” He pulls back remembering Gwen is there. “Plus, I have Gwen here. She’ll protect me with her kind words and supportive attitude.”

“Eat a dick.” Gwen grins at him as she says it.

“Gladly.” Grizz returns the smile and focuses back on Sam. He doesn’t seem comforted but seems to have dropped the subject. “You focus on Becca and Eden. They need you right now.” He nods and they clasp each other in the friendliest hug they could manage but even then Grizz suspects it lasted longer than need be. Sam hugs Gwen goodbye and they part. Just as they turn, Grizz turns back once more. “You need to tell Becca.” Sam’s eyes go wild for a second and Grizz realises what he thinks he means. “About Allie and Will. About everything that’s going on out here.” The panic dissipates but it’s quickly replaced by a grave expression. The enormity of the issues happening around us is taking a toll, but Becca deserves to know what’s happening. She deserves to know what to expect, especially since she has a child now. Sam nods and enters back into the building. Grizz and Gwen make their way to the church. Today just will not end.

#the society #fanfic #part3 #sam x grizz #grizz x sam #protect grizz and sam #first #bored #be kind please #I WANT SEASON TWO NOW #angst #little bit #not much #just a little bit

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waywardrose13 · 6 years

Text

Running With Wolves- Chapter Two

Chapter One // My Masterlist

Pairings: Alpha!Dean x Omega!Reader, Alpha!Dean x Feral!Omega!Reader (eventually)

Chapter Warnings: Angst, language, A/B/O dynamics, disownment of a child, abusive relationship (briefly), heat, angry!reader, possessive!Dean, mild smut, virgin!reader (implied), implied past attempted assault, and more angst

Series Warnings: Language, A/B/O dynamics, graphic violence, Feral!Reader, harassment, attempted physical assault, cheating, graphic murder, age-gap, more warnings TBD

Word count: 4421

Characters: Reader, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Eleanor (OFC), Alaric Y/L/N, Eliza Y/L/N

Synopsis: She’s never been your typical omega. She’s never fit the stereotypical soft spoken and submissive role. Instead, she’s hot-headed and aggressive, leading people to believe her to be an alpha. “Borderline feral,” she’s called, and she can’t help but wonder if that’s what she’s been battling against her whole life. Being disowned by her own father and looked down upon by society for her biology kept her from allowing people to know she’s an omega. But when she meets her true mate, her secret is revealed, and she no longer feels safe inside her own home. Fast forward a year, Y/N Y/L/N is living peacefully with her alpha and his brother. Her temper had been kept at bay since being mated, and Dean Winchester never expected her to be the omega most alphas saw them to be. But when he breaks her trust, and her heart, she snaps, and the inner ferocity she fought so hard against for years comes to light, and the only thing that can save her from herself is her alpha, the one who betrayed her in the first place.

A/N- Chapter two! Thank you for all the feedback on chapter one! It helped motivate me to write the next chapter quickly:) I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and next chapter, we’re going to start seeing some serious borderline feral-ness from the reader;)

Feedback is encouraged and greatly appreciated! It’s what keeps me motivated and it always makes me smile:)

I clung to the alpha’s jacket, sweat beading on my forehead as fire erupted from under my skin. He hadn’t said a word, swiftly carrying me through the parking lot and to a car. I was too dazed and wrapped up in my own heat to get a good look at it, or even protest to being put into a stranger’s car, and curled up in the front seat he place me in. I could vaguely hear shouting outside the car, my eyes fluttering a bit to catch a glimpse of the alpha and an even taller man yelling at each other outside, the alpha growling and pushing the other man back as he opened the driver’s door.

“Mine,” he snarled, shutting the door quickly in the man’s face and peeling out of the parking lot. Another forceful cramp hit me, and I groaned, my arms wrapping around my torso as pain ripped through my body. My clothes clung to my damp skin, making me even more uncomfortable than I already was. I could feel the alpha’s eyes glance at me periodically, but I barely noticed. My hands fumbled with my flannel, buttons being clumsily slipped out of their holes and the fabric was slipped from my shoulders. I wasn’t thinking much as the heat drove me mad, my hands stripping my undershirt off to leave me in a bra and jeans. The alpha finally placed a hand over my fumbling fingers as they messed with the button of my jeans. I whined at the contact, my body reacting to his touch on its own accord.

“Patience, omega,” he said softly, voice husky and warm like whiskey. His voice now a stark contrast from the bar, slow and soft; kind and gentle as he shushed me. I whimpered, crying out as a cramp hit me hard.

“Please, alpha,” I panted, writhing on the leather. “It hurts.”

“I know, omega. I know. We’re almost there,” he assured me, his hand moving back to the steering wheel. His body was tense, his self control amazing. An omega, his omega, in heat beside him, and he was keeping himself together rather well. I, on the other hand, felt as though I was going to burst into flames, my thighs rubbing together to try and soothe the growing ache between them.

After what felt like hours, the alpha stopped the car, getting out quickly and rounding to my side, lifting me with ease and stalked across the parking lot, pushing open a door and walking into a room.

He placed me on to a bed. It wasn’t overly comfortable, but it was good enough that I could stretch out on, my body twitching and writhing in discomfort. I could hear the door lock and the deadbolt be put into place, the distinct sound of a belt being undone making me realize that the alpha was a stranger, anxiety bubbling deep within me. The thought that I have never done this hadn’t crossed my mind yet, and I debated on whether or not to tell him. If I did, he may stop, and I fucking needed this. But the nerves were undeniable, and as I heard him take off his shoes and jeans, the reality of it all set in. I had never wanted to do this before now, the fear of an alpha claiming me or a beta spilling the beans that I was an omega too strong. But this was the strongest heat I’d ever had, and the fucking adonis undressing mere five feet from me made me want it now more than ever. There were questions, sure, but luckily I knew the aspects of it. I knew he was my true mate, and even though I was buzzing with nerves, I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else.

He crawled up the bed, aiding in my fruitless attempts to get my jeans off. He took off my shoes and socks, slipping the denim over my ankles and tossing it behind him. I panted and squirmed, my hand traveling unconsciously down, fingers beginning to poke under my panties when a hand caught mine.

“I’ve got you, ‘mega,” the alpha whispered, bringing my hand up to kiss my fingertips, one by one. “What’s your name, pretty girl?”

“Y/N,” I said breathlessly. He hummed, his other hand running up my side with the touch of a feather, making me shiver.

“I’m Dean,” he said slowly, knowing I wasn’t quite in the right headspace to listen. My eyes were closed, hands blindly reaching out for him.

“Alpha,” I pleaded.

“What’s your last name?” He murmured. I groaned in frustration.

“Y/L/N,” I said.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” he said slowly, testing it on his tongue. He bent down again, scenting my neck. He moaned, hands tightening a bit on my waist as he placed a kiss to my neck.

“How old are you, ‘mega?” He asked, fingertips running over my cheek as he pulled back. I nuzzled his hand, leg lifting to wrap around his waist, hips bucking to rub against him.

“Please.”

“Answer the question,” he said.

“Twenty-three,” I grunted, impatient. I felt him stiffen for a moment, relaxing as I ran my hand up the side of his neck. “Now please… Take the pain away.”

His hand cupped my cheek, my eyes opening to lock with his emerald ones. He gave me a gentle smile, leaning down and pressing his lips softly to mine.

Seven Years Ago

I packed quickly, taking the absolute necessities. Clothes, my money stash, medicine and some of my favorite books. I picked up the thin rope bracelet on my dresser, enclosing it in my fist before taking a glance around my room. It wasn’t completely bare, but it was plain. Simple paintings inhabiting the cream walls, a black and white floral bedspread the only truly decorative thing in the room. My father never allowed such things like posters and colored walls. He wanted simple and elegant, a room that could fit a beta. A beta who never came to be.

I distinctly heard my father’s voice, loud and angry down the hallway. I gently shut my door behind me, looking to my right at my parent’s room.

“She’s a fucking omega! Do you know how this will affect me? Us? We’ll be the laughing stock of the town!” Dad yelled.

“She’s our daughter, Alaric. How can you throw her out on the street? An omega… alone. What the hell is wrong with you?”

I flinched at the sound of skin hitting skin. Closing my eyes, I wavered on my feet, teetering on the edge of running outside, and running to my mother. I clenched my jaw as a sudden burst of anger surged through me. A rage that unbeknownst to me, sparked a growing rage that would lead to future consequences.

“You will not speak to me that way,” he hissed. My mother didn’t reply, the lock on their door echoing softly as it turned, the knob jiggling. Swallowing hard, I sprinted down the stairs, knowing my father was expecting me gone. Dashing towards the front door, I bent down and picked up my tennis shoes, slipping them on as quickly as I could, dad’s steps down the stairs matching my crashing heart in my chest.

His eyes met mine as I stood up from tying my second shoe, both frozen in our places. His jaw ticked, the creak on the stairs letting us both know my mother has joined us.

“Can I say goodbye to her?” I asked. His lip twitched.

“No,” he said slowly. “You’re supposed to be gone already.”

“Right.” I nodded bitterly, giving him a smirk. “Because my presence will affect you, right? I’ll cause you to be the laughing stock of the town?” I chuckled darkly, eyes narrowing. He almost flinched at the look I was giving him, confusion and utter fear crossing his face. My eyes flickered to the stairs briefly before meeting his again. “I’m not sure I want to be living under the roof of an alpha who’s too wrapped up in his own self image and egotistical mind to care about his own daughter.” His bows raised. “An alpha more concerned with himself than his pack isn’t fit to be, well… the alpha.”

“What did you just say?” He asked lowly, stalking towards me slowly. I stood my ground, not fazed by his angered look, or the way his hand raised in preparation to strike me.

My eyes looked down at his hand, another dour chuckle slipping past my lips, making him stop in his tracks. I locked eyes with him once more, shoulders straightening as I said my final words to my father.

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” I said, head tilting a bit. “I wouldn’t be afraid to fight back. I’m not your daughter anymore, remember?” I felt my nails sharpen a bit at my words, a threatening scent spilling from me, my father stiffening at the sudden change. He could feel it, feel my anger and the strange energy rolling off me. An energy and rage omegas didn’t have, something that scared him. “So hit me, I strike. Unlike Ma, I ain’t your bitch.”

And with that, I opened the door, stepping out into the sunlight, leaving my parents behind without another look.

Present Day

I felt heavy.

I was naked, my hands braced on the dingy motel room bathroom sink, head down and eyes closed. Waking up next to a body- a stranger- for the first time in my life was beyond nerve racking. Finding my true mate was even more so. My eyes flickered up to the mirror, locking on the claim that had been laid less than ten hours ago.

I growled lowly, fist raising and punching the glass with such ferocity, it cracked and shattered, little shards raining down on the ceramic. I never wanted to be claimed. I never wanted an alpha. My mother’s words had rung in my head since I presented, the constant warning of alphas keeping me wary and distant. I refused to even get close to betas. But now I was tied to an alpha whom I just met, one I knew nothing about. I had already given a piece of myself to him, but I didn’t think he’d fucking claim me.

The door burst open, the alpha’s eyes wide and searching, a gun in his hand. I cringed away from it, scrunching up my face at the intrusion. I grabbed the robe hanging on the rack, slipping into it as he simply stared at the mirror.

“What the fuck?” He asked, looking down at me. My face was blank, but my eyes were hard, staring into emerald ones filled with confusion. “I thought you were hurt.”

“Nope,” I said. He nodded, running a hand through his hair.

“Why… Why did you break the mirror?” He asked. It was then that I noticed he was still bare, his fucking junk out for me to see in the morning light. He didn’t seem fazed by that fact, obviously very comfortable around me already. I, however, wasn’t.

“I was angry,” I said simply. I moved around him, doing the best I could not to touch him. He watched me, a puzzled expression on his face. I looked around the room for my clothes, finding them and picking them up, realizing my flannel and undershirt were still in his car.

And then another cramp hit.

I grunted, hand flying out to land on the headboard of the bed, eyes closing as I took a deep breath. I had been fine this morning, last night’s events keeping my heat at bay. But now the wave was coming back.

“Hey, hey,” Dean said softly, rushing to my side. I flinched as he got closer, and he recoiled immediately.

“Don’t… don’t touch me,” I said.

“What is going on?” He asked. “You were so… different last night.”

“Yeah, heat does that to you,” I snapped.

“The fuck is your problem?” He asked harshly.

I winced as I stood up straight, hand flying to my abdomen as another cramp hit. “You fucking claimed me last night.”

“Okay… and?” He raised a brow.

“You don’t see the problem with that?” I yelled. “We don’t know each other!”

“You’re my true mate!” He said. “Who the fuck else would claim you? Do you have someone else?”

“I… No,” I said.

“So what’s the problem?” He shook his head. He smiled a bit, walking forward again. He reached for me, and this time I let him take my hands in his, fingers gently lacing with mine. “Look, I never wanted to claim anyone. Ever. But I never thought I’d meet my true mate. The person I was supposed to be with. And last night, I swear, I wanted to wait. But the time came and I couldn’t help myself.” His eyes locked on the mark on my neck, his fingers reaching up to brush over it softly. “The life I live… It’s a dangerous one and I never would want to drag anyone into it. But if you’re my true mate, it means someone thinks you’re strong enough to handle it. And honestly, I could use something good in my life right now.”

I bit my lip, mulling over his words. He was right. I didn’t have anyone else, nor have I ever. Last night was the first glimpse I’ve ever had at the passion and emotions between two people. And even though I had just met Dean, I knew I wouldn’t want to leave him, even if he hadn’t claimed me. Being in his presence, I felt complete, like a part of me had been filled that I had been missing. I had been angry, furious, about being claimed. But his words had reassured me, made my heart swell just a bit. I smiled smally at him, embarrassed about how I had acted earlier. But I couldn’t control myself; the anger I seemed to always have. It seemed I was never able to.

I cringed and moaned in discomfort as the pain grew in my belly, my skin starting to itch and sweat. I lifted my chin, tilting my head a bit so my mark was clearer. I pressed myself against Dean, hands running up his bare chest to lock around his neck, my nose reaching to press against his throat.

“Alpha,” I whispered. He growled at his title, his arms wrapping tightly around me, lifting me up until my lips met his. He carried me to the bed, tongue licking into my mouth, lips soft but harsh against mine. Dropping me onto the mattress, he broke away, unceremoniously ripping the robe open to expose me. I writhed on the bed with need, skin flushing both from the heat and embarrassment from being so… bare. He could feel the uneasiness rolling off me, his lips dipping to kiss my stomach, moving up to the canal between my breasts, finally landing on his claim mark.

“Have I told you how beautiful you are?” He said lowly, hands running down my sides to rest on my waist. He rolled his hips against mine, his hot member heavy and hard, making me gasp as it bumped my core.

“I… I don’t think so,” I said honestly, barely remembering anything from last night. He chuckled, pressing his lips to mine again, one of his hands traveling further south. His fingers danced across my pelvic bone for a moment, the increasing nerves bubbling inside me once more, worse than last night, not as delirious from heat now. They dipped lower, running up and down, pressing on the small bundle of nerves, making me jerk in his hold.

“Well then,” he whispered. He shuffled down the bed, giving me a lewd smile before pressing a kiss to my hip. “I guess I’m just going to hafta show you, hm?”

Seven Years Ago

My feet were killing me.

I was nearly across town now, halfway through the thicket of woods. It was the only place I could think of to go. The only place that I wouldn’t be kicked out of.

When the house finally came into view, I nearly sobbed with joy. Ignoring my aching feet, I ran, hoisting my bag higher on my shoulder. Just the mere sight of it brought a wash of calm and relief over me.

It was older. A southern farmhouse in a field past the woods of my small hometown. It was white with black shutters, a wrap around porch decorated with hanging pots of yellow and pink flowers. The steps leading up to the porch were old and cracked in places, much like the rest of the house, but it still had the familiar smell and feel of home and love.

I raised my fist and knocked on the door, hoping she hadn’t already gone to her Thursday meetings at the church. The cool wind blew my hair over my shoulder, the small swinging bench rocking lightly, the old chains squeaking loudly. I sighed, moving to peer into one of the windows. I could see the lowly lit sitting room and its hideously floral decorated walls, the open book and glass of water on the small table beside the ottoman chair.

I moved back to the door, about to knock, when it opened. The salt and pepper haired woman I was dying to open the door smiled warmly at me, her gray eyes kind.

“Why, Y/N,” she said, a hint of a laugh in her words. “What brings you out here?”

My smile faltered, brows furrowing. “He kicked me out, Ellie-” her eyes widened- “because I’m an omega.”

She swallowed thickly, pushing open the screen door and beckoning me inside. Sympathy was written across her face, her arms instantly wrapping themselves around me.

“Oh, my dear,” she said sadly. “My poor dear.”

I hugged her tightly, the familiar lemongrass and chamomile scent washing over me. She patted my back, pulling away to guide me into the kitchen.

“Won’t you have a slice of pie, Y/N?” She asked, motioning for me to sit at the breakfast table. I laughed softly, dropping my bag and complying, smiling at her as she set a plate with a slice of cherry pie in front of me.

“You don’t care that I’m… I’m an omega?” I asked, picking up my fork. She sat in the chair beside me, smoothing the tablecloth over round wood.

“No,” she said after a moment. She looked up at me, giving me a smile. “You know I wouldn’t. That’s why you came here.”

I let a short breath out of my nose, my lip twitching. Her hand landed on my knee, patting it gently.

“I’ll always be here, Y/N,” she said.

“I can’t stay here, Eleanor,” I said slowly. “It’s dangerous for you.”

“That’s rubbish,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve lived a full life, Y/N. I’m nearly eighty years old now. I don’t want you worrying about me.”

“If someone catches a whiff of me when my heat hits-”

“We’re too far away for that,” she said.

“God forbid someone sees me and tells my father.” I ignored her. “It’s just not safe, Ellie. Besides, you know how omegas are seen. What happens when people in town find out you’re housing one? Not only will they think less of you, but alphas could come here. And then you’d be caught in the crossfire.”

“Then why’d you come here?” She asked. There wasn’t a hint of anger or annoyance, simply curiosity.

“I dunno,” I said. I furrowed my brows, eyes trained on the table. “I guess I needed some place to regroup. To think things through. I needed somewhere safe.”

“Well,” she said, standing up. “You’re always safe here.” She got up to cover the pie, her lips pursed in thought. “I know you won’t stay long, but whenever you need somewhere to go, somewhere to feel safe again.” She looked back at me, a gentle smile gracing her features again. “You always will be welcomed here.”

Present Day

It was mid day when I woke again.

A fist was pounding at the door, annoyed huffs coming from outside. I lifted my head, confused.

“Dean!” A voice called. It was male, deep but not as deep as Dean’s. I looked over my shoulder at the alpha sleeping behind me, his arm still draped across my waist. I sniffed the air, smelling the scent I had been drawn to just two nights ago, and another, more unfamiliar one. It was similar to Dean’s, but wasn’t as attractive. It was slightly bitter and smelled more like any other alpha I had come across.

Sighing, I rolled out of bed, the alpha grunting at the loss of me under his arm. I smiled a bit at that, picking up his discarded flannel and my jeans. I slipped them on quickly, finishing up the buttons on the flannel as I unlocked the door, opening it a crack.

“De- oh.” The man took a step back, blinking a few times and looking down awkwardly. He was tall, even taller than Dean. His hair was a darker brown than my alpha’s, longer too, nearly to his shoulders. He looked intimidating with his width and height, but his hazel eyes were soft. “Is uh… Is Dean in there?”

I narrowed my eyes, tilting my head a bit. “Who are you?”

“His brother,” he said. “Sam.”

Dean hadn’t mentioned a brother, but now that I thought about it, the alpha in front of me sounded much like the man who Dean had been arguing with at the bar the night before. I swallowed thickly, glancing over my shoulder at the man who was beginning to rouse.

