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kim-ruzek · 3 years ago

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life's strange sense of humour

Summary: Kim, Hailey, Sylvie and Stella all conceive their babies around the same time... Then also go into labour on the same day. Pure Crack, but taken seriously because this is me.

Or; a love letter to the upgess friendship because they went funny fic? Nah, we're gonna make it wholesome.

Warnings: Childbirth, I guess.

Word Count: 3.4k

Read on AO3

Notes: So. I had this funny thought months ago, recently talked about it with Cíara when they mentioned something similar and I'm having Thoughts about how I want the upgess friendship to go so apparently my mind went yes, write this, please.

Also Cíara: it's not the child number we decided and not the exact circumstances but I couldn't help but make burzek's conception happen this way 👀

Life, Kim has learned, can have a strange sense of humour sometimes.

This, she thinks to herself as her and Hailey stare, open mouthed, speechless, shocked at each other, is definitely one of those times.

“I... What?.. I,” Hailey stumbles out, her eyes wide, Kim staring back with equally wide eyes, watching as the blonde tries to process this, tries to process how they even happened—all while wondering herself what the chances of this happening are, that this can only be because life has a strange taste in what’s funny.

“This—this isn’t right, right? Kim, right?” Hailey almost looks desperate at her, glancing down at the stick in her hand and back up at Kim frantically, her eyes darting as she does so, gliding over the pink positive line like if she doesn’t focus on it, it won’t be there.

“Well, I kinda hope it is,” Kim lets out a dry kind of laugh as she answers, glancing at her own stick, with a matching pink line. “Since we brought these together and I—I want to be pregnant.”

The panic lessens briefly in Hailey’s eyes, her friend smiling again at Kim’s own shock. “Right, yeah. And you want to be pregnant—so no more freaking out, yeah?”

Hailey grabs Kim’s hand with her spare one, giving it a supportive squeeze. “No more freaking out, this is good.”

Kim smiles back at her friend, the hand holding her stick drifting over her flat stomach. Her earlier worries—about if she can do this, if she could handle being pregnant again—still clinging to her but not making her feel as sick, the joy and excitement at being pregnant, at having Adam’s baby in her again, flooding her stronger. She repeats her friend’s words in her mind; this is good.

“But like—yours could be right, and mine wrong? Right? Like that could happen? I mean— people get false positives. This, mine, it could be false?” Hailey has gone back to freaking out. Kim places her stick down so that she can run her hands down the blonde’s arms, calming her.

“Hailey, breathe. Everything is okay.” Kim pauses, letting Hailey breathe in and out before continuing. “It could be a false positive—it could also be real. But it’s okay, it’s not a crisis if it is real. Have you and Jay discussed kids?”

Hailey smiles momentarily at the mention of her husband, her hand twisting the wedding ring on her finger before answering Kim. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course we have. A few times—before we were even together, even. Not that we were planning it together—well, not out loud—”

“Hailey.” Kim cuts off her rambling. There’s not many times that the blonde rambles, even when she’s panicking, she keeps a—seemingly—calm head. But when she does, she can really start to spiral.

“Sorry.” Hailey stops, running a hand through her hair, the other still clinging to the stick, almost as if she can’t put it down, like the thought is something incredibly out there and impossible.

“What have you discussed? Do you two want kids?” Kim gently probes.

“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” Another short-lived smile. “But not—not now. It’s still, it’s something in the future. And we still weren’t fully decided if we’d do it this way, like I always wanted to adopt but I know, I know it’s not a walk in the park and we’ve been talking. I’ve been wondering if it was just because of the fear of my genes and I. We agreed we’ll leave it for a bit, but that’s gone out the window.”

Hailey pauses, running her hand through her hair again, before groaning. “Kim, tell me, what should I do?”

Kim gently holds both of her hands, closing Hailey’s fist around the stick. “You talk to Jay.”

That seems to calm the blonde, Hailey getting a soft smile on her face—the face Kim has dubbed her Jay smile. “Yeah. I talk to Jay.”

“Okay. Can we leave now—I think if we’re any longer Adam might just walk in. You know he has no patience,” Kim looks at Hailey’s expression carefully, noting every part of it, making sure that her friend is good enough to get through the rest of the day.