“Oh,” I said turning back to the tall alpha. I looked up to meet his eyes, but they were looking down at me, or rather, my neck. His brows were shot up, eyes wide as they stared at my skin where my hair had fallen away from. My hand automatically raised to hide it, his eyes then flickering to me.

“I… Dean… What…” He stuttered, trying to come up with words. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut, eyes blinking rapidly.

“Sam?” Dean’s voice said behind me. His body pressed into my back, his arm curling around my waist. Sam’s eyes flickered down to where he held me, and then to Dean, and then back to me.

“Okay, what the fuck?” Sam blurted. Dean let out a long sigh, stepping out of the way. He brought me with him, pushing open the door enough for the newcomer to step in.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean said. “We’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Yeah, you think?” Sam asked walking into the room. He automatically flinched, nostrils flaring at the smell of sex and an omega in heat. His head snapped to me, Dean’s arm tightening as a growl ripped from his chest.

“Mine,” Dean snarled, Sam taking a few steps back with his hands outstretched in defense.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “Calm down. I’m not going to do anything.”

Dean’s arm tightened even more, his thumb rubbing slow circles on my torso. He stood tall, eyeing Sam warily.

“She’s mine, Sam,” he said.

Sam nodded slowly, giving Dean a confused look. “Yeah, you said that.”

“No. I mean, she’s mine, Sam.” I glanced up at Dean, watching as he tilted his head a bit, pursing his lips.

Sam was puzzled, his face scrunching up. His eyes looked between the two of us, eyes widening when he understood. “Oh, oh. So, like… You mean, she’s your…”

“Yeah,” Dean said.

Sam smiled. He raised his hands a bit, letting them fall back to his sides. “This… This is awesome, Dean! Congratulations!” He looked down at me. “And you, too…”

“Y/N,” I said. His smile widened.

“Y/N.” He took a few steps forward, gauging Dean’s reaction before holding out his hand. “I’m Sam Winchester, Dean’s younger brother.”

I shook his hand, giving him a smile of my own. “Y/N Y/L/N.”

Sam took a few steps back, his nose wrinkling again. I bit my lip to hold back my laugh as he glanced around the room for a moment.

“Look, how about we pack up and we can get back to the bunker,” Dean said. “We’ll meet you at the diner a few blocks down.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, good idea. I’ll see you guys later.” He gave us both another smile, giving the room one last look and bolted from the room, no doubt uncomfortable with the scent of an omega in heat.

“How’re you feeling?” Dean asked, turning to me. His hands cupped my waist, eyes sincere.

“I’m okay,” I said honestly. “A bit dizzy but no pain yet.”

“We don’t have to go eat if you don’t want to. There’ll probably be other alphas there and I don’t want you to be afraid. But, I’ll be there obviously. I’ll protect you.”

I smirked. “I’ve been alone for the past seven and a half years as an omega, Dean. I’ve never needed protecting before.”

“Have you ever been out alone while in heat?” He asked, raising a brow.

“I… Once.” I furrowed my brows, looking away. “Wasn’t a great experience.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, hand tightening. “Did someone…”

“No,” I said looking back at him. “They tried.”

He nodded, leaning forward to kiss my forehead. “Well, you’ve got me now, sweetheart. I won’t let anything happen to you, even if you don’t need my protection.”

I cupped his cheeks, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. “What’s the bunker?”

He smiled. “It’s where Sam and I live. It’s like the bat cave.” His lip twisted up into a sour look. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to tell you that you just gotta trust me on.”

I raised a brow. “Okay?” He backed away and turned, picking up his discarded clothes and headed towards the small table where a duffel bag sat. “You said ‘we’. Does that mean I’m coming too?”

He stopped what he was doing, turning his head a bit. “Do you not want to?”

“No, I do. I just… where exactly are we going? Where are you taking me?” He turned to face me fully, a warm, gentle smile on his face.

“Home,” he said. “I’m taking you home, Y/N.”

>> Chapter Three

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din-jarring · 3 months

Text

javier peña in every episode of narcos

2x06 los pepes

#pedro pascal #javier peña #narcos #narcos 2x06 #🩸carly gifs #javier peña in every episode of narcos #jacket creak appreciation society

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violetsmoak · 6 years

Text

no safety or surprise [1/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035168/chapters/42616919

( See First Chapter for full Disclaimers & Warnings)

Summary: A haunting broadcast reveals the Joker’s final act and sets off a chain of events that will destroy the world. Terry finds himself collaborating once more with the estranged members of Bruce’s former team. As the end nears, however, he and the other Bats are faced with hard choices about survival—and forgiveness.

Rating: T (may change depending on the amount of graphic/details I decide on)

________________________________________________________________

chapter one: the calm before the storm

Neo-Gotham, Friday, June 13, 2042 9:04 AM

MCGINNIS

Siblings, Terry thinks as he scowls down at the little gremlin on the couch, are highly overrated.

At some point, while he was getting ready for school, Matt snuck into his room and stole his comforter. The twip is now wrapped up like a giant burrito, watching television and pretending he doesn’t see Terry’s irritated expression.

“Don’t you have your own?” he grumbles. “You’re going to get your sick germs all over it.”

“You can just wash it later.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I think it’s cute,” Mom interrupts, stopping the fight in its tracks the way she always does. She doesn’t look up from her phone, thumb flying through a text. “And you used to do the same thing, by the way.”

Terry blinks. “I did not.”

“You did. With mine and your father’s bedspread. That, and homemade soup? Always made you feel better when you were sick.”

Which, okay, Terry can sort of remember that.

There was something safe about being wrapped in blankets that smelled like Dad’s aftershave and having Mom spoil him with food made just for him. A pang of sadness hits him, leeching away from his irritation; Matt was never able to do that. Their parents divorced rather soon after he was born, and Dad wasn’t around Matt much afterward, let alone when he was sick.

Since Warren McGinnis’ death, Terry is the only adult male presence his brother has in his life.

And I’ve done a pretty crap job of that so far.

He’s always so busy, working for Mr. Wayne on and off the books. The criminal element in Gotham makes it practically impossible to maintain connections outside the life.

It’s ironic that Batman is better at being a role-model for Matt than Terry is.

The fight drains out of him, and he gives a put-upon sigh. “Fine. He can have it. But if I get sick, I’m going to hang him over the balcony by his feet." He turns away, but knows Matt is sticking his tongue out at the back of his head; it’s what he’d do at that age. “So, what’s the verdict? Staying? Going?”

Whatever Matt has, their mother seems to be coming down with as well. She’s been debating all morning about whether she intends to go into work or not. Terry’s stuck around, in case she does decide to go, and he has to watch Matt; he can Livestream his classes, she can’t exactly do the same for her job.

“I don’t know,” Mom says, frowning at the screen. “Jarvis and Riley are out today too apparently.”

Terry whistles; he’s happy he hasn’t caught whatever’s going around. It’s still the cold part of June, around the time when the temperatures fluctuate between mild and freeze-your-nuts off. Mom always tells him how when she was a young girl, the weather already started warming up in May, but because of global warming summer doesn’t really arrive until July.

So now, June is the summer flu season.

Point being, I could still catch it. And won’t that be fun.

Because Batman doesn’t get sick days, and Terry knows from experience that having a cold while wearing the cowl is probably the most disgusting feeling ever. And that includes wading through sewage and cleaning rotten food out of the refrigerator.

While Mom continues to debate with herself, he fires off texts to Dana and Max, asking them to cover anything he misses for the first period, in case he’s late. There are about ten seconds before he gets a response from Max.

‘No problem. Is it work? Or work?’

Before he can respond, Dana’s text comes in. ’everything OK w/ mr wayne?’

And he can’t help a smile at that, because he doesn’t have to make up any kind of lie or excuse, because they both know. He’s still getting used to the fact that Dana knows, and that she understands. And wants to help.

It’s more than he ever thought he’d get when he started this whole thing.

‘Wayne OK far as I know,’ Terry texts them both back, mentally crossing his fingers that he isn’t jinxing anything. ‘Mom & Matt not feeling great. Keeping an eye on them a bit.’

‘aw, sux. tell them feel better from me. dnt worry, got u covered! <3’

There’s a minute or so before Max responds.

‘Too bad. Nasty flu this year, huh? Not feeling great either, but test period 2, so…’

Terry’s eyes widen. ‘Wait. What test?’

‘LOL.’

‘Srsly, what test?!?!’

There’s no answer, and Terry frowns down at his phone, trying to decide if Max is messing with him or not. He’s about to double-check with Dana when his mother speaks.

“I think I will stay home,” she decides, rubbing her cheekbones. “My face hurts. I really hope it’s not another sinus infection. That’s all I need on top of everything.”

“Hey, take it easy,” Terry tells her with a comforting smile. “It’s been a while since you had the day off. Besides, the world’s not going to shut down because one astronomer doesn’t come into work.”

“You say that now,” Mom says dryly. “If an asteroid is hurtling toward the earth and it’s my job to spot it, you’re going to feel pretty foolish.”

“Nah, never happen.” He grabs his bag and starts for the door, stopping to press a kiss to the top of his mother’s head. “With Superman out there? And the Justice League? Pretty good job security, I’d say.”

“Lame,” Matt grumbles from his blanket cocoon. “Batman can take them all. He probably has a special rocket to shoot stuff down.”

And, okay, maybe Terry might rethink his stance on siblings, because damn if those words don’t make him grin.

Matt notices and frowns at him. “Why are you smiling at me like a creeper?”

And, there goes that good feeling.

“Trying to decide whether to take a pic and send to your friends and show them how pathetic you are right now. You’re like a human-larva hybrid. It’s gross.”

“Yeah, well—well, you’re adopted!”

That’s his latest insult to everyone when he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Matt!”

“At least I was planned,” Terry retorts.

It takes a moment before the penny drops, and his brother’s overly pale face goes red. “Moooooom!”

“Terry, leave your brother alone, he’s sick,” she sighs, rubbing her eyes.

“What’s his excuse for the rest of the time?”

“Go to school, hon.”

Matt smirks at him, and returns his attention to the television, flipping through cartoons. Terry rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything about favoritism, because it always comes back to how he’s an adult now and should know better than to stoop to the level of a ten-year-old.

I can win a fight against the deadliest member of the Society of Assassins, but not this. Go figure.

“Will Mr. Wayne need you today?” Mom asks as he puts on his jacket. He knows she’s wondering if he’ll be able to come home and relieve her from Matt-duty at some point, which he totally understands.

“We’ll see. I’ll probably drive out to check on him tonight, but I think I can get home after school if you need a break.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“Do you want me to bring you guys anything while I’m out—?”

There is a sudden, sharp drop in pitch throughout the entire house. Terry’s ears pop a little, the same way they do whenever Shriek mutes the sound in the surrounding area, but somehow his hearing simply becomes sharper now.

Before Terry can wonder if it’s a sign the sound-terrorist is back out on the street, the living room is filled with music. A jaunty, haunting carnival tune that instantly has the hair on the back of Terry’s neck raising.

His gaze whips to the television screen, which is flickering between static and a blank screen with the words HA HA HA flashes across it in red.

His mouth goes dry.

________________________________________________________________

WAYNE

Bruce is starting to wonder if a Lazarus Pit might not have been a better idea than the liver transplant. Of the methods for artificially prolonging life, at least with the Pit, he would eventually start to feel like he was recovering.

After the madness subsided, at least.

On days like today—when it’s damp and chilly, and there’s nothing going on in Gotham to keep him glued to the computer screen in the Cave—it’s hard to remember the arguments he’s always made against using the restorative powers of a Lazarus Pit. His body protests with every movement as he eases it through several slowed kata variations. Part of his physical therapy, as suggested by his doctors.

Since his procedure, he feels the exhaustion much more keenly. It’s bone-deep fatigue that seeps into every muscle, emphasizing the way his bones creak and grind against each other, cartilage worn away from age and decades of abuse. It’s the way his energy levels drain so much faster now, to the extent that even his usual ability to will himself into action seems to wane every day.

Not that he really had a choice in the matter. He was in end-stage liver failure, and the nearest Pit is in New Cuba. He’d just been lucky that there was a suitable donor in the hospital at the right time.

‘Luck’ is one word for it. ‘Cruel irony’ might be a better phrase.

Douglas Tan is one of the names he’s going to carry on his conscience for the rest of his life; or, at least on his liver.

Terry still makes jokes about Batman having a piece of a Joker inside him, but then Terry tends to use humor to cover up when he’s worried. Dick always did that, too; and Jason.

Bruce scowls, bothered by the direction of his thoughts, as well as the raggedness to his breath. He isn’t even moving very fast, but it’s taking him every bit of strength to keep at it.

Ace is curled up in his usual spot in the cave, watching Bruce with what seems to be narrowed eyes. As if to say, don’t overdo it or I will knock you over.

The dog is smarter than most people.

Ace is one of the reasons the doctors were willing to leave him to pursue recovery on his own and not under some beady-eyed nurse in the hospital. Money isn’t as much an incentive as it once was, with so many legal and health standards in the way; the older he gets, the less likely people are to trust his ability to make decisions, lawyers or not.

He tolerated a private nurse for about a day while having Terry make other arrangements and manufacturing a piece of paper saying Ace was a certified service dog. He’s not, but Bruce has no doubt the dog would activate the medical alert button at the computer if something were to happen. And Terry has an alarm set up, keyed into the surveillance and motion sensors in the Cave. If anything were to happen, he can be here faster than any ambulance.

Old age has fed into long-buried fears, and it gives him an embarrassing sense of relief knowing there’s someone to look in on him. It has always bothered him, being dependent—being weak.

Some days he’s more accepting of it; some days he wishes he had Kryptonian DNA.

Which is usually the point at which he forces himself to occupy his mind with other things because envying Kal-El can only lead down a dark, frustrating path of self-pity. One he’s determinedly avoided ever since meeting the other man.

After another fifteen minutes of forcing himself to think about nothing but the movement of his limbs, Bruce finally finishes his exercises. Sweat coats his back and his muscles ache with the same burn as if he just spent several hours grappling through the Gotham skyline. Even if it took fewer challenging movements to reach this point, that burn is comforting.

Familiar.

And that’s a word that’s been cropping up more in his thoughts lately. History tends to repeat, after all, but it’s still strange to experience. Terry’s been an excellent example of that.

Like Bruce, the McGinnis boy started out with nothing but a suit and an old man’s voice in his ear. Now, he’s got a network. Friends who he trusts and who will keep his secret. A steadily growing list of allies in the field.

The Police Commissioner. The Justice League.

And a Catwoman too, for Christ sakes.

He wonders what Selina would think about that.

Bruce just hopes the kid won’t make his mistakes. Forty years is a long time to rack up regrets.

At least Dick’s back in contact now.

Sort of.

He showed up the second night that Bruce was recovering from his procedure at the hospital; he’d managed to convince Terry to go out on patrol instead of wasting his time watching an old man sleep.

“Batman doesn’t get a day off.”

Bruce had dozed for a bit, but not deeply; it wasn’t difficult to discern that he wasn’t alone.

One minute the room was empty and in the next, Bruce could feel that familiar presence—the one of a man who had carried the mantles of Robin, Nightwing, and Batman—and somehow lived to tell the tale. Then his estranged son was stepping out of the shadows, glaring down at him, muscles in his jaw working and fists clenching and unclenching.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Bruce had croaked, wishing he had thought to ask for ice chips before the nurse left. “I’m too stubborn to die.”

The silence hanging afterward was filled with everything he couldn’t say yet. For once, Dick didn’t call him on it.

“You’re more stubborn than God,” his boy countered.

(He’ll always be a boy to Bruce, grey hair and eye-patch be damned.)

And yet, Dick sat, arms crossed and spine stiff for the rest of the night. Still angry, but present nonetheless. He stayed until morning rounds without saying anything and then left.

They haven’t seen each other since, but sometimes Bruce can hear feedback on the comms when he’s directing Terry’s patrols. The tinny whisper of signals crossing from the bug he pretends he doesn’t know Dick planted on the underside of his medical ID tag.

It’s not much, but it’s something. The opening of the possibility that at some point, he’ll come around.

Barbara did, after all.

Mostly because of Terry, but afterward Bruce started making the effort. They can have conversations alone now that don’t end with her yelling at him (or punching him, on one or two memorable occasions). Bruce forgot how much he enjoyed her sense of humor and intelligence—how much he enjoyed their friendship—from before they slept together.

(That might be one of his life’s biggest shames. Oh, he has regrets associated with all of the family for one thing or another, but this is the one that still wakes him up at night feeling dirty.)

In a way, it’s easier with Tim, and that’s a bridge Bruce thought had been obliterated long ago.

Granted, he’s leaving Gotham again—the last incident with the Joker army rattled him enough that he put in for a transfer to the Beijing division of Wayne Enterprises—but he stuck around long enough to collaborate with Bruce on a subdermal antitoxin deployment implant against Joker venom.

(None of them want to be caught unawares again.)

It’s in the prototype phase, with only five of the devices in existence; he, Tim and Terry are testing them personally. It’s not exactly something the FDA is going to approve for human testing anytime soon, not with all the new legislation, but with the state of Gotham, it’s unwise to wait on it.

(He sent one to Barbara and one to Dick but doesn’t know if they’ve bothered to activate them. At least they haven’t sent them back.)

If the implant works, Bruce is seriously considering modifying the tech for the Wayne Enterprises medical division. There are a lot of illnesses and viruses out there which require regular dosages of medicine to keep them under control. The difficulty is finding funding and ensuring the board of the directors doesn’t jump on the chance to charge exorbitant amounts of money for the technology. The whole point of the tech is to help anyone who needs it, not just the filthy rich.

Maybe that’s the next project, after CAIN, he muses, grabbing his towel from where he draped it over one of the computer processors.

His global Clean Air Initiative Network is something he’d been working on before stepping back from the company. It was shelved almost immediately by Derek Powers when he took over, but since Bruce has been back, he’s been revisiting a lot of old projects.

Lucius’ boy did most of the technical work on it, and Foxtecha will have joint ownership of the patent when it’s ready for public consumption. Bruce would have asked Tim, but he knows how determined his estranged son is to get out of Gotham. He can read it in the tone of his emails, which have thankfully lost the stilted, formal business tone they’ve had since he returned to the company.

(Bruce mentioned paying a visit in the future, and Tim didn’t say no, so he counts that as a win.)

It’s a little disconcerting how the family is coming together again; disconcerting but welcome.

He’s received a vid call last week from Cassandra expressing concern over his surgery, and then a short, gruff email from Duke all-but ordering him to get better. There’s even a letter from Stephanie—or Eurus, as she goes by these days—smelling of dust and desert sun and incense found only in Nanda Parbat. Her messy, looping scrawl, echoed Dick’s sentiment about Bruce’s stubbornness and alluded to its genetic inheritability.

(That said more than if she had mentioned Damian outright; his youngest son has remained stubbornly silent.)

Bruce lost track of her not long after Damian’s short and brutal stint under the cowl; it had surprised him to find out she ended up in Tibet.

It also relieved him. Because no matter how dark a path his son wandered, at least there would be someone to challenge him. To not obey without question. To give him a link to the life he once had, to being human and alive.

(Bruce very carefully doesn’t think about Jason—doesn’t wonder if things had been different if he wouldn’t have reached out as well. Even after so many years, that wound is still raw.)

The whole thing is a stark difference from the last few times he ended up in the hospital, including when he was dosed on Joker venom several months ago. He didn’t hear anything from them at that point, which makes him think someone really thought he was dying this time and reached out.

Barbara, maybe. Or Dick. However much tension there is between himself and Bruce, he does keep in touch with the others. Hell, it might even have been Terry. The kid doesn’t know the rest of them personally, but he’s gotten adept at navigating the computer in the cave.

And he’s always been curious about his predecessors.

Bruce’s first family.

Or maybe just the first phase of the family.

Bruce shies away from that secret bit of knowledge he has about Terry, and his brother Matt. What he discovered the first time the kid returned to the Cave with bloody gashes that needed stitching up. The files and medical information buried beneath every firewall he could fashion, so the latest Batman can never stumble upon it accidentally.

The most Bruce has allowed himself to acknowledge it is an amendment in his will setting aside trust funds for both boys.

As if triggered by his thoughts, the screen of the Bat-Computer flickers to life. He rolls his shoulders, expecting an alert on some heist or robbery going on in the city; another case to add to the docket for Terry to investigate after school (depending on the severity).

Bruce doesn’t expect the Cave to suddenly fill with a jaunty, haunting carnival tune that makes his entire body seize in recognition. And yet, he already knows what’s coming even before the words HA HA HA coalesce upon the screen.

“Hell-O World! It’s your favorite rascal…”

________________________________________________________________

GORDON

There are times when Barbara misses being a vigilante, if only because there was a lot less paperwork involved. Questionable legality aside, there was always a simplicity to the whole endeavor: track down the bad guy, entrap-and-or-beat said bad guy into submission, and then drop them off at the GCPD.

Now that she’s the one behind the desk, though, she has a lot more appreciation for the work her father did. She wonders how he never developed an aneurysm or stress-related heart condition due to the grief Batman (and the rest of them) caused the department.

She has barely sat down in her office, but there’s an influx of emails flooding her inbox. She scans through the first few—requests from someone in IA sniffing around some of her open cases on the barest hint that she’s allowing Batman to help, reminders about upcoming social functions she would rather skip, two officers that have to be brought up on disciplinary charges—and sighs. It’s just the first two dozen.

Today is going to be a triple espresso kind of day, I can tell, she decides, rolling her shoulders and tilting her neck from side to side.

Another message chimes as it comes in.

Crime Alley and Tricorner are requesting more plainclothes officers in the area, ostensibly to deal with an upswing in crime over the past twenty-four hours.

Barbara frowns at this—it must be significant if those particular precincts are reaching out, they usually hate working with Central. Then again, everyone’s been jumpy about security since the Jokerz almost destroyed Gotham.

They’re still finding bodies from that one. She’s got three of her officers’ families grieving without any closure.

Barbara goes back over incident reports from the last few hours, noting a rise in attacks on the homeless, property damage and extreme road-rage (twenty-six separate incidents of that, which is a new daily extreme for her). From the initial investigations into each of the unrelated events—all in different areas of the city—there doesn’t seem to be any motivating factor or link.

What the hell is going on?

A crime spike isn’t ordinary for June; they usually start around now and then play out over the course of weeks.

Not hours. Have any of our usual players been released from custody lately? There’ve been no outbreaks or escapes that I know of.

If there is someone out there stirring things up, she hopes to God it’s just someone like Walter Shrieve. Arrogant and brilliant offenders she can deal with; they’re always so eager to prove themselves the best, and it always leads to their downfall. It’s the criminally insane ones that keep her up for days on end trying to restore some semblance of sanity to a city that’s never going to get any better. Even worse is a combination of the two.

Uneasy, she fires off a message to her counterparts in New York and Toronto, to see if they’re seeing similar phenomena in their jurisdictions. She hopes this is nothing, but she’s getting a hunch. And her hunches never lead her to anything that could be remotely called good.

“Get me Commissioner Sawyer over at MPD,” she tells the computer. She and Maggie go way back, and the other woman doesn’t pull that intercity rivalry crap when it comes to sharing important information.

“Yeah, the dregs are coming out of the woodwork here, too,” Maggie tells her after they exchange the requisite pleasantries. Her voice is carefully measured in a way that tells Barbara she’s not having a good day, either. “We had a damn flash mob that caused an A-trak derailment this morning. I have no idea how there weren’t more casualties, but…”

“Where’s Superman when you need him, right? I’d heard he was back in play.”

According to Bruce and Terry, anyhow.

“If he is, he must be off-world or something, because I doubt he’d be sitting on his ass at a time like this. What about on your end?”

“Well, we’re not exactly beyond the powers of the GCPD right now,” Barbara replies, a little smugly. “No need to take the Bat-signal out of storage.”

Yet, the unwelcome voice in her head echoes.

“Oh-ho, aren’t we getting confident in our old age?” Maggie sneers, but there’s no real malice to it. “For all our sakes, I hope it stays that way. But I’ve got a hunch...”

“Yeah,” Barbara sighs, her stomach dropping. “Me too.”

It’s not a good sign when both she and her opposite number in Metropolis are on the same wavelength.

As Maggie hangs up, three more incident reports pop up on the side of her screen. Skirmishing at Gotham General—that’s all they need now. If things are just warming up, it’s looking like another long day.

Sam’s not going to like it…

Barbara dials in the number herself this time on her personal line. There’s a trill and the viewscreen pops up to show her husband in his office at the DA, scowling down at a tablet. His expression clears when he sees her.

“Didn’t I just see you this morning?” he jokes. “Or were you that keen to see me again?”

“Always,” Barbara tells him, softer than she speaks to anyone else. “But I’m actually calling to apologize. It’s going to be a day, and I don’t know if I’ll get home for supper.”

“It must be bad since you just got there.”

“Things have been hairy all night,” she admits. “I’ve got incident reports multiplying as we speak. You’d think with the bug going around people would be staying home to recuperate, but it looks like they think it’s an excuse to break the law.”

“Well, it’s Gotham. After all this time, it’s not a surprise.”

“It’s really, really not.”

“I know I’d rather be home in bed,” Sam says, and normally a comment like that would have innuendo behind it. This time it’s all too earnest. He rubs his face tiredly. “I think I’m coming down with it too, to be honest.”

“If you give it to me, you’re sleeping on the couch for the next week,” Barbara informs him automatically. “I can’t afford to miss any work for the next…forever.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, hon. The minute they see you blink in this business, you’re dead in the water.” Sam grimaces and rolls his shoulders, and Barbara experiences a tinge of concern because he does look pale.

“Maybe you should go home,” she suggests. “You can work on your cases at home, can’t you?”

“Unfortunately, no. I’m due in court at ten o’clock.”

“If you’re dead from the flu, do you know how many criminals are going to walk free?” she demands, only a little bit joking.

He chuckles. “Come on, Babs, you know no one’s died of the flu in twenty years.”

Barbara has a witty retort on her tongue, but it stalls when Sam’s image freezes in front of her. It seems at first to be a lag, but then the screen morphs from his office to what looks like a brick wall.

She feels an icy cold slice through her, the same one she always gets when anything is associated with him. It’s the echo of a bullet, tearing through her internal organs and spine, and the hair-raising chill.

Barbara doesn’t really read the words, too focused on the high, cold cackle in the that somehow blocks out every other sound.

________________________________________________________________

DRAKE

For the first time in a long time, Tim is happy.

His house is a gutted mess of boxes and detritus, but unlike in his younger years, it’s not because some supervillain has come crashing in to threaten him. He smiles, a little whimsical, at the date on the holographic calendar, and the word that hovers there: Moving.

In a week, he and Arlene will be in Beijing, and forever free of Gotham City.

They made the decision together in the weeks following the Jokerz attack, after Tim escaped the Cave the last time. He made it clear to Bruce and his new apprentice that it was the last time.

He doesn’t mind continuing to work for Wayne Enterprises—hell, he helped build that company, he takes a certain amount of pride and responsibility for it—but he won’t be doing that from Gotham. There’s too much history here, too much…everything. Apparently living on the outskirts or even in the same state (even on the same continent) isn’t enough for Tim to completely escape the lingering, nightmarish legacy of Batman.

Of Robin.

He wants normal. And after everything he’s been through, he more than deserves it.

“Oh, I’ll be sure to tell your dad, he’ll be happy to hear that,” Arlene says, chatting with their daughter Janet on the vidphone across the kitchen. In the den, the low sounds of the television provide background noise.

“—the level of unrest breaking out in the world’s major cities, has politicians asking, ‘is this another Yellow Vest Movement?’—"

“Honey, Janet says she and Maeve will be coming to help with the move after all.”

“You mean coming to eat pizza and beer,” Tim replies with a smile; they’ve already hired movers.

“Semantics,” he hears his youngest daughter laugh. “Either way we’ll be there.”

“Always happy to see you, kiddo.”

“Now, I’ve got to let you go,” Arlene says. “I have a nine-thirty conference call with Peking U., but I’ll speak to you later on.”

She has a follow-up interview for a position in the Linguistics Department there. It’s a step down from her current professorship at Gotham University, where she was on the tenure track, but when Tim pointed this out, she insisted his mental health was more important than her job prospects.

He tells himself he gave in so easily because after so many years of marriage it’s futile to argue with her. He tries not to acknowledge the total relief that he didn’t have to argue with her about it.

“Yeah, no problem Mom. Talk to you soon.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too!”

The video feed of their daughter winks out.

“Do you need me to get out of your hair?” Tim asks.

“No, I’ll take the call up in the office,” his wife replies and presses a kiss to his temple as she passes. Then she pauses, turns around and grabs the coffee pot to bring with her. “And I’m cutting you off. Any more of this and you’re not sleeping tonight.”

Tim sighs. “It’s like you know me or something.”

“And don’t forget it, mister!”

He listens carefully to the sound of his wife retreating up the stairs and over the landing, and then reaches for the microwave, where he surreptitiously stashed an extra cup earlier that morning.

And swears when he finds it missing; a quick glance to the sink sees it already washed out.

Damn it, she does know me.

But the thought is more fond than irritated.

Arlene is the only sure thing in his life, especially after his trauma. They met through Kate Kane—or rather, because of Kate Kane. The two women attended West Point at the same time, and Arlene acted as a character witness for Kate prior to the dishonorable discharge. Though Arlene graduated from the Academy, she did not spend much time on active duty before she was injured by a roadside bomb and lost her leg. Afterward, while dealing with her own PTSD, she pursued an academic career. She and Kate lost touch, and it wasn’t until the media released news of Kate’s murder that she heard of her again.

Arlene attended the funeral, which is where Tim met her for the first time. Two weeks later, they met in a support group for trauma survivors and started getting coffee together. It took Tim a year to figure out she was flirting with him (which Jason never stopped teasing him about, even when he was on his deathbed). After everything with Stephanie, and then with Jason, Arlene offered a safety none of his other partners ever had.

There’s a high-pitched trill from his cellphone, and he glances down to read the text from Cass.

‘ayt? need yr flight info. to pick u up from airport next wk. :) :) :)’

His sister still prefers to text over talking by phone, even all these years later, which he’s pleased about. So much these days is done with face-to-face screens or even holographic technology; he wasn’t really a people person before, but it’s getting rarer and rarer to have any kind of privacy. Texting—especially across the encrypted server he’s set up—is a relief.

Tim relays the details to her, along with the implied greetings from his wife, and expects that to be it. But then he gets another text.

‘question? 4 work.’

Tim tenses.

Cassandra Cain works as a retired ballerina who opened her own school of dance; it’s highly unlikely the work-related question has anything to do with that. It’s probably for Black Bat.

But he cautiously texts back, ‘As long as it’s just a question.’

He’s had to re-learn to establish boundaries.

‘fair. u worked cybersecurity. ever hear of Morningstar. hacker/agency???’

Tim frowns, thinks back, and shakes his head even though she can’t see it. ‘No. Never dealt with anything like that.’

Ok! 3Q. worth a shot. will c u & arlene on thurs. 520GG!’

‘88MM’

He waits a few minutes, but there are no more messages forthcoming, and then sends out the last message—‘88MM’, before putting his phone away.

Unlike everyone else from his vigilante days, Cass knows how to not push.

And yet…

She rarely asks him about anything that might involve her after-hours work, both out of familial courtesy and because her operation is, at least unofficially, supported by the Chinese government. Legally, there’s not a lot she can involve him in; when she does, it’s only where she has absolutely no other recourse and it involves paperwork and non-disclosure agreements.

Only twice has she asked him something in an off-hand way, which he knew instinctively had to do with Black Bat but pretended not to realise. The last time, his information helped her locate and dismantle a eugenicist breeding program using homeless girls.

Perhaps that’s why he finds himself reaching for his laptop and looking into anything to do with Cass’s mysterious ‘Morningstar’.

The word generates a broad spectrum of results, even when he searches through the Dark Web. Nothing to do with drugs, nothing related to human trafficking or weapons—nothing that wouldn’t immediately stand out to Cass in her own searches. He narrows search parameters, skating through encryptions and IP trails and layers and layers of disturbing data—

Within ten minutes he comes across the exact word in connection with a burgeoning hacktivist group known as DevilNight, but no indications as to what it refers to. It’s odd, considering the group has only existed for a short while and has hardly done anything worthy of attention. It makes no sense that something like this would be on Cass’s radar, especially considering based on his tracking, the group is based in Idaho.

He has just started to peel back the layers of the group’s security when his computer screen freezes. A beat later, words begin to type on his screen, and the blood drains from his cheeks.

H E L L O J U N I O R

Even as the words register, Tim is already shoving himself backward, away from the screen. His hand slaps against the spot in his neck where Joker’s microchip was implanted—the spot where he injected Bruce’s anti-venom deployment system. It’s a reassurance, a reminder, he will be safe—

Horror suffuses him as another message typed out in front of him:

D O N ’T B E A N A U G H T Y B O Y

Bile rises in his throat and Tim feels the world spin. Instantly, he is back in that horrible room, hysterical laughter in his ears and a falsely cheerful melody playing in the background.

He has to fight himself back under control, checking his surroundings, going over simple facts about himself in his head—

Not Junior not Junior not Junior—

My name is Timothy Jackson Drake. Drake-Wayne.

He is still that, even if he never uses the name anymore. He never got around to changing it, never had the courage to.

My parents were Jack and Janet Drake. Mom died when I was a boy, Dad remarried. Dana. But they died—

Kidnapped, poisoned, murdered, went insane—

No, he’s getting off track. Facts, he needs facts about himself, to ground him, to remind him of who he is and not what he has lived through.

I work as a communications director and do contract work for Wayne Enterprises. I have two daughters—Kate and Janet. Kate is a veterinarian; Janet is a stockbroker. She married Maeve last year. Kate is pregnant with our first grandchild. Arlene and I go to Florida every winter…

At long last, he gets himself under control again, can separate himself from the specter of Junior.

He expects the laughter and the inner echoes of carnival music to fade away.

Instead, it becomes louder and more distinct.

Tim stares at his screen in horror as the message vanishes, the words replaced with something even more sinister.

HA HA HA.

No.

Not again.

He can’t do this again.

________________________________________________________________

GRAYSON

Dick only ever feels his age in the mornings.

There’s just something about his body waking up after a long sleep, before his training kicks in to ignore the aches and pains, that can’t fight off the heaviness as fast anymore. Every day it’s more painful putting himself through the usual routine of exercises to keep himself in shape.

Thankfully, he’s still outwardly put-together enough to hide it.

He smiles ruefully at his reflection in the bathroom mirror—more of a grimace, really—and studies the patchwork of old scars and not-so-old bruises across his chest.

He knows he doesn’t look his age. It’s not even due to cosmetic surgery or organ replacements or even the personal holograph projections that have gotten popular in the last decade. Longevity just happens to run in his family; John Grayson’s father was still pulling triple somersaults at eighty and Mary Lloyd’s grandmother lived to be a hundred and thirteen.

The only thing artificial in his body are metal plates and pins that replaced bones fractured beyond natural healing, and the biotech keeping the bullet in his spine from moving. (And the antitoxin implant Bruce sent him; because no feud is worth getting dosed with Joker venom, whether the bastard is dead or not.)

Not bad for fifty-nine, he decides and heads for the kitchen.

There’s a moan from his bedroom, and he pauses briefly as he passes to consider the woman lying in his bed in nothing but his bedsheets. In her sleep, she curls to one side, causing the sheet to slip a little and reveal bruises in the shape of his fingers across her hip. He can feel the matching set on his own back.

Definitely not bad for fifty-nine.

For a moment he debates the merits of returning to bed and continuing where they left off last night, but that would be against one of the unspoken rules they established when they started sleeping together.

The other is that they don’t use real names.

He doesn’t know or want to know hers—after a lifetime of failed relationships and broken hearts he knows better than to get attached. And though he’s aware she knows his—the world knows his name since that fiasco with the wannabe Hush—she never uses it. If she must, she calls him Wing, and it’s a clear reminder that she has no intention of crossing any boundaries to let things become personal.

He has no problem with that; he calls her Black.

He’ll never call her Cat because that’s what Bruce called Selina Kyle. Associating this Catwoman with the original just feels a little too oedipal to Dick.

(Selina never really gave off motherly vibes, but she was the most constant presence of all Bruce’s paramours, so she sort of ended up in that role by association).

The original Catwoman was the only one Bruce could never completely push away—though that might say more about Selina’s stubbornness than the old man trying to keep hold of the people in his life. She decided when they were in a relationship, or out of one, whatever Bruce wanted.

In the end, even that wasn’t enough though. Her heart was never as strong after the incident with the real Hush.

Dick remembers attending the funeral. Bruce didn’t show up at the service or the burial. It was a few years into his self-imposed exile, right after Damian’s departure, and soon after Steph and Cass. He obviously hadn’t wanted to face any of them (maybe couldn’t face them).

But there was a crack in the headstone the next time Dick brought flowers (an imprint of a fist he would know anywhere) and he knows Bruce blamed himself for that too.

Dick heads to the kitchen, grabbing a coffee for himself. He debates for a moment, leaving one out for Black, but if the usual pattern holds, she’ll be jumping out his bedroom window soon without even coming into the kitchen. She’s not exactly one for goodbyes. Instead, he leans on the counter and pulls out his mobile, scrolling through the day's news stories.

Call him old fashioned, but he prefers to read the news than watch the featureless blue talking heads on the television. He spends about a minute skimming a beat piece on the successful launch of Wayne Enterprises' latest environmental initiative. Tim was telling him something about that the other day; it was the most animated and relaxed Dick had seen him since that night with the Jokerz.

“It’s basically like a planetary rebreather,” his estranged brother enthused. “You know how trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen? It’s sort of like that, but on a larger scale. Once it's all set up, any toxins pumped into the atmosphere will get filtered out and converted to oxygen.”

Tim had then gone on a lengthy explanation about the technical details that Dick had no chance of following, but given how enthused he’d seemed, it hadn’t mattered.

He’s going to miss him, now that he’s headed off to Beijing, but Cass is ecstatic. As far as Dick knows, they haven’t seen each other in ten years. It almost makes him want to head over and join the reunion.

Except that would be counterproductive to his current plans.

Dick is in Gotham on the pretense of opening a second athletics course, but really, it’s to keep an eye on things.

He doesn’t trust Bruce not to screw up whatever he’s doing with this new kid, and the boy’s too green to notice the signs of losing himself to Bruce’s mission. When the old man cuts him off—and it’s when, not if, because Bruce will inevitably screw this up—the McGinnis kid is going to need someone to keep his head above water.

Dick’s only been around him a handful of times, but there’s a cockiness and attitude there that reminds him of Jason. That’s concerning enough on its own, but what really makes the hair on the back of Dick’s neck stand up is the sense he has of this kid’s potential to do damage. He’s seen that, before, too, along with the results.

Christ, the kid even looks like Damian. If I didn’t know Bruce so well, I’d think…

He shakes off the thought because it’s too disturbing to contemplate.

The point is, Terry McGinnis needs someone looking out for him, even if he doesn’t realize it. Bruce isn’t going to do it and Barbara has clearly forgotten a hell of a lot of history since she’s allowing the boy to fly around her city risking his life.

So it’s up to Dick.

Again.

I’m way too old to be getting another brother, he thinks darkly, in what once might have been genuine humor but now feels just exhausting. Especially considering his track record with the others.

He doesn’t even know where Duke ended up.

Something flickers on the edge of his eyesight, and he turns to look out the window of his apartment. Across the street, the giant vid-screen advertising the latest energy drink blinks and goes briefly blank. Along with every other screen as far as the eye can see.