“Yeah. Yes.” Hailey nods, pulling Kim into a hug. “Thanks, Kim. And congratulations, again. This is really great.”

Kim squeezes her back, looking forward to when she might—maybe—be able to say it back to Hailey.

The day had started with Kim throwing up in the toilet. She had been feeling nauseous for a few days, going in waves, and that feeling—that thought that it might be because she’s pregnant and not because it’s flu season—had been in the back of her mind.

She had tried not to focus on that thought too much, not wanting to go down that path, not when it could just be a bug. Not wanting to give herself hope, only to get it taken from her.

Kim had rationalised it, even the throwing up. It was a minute amount, nothing compared to when she was pregnant the first time. Adam had a food related bug the other day, so this could just be that, Kim had told herself. Things tend to hit her a bit slower, after all.

And then there’s that Sylvie has a stomach bug—one that’s kept her in bed all week, texting Kim often to complain when Matt is on shift. And Kim had hung out with Sylvie the day before she fell ill. This, Kim told herself, is probably just it affecting her, now, too.

This day was the first time she threw up, and so was the first time she told Adam she’s been feeling nauseous. His reaction was exactly how she predicted it would be.

He had lifted an eyebrow, pausing as he sipped his coffee. “Are you... Do you think..?”

Adam had asked it very casually, his expression neutral. Like her, he was unable to say the words, finish the sentence, neither one of them wanting to voice the possibility, not wanting to voice it in case it’s not, not wanting the hurt associated with false hope.

“I don’t know. It’s probably a bug.” Kim had answered and he had hummed in response. A part of her wished that she wouldn’t tell him this, that she wouldn’t be having this conversation with him when it’s just a thought and not even, really, much of a possibility.

But communication is important, a lesson she had learnt many times before—that in the long run, it does more than doesn’t. And it’s not good for her, for herself, to keep these thoughts locked up only in her brain. Especially when having more kids is something they want.

It’s not like they’re actively trying. Kim’s only just come off birth control, and the doctor warned them it takes a while for her body to adjust. They had even been using condoms, occasionally, as it makes the clean up easier in their busy lives.

That had been all they had said to each other, then, needing to get Makayla ready and to school, before heading to work themselves. But it was only a few hours later, when another wave of nausea had washed over her while Adam and her were in the break room that she had stopped them making the coffee, grabbing at Adam’s arm.

“I should get a test.” Kim had told him, murmuring, but her urgency clear. She knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else until she knew if she was or not, the thoughts in her mind almost distracting her.

“Okay. Now? We can say we’re going to see a CI?” Adam immediately got his game face on, and that’s when she had started to panic. About what if she is pregnant, about if she’s ready to be pregnant again, about if she can handle it.

Suddenly, the thought of simply peeing on a stick seemed impossible.

Hailey had entered the break room, then, and had took on look at Kim’s panicked expression and Adam trying to calm her to know that something was up. It only took one look between her and Adam, after Hailey asked if she was okay, for them to fill in Hailey, needing another voice to help them through this.

“Hey, calm down.” Hailey had said in that way of hers. “It’ll be okay and there’s no point panicking until you know—and here. If it’s too much to pee alone, I’ll take one with you. Moral support.”

It was an insane idea, Adam staring at Hailey incredulously. But it clicked in Kim’s brain, and she found herself saying yes before she knew what she was doing.

They had used the CI lie instead, telling Voight they were going to see one of Hailey’s. Kim had watched as Hailey tried not to focus on Jay’s eyes following them out the bullpen, not wanting to let him know there was anything more to it—good, considering.

The journey there and back was filled with Kim’s nervous ramblings to Hailey, as she voiced her fears and worries about this, the blonde just listening patiently and giving her comfort and support when she needed it.

They had taken the tests in the district ladies room, Adam waiting outside—probably shooing away anyone else. Which, Kim had thought, probably means Trudy will have a theory to her being pregnant before the day is up.

“It’ll be alright, Kim.” Hailey had reassured her as they waited those long two minutes. Hailey had gotten out her phone, had set a timer for them and even though Kim could see the seconds counting down, it felt like eternity.