Dick narrows his eyes, taking a step forward to study the phenomena, and then freezes as his quiet apartment is invaded by obscenely cheerful music and a laugh he wishes he could forget.

Every screen for miles spells it out, and he knows immediately that things are about to get worse.

________________________________________________________________

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haughtbreaker · 6 years

Text

Pour Me More Ch 2: Only a Memory

Thank you so much for all those that took a chance on this story. I appreciate all the comments and kudos. Thanks to @jaybear1701 for repeatedly telling me to stop using the word "form" and to use more commas. Although I have a huge chunk of this story typed, I’m going to be getting ready for Earp-a-palooza so I’m knee deep in prep. I’ll have a vendor table there for GalPalStitches.Com if anyone wants to drop by.

Also Posted on AO3.

Trigger Warning: Mention of past suicide attempt.

Accompanying Song for this Chapter: Beauty from Pain by SuperChick

The moment her plane touched down, Nicole could feel the chill permeating through the window. She tugged her hoodie a little closer, knowing she would soon have to adorn the heavy coat that took up most of the space inside her backpack. Even with the buds in her ears, she could still hear the flight attendant droning on about keeping her seat belt on and not standing in the aisles until the plane came to a complete stop. Nervously, she gripped the small keychain in her pocket, running her thumbnail between the layers of the keyring.

When the door to the plane opened, a rush of cold filled the air and Nicole realized something she hadn't even considered… there was no warm walkway waiting outside the door leading to the airport, only icy wind and a long trek across the tarmac. She quickly tugged out her jacket, barely getting her beanie over her head before someone was clearing their throat impatiently behind her.

The frigid cold bit right into Nicole's face as she stepped down the stairs, trying not to slip on the stairs that looked at least half a century old. She attempted to turn her mind away from her burning eyes and the frigid shock to her lungs as she followed the flock of people that headed towards a nearby building. Instead, she thought about home, picturing the sun shining on the perfect break, the wind smelling of salt and sunscreen. She tried to taste the seawater on her tongue and hear the wind blowing through the leaves of coconut trees, the feel of soft skin under her fingertips and lips pressing against the spot just below her left ear. Listening closely, she could hear that voice…

"My beautiful beach rat."

Nicole blinked as her eyes began to water, lost in a memory of what once was, her feet working by autopilot. A blast of artificial heat assaulted her just inside the door and she was pulled back to the present, feeling her skin drying almost instantly. "Welcome to fucking Canada," she mumbled as she moved with the crowd being herded towards the baggage area by security ribbons and faded signs. The large digital display on the wall told her it was just before noon and she tried not to think too much about what she'd be doing if she were home, about how she'd be in third period, American History. A lot of good that would do her now.

It wasn't a far walk. The airport didn't appear to be much bigger than one of those gas stations surrounded by cornfields in rural Indiana or some other horror movie shit like that. Where zombie kids came out of nowhere to slaughter you if you weren't paying attention.

It didn't fill her with a sense of comfort.

From what her mother had told her about her hometown, Purgatory was a bit of a shithole - a place where you were lucky if your house had indoor plumbing. She hadn't even fathomed that outhouses were still a thing. Her thoughts lingered on midnight bathroom trips and the probability of freezing to death on a shitter.

There had to be a statistic for that somewhere.

The baggage area was straight ahead through a set of automatic doors. The guard blocking the exit from the secure area was a man who had to be at least 80 years old, sitting on a stool and sleeping soundly. To Canada's credit, the waiting loved ones seemed to be keeping honest by staying near the baggage claim, waiting patiently for the passengers to exit.

Nicole wasn't quite sure who she should be looking for and raised an eyebrow as she saw a girl dressed in black leather holding a hand-written sign that said Haught Pants McGee. The girl wore a pair of aviator glasses that she lowered to look at Nicole. Blue eyes, angular features and all attitude, no doubt stuck in some sort of personal rebellion against the social norm. This had to be one of the sisters she'd heard about. Nicole sighed softly, walking straight up to her and stopping.

"I don't think we're at the point in our relationship where you can make fun of my name yet."

The girl shrugged, folding up the sign. "Well, can I make fun of you being gay at least? I do have to say, I always wanted a gay cousin. I'm Wynonna."

"I'm pretty sure that could be considered some level of prejudice." Nicole gave her a wry look. She wasn't quite sure how to gauge her new acquaintance. "Well, I'm Nicole and I can't say I ever wanted a leather-clad deviant as a cousin… adopted cousin… or second cousin of my mother's adoptive family... however the hell this works."

"Funny, I'm not the one that was sent off to another country," Wynonna paused. "This time. Shit, maybe we are related… by adoption," she mocked before pursing her lips and looking around awkwardly. "So… now that we've firmly established that we could legally bone without being shunned by society… you got more shit than that little backpack? Cause you're a little too tall for my meticulously assembled wardrobe and you're definitely about a dick and a half too tall for Waverly's shit."

Nicole couldn't help smiling. She'd had a picture of what the people of Purgatory would be like, but this was definitely not it. Wynonna was snarky and crass. It reminded her a little of her best friend back home, the one that was still alive anyway. "Yeah, I've got a suitcase and a duffle. And is the phallic measuring system particular to Canada as a whole or your own personal flare?"

"Easy now, Haught. I don't think we're in that stage of our relationship that you can ask me about my personal flare," Wynonna quipped with a wink. "And I hope you don't expect me to help you carry shit… I've got like… corporal tunnel."

"Carpal tunnel," Nicole corrected. "One too many hand jobs?"

Wynonna had the audacity to smirk. "Maybe a dozen too many." When a buzzer rang through the area, there were a few clanks before the small baggage carousel started spinning. "Let's get your shit so we can get back to Purgatory."

The drive was longer than Nicole thought it would be. It took about an hour of listening to Wynonna's shitty death metal that Nicole was pretty sure was Scandinavian before they passed the sign that said "Welcome to Purgatory! You'll never want to leave." Nicole swallowed audibly as they passed through the town at what had to be double the speed limit.

Nicole watched with apprehension as Wynonna seemed to almost gleefully speed past the sheriff's department, her eyes watching the rearview mirror with disappointment as no one noticed, as if she wanted to be pulled over. Wynonna huffed and turned the music down just a bit and slowed as the building disappeared out of view behind them.

It took another 15 minutes to push straight through the other side of town and drive the short distance away to what looked like a farm of sort. The house wasn't at all the shack Nicole imagined it would be, she thought, the Jeep pulling to a halt with a jolt. It was a two story house with a porch that wrapped around two sides of it. Behind the house and a bit away, there appeared to be a greenhouse that had seen better days, some of the windows cracked or missing.

Nicole slipped out of the Jeep, her legs a little unsteady after the less-than-smooth ride. There was a loud creak and she saw a woman standing in the doorway. She was slightly familiar, not from Nicole's own memories, but from photos she'd seen when she was younger.

"Nicole." The woman had short grey hair and wore a flannel shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans. She held the screen door open, expecting Nicole to enter.

Grabbing her suitcase and duffel from the back of the jeep, Nicole kept her head down, stepping inside and looking around. It was… rustic was the best word she could think of. Not exactly Martha Stewart's idea of rustic, but certainly not the backwater redneck motif she was expecting.

"Alright, let me look at you." Gus stepped up to her, a thoughtful look on her face. Her eyes held a wisdom that seemed befitting of her old age. Gus had of course aged since the pictures from her mother's childhood. "You look just like your mother, but definitely a lot taller," Gus mused.

"Yeah." Nicole nodded. "So I've been told." She wasn't in the mood to talk about her mother. It was one of the things she'd dreaded, having to discuss her dead mother with the woman that had adopted her. Her mother had never spoken ill of Gus, just that she was a no-nonsense woman with keen observation skills. Gus hadn't come to the funeral and Nicole hadn't understood at the time, but after her own experience with grief, it had bought Gus a bit of lenience.

Wynonna entered the house with a slam of the door, causing everyone to jump.

"Damn it, Wynonna." Gus shook her head.

Wynonna held up her hands. "Not nice to swear at kids, Gus. You're gonna give Haught here a bad impression."

"You are not a damn kid anymore. In fact, isn't it about time you went and got yourself a job?"

"I'd love to, Gus," Wynonna shrugged, "but you know with this economy, it's getting harder to find a job that will pay you an honest living when you've got a college education, let alone being a high school dropout."

"That's funny because your sister got a job during the summer, and she's two years younger than you and still in high school."

"You got her that job!"

Nicole just watched as they argued back and forth, feeling a bit like a third wheel but also feeling a passive amusement. She'd never really gotten the opportunity to argue with her mother like this, and even if Wynonna and Gus weren't actually mother and daughter, it was an interesting dynamic.

"Can you just show her to her room, please, while I get started on dinner?" Gus massaged her temple. "I have to work tonight and I'd rather not do it with a dang headache."

Wynonna did an about face, heading to the stairs and stopping suddenly before looking at Nicole. "You coming or what?"

"Sure." Nicole shook her head, grabbing her luggage. "Thanks, Gus," she said as she passed the older woman. It was a bit of a struggle getting the luggage up the stairs, but she got there to find Wynonna leaning against the wall near a door, arms crossed over her chest. "Thanks."

"Glad to help." Wynonna responded. "Here's your room. Mine is down the hall over there and my sister Waverly's room is between ours. Gus sleeps in the room downstairs."

"OK." Nicole nodded, setting her things just inside the door before looking up at Wynonna.

Wynonna pursed her lips, tapping the toe of one of her boots for a moment before clapping her hands once. "Okay, then. Welcome to Purgatory." She turned on her heels and left without another word.

Nicole released a long sigh as she looked around the room. "Well…" She shucked off the heavier coat she wore but kept her hoodie on, hugging the material closer to her. The room wasn't much smaller than her room back home, but it smelt like storage and the walls were bare. The bed looked new, at least, with fresh sheets and a thick comforter.

She probably should have started unpacking - settling into what was going to be her new life for however long her father didn't want to deal with her anymore. She didn't blame him, of course. He hadn't been the same since her mother died. Her grief was a mirror of his own, a living reminder of what loss felt like. It was easier for him to turn his back on her than to live through it again.

She ignored her suitcase completely, grabbing her duffle bag as she sat on the bed. It was softer than she liked, almost as soft as Shae's pillowtop. "Stop." She broke the silence of the room. She knew she needed to stop comparing everything to… before.

Her watch alarm went off with a soft beep, a reminder that came three times a day of just how fragile she was. In her backpack she found three brown bottles, the contents rattling softly as she fought against the child-safety locks. Her grip strength still hadn't come back fully, even after months of physical therapy. Eventually she was able to tip out the collection of whites and peach that had become her life, washing them back with the half-empty bottle of water she'd gotten on the plane. With a grimace at the bitter taste left on her tongue, Nicole tossed the bottles back into the safety of her backpack. She wasn't quite ready to share that part of herself with her new housemates. No doubt her father had already told Gus, but no sense in giving Wynonna what could be prime ammo to use against her.

From her backpack she pulled a small framed photo, her fingertip brushing along the line of Shae's jaw. "Well… we're in some shit, Babe." She set the photo on the nightstand and pulled a familiar plush throw from her duffle bag. She could feel the lethargic wave washing over her, the side effect of her medication almost irresistible when combined with hours of traveling.

Kicking off her shoes, she pushed her bags to one side of the bed before wrapping herself in the throw, breathing in the scent of home. Looking around the room once more, she let her eyes settle on the photo of Shae as she drifted off to sleep.

The sun was reaching for the horizon by the time Waverly stepped out of the locker room and headed towards the parking lot. Cheerleading had gone a little long but still Wynonna was nowhere to be seen. She sniffled against the cold as she checked her wristwatch.

"Waves!"

Looking up, she raised a hand as Jeremy jogged up to her, his breath coming out in white puffs of condensation. "Hey Jer-bear." She smiled at her best friend who was carrying a stack of books. It was Friday which meant he had been meeting with the science club. A genius when it came to anything science, he was the only other student in Purgatory that was graduating a year early, but unlike Waverly, he wasn't a cheerleader that was liked by everyone in town. He often got pushed around by the asshole jocks of the school and Waverly did her best to shield him with her own popularity. Not only was he picked on for his intelligence, but also for being one of the few out gay students in school, and the only person Waverly had confided in regarding her questioning her own sexuality.

"What are you still doing here, Crazy." He scratched at the stubble forming along his jaw. "It's freezing! Where's your Jeep?"

Waverly shrugged. "Wynonna had to pick someone up from the airport so she took it. She's running a little late, as always."

"Classic Wynonna." Jeremy shook his head. "Got some family visiting?"

"Kind of." Waverly pursed her lips, trying to think of the best way to explain it. "I guess she's kind of like a second cousin but not really? Her mom was adopted by Gus as a kid," she explained. "And I guess she's going to be living with us for a little bit. I'm not exactly sure how long."

"Whoa." Jeremy raised his eyebrows in surprise, shifting the books in his hands so he could adjust his beanie. "That's kind of crazy. Have you not met her before?"

Waverly shook her head, feeling the chill attacking her uncovered face. "Nope. Her dad is American so she lives in California…lived I guess."

Jeremy grimaced. "From California to Purgatory… that's gonna be a bit of a weather shock."

Waverly chuckled. "Completely. You'll probably meet her on Monday," she paused before an idea came to her, " unless you wanted to come over this weekend?" She gave Jeremy her best pleading look. "We can study for our physics exam?"

"As if you needed to study." He rolled his eyes in exaggeration before sniffling.

"There's never any harm in studying, even when you know the answers." Waverly heard the sound of the gears on her Jeep grinding before she saw Wynonna skidding into the lot. "God damn it, Wynonna." Waverly barked as both she and Jeremy took an instinctual step back, the Jeep barely stopped in time.

"Sup Nerd," Wynonna nodded towards Jeremy before looking at Waverly. "Get in, Loser."

Waverly rolled her eyes before giving Jeremy a quick hug. "Tomorrow? Please?"

Jeremy sighed. "You know I can't say no to you."

"Good. Awesome. Thank you. I love you." Waverly grinned and waved before she slipped into the Jeep. As they pulled away, she reached over and turned the volume of the death metal down. "So…."

"So what?"

Waverly narrowed her eyes at her sister. "What are your thoughts?"

"That Hanson should never have stopped making music."

"Wynonna!"

Wynonna huffed. "What do you want me to say? She's… quiet, but snarky. Taller than me… like Wonder Woman kind of tall minus the leather bathing suit. She… looks so gay."

Waverly had to laugh. "What the heck does that mean?" Waverly looked down at her own clothes, star speckled leggings tucked into fuzzy calf-high boots under her cheerleading uniform that was covered with a puffy white jacket with faux-fur trim. Did she's look gay? Or bisexual rather? She didn't think so.

"You're just gonna have to see for yourself I guess."

Waverly nodded, looking out at the stretch of road ahead of them. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

#wynonna earp #wayhaught #pour me more #we fanfic #tw: mention of past suicide attempt

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pftones3482 · 7 years

Text

Commission for @yriafehtivan. Percabeth fluff ahoy (I haven’t written them in so long, this was such a treat). They’re about 24 in this. Under a cut for length.

Annabeth had been tossing and turning in bed for hours, watching through blurry vision as the numbers on the digital clock next to the bed flipped slowly towards three am. Percy was sound asleep next to her, snoring and drooling as per the usual, and she wished she could have joined him.

It had been over seven years since the whole Tartarus fiasco, but sometimes, especially after a bad day, Annabeth found it hard to sleep without visions of demons and monsters crisscrossing her dreams.

Careful not to wake Percy, she slipped out of bed with a resigned sigh, tugging her robe on over her pajamas and shuffling into her slippers. She ducked out of the bedroom, absentmindedly pulling her now-ratty hair into a ponytail at the nape of her neck.

The floorboards creaked softly under her feet until she reached the kitchen, where the wood shifted to tile and became completely silent. Annabeth crossed to the cupboards, moving by feel alone, and pulled out a mug. The refrigerator gave her just enough light to make herself a single cup of coffee, which she promptly dumped a pound of sugar and creamer into and carried out onto the front porch, spoon clinking against the ceramic.

The sky was inky black, and the ocean waves battered against the sand with a comforting crashing sound, one that Annabeth had grown to adore over the years. She sank down onto their porch swing and tugged her knees up with her, adjusting the robe with one hand and holding the coffee out with the other so it wouldn’t spill.

This close to the ocean there was less light pollution, so they could see the stars, see the constellations that speckled the sky. Annabeth sipped at her coffee slowly, burning her tongue as always, and gazed over them, pausing on certain ones and giving a soft smile. The swing rocked under her gently, almost non-existent, and she leaned with it on instinct.

Her fingers curled around the mug as the sea breeze lifted and curled around her, whisking her loose curls across her face and sending a pleasant chill down her spine. She tucked into herself even more and lifted the mug to her lips, staring at the faint outline of the tide stretching across the sand.

The moment they had graduated from college, she and Percy had moved here, to Montauk, fixing up the cabin (or rather, she redesigned certain parts and he helped her with it) and making it a permanent home for them. Sally had bought the cabin after she married Paul and had kept taking care of the place, even after all the years away from it. She had been happy to sign the property over to them.

Annabeth had been wary, to say the least, about moving in with Percy for good. It was one thing to live at the same camp, or to go to the same school. Living together was permanent, in a way. But they both agreed that they wanted to stay close to camp, help out with any half-bloods that might need them, and Percy had insisted they be close to the water. She didn’t blame him.

The breeze kicked up again, salt biting at her lips, and something in her twisted, wanted to move. Her feet clunked to the floor and she set her mug on the table next to the swing, stepping out of her slippers and wrapping her robe firmly around her body. For mid-September, it was chilly out, but the sand was still soothingly warm when she reached it. The young woman sighed and, for a moment, breathed, completely still, the wind buffering her body. She crossed the beach all the way down to the water until it licked at her ankles, the liquid freezing compared to the ground, and she tilted her gaze back up to stare at the stars.

Annabeth wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there when the water pulled back from her feet, just enough for her to realize that they were numb. She wasn’t too surprised when Percy’s arms enveloped her from behind, cautiously, like he didn’t want to scare her. She appreciated it, and leaned back against his chest with a sigh.

He tightened his grip on her and kissed her temple. “You okay?”

Annabeth frowned and traced her chilly hands over his warm ones, interlocking their fingers after a moment. “I think so. Couldn’t sleep is all.”

Percy made a sound in the back of his throat like he understood, which of course he did. She was usually waiting for him when he got back from his swims, a hot cup of whatever drink she had made in her hands that she transferred to him without a word. “Would you like to go somewhere?”

Annabeth tilted her head thoughtfully, peeking up at him in the dark. He glanced down, eyes sparkling even now, and gave her a smile. “What?”

She shook her head with a chuckle and twisted in his grasp, wrapping her arms firmly around his waist and leaning back. “Nothing,” she promised.

Percy hummed, amusement speckling his gaze. He ducked down and kissed her tenderly, achingly slow, so that when he pulled back she had been stunned to silence. “What?” he asked again.

She swallowed and pressed to him, resting her cheek on his t-shirt and letting her fingers trace over the faded Camp Half-Blood letters. “Going somewhere would be good,” she decided.

He nodded. “Thought so. Let’s go get dressed.”

“Don’t like my PJs?”

“Love them, dear, but I don’t think society would like it very much. Plus, your feet look like they’re freezing.”

She stuck her tongue out at him but allowed Percy to wrap an arm around her shoulders and guide her back to the house, keeping her right arm hooked over his waist and leaning against his bicep.

Percy was basically dressed, just had to brush his hair and grab a jacket, so she bustled around getting ready as fast as possible, putting on a pair of jeans and a baseball tee and running her fingers through her unruly hair to try and make it look somewhat presentable. She brushed her teeth almost as an afterthought, grabbed a windbreaker, and met Percy in the front hall, where he was staring out the window with a soft look on his face, keys twirling absently around his fingers.

She snatched the jangling metal and darted outside before he could protest, his laughter following her all the way to the car, a tiny little Prius that looked suspiciously like the one Paul had once had before he got his new car; if Annabeth looked at the top carefully enough, she could still make out faint hoofprints that had long since been hammered out. It ran smoothly, though, which was surprising after all it had been put through, and that was all that mattered.

After a moment of tussling and tickling, Percy snatched the keys from her hand and claimed the driver’s seat. She couldn’t drive anyway, he protested, so she should stop pretending like he would let her. Annabeth didn’t mind, honestly. She was content to just sit back and watch the landscape; she’d get too distracted to drive, if she was honest with herself.

Percy turned the heat on to warm up the interior and Annabeth plugged her phone in, swiping through Spotify as Percy pulled from the driveway and onto the main road. She found a quiet playlist and turned it on, letting the sound waft through the car and calm the very last of her nerves.

Once they settled onto the deserted streets, Percy’s hand found hers and laced their fingers together over the center console. “Where to?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

She tilted her head, thinking for a moment. “I don’t know.”

He chuckled. “I take it we can cross Olympus off the list?”

“Could we even get up there at this time in the morning?”

“Probably not,” Percy admitted.

Annabeth hesitated. Part of her wanted to do what she had always done as a kid, make her way to Camp Half-Blood and wander through the fields, over the beach. Another part of her wanted to drive until there was nowhere left to drive, until the sun came up, until they were out of gas.

Percy glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow, fingers on his free hand tapping at the wheel. He let go of her hand to turn a corner before speaking again. “You up for anything?”

She looked at him, tugging her jacket sleeves over her fingers and crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, that sounds good. Surprise me.”

He glanced at the clock. “Got about forty-five minutes, then. Take a nap.”

She started to protest, but Percy reached over and turned up the music, humming along. That combined with the soothing whir of the road and the darkness eventually lulled Annabeth into what could only be considered dozing.

When Percy parked the car, she could swear she had only been asleep for thirty seconds. But the clock had ticked forward to read 4:45 in the morning, and Percy had turned off the heat. The sky was lightening the slightest bit, just enough for her to lose track of the stars, and she squinted out the window with a frown. “I don’t have my-”

Percy handed over her glasses without a word, a smile on his lips. She took them sheepishly and slid the Celestial frames onto her face, blinking as the world came into view. In the dark, not having them on wasn’t a problem; her eyesight wasn’t that bad, not nearly as awful as Jason’s. But it had gotten worse over the years, so when she didn’t have them, she got a little paranoid.

Her gaze slid over the familiar-yet-unfamiliar parking lot, the loose gravel and dust everywhere, eyebrows crinkling in confusion. They were in front of a building, she could tell that much, but there were no signs on, nothing lit up to give her a clue as to what it was. The single parking lot light was at the back and flickering, the dim bulb barely holding on. “Um…Percy…? Why did you bring me to a place that looks like it could be one of Nico’s haunting grounds?”

Percy laughed at that and shut off the car, slipping out of his seat and moving around to hold open Annabeth’s door. He held out a hand, a devious look on his face. “C’mere. You’ll recognize it.”

She hopped out, linking their hands and waiting patiently while Percy locked the car with a small “beep!” They wandered closer to the store and Annabeth nearly tripped on one of the larger clumps of rock on the ground. “This place is real trashy,” she grumbled. “Super romantic.”

“You didn’t say romantic,” Percy protested, his voice light. “You said surprise you.”

“Remind me not to ask you for surprises again.”

Percy snorted and pulled an object from his pocket, handing it over. She took it, feeling her fingers down the flashlight and clicking it on. The white circle illuminated the nearest piece of cement and she yelped, eyes wide. It was a hand.

“This…”

She swung the flashlight up, catching it on the old, worn down letters that had once glowed a bright neon, breath catching. “This is-”

Percy shook with laughter next to her and she slapped at his chest repeatedly. “You brought me back to Medusa’s? Percy!”

He was still chuckling, lifting his hands. “Don’t worry,” he said, voice bubbling. “It’s totally abandoned. She hasn’t been back here since. Honestly, I’m amazed the city hasn’t pulled the place down yet.”

“And…the statues?”

Percy kicked at a piece of rubble absentmindedly. “Took a little work, but some of the Hecate and Apollo kids figured out how to replicate the beneficial Gorgon’s blood. I helped.”

“You helped?”

Percy shot her a look, and a patch of stubble on his chin caught the light, casting a shadow across the lower half of his face. “Yes. Why?”

She pouted. “You never told me about it.”

He shrugged and wrapped an arm around her. “Didn’t seem all that important.”

Annabeth would have protested, but truth be told she didn’t care much. Instead, she picked her way around the rest of the crumbled rock, relieved that it no longer contained actual people, until they were finally standing in front of the doors.

The interior was dark, but not in an eerie way. Weirdly enough, Annabeth felt…comfortable standing here. After everything they had gone through, it was nice to come back to someone they had defeated, someone that had seemed challenging and was now nowhere near them.

“This was our first quest,” she murmured, dusting a hand over the door handle and wrinkling her nose as her fingers came back covered in grime. She wiped them on her jeans and glanced up and over at Percy, who was watching her silently. “You, me, and Grover.”

He smiled at the mention of their friend. “Shoulda brought him, huh?”

“No,” she giggled. “Juniper would have killed us if we stole him away while the baby was still so young.”

“Afraid of a tree? Annabeth Chase, I am stunned.”

“Juniper has a nasty right hook.”

Percy rubbed his jaw and frowned at the memory, nodding. “True,” he agreed.

Annabeth looked back to the shop, squinting to try and make it out better. She could see that it had been upheaved, like people had raided the place and stolen, which was no surprise. The streetlight flickered behind them again, brightening just a bit, and something glinted gold on the counter. She chuckled. “Idiots didn’t take the drachmas.”

“What use would mortals have for those?” Percy questioned.

She shook her head and glanced back at him. “You brought me here to…what?”

He shrugged, stepping behind her and wrapping an arm tightly around her waist. His chin settled on her scalp, and when he spoke, she could feel the vibrations in her bones. “You couldn’t sleep. That usually means nightmares. Just…wanted to remind you how far we’ve come, I guess. That we’re still here. Still standing. Still together.”

His voice jumped a little and she felt it, in the way his throat bobbed, his teeth clacked, the way his fingers curled in her jacket. She frowned, about to ask him if he was all right himself, but then he continued.

“I think I wanted the reminder myself,” Percy murmured. “We were twelve. We were twelve, and I cut off Medusa’s head.”

She gave a soft huff of laughter at the disgust in his voice. He snickered and pressed a kiss to her hair, both of them still gazing at the glittering drachma on the counter of the store.

“That was the first…real time, I think, that we actually fought together. I mean, other than you beating on me in the training arena.”

“I still kick your ass.”

Percy didn’t argue, which meant that he was being serious for once. “I think that was the first time that I realized how real this all was…how it all is.”

For some reason, her heart started pounding. Butterflies-actual, goddamn, childlike butterflies, that she hadn’t felt since Percy had first asked her to move in-started dancing in her stomach, twisting around her gut, and her breathing hitched.

“Marry me?”

It was said so nonchalantly, so quietly, that she almost missed it. But then Percy’s other arm, which had been missing from her hip, slid around her, and curled in his hand was a dark box, flipped open to reveal a bright silver-she had never been into gold-band, aquamarine and cobalt gems arranged in a delicate, circular pattern, with a singular gray spinal stone nestled in the center.

She fell silent for a moment, heart fully halted and eyes wide, and Percy hesitated behind her. “I…you don’t have to say yes,” he stammered, drawing back a little. “I wasn’t even going to ask tonight, I had this restaurant idea planned for this Saturday, but I know you, and I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable in public, and then I was going to do it on the beach, but then you said you needed to go somewhere and I-”

“Percy,” she breathed.

He froze, jaw audibly clicking. “Yeah?”

She twisted to look at him, the way his face was haloed in the street light, the anxiety in his eyes, and she reached up, cupping his cheeks in her hands and pulling him down to catch his lips, working until he finally relaxed, melted against her, the hand without the ring swooping up her back to tangle in her hair and tilt her head up just a little bit more. She drew away, still holding him close, their breaths mingling, and gave a single nod.

Percy blinked. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

A grin slid across his face, giddy, and she felt her smile mimic it, cheeks aching as she backed up and let him slide the ring over her finger. It caught the light, blue and grey mingling into a bizarre rainbow, and then she tore her gaze from it to go back to kissing Percy breathless. “Thanks for not making it a boring diamond,” she laughed in between pecks.

Percy snorted and shook his head. “I didn’t even think about it,” he admitted. “You’re not a diamond kind of person.”

It certainly wasn’t a stereotypical romantic setting; in fact, the only place that could have maybe been worse romance-wise for Percy to propose would have been Tartarus itself. Or maybe that Cyclops cave in the Sea of Monsters. Arachne’s lair. Okay, there were actually quite a few places that could have been worse.

But Annabeth understood his desire to do it here, even if he clearly hadn’t planned to. It was like they had come full circle, back to the beginning, closed off the loop. In its own way, Percy proposing in the parking lot of Aunty Em’s was the most romantic way he could have proposed. Bizarre, maybe. But…oddly perfect.

“You’re smiling,” Percy noted, pulling back with an impish smile.

“And you’re a Seaweed Brain,” she retorted, smirking.

He laughed in agreement and linked their fingers, tugging her slowly back to the car. “What do you say we go home-” she shivered in delight at the word “-take a warm shower, sleep, maybe, and then go out on a double date tomorrow night with Jason and Piper and see how long it takes them to notice?”

“Piper’s mother is the goddess of love, Percy. If she doesn’t notice, she’ll get disowned.”

“You know Jason is the most oblivious person in the universe,” Percy joked.

“Second only to you.”

Percy spluttered in protest even as Annabeth climbed into the front seat, cheeks stinging from how much she was smiling. He climbed into the driver’s seat, she picked a louder playlist for them to listen to on the way back, and they pulled out from the parking lot and into the sunrise.

#is this domestic?#imma say it's domestic #percabeth #pjo #percy jackson #writing commissions #my writing #fluff #annabeth chase #im bad at tags sos

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thelion-thehound-and-thelam-blog · 7 years

Text

Title: Inversion

Series: Hannibal (TV/Novel Hybrid)

Rating: Everyone

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11994324

Pairing: Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter

Summary: Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter role reversal AU. Takes place in Hannibal TV verse after season 1 episode 5. Right now it's a oneshot, but I might write more stories in this verse later.

Serial murderer Clarice Starling, once a shining star of the FBI, is now imprisoned in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

---

In the dreary gray of the basement of the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Hannibal Lecter found himself across a startling pretty and intelligent young woman.

Death Angel Clarice Starling, the tabloids called her.

Clarice Starling, convicted murderer of 7, and killer of serial murderer Jame Gumb, known by the public as Buffalo Bill. That was only counting the ones that the FBI knew of.

Up until her incarceration, Clarice had been a brilliant agent at the FBI. Her teachers constantly scored her at the upper tier of the top 5% in all areas. Her discovery and murder of the high profile serial killer was just a cherry on top. She was the lioness to Will Graham’s hound in Jack Crawford’s pack.

It was this same lauded intellect and ability that allowed her to go uncaptured for years. Although Hannibal had long wished to interview her, his motive for his visit today was...a little more personal.

An orderly offered to take Hannibal’s coat when he entered the front office, which he politely declined. The man mentioned that the director was out at the moment, but would be back very soon and let him into the hospital director’s office.

Hannibal was left standing in the middle of the office and gave only a cursory glance at the gold plaque reading “Dr. Fredrick Chilton”.

The director’s office of the hospital was a room furnished considerably in contrast to the bleak grays and greens of the mental institution. On the wall hung many academic achievements in their ornate frames and waxy parchment, lauding the director with many degrees and accomplishments. This too, Hannibal only spent a few seconds glancing through.

The door behind him creaked. The same orderly from the front office opened the door for in a small, short man with oily hair that reminded Hannibal of a certain pigment secreted by the gall bladder.

“Are you Hannibal Lecter?”

“Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”

“I’m Dr. Fredrick Chilton, director of this hospital.”

Although the man emphasized on the doctor, in the short five minutes Hannibal spent conversing with Chilton in his tasteless office, he learned that the man had no medical degree at all.

“I can see why they sent you,” Chilton tugged his cuffs, his beady eyes narrowing at Hannibal’s tailored designer suit. “Starling rarely gets to see anyone so put together, not in this place. I’d rather not go down myself, you see.”

Hannibal only gave the man a nod. “I’m certain you have your reasons.”

“Indeed I do, she’s a terribly disturbed woman. You wouldn’t expect it, not from such a pretty face. But it’s so rare to get my hands on someone like her, alive. A female serial killer.” Chilton beamed. He reminded Hannibal of a schoolyard boy showing off a prized possession - odious. “She’s housed in the basement ward, where the worst go, under maximum security.

Chilton opened the door to his office, leading Hannibal down the hall to where they would take an elevator down to the lower level, his chatter never stopping as he spoke of all of his cases in the hospital basement.

Hannibal had little interest in Chilton’s collection quest of the vile and sick. Upon exiting the office, his fingers skillfully picked a business card off of the large wooden desk and whisked it into his suit pocket in one fluid motion; Chilton none the wiser.

---

The heavy steel of the gates lowered, making a clattering noise upon contact with the cement floor. Hannibal turned to face Chilton as they reached the basement cells that held the hospital’s more infamous inmates. “Thank you Dr. Chilton. However, I believe it would be best if I faced Miss Starling by myself.”

Chilton stiffened for a moment, before amicably holding out his hand. “You should have told me earlier, I would have sent you with an orderly.”

Hannibal knew, much to his distaste, that the slick shine of the man’s hand was from lanolin. He grasped it for a moment, holding it only as long as society dictated acceptable.

The moment Chilton turned around, Hannibal unfurled his handkerchief from inside his jacket, wiping off the oil in a practiced motion. He then carefully folded the handkerchief and placed it in his pocket opposite to Chilton’s business card.

At the door to the basement stood a different orderly and a prison guard. A nametag with Eric printed on it, gleamed in the fluorescent light of the ceiling lamps of the orderly’s work uniform. Chilton had sent a message ahead of time, thankfully, and Eric was waiting to let Hannibal in.

“Walk straight in the middle.” Eric instructed, his voice reedy in the cool air. He led Hannibal down the hall, the prison guard bringing up the rear. The basement’s ambient atmosphere, contributed partially by the lights within the cells, cast a dim blue against the cement and glass. “They’ll shout and scream as you walk by, it’s nothing personal. The cell you’re looking for is at the end, to the left. Don’t hand her any pens, she has her own. Make sure any paper you hand her is free of any metal. Don’t go near the glass, don’t touch the glass, or we will have to escort you out of here by force. Do you think you’ll need a chair?”

Hannibal appreciated the man’s courtesy and affirmed that he, indeed, would require a chair. Eric walked to one of the lockers at the end and pulled out a folding chair.

As he took a seat, Hannibal observed Clarice in her cell. She kept her back turned to him as she occupied herself with a magazine, seemingly unaware of his arrival. Books, periodicals, and newspapers were piled on the edge of the desk bolted to the wall, as well as the head of the sleeping cot. Mail was scattered to the corner, an afterthought.

The thick partition of solid glass that separated the woman from Hannibal reminded him of a specimen box for insects. Clarice’s fiery hair, incapable of being dulled by the atmosphere of the prison, shimmered like the vibrant color of butterfly scales.

He sat there, for a moment, observing her. When it became clear that Clarice had no intention of acknowledging his arrival, he spoke up. It was quieter at this side of the ward, carrying his words clearly.

“Hello Clarice Starling, I am Doctor Hannibal Lecter, may I speak with you?”

The woman smoothly closed the magazine in her hand and set it down, next to the letters and books. With a practiced twist, she turned to face him, her arms and legs crossing. Clarice Starling sat as if she were in her office at Quantico instead of in a tiny harshly lit supermax unit.

“Hello. Dr. Lecter.” There was a slight ghost of Clarice’s southern accent in those words, dripping a barely concealed amusement in the way she spoke his name. Her stare seemed to weigh him from the other side of the glass, glinting with a great intellect. “Are you here to poke around my head like everyone else?”

“Only if you wish me to, Clarice Starling.” Hannibal kept their gazes locked, speaking her name softly.

Clarice tilted her head.

“If you're not here to deconstruct me, then what are you here for?”

“My own interests and personal research. I read your paper in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Clarice, it is brilliantly written.”

A snort. Clarice leaned back, her hand brushing her vibrant hair back casually. “I’m amazed, Doctor. Exactly how much research have you done on me already?”

“Not much. I’d very much prefer to speak with the genuine person."

Silence. Then Clarice began to tap her fingers, as if thinking. “Personal is it? Dr. Lecter, what reason do I have for answering any of your questions?”

This time, Hannibal graced Clarice with a small curve of his mouth. “If you so happen to wish for a fairer method, perhaps we could do a quid pro quo, Clarice?”

The silence returned, and they sat in mutual solitude. Clarice pondered for a moment, her tapping resuming. Next to her, lay the last month’s copy of Vogue.

“You tell me something and I tell you something. But Doctor, what do you have to offer me?”

There it was. Hannibal kept his eye contact with Clarice and spoke in a measured tone.

“I may be able to bring in Will Graham for a visit, Clarice.”

Clarice pursed her lips, as if she found the idea unappealing.

“And how would you be able to do just that, Dr. Hannibal Lecter?”

“He is my patient, unofficially. Some more recent cases have...upset him. I thought, since he has mentioned you before, that it might help him to center himself to see you.”

Clarice leaned back again, staring at her fingers. She seemed to ponder the offer for a moment.

“Dr. Lecter. Are you aware that the man who put me here was Will Graham? What makes you think that I would have any motive to help him?”

“Because, Clarice, you were the one who surrendered yourself to him.”

Clarice exhaled through her nose and wrapped her arms around herself. That was the one detail that both she and Will had left out during her surrender, left out during all of the court trials. “How is Will?”

Pleased, the curve once again graced Hannibal’s thin lips.

“Not in the best shape, unfortunately. Crawford has chosen to involve him once more in his quest for righteous justice.”

Clarice furrowed her brows. Her last face-to-face talk with Will had been after her prosecution. At that time, Will told her that he chose to formally retire from fieldwork, wishing to focus on teaching at the academy. Did Jack attempt to replace her spot as Will’s anchor with this man in front of her?

How quickly does faith slip away, how weak is the material that trust is made of. Gratitude, as Crawford liked to say, had a short half life.

“I see. Your turn.”

“Why do you kill, Clarice?”

Silence. Then the tentative shift of Clarice’s body as she straightened her posture. “Dr. Lecter, I cannot fathom why you would ask that question.”

“Why do you think I wouldn’t?”

“I am sure my motives have been thoroughly examined and analyzed by the press and scholarly journals. Journals, I am quite sure, that you read.”

“They only talk of simple minded speculation. I doubt, Clarice, that your reasons are as banal as ‘man hating’.”

“What makes you think I don’t hate men?”

“You certainly don’t hate Will. You tolerate Jack Crawford.”

Silence again.

“You’re right. I don’t.” Clarice laced her fingers together. “I do it to silence the screams.”

“What screams, Clarice?”

“The lambs.”

“Why lambs?”

“What case is Will working on right now?”

“He just finished with the Angelmaker. Jack has, for once, allowed him a moment of peace before plunging him head first into another gruesome case.”

“The lambs are from my childhood. My mother sent me to live with my aunt whose husband owned a slaughter barn. Do you think you could tell Will to stop, Dr. Lecter?”

“I believe Crawford already offered him that option. He refused.”

“That-” Clarice stopped herself, her laced hands clenching in anger, as if offering prayer. She grasped that anger, tamping it down with great willpower and used its edge to clear her mind. “I apologize for that, Doctor. Your question?”

“Why did your mother send you to live with your aunt?”