“I can’t. Can you look at it?” Kim had asked after the minutes were up, unable to look at the stick, feeling quite like her heart was in her throat. Hailey had rolled her eyes good-naturedly, before telling Kim that she will.

The excited yelp that left Hailey’s mouth almost instantly after told Kim all she needed to know and Kim turned the stick to look at it herself, and seeing that amazing pink line.

“I’m pregnant! Hailey, I’m pregnant!” Kim couldn’t help her own excitement, throwing her arms around the blonde, squeezing her into a hug.

“Oomph,” Hailey clearly hadn’t been prepared for that, lifting her arms weirdly at the sudden brunette weight barrelled into her and that’s when Kim saw it.

Hailey’s own stick.

Hailey’s own stick, with her own pink line.

“Hailey!” Kim gasped before she can stop it, squeaking out her friend’s name. Hailey pulled back from the hug, frowning at Kim.

“What?”

“Your...” Kim couldn’t finish the sentence, instead she pointed at the stick and watched as Hailey looked down at it, watching the comprehension and then shock over take her face.

It’s a few days later, and Kim is sitting in Molly’s. Sylvie has gotten over her bug and immediately organised a girl’s night out. Not that Kim or Hailey will be drinking—a shame, since Sylvie had told them that she and Stella had some exciting news.

The day after the found out, Hailey had come into work and whispered into Kim’s ear that everything was okay. That her and Jay decided that this is unexpected but welcome, and they had a doctor’s appointment to confirm it.

Very little people know yet. Kim has been to the doctor, the doctor confirming she is ten weeks along. They told Kevin almost immediately, Trudy—as Kim guessed—had yet again figured it out and of course Hailey knows, alongside Jay.

They told Voight, just so Kim could explain why she doesn’t want to go out in the field—can’t, really, her pregnancy being somewhat of a high risk—although she’s waiting until Monday to officially disclose.

This weekend Adam and her have plans to tell Makayla, something she’s quite excited too, knowing how much her daughter wants to be a big sister, having been begging them for a baby for months—well, that or a puppy.

Hailey and Jay have only told, obviously her and Adam, and Will. They’re waiting until after today—the day of their doctor’s appointment—before disclosing and Kim and Hailey had a conversation about announcing it to their mutual friends, deciding it might be nice to do it together. Of course, it depends on how along Hailey is.

“Hey,” Hailey slips into the booth next to her and Kim smiles in greeting to her friend.

“Hey. How did the appointment go?” Kim asks, knowing once Sylvie and Stella gets here they won’t be able to discuss the pregnancies.

“Great,” Hailey practically beams. “We heard the heartbeat! Jay cried.”

Kim laughs slightly. “So did Adam. I mean, so did I, but I cry at everything.”

At that, Hailey laughs too. “Kim, so does Adam. Not like you—but I wouldn’t say he’s not a crier. Jay—I’ve seen him cry, but, man, it was. It just hit me, this is the father of my baby. And it made me more happy then I think the heartbeat did. We were both raised by a men who never be seen crying but our baby isn’t going to have that. It was...it was wonderful.”

“I’m so happy for you. Congratulations,” Kim pulls her into a hug before quickly adding on, checking to see if Sylvie and Stella had arrived yet. “So come on, quick. How far along are you?”

At that, Hailey excitedly grabs her arms. “Yes! How could I forget! Kim, you’ll never guess—I’m also ten weeks along!”

Life, Kim thinks again, really does have a strange sense of humour.

A thought she once again thinks when Stella and Sylvie arrive and they make their announcement.

“We’re pregnant. Both of us.” They announce and Kim’s mouth drops open, and she realises they all ordered water instead of alcohol. She barely knows how to process this, Hailey squeezing her hand in shock under the table, but before she can, they’re dropping the next bombshell.

“Stella found out about a week or so ago, I found out earlier this week when I kept throwing up. We’re both around ten weeks,” Sylvie continues.

“No fucking way.” The words drop out of Hailey’s mouth, and judging by the way she gasps, holding her hands across her mouth, Kim guesses she didn’t mean them too. Kim tries to calm her down, widening her eyes at the blonde, but the other two catch on to that there’s something going on.