“My father died and there was too many mouths to feed. There’s only so much you can do on a high school education. What was the first case Crawford dragged Will into?”

“A missing girls case. He believed they were being murdered, but lacked evidence.”

“And so he sought out Will Graham, thinking he could find the murderer even with the lack of evidence. How did that turn out?”

“Badly.”

There was a pause - one final time - as their conversation reached its end. Without looking away, never looking away, Hannibal asked one more question.

“What, Clarice, was the memory that led to the screaming of the lambs?”

Like a thin stream, Clarice’s voice quietly slid through the glass partition, through the small holes in the barrier.

Any person other than Hannibal would have had to struggle to hear.

“When I came to the farm, I was happy. I’d always loved animals and my aunt’s family treated me well.”

“You were happy, Clarice. Until you learned they fed out animals for slaughter.”

“Yes. The farm mainly fed out slaughter horses, although they did other animals depending on the season. All of the horses on the farm were either sick or lame. I hadn’t realized it at the time.

“I became attached to a blind mare. None of the slaughter horses on the barn had names. They don’t tell you when you’re feeding them out, so I called her Hannah.”

“What happened to the horse, Clarice?”

“We ran away. It was summer, we could sleep out.”

“Did you lead her or ride her?”

“A little of both. I had to guide her to a fence for me to climb on to ride her. We rode out to a livery stable outside of town. For 20$ a week, I could keep Hannah in the corral. There was enough on me to pay for it but the owner’s wife called the sheriff on me.”

“What happened after?”

“My aunt decided to let me go. They sent me to a Lutheran orphanage after.”

“Did they slaughter Hannah?”

“No, she went with me. The orphanage was on a farm, they let her plow the garden.”

“Why did you run away with the horse?”

“They were going to kill her.”

“Did you know when?”

“No, but she was getting fat.”

“At what time did you set off with Hannah?”

“Early, it was still dark.”

“Something woke you.”

“Screaming. The walls on the farm were pretty bad at keeping sound out and I woke to screaming in the dark. They were slaughtering the spring lambs.”

“And this prompted you to run away.” He spoke it as if it were a fact and not a presumption. It irked her, but Clarice found herself unable to rebut his statement.

“Yes.”

“Yet you still hear them. Are they in your dreams, Clarice? Or do you hear them even when you are awake?”

“Dreams, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Sometimes I hear them even after I wake up, even though they couldn’t possibly be real.”

“And does killing stop these screams?”

“Depends. If it’s just killing, no. They stop when I save someone.”

“And then you’re free, for a time. But later you find that you must do it again, to make them stop.”

“Yes.”

Hannibal leaned back, his face still with calm and at peace. Clarice, given time to ponder, wondered what this man wanted. He held no notepad, nor did he ever break eye contact with her. He seemed too proper to wear a wire and Clarice could not see anything on him that would suggest such an instrument. He didn’t even seem to carry a briefcase.

“Thank you, Clarice.” There was warmth in the thank you that had not been present in their earlier conversation. A good-humored crinkle appeared at the edge of his eyes. A genuine smile. “I will be sure to bring Will next time.”

Clarice watched from her side of the glass. Watched as Hannibal stood and gestured to Eric. Watched, as he gave her one last look as the guard led him away. Watched long after the doctor’s silhouette vanished from the hellish basement ward of the Baltimore’s Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

#inversion AU #Clarice Starling #Hannibal Lecter #Oneshot #role-reversal #Will Graham (Mentioned)#fan fiction #WEH MY INTERNET IS FINALLY BACK I CAN POST THIS #sorry im a bit awkward w dialogue

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docsamurai · 7 years

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Humans are weird: The training grounds

*Quick note before I start: This is the 5th installment in a series I’ve called the Lost Colonies which is largely about human society adapting to the strange environments of other worlds. You can read the other installments here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this series, but with my new work schedule I had to bring it to a close. If you’ve enjoyed this story follow me on here for my other writings. Thanks again to everyone who has reblogged, liked, replied, DMed, or otherwise shown their appreciation for this series. It means a lot to me that people enjoyed it and the love you’ve all shown me has really helped keep me going for these last few months.*

Alarms blared as Kiara ran through the maze of corridors. “SHITSHITSHIT! Where the FUCK is she?” Boots clanging off the steel floors nearby told her that troops were closing in. Kiara took a deep breath and focused on the noises around her and managed to pick out gunshots echoing down the hall to her right. Turning towards the shots she picked up speed and tore down the hallway. The hot, dry air stung her lungs as she fought to push herself even faster but still the boots closed in. Finally Kiara rounded another corner and almost ran straight into Jeanne.

Jeanne opened her mouth to say something and then she looked over Kiara’s shoulder and instead pinned her to the wall of the corridor. “Give me a second.” Jeanne grunted as she stuck her sidearm out around the corner and fired blindly down the corridor Kiara had just come from. There was the sound of a body hitting the ground and the boots screeched to a halt followed by the electrical hum of an energy barricade. A second later the air was filled with gunshots as the troops opened fire in their direction. Jeanne crouched to lower her profile and kept her back pressed to the wall and gestured for Kiara to follow suit. “So this is turning out more fun than I thought it’d be.” Jeanne yelled over the roar of the gunfire.

Kiara caught her breath as she huddled next to her friend. “FUN?!” Jeanne chuckled “Yeah, I’ve been waiting for these jackasses to do something worth a fight.” Kiara’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “YOU PUNCHED THEIR ENVOY!” Jeanne shrugged and reloaded. “Hold that thought.” Jeanne pulled a fist sized cylinder from her backpack, hit the trigger and threw it down the hallway. The cylinder didn’t even have time to hit the ground before it scanned the hallway, picked the targets and sent a hundred inch long missiles speeding around the energy barricade and into the troopers. Jeanne got up from the floor and helped Kiara to her feet. Jeanne adjusted her gear and handed Kiara a sidearm.

“We should get going. I’ve already signaled for extraction, we just need to make it to the North wall.” “Jeanne there is no ‘North’ here. The magnetic fields are chaotic because of the unstable core. It’s the reason this whole place is a fucking desert!” Jeanne stopped in her tracks. “Shit...” Suddenly bulkheads slammed shut cutting them off in the middle of the corridor. “OK, that could have gone better.” Kiara slumped against the wall. “I can’t fucking believe you sometimes.” Jeanne pulled a cigarette out of a case in her pocket, lit up and took a long drag. “Yeah, I fucked this one up. Sorry. I’ve got a plan though.”

Jeanne got to work setting up a series of devices around their section of the corridor and Kiara sighed. “It’s not entirely your fault. I wasn’t exactly trying too hard with this group.” Jeanne chuckled “I would have loved to have seen the Commander’s face when you told her that you were married to one of those ‘filthy furballs’.” Kiara smiled. “Yeah, I’m really not sure why the galactic council even wanted to try and reintegrate a faction of the EarthGov military that was still active after all this time.” Jeanne shrugged again and stubbed out her cigarette. “Gotta admit it’s been fun though. We haven’t done anything like this in a long time.”

Kiara shifted her weight as Jeanne leaned against the wall next to her. “Can’t help it really. You’re always off on deployment terraforming dangerous worlds and I’ve spent the better part of 20 sols jumping all over the galaxy. I know I should make more time for my friends.” Jeanne cocked an eyebrow at Kiara “Just friends? You don’t need to make more time for Mr Williams-Venn too?” Kiara shifted again. “It’s not like that. Turic cultures... They don’t exactly-” The sound of the bulkhead creaking open cut Kiara off.

Jeanne sprung up from the wall and hit an activation switch on her wrist, a powerful energy field sprung up in all directions shielding the pair from attack. The bulkhead finally retracted into the ceiling revealing several dozen soldiers outfitted in advanced armor with their weapons trained squarely on Jeanne. Jeanne held up a voice amplifier and yelled down the hall. “I INVOKE ARTICLE 317 OF MIL-SEC CODE AND DEMAND TRIAL BY SINGLE COMBAT!” The soldiers paused and looked at each other before one shouted back. “NAME AND RANK?” Jeanne squared her shoulders and bellowed back “STAFF SEARGENT JEANNE JETT. I AM CHALLENGING AS RANKING OFFICER FOR MY DEPLOYMENT GROUP FOR SAFE PASSAGE IN RETREAT OFFWORLD.”

Kiara held her breath as the soldiers were again silent before they finally shouted back their agreement to Jeanne’s terms. As the soldiers lowered their weapons and approached the shield Kiara whispered to Jeanne “Are you sure about this?” to which Jeanne only replied with her trademarked cocky grin and a wink. Jeanne lowered the shield and the soldiers parted to escort the pair out of the corridors. Despite the fact that there weren’t any identifiable markings and the electromagnetic fields scrambled most communications the soldiers led them through the maze of corridors with ease. Finally they were let out into the harsh blue light of the training yard.

This military outpost had been situated on a rocky, mostly barren world in long orbit around a dying blue supergiant. “Dying” was a relative term as it still had thousands, if not millions of sols before it finally collapsed and in the meantime the incredible heat of the star kept the base within habitable conditions even at such a distance. EarthGov had founded this outpost as a training site centuries earlier and the commander of the outpost had been so fanatical in his devotion to EarthGov that even after they had fallen he continued to train new generations of recruits until his eventual death. From what Kiara could tell, each successive commander had treated the outpost like their own personal fiefdom with each in turn making the decision to purposefully remain hidden from the rest of the galaxy.

The current commander Fortrix stood on a raised platform above the training grounds listening to one of her lieutenants. “So you wish to fight for your freedom? So be it, you’ll face me.” Commander Fortrix stepped down from the platform pulling her jacket and shirt off. At over 2 meters tall and nearly 120 KG the commander looked like wall of solid muscle. Fortrix stood in the harsh blue light, muscles rippling across her massive frame as she stretched and prepared for the fight. Jeanne followed suit, dropping her backpack and dozens of hidden weapons before peeling off her sweat drenched shirt and taking her place in the ceremonial fighting circle that had been hastily scratched into the dirt by the eager soldiers.

Jeanne and Fortrix locked stares and closed to the center of the circle where the height difference became readily apparent with Jeanne standing a full 30cm shorter than her opponent. Fortrix and Jeanne grasped each other’s forearms and slapped a closed fist to their bare chests to sign the verbal contract between the soldiers and they backed away to their respective sides of the ring. The lieutenant blew a horn and Fortrix lunged towards Jeanne. Kiara could barely follow the action as Jeanne pivoted, tried to drive a fist into Fortrix’s temple but Fortrix feinted at the last second and swept Jeanne’s legs out from under her dropping her to the ground. Jeanne rolled to the side avoiding Fortrix’s elbow as she smashed it into the dirt inches from her head and Jeanne countered by kicking off the ground and flipping into the air to drive a knee into Fortrix’s chest.

The soldier’s jeered at Jeanne scoring the first blow but cheered as Fortrix grabbed the knee and threw Jeanne clear to the other side of the ring. Jeanne twisted in midair and landed lightly on her feet and bolted back to the other side of the ring at a speed Kiara had never seen. Fortrix had just gotten back to her feet when Jeanne barreled into her heel first driving all of her momentum into the side of the commander’s knee. Fortrix howled in pain and crumpled to the ground as Jeanne spun using the momentum to her advantage and brought her fist around, slamming it into Fortrix’s temple knocking her senseless. The soldier’s fell silent as just that quickly the fight was over. Jeanne stood in the ring panting heavily as the sweat and blood streamed down her skin. Jeanne looked at Kiara and pointed to her voice amplifier which Kiara quickly tossed to her.

“LISTEN UP SHITLORDS! I HAVE DEFEATED YOUR COMMANDER IN SINGLE COMBAT! BY ARTICLE 317 OF MIL-SEC CODE YOU ARE NOW BOUND TO LET US RETURN TO OUR SHIP!” Kiara groaned to herself and wondered if Jeanne really had to call them “shitlords”. True to their word though, the crowd parted to allow Kiara and Jeanne to collect their equipment and leave as Fortrix was ushered off the field on a stretcher. The main door to the training ground slammed shut behind them and they heard a heavy bolt being slid in place. Diplomatically, this whole trip had been a disaster, but at least they had left alive.

Hours later Kiara was writing up her report back on the jumpship when Jeanne came to her quarters grinning and offering a bottle of Andarian wine. “Hey there. We never got to finish our conversation.” Kiara grabbed some glasses and within a few minutes the two of them were finally managing to relax for the first time in days. “I wasn’t joking earlier. What’s going on with you and Kit’cha?” Kiara sighed. “It’s a Turic thing. They don’t really do marriage the same way as humans. For them it’s weird to have emotional attachment to their mates. Kit’cha makes the effort and I appreciate it, but even after all this time it’s still weird for him so I don’t press it too much. There’s also sex...” Jeanne cocked an eyebrow “Oh?” “Human and Turic biology don’t exactly... mesh... that well. We’ve come to an agreement that if we can find another mate for ‘physical affection’ as he calls it, that as long as they’re OK with being part of this whole mess that neither of us have a problem with that.”

Jeanne coughed and gulped down her wine, her face rapidly turning a shade of crimson that Kiara had never seen on her. “So uh... have you uh... found any, umm, anyone to-” Jeanne trailed off. Kiara, grinning from ear to ear replied “Staff Sergeant Jett, are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?” Jeanne fumbled with her glass and mumbled “I mean, if you’re into that sort-” Jeanne wasn’t able to finish her sentence as Kiara was already kissing her, pressing both of their bodies into the couch. Maybe this mission hadn’t been a total disaster.

#space australia #space orcs #HUMANS ARE WEIRD #The Lost Colonies

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nautilusopus · 7 years

Text

The Number I

Chapter 1: A Very Normal Opening Chapter For This Post-Series Fluff Piece

Hooooooooooooooooooly fuck this thing's live now. This is easily the stupidest thing I've ever written. It's also the first thing I've ever technically published. Thank you so much to @cateringisalie, @fury-brand, and @limbostratus for helping me proofread and copyedit this magnificent piece of self-indulgent, petty, overcomplicated garbage for the world to see.

And to think this thing spawned from a joke about watching someone take a piss.

Four years after meteor-fall and Cloud Strife still isn't himself. The thing that haunts him comes always at the same time... and when it does, on a distant far-off world, a needle moves. Twisty AU. Warnings for future chapters.

At precisely 6:09 am, Cloud Strife heard a creak outside his window, sighed, and quietly reached for the hunting knife under his pillow.

He had already been up at that point, partially for a quick workout -- it didn't really do much for his actual physique due to the enhancements, but it had been a habit for so long it felt wrong not to. There was a small part of him that still felt a small thrill of satisfaction at his own ability to put himself through a morning routine that would have had most professional athletes red-faced and exhausted and not even feel winded.

He carefully crept towards the window, staying low to the ground, and crouched underneath it. If they were burglars, they were certainly persistent. Any thief with half a brain would have moved onto another building by now, after he had noticed them the first eight times. Salvagers didn't come in this far from the ruins of Midgar. And it should have been obvious, given the shabby look of nearly everything in Edge, that he didn't have anything worth stealing, save perhaps his bike, which wasn't even upstairs anyway. Yet nearly every morning at the same time, there they were. Figures, outside his window, in the corner of his eye. Watching, until the minute it was clear he knew they were there -- and, he somehow knew, trying to get in.

He hadn't brought it up to Tifa, let alone anyone else. They'd have thought he was mad, which was an option he hadn't entirely ruled out himself -- they never left any scent for him to follow, and he wasn't really sure how they had gotten onto the roof anyway. The hallucinations were one of the few things he had managed to leave behind with that mess four years ago, and what sort of hallucinations woke you up eight days in a row at the same time?

Barret would probably suggest a shrink again, and Cloud would brush him off and say he was fine, really, and Barret would just shake his head and give him a look and mutter under his breath. Tifa might actually believe him, but the thought of that appealed to Cloud even less. She did enough worrying about him as it was. And about the bar, and the kids that passed through it, and who knew what else she hadn't told him about. Tifa needed good news.

So, here he was, crouched under the window next to the tire he'd been using as a chair for months on end, ready to stab a complete stranger that for all he knew maybe just really really wanted food. There was a bar and grill one floor down, after all.

He sat in silence for what must have been two minutes. A quiet tapping started against the wood -- quiet at first, and slowly, then louder and more insistent. It grew in volume until a hundred fingers must have been drumming against the window, and a rushing sound began building behind it, until it felt as though the noise was coming from every wall. Something moved through it all.

Cloud jumped up from under the windowsill and yanked the window open, brandishing the knife at the rain.

"...fuck's sake..." he muttered, sitting down on the chair his family had insisted he replace his tire with, dropping the knife on the table. Upon further reflection, he got back up and pulled the screen down, the water already starting to spray on the papers on his desk.

He turned his chair back to the desk and away from the window. If he didn’t look directly at it, then nothing would be there, and there would be nothing to worry about. And truth be told, he was worried that if he looked at them, they’d somehow be able to see him. Today was a good day -- he had woken up and gotten out of bed knowing exactly what he was doing and why. No need to acknowledge anything to the contrary.

He thumbed through the papers absently. Most of them were bills -- not for him this time, thankfully. Invoices he had been meaning to send out to clients, largely for repair work, or delivery. A couple were accounts, but the numbers part of it all never made much sense to him, so he often had to drag in someone that had actually finished their primary education to help him. Usually that was Reeve, but Reeve's time was extremely limited these days now that the rebuilding effort had moved beyond literal construction of roads and buildings and was now focused on political infrastructure, and Cloud always felt a bit guilty about calling him over for the sake of paperwork, and therefore never brought it up. The end result was a large pile of stressful charts that he could never motivate himself to do alone.

A noise from the end of the hall snapped him out of his intense focus on absolutely nothing constructive, and he hastily flicked the water off an account involving a leaking roof and got up, stashing the hunting knife back under his pillow. Tifa was awake.

Cloud crept downstairs, careful not to wake whoever was asleep on the couch in the back. He'd since lost track of who was here this week. Maybe Yuffie? He probably should have written it down somewhere.

"You're up early," he commented as Tifa came downstairs. Cloud was usually up by 7 (they had talked him down from 4 am, reminding him that most of society didn't run on military time and the extra sleep would do him some good), but Tifa usually slept in until 10 in preparation for the late shifts the bar usually offered.

"The storm woke me up," she said, rummaging through the fridge for eggs. "Maybe I should start a garden, with all this rain.” She paused, staring out the window for a moment. “Wouldn't have to bother taking care of it much." She took a can of corned beef hash from the cupboard and set about dumping the mixture into a frying pan.

Cloud watched her intently. He was banned from the kitchen after the incident with the dishwasher. "It's nice," he said quietly. Tifa looked faintly uncomfortable and refocused her efforts on chopping mushrooms, so he looked away.

The streets would likely be empty today. Cloud was one of the few people in the city that owned a vehicle, by dint of him building it himself, and nobody wanted to walk in the rain. Tifa wasn't the only one it set on edge these days.

"...Gonna be across town today. Broken roof," he continued. "Was gonna save it for tomorrow, but they'll probably want that finished now."

"You should visit Yuffie while you're out," she replied, grateful for the change in subject. "She stole from the till last time she was here, and she knows I'd probably break her fingers. She'd listen to you."

He shrugged. "Headed into the ruins today, too. Maybe she'll turn up. Don't think she's left for home yet."

Tifa looked up from the pan on top of the stove, which was now giving off the tantalising scent of grilled mushrooms. "You're fixing a roof in the ruins?" she asked, doing her best not to sound as though she thought he was wasting his time.

He seemed to notice anyway, and shook his head, looking a bit embarrassed. "No. Was thinking, it's been a while since anyone's checked on... things, out there."

A look of comprehension settled on her face, and she looked up from the pan at him. "D'you want me to come with you?"

He scratched his neck nervously. "If you like. You didn't really know him. Wouldn't you be bored?"

"No."

Cloud looked at her appraisingly.

"...It's something that matters to you. And I figured you'd need someone with you anyway," she said, shrugging. "Johnny comes in at five today anyway. We'll switch off and I'll meet you there." She dumped half the mixture in the pan into a bowl and set it in front of Cloud, and he relented.

They ate mostly in silence, with Tifa intermittently speaking to him about the bar, or the relief effort, or how he really should remember to lock the back door more often, but he didn't mind it much. He appreciated the company, and it was nice to spend time with someone that realised you couldn't really have much to say. Mornings made it more difficult. At the very least, his family said he'd been getting much better, and it helped to hear speech.

Eventually he got up and pulled on his boots. "You'll be here later tonight, for the dinner rush?" asked Tifa.

He nodded, so she could see. "See you later tonight," he confirmed, and turned to leave, pulling on his jacket from the hook on the wall nearby and opening the door to the now slightly less street empty.

Tifa dashed forward and quickly slammed the door shut again, causing him to jump. "Wait!" She produced a pair of tinted sunglasses he had left on the counter the night before. "Don't forget."

Cloud grimaced and put them on. He would look a bit odd, he supposed, wearing sunglasses in the rain, but that was the least of his problems. "Right. Sorry. Later tonight."

Tifa moved away from the door and went back upstairs, probably to resume sleeping. Cloud left Seventh Heaven and headed around out back for his bike and the crate of supplies he kept next to it.

He stuffed the crate awkwardly into the harness on his back (it wasn't really meant for things that weren't swords, but it would hold well enough for a few short trips through even roads), and dug his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and cupping it under his body to shield it from the rain, scrolling through the tiny two inch calendar the screen offered. Roof, moved up to today. That first.

The drive over helped wake him up a bit more -- weather was another thing that helped, he had noticed. Outside stimulus that wasn't overwhelming, the way sound and light and scent could be, and the act of driving gave him something familiar to focus on.

He should have been focusing on it, anyway. After the first two days, he had started keeping track of it. 6:09 am, every day, without fail. It seemed like the sort of thing a human would do -- whatever they were up to, it was planned and consistently executed. But they didn’t have any scent. Everything had a scent. Even water, if you could believe it. Maybe they were hallucinations after all. He considered sleeping outside, and seeing if he could get a glimpse of them as they approached the building. The idea didn’t appeal to him much, though. If he was outside, they would know he was there, and see him, and…

He couldn’t think of anything worse than having them see him, but that only made him feel worse.

A loud honk cut off his train of thought, and he swerved quickly to avoid an oncoming truck. You’re still thinking about it, he chided himself. That’s not important. Your job is.

His hair was plastered to his face from the wind and the rain by the time he pulled off the overpass. He didn't speak much to the first clients -- out of pragmatism, not inability -- and got straight to work after a few quick questions. An out-of-place pipe rather than an actual hole in the roof, fortunately, that was welded back into place with fire in about an hour. The couple had been a bit suspicious as to how he got onto the roof of a five storey building that quickly, but then he was a young man in his prime who did this for a living.

By this point the rain had let up a bit, and he checked his phone again in the lobby of their flat. Dislodged pipe, check. Next... of course, that sink. It had been a week already, hadn’t it?

He checked the time and saw he had about an hour left to get there, so he made a quick run to the nearest store, consulting another list on his phone that he'd saved as a memo by now: bread; tomatoes; some sort of greens he couldn't pronounce the name of; dish soap; and two rolls, the kind with berries baked into them. He awkwardly shoved the bag over his shoulder to hold it in place during the trip, and made his way back into the city again.

He had barely knocked on the door when it flew open and he was hurriedly pulled inside. "You look like a drowned cat. Didn't I tell you last time to get a hat or something?" said the old woman currently somehow leading him into the kitchen by his sleeve. Ms. Suk. She was a regular of his. He opened his mouth to answer and she cut him off again. "Never mind that. Get yourself situated, I've got a lot more work for you today than I planned."

He unpacked the groceries and sat down at the table, not removing his jacket. She simply shook her head and busied herself with the tea kettle. "How's that nice young lady doing? Tessa?"

"Tifa," he said. "We hired some extra hands. Too busy for just the three of us anymore." He watched her work, suppressing a pang of guilt.

"Mm. About time, too. It's a shame about Shinra, really, she could have been quite successful working for the president, all his fancy dinners and such. She's got the talent to. Don't get up," she warned, as he moved his leg slightly in preparation to help her with one of the lower cupboards, "I'll not have you tiring yourself out this early."

A few minutes later, and after much uncomfortable staring at the tablecloth on his part, she had tea set out for the both of them, and a cheese sandwich for Cloud, with the rolls set off to the side. Cloud chewed in silence for another few minutes.

"My sink," she began, regarding him shrewdly over her teacup, "has not been draining properly since the day before yesterday. I suspect I must have accidentally dropped some silverware down it. I'm sure you're aware of how clumsy I can be. Bad joints, you know."

Cloud nodded. It seemed like a fork and bits of cloth lodged itself in the drain every week at about the same time, for about two months now.

"It's very fortunate you're here, I can never make heads or tails of any of this myself," she continued. "You can take off your glasses, you know. I don't know why you'd bother in this weather."

Cloud finished his sandwich and started on his roll. "Medical condition," he said. That part wasn't entirely a lie. "Too much light gives me headaches."

"Mm. Well, it's a good thing it's raining out then, isn't it?" she said brusquely. "When you're finished, we can get started."

It didn't take long to get the dishes cleared away, and after setting then by the sink, he had the u-bend unscrewed, this time removing a handful of yarn. He reassembled the pipe and showed it to her.

"Well, how about that," she said offhandedly, and he set about washing their dishes while she fiddled with the portable radio in the background. She was unable to get it to produce anything other than heavy static and distorted, indistinct voices neither of them could make out properly.

"Damn weather," muttered Ms. Suk, and switched it back off. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to talk to each other, won't we?" She led him upstairs and gestured to several boxes.

"I need all of this moved downstairs and out of the way. It's mostly things my son sent me from Kalm four years ago to help us get by, but it doesn't do me much good these days, and if I trip over them one more time in the dark I'm going to disown him." She brought out a mug of water and set it on a nearby table for him. "Off you go. I'll let you know what needs keeping."

In the next hour he'd come to regret the lack of a functioning radio. She spoke frequently of her own family in between sorting through dusty boxes of blankets and unused china, of how her son had gone to work for Shinra and had set aside some money for her to live, about how much nicer things had been since she had come to Midgar from western Wutai, about her sister who hadn't gotten out of the city in time, but when the conversation turned to him he found himself drawing a blank. He mostly tried to redirect it about his family as well -- Barret, coming by with Marlene to visit every other week, Nanaki's letters (he wasn't entirely sure how he was writing them), Cid visiting every now and then to remark on his bike or other things he'd built. Ms. Suk continued to probe elsewhere.

"What about you, dear? Where are you from?" she asked.

"...Nibel," he said, after a pause. She nodded thoughtfully.

"Thought you had a bit of an accent, but I couldn't quite place it. Your Standard's quite good." He took a sip of the water and unpacked another box that only looked a few years old compared to everything else. Clothes, mostly, with some photographs he set aside for an end table downstairs. "You don't see many people around from that region. Was it nice there?"

"Cold, mostly." Ha. "The weather's nicer down here."

"I'd imagine so. Your parents, were they natives?"

"I --" Something tore through him, like putting weight on a broken leg, and it opened its mouth to speak. He tore himself away from the daze in his head back to the dimly lit room and the sound of rain, suppressing a wince. "Yeah. Yeah, they were."

"Do you speak much of the language yourself?" she asked. He took deep, slow breaths, not caring for the moment about the mess of old scents that did nothing to help him orient himself. "You're a bit young to, I'd think, but if they knew some perhaps you picked it up?"

"A bit. Just phrases. Suffixes. Stuff that gets mixed in." God, how he missed that radio.

"You've got a good ear, then. Most boys your age don't even know there are other languages. I suppose they speak it up there a bit more. Pah! They did a lot of good for the world, but if there's one thing I begrudge Shinra for, I suppose it's all that culture that got washed away. Nobody's bothered to remember. When I was a girl, we used to... did you want to take off your jacket?" she suddenly interjected. "You look like you're about to have a heat stroke."

It was true. The heat of the house, combined with the work, his own body temperature, and the stress (god, the stress) had sweat running down his face. He hesitated for a moment, braced himself for the inevitable, then obliged. If it'd keep her on the subject of Wutai, maybe his head would stop pounding.

Instead she fixed her eyes on the melted-looking scar running up his left arm and disappearing into his sleeve. "Ah. Goodness, you're certainly lucky, aren't you? Or perhaps very unlucky, as it were. How old are you?" she asked, scrutinising him more carefully.

"Nibel was hit pretty hard. That's why I came to live here, after it was over." Another lie, covering up more questions he couldn't answer.

She nodded curtly. "Well, we're happy to have you, dear," she said. He felt the pit of guilt in his stomach twist a bit tighter, but at least it had the intended effect, and she switched the topic to the rebuilding effort and kept it there for the next half hour.

By the time they were finished, he had a trash bag he dumped out the back, a full bin for recycling, and a pile of old clothes. Ms. Suk scooped the clothes into an empty bag and pushed it into his arms.

He stared at it blankly for a moment. "...Should I put them in the wash?"

She "hmphed" amusedly. "Those? Of course not. What am I going to do, wear them? At my age? Something like that, it'd be awful on my figure. I'd look like porridge someone poured into a sock, if they fit at all. They're yours now."

Cloud blinked. "I can't take these," he objected.

"Why not? They look about your size, and you could do with something decent to wear that isn't worn thin. Makes you look like a hoodlum, and we both know you're certainly not too good for anything I could offer you, don't we?" she said pointedly. "Go, get them out of my sight. They're only taking up space. And here, for your trouble," she added, pressing a wad of gil into his hand. He was certain it was quite a bit more than what he had asked for. She handed him the pocket radio, too. "Something else for you to fix. It's obviously broken."

Cloud nodded numbly, struggling to come up with something to say that wouldn't sound as inadequate as "thanks".

After another quick exchange and her thrusting another package into his hands "for the road", this one containing some sort of spicy baked egg and cabbage mixture that he could never remember the name of, and he was hustled out the door into the now sunny street again, until she found something creative to stuff down her drain next week.

“Get a hat!” she yelled after him.

He flipped open his phone again, wondering if he should perhaps get a proper watch. A bit past noon, with five hours to kill. He could head out to the ruins early and see if there was anything worth salvaging, but it'd be more efficient if he just picked Tifa up himself. And besides that, it'd be easier to get where he was going without carrying a box full of scrap metal and screwdrivers and a bag of clothes all day.

There was a small crowd of patrons in the bar by the time he got back. He came in through the back, set down the crate and the clothes, put his food in the fridge, and made his way towards the front and slipped in behind the bar and began washing the dust off his hands.

"You're back early," she said over her shoulder, fetching him an apron.

"The roof thing took less time than I thought," he explained. "Tables or bar?"

"Bar. I need to help out in the kitchen," she said, and slipped into the back without another word as he set about making drinks for the patrons.

As it turned out, there wasn't much to do either way. Once the initial crowd cleared out, business slowed to a trickle, and Cloud found himself leaning against the counter with his back to the door, chewing at a hangnail on his thumb.

Tifa reemerged from the kitchen and crossed her arms. "That's bad form. What if someone walked in?"

"Nobody's gonna walk in."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. There aren't any cars coming, and the sidewalks are empty for at least a block both ways."

Tifa uncrossed her arms and sat down. The vibrations-off-the-sidewalk thing still freaked her out a bit, he suspected, but also Cloud really wanted to win his petty argument for not doing anything.

"I brought food."

"I saw. Kimchijeon?"

"Sorry?"

"The food."

"Oh." He scratched his neck. "Got some clothes, too. Dunno how well they'll fit. The shirts'll be nice, at least. See if there's anything that'll fit you in there."

"Oh!" She smiled. Most of her clothes doubled as work clothes these days and were worn threadbare much like his own, and she'd been putting off buying anything nice for herself for months. "I'll make something for you to bring over next time."

"That'd be nice."

He stood in silence for another few moments. Now that the sky had cleared up, the whole bar was comfortably warm from the sun filtering in through the windows. Tifa was prepping some sort of drink mix, occasionally glancing out the window just in case. His hair and jacket had finally dried out.

They were always busy, it seemed -- he and Tifa and Barret and the rest of the family. That was a new experience; having something to do or be done constantly. People to see, and things to fix, and a room of his own to keep tidy. Or not keep tidy at all. If he wanted he could do nothing at all, for a whole hour. Maybe two. Maybe even a day. (A day, he had thought, seemed like far too much time. It wasn't as though he disliked work.) And then, if he got lonely, he could go downstairs or open his phone and talk to someone that expected nothing of him but his company, and maybe for him to wash dishes or do laundry sometimes.

It was too perfect. He had always suspected as much, and two years ago he'd received an unpleasant reminder of how easily it could be taken away. Having something to lose, for the first time in years... that was a new experience, too. All it took was one mistake.

He thought of the people looking in through his window and wondered if he was on the verge of one of those mistakes right now.

"Hey... Tifa?"

She looked up from the bottle she'd been unscrewing. "Yeah?"

The words caught in his throat. "...If it's all the same to you, I'm gonna head out early," he managed to get out. "Let me know when you switch off, and I'll come pick you up."

"Alright," said Tifa. "Remember, later tonight."

"Later tonight."

Cloud quietly seethed at himself the entire ride back into what was left of Midgar. She'd been so patient. Coming up with the system they had, letting him live in her building, putting up with his presence. If we're having any trouble, we'll talk to each other. Even if it's stupid, she'd said.

All it would take was one mistake, though. Maybe a panic attack at a bad time. Maybe if he had one of his bad days at the same time as one of hers, and neither one of them handled it well. Maybe if Marlene saw. She wasn't there often, and she had seen quite a lot for a girl her age, but there was no point in scarring her further.

That was the point of this trip, though, wasn't it? For his own benefit. Something like that. Some things were a lot more difficult to fix than others.

He pulled his bike up alongside an old abandoned church in what used to be Sector 5, opened up Fenrir and removed the centre blade Vigilante, and proceeded into the city. Strictly speaking, civilians weren't supposed to be here, and going any further on a vehicle was impossible due to the millions of tonnes of twisted steel piled high, with human remains they hadn't been able to retrieve sealed away under concrete and melted skyscrapers. If it was decomposing at all, it was doing it very, very slowly. The earth here was still barren -- not even bacteria seemed to thrive here anymore.

Cloud had been one of the few people "allowed" to head as deep into the city as he was today. If a building collapsed on or underneath from anyone else, it would have been a problem. Cloud and Yuffie were both light enough to navigate unstable ground, and athletic enough to get through what would be completely impassable territory to anyone else.

It had to be him, visiting like this. There was nobody left that would care about that spot on what was left of the sixty-eighth floor. So every week, he came back. One day it would all crumble, but until then it was something that he considered his duty. The world had already forgotten him, so Cloud couldn’t afford to.

It was eerily silent as he climbed higher and deeper into the ruins. Occasionally he'd hear the creaking of metal, as more infrastructure crumbled in on itself, but there was nothing living here for hundreds of miles. The silence set him on edge, and he switched on the radio, which now seemed to be working properly. He'd try to get her to take it back later, if he could convince her to.

Cloud delicately hopped off the top of the six storey building he'd scaled and landed lightly on the wreckage of a train below it. The tracks were mangled and the supports keeping them up had collapsed years ago, but he'd found one could still mostly follow them in towards the centre of the city. Every now and then, he thought he recognised a building. It was impossible to tell anymore. Sector 6 looked just as bad as everything else.

Eventually he reached something that did look familiar -- a pile of shattered glass that had once been part of the neon sign next to it: Shinra Electric Power Company. He made sure his gloves were on properly, bent his knees, and took another leap, managing to get a handhold on the ledge of the second storey. The stairs were blocked on many floors due to collapse, and some passages he'd discovered the last time around had since collapsed in on themselves, so he'd opted to cut his way straight through the ceiling rather than bother shifting rubble. It was faster that way, and at the very least if the building collapsed in on itself anyway he'd already have his sword out to cut himself free before he was crushed.

On the sixtieth floor, the trumpet solo the radio had been broadcasting was suddenly replaced with heavy static again. He stopped to retune it, but it only got louder. He was surprised it had gotten reception this far out at all, and clipped it onto his back pocket again. Perhaps the signal would sharpen if he made it back outside at the top.

On the sixty-first floor, the signal did sharpen, but the jazz solo did not resume. The indistinct voices he had heard before became slightly clearer, but no more intelligible. Cloud saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

His sword had already been out, but now he switched it to its wider stance with a quick flick of his wrist and held it at the ready. Something else moved, and he whipped around to face it.

They were all around him now, and no longer at the periphery of his vision. Shapes he couldn't make out, as though his eyes didn't quite focus on them. The shadows outside his window were here now, with no glass to view them through. He took a step back, and they seemed to move with him. He could hear the distorted noises more clearly now, and it was no longer coming from the radio. They had no scent.

He wanted to get away, to attack, to yell at the shapes, anything, but suddenly his thoughts felt muddy and confused, and his sword clattered to the ground as his hand didn't quite want to grip it properly anymore. The shapes moved faster and they seemed to twist the world around him as they moved, as though they were taking the world and dragging it with them, like ink splashed through water. The noise was deafening and overwhelming, and the air felt thick.

Cloud Strife abruptly stopped thinking.

It was a curious sensation, if it could be called a sensation at all, given he couldn't process it. Every thought he'd had was snuffed out as quickly as it came, and nothing else followed them up. He simply existed, mind inert, his sword still lying at his feet. If the shapes were still there, he wouldn't have known, or cared.

He stood there, completely motionless, scarcely breathing. He took a step forward, then another. He began to walk, at first aimlessly, and then with purpose. He went to the sixty-second floor, and then the sixty third. At the sixty fourth floor, he stood in the centre again, this time for longer. The world seemed static at times, and spun around him at others. His breathing came in odd spurts, as though his lungs simply stopped working on and off.

His phone rang.

Cloud coughed, stumbled forward onto his stomach, and cried out, his sunglasses clattering off his face.

He didn't answer it right away, nor did he pick up on the second or third calls, and simply lay there, trying to pretend he wasn't shaking slightly. The radio had moved onto another song more prominently featuring a saxophone. He felt sick and disoriented.

He put his glasses back on, went back downstairs, collected his sword, and began descending Shinra Tower, frequently stealing glances over his shoulder. He saw nothing but rubble.

He walked back to Fenrir, replaced his sword in his harness, rather than inside his bike, and drove back into Edge, trying to sort out his thoughts. His head throbbed.

He remembered very clearly walking up the stairs. The motion, the sounds of his footsteps, the careful observation of his surroundings and the fixed staring at nothing with his eyes unfocused. But there was a strange period of nothing that accompanied all of it. He hadn't thought anything, been aware of anything, felt anything the entire time. It was as though a portion of his life had simply been replaced with images shot from a camera.

There had been something in that tower with him. He was certain of it, though he didn't know how. He wasn't harmed, as far as he could tell, apart from a scuff on his cheek that would already be healed by the time he got home. It hadn't felt like anything he'd experienced before, even with Sephiroth. That was the worst part of it all, he thought. If it was related to him, he'd at least know how to deal with it. Sephiroth was dead. Explicitly dead, killed twice over. The first time had been fairly thorough, he'd thought, until it had turned out the dead part of him needed killing again, two years after that. None of it had made much sense to any of them, but that had destroyed him for good. He had at least sensed that.

A sharp stab of pain in his head brought him back to the present. Sephiroth might have been dead, but the genetic tampering was still irreversible. He'd have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

When he got back home, Tifa was standing there looking concerned, which was almost worse than looking angry. "You didn't answer the phone. What happened?"

"...Not really feeling well," he supplied lamely. "We'll go back out there some other time."

"Jenova?" she asked, to which he gave a small nod. Whether or not it was the problem before, it was certainly the problem right now.