Kim sighs, after Hailey gives her the go ahead. “Hailey and I—we’re also pregnant. Ten weeks.”

Life has a strange sense of humour.

Kim doesn’t think there’s any mutual acquaintance in their lives who doesn’t somewhat doubt that the four couples didn’t plan this. If Kim wasn’t living through it, she’d scarcely believe it herself. Especially when they narrowed it down and are pretty sure all four pregnancies are the result of a faulty condom—condoms taken from Kelly’s infamous bathroom supply.

Kelly and Stella are self explanatory. They hadn’t used them in a while, but Stella was changing birth control and so they did. Matt and Sylvie a little bit less, but still less incredulous. Matt doesn’t live with Kelly and Stella anymore, but the guestroom—now a nursery—was still open to them any time, the boys having slight separation issues. And apparently when they did this, they’d just use Kelly’s supply.

Jay and Hailey had apparently ran out, and they hadn’t gotten more before Stella and Kelly hosted a night at theirs and Jay had apparently thought grabbing a handful from the supply would be a good idea. Hailey almost questioned her choice in man then, not that Kim could judge her.

Because on that same night, Adam and her were getting a little too flirty and when they realised they were feeling a little loud than they can be, with Makayla sleeping at home, they, in their wisdom, decided why not do it in Adam’s jeep.

And they didn’t have any protection, naturally, on them so Adam had grabbed a condom for Kelly’s supply.

And thus, all four pregnancies were made.

There are benefits, however, Kim would happily admit. Voight, maybe not, depending he’s down two members and another two when there’s doctor appointments. And with them being due around the same time, they’ll be a month he’s down all four, give and take. The unit—especially Kevin—might also not, especially on the days her and Hailey’s hormones and cravings and hated smells conflicted.

But there are benefits. Having your three close friends going through the same things is nice, especially when they could see if a symptom or something is usual—especially when one of the friends is a paramedic and the other’s brother in law is a doctor.

It also makes it more fun, all of them—the men included—having a light hearted race about who’s bump shows first, who kicks and moves first and so forth. It made the pregnancies that little bit more fun, even when it was miserable, even when doubts and anxieties about the upcoming parenthood loomed.

The biggest race, especially as the pregnancies drew closer to the end, was the competition and bets who will go into labour first, who will have their baby before the other.

But, of course, life has a strange sense of humour so, naturally, they all went into labour on the same day.

Stella had technically started the night before, her contractions beginning then. They were far and few in between so she was advised just to wait.

Kim’s had started earlier that morning. She had been woken up at the crack of dawn with back pain. Nothing too unusual at this stage of the pregnancy, but as Adam was helping Makayla pack her lunch for school, Kim’s waters had broke.

When Adam and her had gotten to the hospital, about to update the group chat, they had passed Stella and Kelly and the high five they had shared had raised some nurses eyebrows.

Childbirth being the thing that it is, they didn’t look at the group chat after that. Kim’s contractions were starting to come more frequently, and Adam had left the room to holler at the doctor—only to run into Will. Will, who raised his eyebrow at Adam, and asked if he was here for Hailey and Jay.

Because the one thing Voight joked better not happen, that he can’t be down four members, plus a fifth and the desk sergeant as they were determined to meet Kim and Adam’s second daughter as soon as possible, had happened and Hailey had gone into labour around midday.

Flora Leslie Severide is born first, at seven point six pounds. Her godparents had plans to meet her first, but they had got laid up with their own new arrival so the man who had been like a father to both her parents and his wife met her first.

Alice Trudy Burgess Ruzek is born second, at eight point seven pounds, a weight that got her father nearly cursed at. Her older sister was the first to meet her, shortly followed by their grandmother Trudy and godfather Kevin.

If you were to ask Kim who’s kid would come next, she would’ve guessed the Halstead’s son, but it wasn’t. Sylvie had gone into labour later than the others, but had a much faster labour, her daughter being determined to be born quickly, apparently.

And so, Estelle Kelly Casey is born third, at nearly seven pounds. Met first by her honorary grandfather, Mouch, already at the hospital to be with his wife and her godparents, with her cousin Flora sleeping, having been in the world a little longer.

And finally, Nikolas Patrick Halstead made his arrival, last but the biggest at nine pounds, met by his uncle and godfather first, but shortly followed by uncle Kevin, his godmother Kim and uncle Adam still occupied with his cousin.

Life has a strange sense of humour sometimes but—as Kevin joked—at least they can all split birthday costs with each other and not have to worry about their various aunts and uncles not being able to make it.

Not to mention how it made finding the balance between being new parents and having a social life easier.

And eventually, people stopped looking at them as if they planned this. That is, of course, until Sylvie and Hailey had their second kids—Andrew Casey and Theodore Halstead—at the same time, too.

#burzek #upstead #stellaride #brettsey #chicago pd #Chicago fire #Chicago pd fanfiction #Chicago fire fanfiction #I'm not gonna tag all the characters bc Sheesh #but i will #kim burgess #hailey upton #bc there's a lot of upgess moments #ree writes #ree's.writing

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bookishofalder · 4 years ago

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Pretty Girl - Seven

Summary: In which Pretty Girl and Flip take things to the next level after dating 6 months.

Warnings: Smut, language, talk of period sex, copious amounts of fluff. WC-5,507

A/N: Ah! I can’t believe this is the final chapter-just the epilogue to go now! Thanks so much for enjoying this story, it’s been wonderful to share. [Just to be clear, I’m a cis female and speak from experience in regards to the embarrassment that occurs around period sex. That scene is basically inspired by my own incredible husband. We celebrate menstruation on this blog!]

“I think we have to break up.”

A soft breeze blew in the window over the sink, the promise of summer in the air. He was wearing an old t-shirt and jeans and a frown that contrasted against the warmth in the air. Flip stared across the kitchen at (Y/N), eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Now why the hell is that, exactly?” He questioned, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms.

She gestured at him wordlessly for a moment, then pointed her finger at him accusingly, “I just don’t see how we come back from something like this, Flip. I really don’t.”

“It’s not that big of a deal, darling, come on!” He pleaded, giving his head a shake in disbelief.

(Y/N) marched to the fridge and flung it open, her back to Flip for a minute as she dug out what she was looking for, then spun around to face him. She had a can of soda in each hand-one Coca-Cola, one Pepsi, her expression indignant.

“These. Are. Completely. Different.” The pucker between her brows appeared as her frown deepened upon seeing him begin to laugh. “Flip! They taste entirely different!”

“Darling, they really, really don’t. It’s all the same, sugar and carbonation. That’s it.”

Setting the pops down on the counter, she huffed stubbornly, mirroring his crossed arms pose and glaring at him. Flip pushed away from the counter, no longer able to resist her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed the top of her head as he let out a rumble of a laugh.

She was pointedly not hugging him back.

“I can tell the difference.”

Flip leaned back and met her gaze, “You want to bet on that, pretty girl?” Her eyes sparkled with curiosity at his suggestion.

“Go on then.” She replied, grinning up at Flip.

Inwardly, though it had been a playful disagreement, he was happy to have her smiling again. Six months together and he still couldn’t stand to see her anything but happy, his daily mission to ensure she smiled and laughed more than anything else-something he was often successful at. He felt like he pulled in oxygen from her laughs and giggles.

“Hmm, well how about I pour each of them into a cup, and you don’t know which is which, and then you taste them and tell me which one is Coke.” He tucked some of her loose strands of hair over her shoulder, simply an excuse to touch her. He watched her consider the offer, warmth and affection shooting through him.

“That’s easy,” She replied with a nod, “And what does the winner get?”

“What do you want?”

He hadn’t meant for the words to come out as suggestive as they did, but (Y/N) simply rolled her eyes, giving him a playful wink. “Well, if I win...then I want to go to your place after lunch and purge your closet!”

Flip groaned, releasing his hold on her, though she remained leaned against him, to run his hands through his hair. “Of all the fucking things, darling!”

Giggling, (Y/N) reached up and stroked Flip’s jaw. “It needs to happen, detective. And since we’re both off this week, there’s never been a better time!”

Flip scoffed, “We’re off because we’re on vacation, pretty girl. Why the hell would I want to clean my damn closet on vacation?”

“Because you won’t do it any other time, you big grump,” Patting his cheek, she arched a brow at him, “Now, if you win?”