"If you need me to find someone to cover for you, you'll have to let me know now. If you’re not feeling up to it I can find someone to fill in." She looked over her shoulder at the clock. It was nearly eight. “Do you need me to sit with you for a bit, or…?”

He waved her off. "No, I can still help. Just gotta deal with this real quick."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. S'cuse me." He hurried up the stairs to Tifa's room and closed the door. She'd almost certainly seen his sword out of its storage and on his back.

He removed his boots, his harness, and his gloves, and sat in the middle of her bed with his legs crossed. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, and quietly found the source of his headache and dove into it.

This "meditation" was something he did every day, as a means of keeping himself in check. Jenova would always be a part of him, whether it was in his head or his DNA, so Cloud had given up suppressing it. In his case it was a temporary measure at best. Instead he had opened himself to it, trying to supplant it and incorporate it into himself, to take all that deliberate gnawing at his psyche and make it his own. Progress had been slow but steady, although not without its drawbacks. The benefits far outweighed them, as far as he was concerned. And he'd learned quite a bit more about Sephiroth, and himself perhaps, than he'd intended to. Some things he'd shown to his family. Others, he'd been afraid to acknowledge, even though he knew he'd have to sooner or later.

Usually it was something he did before bed. Clearly that wasn't an option today.

Half an hour later, he emerged, feeling a bit odd as he usually did after it was done. He glanced around the room and noted that there hadn't been any fallout from the process this time. If he were in a better mood and didn't have a dinner shift to attend to, he might've taken that as a sign to experiment with some of the more mundane things he'd uncovered. He slid off the bed and put his boots back on.

As he headed to the door, he paused and glanced under the bed, at the box he knew was hidden there, and the odd white materia kept stored in it. Perhaps it would help if he...

Best not to, he thought, and closed the door.

#forfdorfsorf #spitegarbage #amazing literature #the number i #dirge and crisis core are not canon to this because fuck that noise #This is a normal story. Nothing unusual or bad happens in it.#Just your normal postgame FFVII fanfiction like how you normally see in the regular vanilla canon with Cloud and Tifa and some others in it.#Mostly fluff. Nothing to see here. Keep walking.

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marypsue · 8 years

Text

Raising Stakes 17 / 24

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four

on AO3

...

If pressed, Juancarlo Gutierrez would admit that he did not, in fact, have many friends.

Oh, he had many, many associates, people he could go to in a tight spot, favours he could call in, connections he could use. But if the definition of 'friend' was 'someone who gives without expecting anything in return' - well, the number decreased exponentially.

Stan Pines wasn't one of them.

It was almost a shame, really. Stan had been - nice, in a fresh-faced, naive, 'aw shucks' kind of way, acting like he was so tough, like a kitten trying to threaten a Doberman. Juancarlo had almost felt bad about selling him out.

But you didn't stay in debt to Rico for very long, not if you wanted to keep all your skin and internal organs. And you definitely didn't blow Rico off after he finally started offering you real jobs. Stan Pines might've been nice but that naive act was wearing thin. He had to have known Juancarlo'd do what he had to to keep himself intact.

So Juancarlo hadn't given Stan Pines another thought until the evening he'd gotten off the elevator to find none other than Stan himself leaning against the wall just outside of his apartment door.

There was a moment when panic wrapped its icy hand around Juancarlo's heart and squeezed, a moment in which he considered turning right back around, getting back in the elevator, riding back down to the street and walking away and never coming back. Then Stan looked up, casual, caught Juancarlo's eye, and smiled.

Juancarlo told himself not to be ridiculous. This wasn't Rico, after all. Hell, even if through some miracle Stan had gotten back in with Rico, Juancarlo didn't owe him right now - at least, didn't owe him anything but loyalty and silence. And it wasn't like he'd been stingy with either.

This was just Stan Pines. Naive, helpless, baby-faced Stan Pines. Harmless.

"Hey there, pal," Stan said, as Juancarlo forced his feet to carry him down the hall, fishing in his jacket pocket for his keys. Stan pulled a fist out of his own pocket, held it in the air, palm-down, and opened his fingers, letting Juancarlo's key ring drop out to dangle, jingling merrily. "Looking for these?"

Juancarlo swallowed around the stupid, inexplicable lump in his throat, managed to muster up a smile of his own. "Stan Pines! What a surprise."

"Yeah, I bet you're surprised to see me," Stan said. His smile grew wider. Juancarlo tried not to think of sharks. "Hey, don't look so jumpy! Can't a guy drop by and say hi to an old pal?"

He reached over and dropped Juancarlo's keys into Juancarlo's hand. They were shockingly cold. Juancarlo fumbled twice trying to fit the apartment key into the lock.

Stan leaned heavily against the wall beside him, still grinning like a Cheshire cat. "C'mon, then. Aren't you gonna invite your old friend inside?"

...

The robot trundled away, leaving Stan and Susan half-swallowed by a snowbank behind the museum.

The world grew brighter by the minute, the woods around them washing out in the growing light. Trying to raise an arm above his head to shield his eyes felt, to Stan, like swinging an entire oil tanker up into the air and then trying to hold it there. One-handed.

"All right," Susan's voice said, firmly, and a shadow fell, thankfully, across Stan's face. He let his arm drop into the snow beside him with a grateful sigh, unable to care about the cold seeping through his thin coat and pouring through the hole in the back, numbing his bare skin where it touched the snow. "Up you get. The post office's just across the square and Eustace'll be by to open it up in -" There was a brief pause, which it took Stan entirely too long to work out was probably due to Susan checking her watch. "Actually, he should be there right about now. He'll let us in the back if I ask, don't think they'll think to look for us there."

" 'stace?" Stan managed, as the shadow above him shifted and warm hands closed over his, almost burning after the cold of the snow, pulling on his arms.

"My brother, silly." Susan gave Stan's arms another yank, and this time he let her heave him up out of the snowbank and onto his feet. "He delivers mail for Gravity Falls. Didn't I tell you that?"

Stan swayed on his feet. It was surprisingly hard to keep track of which way was up when everything was the same blinding, glaring white. "What, he...bite his own ankles, then?"

"Stan!" Susan hissed, but Stan could hear the note of scandalised giggle in her voice. He worked up the brightest, biggest smile in his arsenal, hoping it'd distract her some from the way his eyes kept trying to slip shut.

Susan gave Stan a soft smack on the arm, which turned into gently holding Stan up as he leaned into her palm. "Okay, mister, we need to get you somewhere dark and out of the way before you nod off right in the Society's backyard."

Stan only managed a 'mnuff' sort of noise as he sagged across Susan's shoulder. Apparently making that brilliant joke had taken more out of him than he'd realised.

Worth it, he decided.

Things went a little hazy after that. Daylight, Stan had found, was better at erasing memories than the most blackout-inducing of benders. The next clear memory he had was of being shaken awake in a dim, cool room full of boxes and bags and the nearly-overwhelming smell of damp dog. It took a few tries, but he finally got his eyes open enough to see Susan's worried face looking down at him, upside down.

"Stan?" she said, in an urgent undertone.

"Whfrgle," Stan managed.

"We gotta go. Come on, up." Susan reached down, trying to slide her hands under Stan's shoulders to lever him up, and failing. "Oof. You, mister, are a dead weight."

Stan couldn't help a snicker.

"A-ha! I knew you weren't asleep!" Susan gave up trying to lift Stan off the scratchy brown couch he'd fallen asleep sprawled out across, planting both hands triumphantly on her hips and pursing her lips instead. "Come on. Up. We gotta get out of here now."

"Nnnnsnot sundown y't," Stan mumbled, rolling over onto his side and letting his arms and legs flop over the edge of the sofa. It took far, far more effort than he felt it really deserved, especially since his limbs already felt like gravity was working double-time on them, and everything ached almost unbearably.

"I know," Susan said, sounding almost apologetic. "But I took a nap too because I'm not used to spending entire nights running around town after guys I barely know, and now Ivan Northwest is out in the front and we have to go."

It took Stan's brain several seconds to catch up with his ears.

"Whhhh, y'mean baldy in th' cloak?"

"Well, he's not wearing the cloak right now and he's got his wig on - but yes." Susan muttered a curse Stan was surprised she even knew. "He must've figured I'd try hiding here. Dang small towns! All your neighbours knowing you is a lot nicer when they're not trying to kill you."

Stan let his eyes slide shut, and listened. If he concentrated, he could hear muffled voices through the stack of boxes on the wall beside him. Unfortunately, one of them sounded very familiar.

"Eustace is stalling them, but we don't have long," Susan said, and Stan jumped - well, okay, jerked slightly - in surprise at the voice so much closer to him than he’d expected. He groaned as Susan pushed him upright, only to stop in puzzlement when she pulled something onto his head. "Eustace loaned me a cap, so you'll at least have a little shade. Now come on. Upsie-daisy. There's a back entrance right over here."

Stan let her pull him up off the couch, shuffled after her as she led him across the room. It took too much effort to keep his eyes open, let alone lift his feet all the way up off the floor for every step, and Stan was sure he'd never be able to find the words for how grateful he was that Susan didn't let go of his hand, guiding him through the backroom.

"I'm opening the door now," Susan said, and a sharp creak and groan was all the warning Stan got before a burst of white light slammed into his closed eyelids like a firework going off an inch from his face. He let out a strangled yell and stumbled backwards, throwing up both hands to shield his face - which meant he didn't catch himself when he walked backwards into a box and tripped over it, crashing into something that swayed precariously and then thundered to the floor.

The voices from the front room stopped abruptly.

Stan barely had time to appreciate what an incredible collection of bruises he was going to have before Susan was back on him, pulling him out of the pile of boxes he'd collapsed into. "Okay, time to go. Sorry about this!"

She gave one sharp shove in the middle of Stan's back, and he stumbled out the door into the blinding sunlight. His feet skidded against something slick, and Stan reached out for something, anything to grab onto. He found nothing. Stan thumped down three stairs and landed, hard, on his face in - "Another goddamn snowbank!?"

"Shhhh!" Susan's voice hissed, as she hurried down the stairs after Stan. At least, that's what Stan guessed she was doing, by the sound of footsteps and her voice drawing nearer. Even with his eyes open, all he could see was a wash of brilliant light.

Hands closed under his arms, and Susan - at least, he was pretty sure it was Susan - dragged Stan backwards out of the snowbank. "Oh, garbanzo beans," she muttered, under her breath, and then, "Stan, can you get up and walk?"

They managed, eventually, to figure out a sort of half-carry, half-drag motion that let Susan support Stan as they shuffled down the alley and out into the square. His legs still felt like they were seconds from buckling underneath him, the world was still washed out in a blinding, headache-inducing white glare, and every joint still burned arthritic, fever aches blooming every time his clothes rubbed against his skin, but Stan felt the fog filling his head slowly start to clear. Not enough for any of Ford’s smart-guy shit, probably not even enough for basic math, but at least enough to pay attention to the familiar feeling of eyes trained on him.

“I had a bit of a look at that book of your brother’s while you were out cold,” Susan was saying, but Stan barely heard her. Her heartbeat pulsed and throbbed close in his ears, slightly too fast for her casual tone. “That triangle guy seems like a real nasty piece of work.”

“Mnf,” Stan agreed. True, he was staggering like he was blind drunk in the middle of the morning, but there was something about the eyes he could feel trained on him that was unusual. In a familiar way. He was sure he’d know why already if the damn sun weren’t melting him into a puddle of stupid.

“I think we oughtta focus on getting into that cabin of your brother's and see if we can’t talk some sense into him,” Susan went on.

“ ‘S no good,” Stan slurred. “Threshold.” The back of his neck was prickling, now. He was reminded uncomfortably of the night outside the diner, the eyes he’d felt on him from the forest - it wasn’t the same sensation (the same scent), but it was definitely as intent, and as unpleasant.

“Ah, I kinda figured. I’ve got an idea ‘bout that, actually -” Susan started, but Stan cut her off.

“Don’ - don’ be obvious ‘bout it,” he muttered into her shoulder, “but look ‘round.”

He was pretty sure Susan probably gave herself whiplash, the way she snapped her head around. So much for ‘don’t be obvious about it’. Her quiet curse made the pit of Stan’s stomach sink, confirming what he’d suspected.

“How many Society guys’re watchin’ us?” he asked. It took no effort to keep his voice low and quiet - it would’ve been harder to shout - but Susan seemed to hear all right.

“Five - no, wait, six. Two behind us, two across the square, two coming this way -” A sharp bite of panic crept into Susan’s voice as she said, “They’ve got us boxed in, Ivan must’ve just gone into the post office to smoke us out -”

“Don’ panic,” Stan muttered, aware as he did so of just how unhelpful the words were. “There...any little...alleys or whatever comin’ up?”

“There’s one just -” Susan started, and Stan cut her off with a nod.

“We’re bein’ herded.” He needed some kind of a plan, but his brain seemed to have turned to mush, his thoughts spinning their wheels uselessly in the sludge it had melted into. And they were out of time. “Wh’n. When we hit th’ alley. You lemme go an’ you scram.”

Susan's grasp tightened around Stan's waist, but before she could say anything, he interrupted. " 'm dead weight 'n' y'know it. An' their real hunter's...down. F'r now."

It felt like his bones were turning to molten lead, but Stan managed to push himself mostly upright. A patch slightly darker than the glare around it loomed out of the brightness just ahead, and Stan guessed this was where he got off. "Plus. I've...taken a stake t' th' chest 'n' got back up. You can't do that." It was suddenly difficult to force words through his lips; they caught on the back of his dry throat. "It ain' you they wan'. Please. If they - if I can't -"

The huff of breath Susan let out sounded a lot like she'd been about to say something and swallowed the words down.

“I’ll be fine. I got...a plan,” Stan slurred, trying to make himself smile, as the patch of shadow fell, cold, across his face. “Meet me at th’ diner.”

Then he gave Susan a push, or pushed himself off of Susan’s shoulder, and stumbled or fell into the alley. Behind him, he heard footsteps slap against the sidewalk, and hoped like hell Susan had listened to him for once.

He was expecting someone to be waiting in the alley for him. That didn’t surprise him. Neither, sadly, did the arm that wrapped around his neck and pulled him into a headlock almost as soon as the shade of the alley enveloped him. There was something about all of this that was painfully familiar.

He wasn’t expecting the voice.

“You just had to stick around, didn’t you?”

“Carla?” Stan managed to choke out.

A hint of amusement mingled with the regret in Carla’s voice, even as a waft of leather and floral swept over Stan. “I’ve been looking for a chance to get you alone like this since last night. You lead a very interesting unlife.”

“Yeah, well, ’m flattered, but this last week ain’ exactly been typical,” Stan grumbled. “’m guessin’ you're plannin' t’ take me out, an' it don’ include dinner ‘n’ a movie.”

Carla sounded like she couldn’t keep the chuckle in. “Your sense of humour’s still terrible.”

“Same ’s yours, hotpants.”

Carla shifted, and Stan slithered down out of her grip onto his ass, falling back to lean against the rough brick of a wall behind him. For once, it wasn’t a clever escape ploy - his bones had just finally turned into jelly. Icy slush started the slow process of working through the seat of his pants, and he let out an exasperated groan.

“Stop that,” Carla said, softer than she probably intended. “You’re so pathetic, you’re almost making me feel sorry for you.”

Stan tried to chuckle, but it died into a wheeze.

"'fore y'stake me," he managed, and stopped. The cold leached slowly through what was left of his coat, through his heavy, aching flesh, settling into his bones.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this tired.

"Do you actually have something to say, or are you just stalling?" Carla's voice asked, amused but a little impatient, like she used to get when she wanted Stan to take her out dancing but the sun hadn't quite gone down yet and he'd invented some excuse to keep them inside a little longer.

"Stallin', I guess," Stan muttered. He wished he could see her expression. See her face.

"Whatever story he's spinning you, don't listen."

If Stan had had the energy to raise his head, if he'd been able to see Ivan Northwest through the blinding light of late morning sun on snow, he would've looked. But he didn't, and he couldn't, and he didn't really need to - even if the voice hadn't said it all, the man's presence crawled over Stan's skin like thousands of tiny bugs.

"No stories," Carla's voice said, and from the sound of it she'd straightened up to face Ivan. "How do you know this man?"

Ivan paused a moment before speaking, and Stan could just imagine him taking in the sight of Carla in her leathers, crossbow strapped across her back, stake held ready to strike. Ivan's voice shifted, something more like respect colouring it as he said, "That is not a man. But I suspect you already know that."

"I know enough." There was a thoughtful silence from Carla, and Stan guessed she was sizing Ivan up. This was a golden opportunity, one he should've been taking advantage of - but he couldn't move. The cold had totally numbed his ass, making the asphalt under him almost feel comfortable. He just wanted to sleep. If Carla and Ivan decided to stake him while he was out, well, at least between the two of them they probably wouldn't botch the job as bad as Corduroy had. "Who are you?"

"A concerned citizen," Ivan said, shortly. "Who are you?"

There was a clank of wood and metal, probably something to do with Carla's crossbow. "Same as you. Citizen. Concerned."

"Are you? I've never seen you around town."

"I didn't say citizen of where."

"Uuuuuuugh, both of you jus' shut up 'n' stake me already," Stan groaned.

"Hm, doesn't sound like a bad idea," Carla said, or started to say, but Ivan stopped her.

"Wait! There is information I need from him first."

"Well, make it snappy. I don't want him weaseling out on me again."

"It won't take long, I assure you."

Stan swallowed another groan as a pale shadow fell across his vision, a wave of expensive cologne mingled with basement must assaulting his nose. Ivan's voice was little more than a whisper as he said, "Where is the book?"

With an effort that felt like he was hoisting the world onto his shoulders, Stan managed to shrug.

"You're not helping your researcher friend by keeping his work from us," Ivan hissed. "Bill Cipher's plans must be stopped, by any means necessary. And if we can't determine what, exactly, Cipher is using him for...then if, to uphold the sacred covenant of the Society of the Blind Eye and to protect this town, we must remove him from the picture entirely -" He cleared his throat, the artificial stench of cologne lessening as he drew back. "Cipher can't use a pawn if it's been taken off the board."

"Excuse me?" Carla's voice interrupted, like it had been chipped out of ice.

Ivan's voice was equally icy, a hint of frustration bleeding through. "Yes?"

"Well, I'm sorry if I'm off track, but it sounded like you just said you were planning to kill somebody."

Stan let his head fall back against the wall, and tried not to smile.

"You were about to stake this...creature...when I arrived," Ivan pointed out, which, judging by the clack of metal against wood that Stan heard, didn't impress Carla much.

"Exactly. I was planning to put down a dangerous creature. But - and of course I'm assuming I heard you right, you were kind of whispering - it almost sounded like you were planning to murder someone I know from high school." Carla went on, in that same almost-innocent tone, "But that can't be right, can it? Because that person called me here just a day or so ago because he was afraid for his life, and he was definitely fully human when I met with him. You couldn't possibly be thinking of doing something to him, could you?"

"This doesn't concern you," Ivan spat. "You couldn't possibly understand -"

"You know, I've always hated that term," Carla said, conversationally. " 'Concerned citizen'. I've always wondered, who is it that you're so concerned about?"

There was a creak of wood and a click, sounds that Stan guessed by the sudden sharp note of fear that cut through the cloying cologne had something to do with a crossbow being loaded, and Carla's voice, level and calm but slightly too fast, said, "You've got ten seconds to get out of my sight."

There was a shout, and a scuffle of footsteps, a solid but muffled-sounding thump and a twang. The smell of flowers and leather swept over Stan again, Carla breathing hard with exertion as she bent over him. "Well, he's going to have one heck of a goose egg when he wakes up. Now.”

There was a soft shhhff as she swept her hair back, and another wave of her scent rolled over Stan like a memory. “You’re going to tell me just what’s going on here. And no bullshit.”

#gravity falls #raising stakes au #this is mary's fic tag #long fic post

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