He considered for a moment. Initially, he was just going to use this as an excuse for spending the afternoon in bed with her. But now, high stakes were on the line and Flip wanted to match her offer. “Ah, I know,” He said with a grin, “If I win, you’ll let me take you to the gun range to train you on how to use my gun.”

With an exasperated sigh, (Y/N) stepped back from Flip, “Not this again, Flip, I don’t wan’-“

“It’s not about wanting, darling. It’s about safety around firearms, you should at least understand the basics of the one I have on me, just in case.” He reached out and cupped her soft cheeks, thumbs stroking gently. They often bickered about his insistence on keeping her safe, and this was a point of contention for them they had yet to work through.

“Uhg, fine!” She stuck her hand out, and Flip took it in his own to shake, sealing the deal. “I’m going to wander outside and check the mailbox while you pour, I guess.”

Spinning, she barely took a step before Flip smacked her affectionately on the behind, “Trust me, it’ll be fun at the gun range!” He joked, watching her retreating figure with admiration.

Without turning, (Y/N) continued toward the front door and called over her shoulder, “Funny, I was going to say the same about purging your closet, detective.”

With a bark of a laugh, Flip shook his head and turned to the soda’s, grabbing a couple of glasses and setting to his task. Noting which one was the Coke, Flip set them back on the counter and moved the cans to the table, where a delicious looking lunch spread was waiting for their argument to end.

It had begun innocently enough as they prepared lunch together in (Y/N)‘s comfortable kitchen, until he let slip that he didn’t see any difference in the two drinks and his girl lost her damn mind.

Flip had to admit, in addition to being a wonderful baker, she was a talented cook as well. But years of living alone and not wanting to clog his arteries from eating out constantly led Flip to become a decent cook himself, and he insisted on sharing kitchen duties, regardless of whose home they were at. And so, most days they would find themselves in the kitchen together, cooking, baking and chatting. They tended to spend more time at (Y/N)’s place, for various reasons including the proximity to the station, the overall warmth of her home and her formidable bathtub. Flip was a big fan of ending their days with a long soak before bed, whether he stayed the night or not-though, he mostly stayed the night.

Reentering the kitchen, (Y/N) tossed the mail onto the counter and glanced around at Flip, eyes twinkling. “Ready?” Flip responded by gesturing a hand at the drinks, his eyes sliding down her figure when she turned to them, admiring her curves in the high waisted shorts and a black band tee.

“Go on then, impress me.” He rumbled, watching her closely.

With a smirk, she took a sip of the first drink, loudly and unnecessarily smacking her lips. Her intent was probably to be obnoxious, but Flip found himself becoming semi-hard at her performance, eyes on her plump lips. She set the drink down and picked up the second, already smiling, and took the sip.

“Easy, detective,” She bragged, setting the second glass back on the counter. She pointed to it, looked at Flip over her shoulder and proudly announced, “This is the Coke.”

Damn it, she was right.

He didn’t even need to reply, as the expression on his face gave him away, and (Y/N) let out a gleeful shout before bouncing over to Flip, standing on her tiptoes and throwing her arms around his neck. One hand splayed out and pressed, urging his head to lower and meet her lips. She tasted especially sweet from her taste test, but Flip didn’t return the kiss, though his hands did settle on her hips instinctively.

“Yeah, yeah, you won,” He conceded grumpily when she pulled away to peer at him with a smug little smirk.

“Oh, come on Flip,” She breathed, rolling her hips into his slightly, “I can feel how not annoyed you actually are.” Groaning at the sensation, Flip shook his head before pointing at the table, ignoring his arousal.

“Lunch, then we’re getting this purge over with, and then maybe I’ll consider this,” He slid his hand between their bodies and patted his erection. “Maybe, if you’re a good girl.”

Cheeks blazing at his words, (Y/N) simply nodded at Flip with a small grin and then pulled away from him, moving to the table.

They let lunch stretch along, not rushing as they enjoyed relaxing together. (Y/N) did spend most of it explaining how the process of this clean out would work. Flip just knew he was going to be bagging a lot of clothes for donation or garbage at her insistence because she was right that he hadn’t done a proper tidy out in years. He hadn’t seen the point.

Though now, unbeknownst to her, he did have an idea of why it might be good to do one-in addition to the joy she would gain from doing it, that is. He just needed to ask her.

All in good time, he thought.

Four hours later, four, and they were still working away and Flip was starting to lose his patience. (Y/N) held up an old plaid shirt that had some minor tears in it, her face scrunched, “Well, how about this one?” He wasn’t sure if he was bothered more by her endless enthusiasm and patience for him, or her determination to seemingly leave him with little remaining clothing.

“I don’t see why I can’t keep that. It’s good for yard work.”

“Flip,” She deadpanned, “It looks like a bear mauled you while you were wearing this, it’s not suitable for anything.”

With an annoyed huff, Flip wordlessly gestured at the ‘dispose of’ pile. He grabbed a large garbage bag to put that pile into, knowing it would do no good to argue. (Y/N) was smiling away as she hung up a section of shirts he was keeping, ordering them by colour which, he had to admit, was visually very pleasing. After stuffing the throwaways into the bag, Flip had cleared enough space on his bed to lay down, stretching out the wrong way across, his joints clicking in places.

Closing his eyes, he relaxed for a moment, content despite the loss of many, he felt, quality pieces of clothing. Though when (Y/N) had made the point that, due to his overall largeness, his clothing would most certainly benefit men at the shelter who normally couldn’t find donations in their size, he had relented on many items that he didn’t wear anymore.

When he felt a couple of pieces of clothing hit his legs, tossed somewhat carelessly by (Y/N), Flip’s eyes snapped open and he sat up in protest, “Now what are you-Oh.”

Oh.

The clothing had been hers, shorts and shirt on the ground at his feet, (Y/N) stood in a simple white cotton panty and bra combination that instantly had him growing hard. It never ceased to amaze and disarm him, how fucking beautiful she was. Glowing skin, soft curves, plump lips, she was devastating. He often wondered what he'd done to deserve her.

Six months together meant they’d been on plenty of outings, either errands or dates, and he’d see the way others would admire her. He always kept a hand on her lower back when they walked together, both to keep himself steady, and to remind others that she was his, and he was hers. And maybe to remind himself, as well.

“Christ, beautiful, you getting a little warm?” He growled out, unmoving on the edge of the bed. With a coy smile, she walked over to stand in front of Flip, eyes only looking down slightly into his. He’d discovered pretty early in their relationship that she found their size difference just as much of a turn-on as he did.

“A little...worked up,” She admitted, closing the gap between them. With practiced ease, Flip lifted (Y/N) into his lap, her legs straddling his. Her fingers sunk into his hair as he latched his mouth to the curve of her throat, kissing her, then dragging his tongue along her skin. With a moan, she ground her hips down, rolling her heat across his hardness. “Maybe a lot, actually.”

With a groan, he wrapped his arms around her and twisted, depositing (Y/N) on the bed before jumping up to rip off his clothing, eyes never leaving hers as he did. When he pulled down his boxers and he sprang free, her gaze lowered and she licked her lips in anticipation.

“Pretty girl,” He growled, crawling over her and caging her body beneath his, his length resting against her thigh. “Do you think you’ve been a good girl, that you deserve to be fucked?”

(Y/N) gave a keening whimper, struggling to wrap her legs around him. Flip didn’t let her, he braced one hand on the bed next to her head, the other he used to still her hips. He began his assault on her neck and chest then, licking, biting and laving his tongue over the skin to soothe it, leaving light marks just how she liked it.

“Please, I’ve been good, so good, it’s been days, I need you,” She breathed out desperately, writhing under him.

Flip snorted, “That’s your own fault, darling, we could have been doing it every day this past week-“

Still whimpering, (Y/N) cut him off, “No, I told you, I was on my period.”

“And I told you,” Flip pulled back and met her eyes, his expression serious, “Unless it hurts, I don’t care what’s going on down there, it’s natural and it doesn’t bother me.”

They’d had this conversation a few times before, as spending so much time staying over at one another’s meant that, eventually, he’d been with her while she was on her period. And Flip didn’t mind, didn't care, going so far as to call his mother and ask if women were okay to have sex in such a state. After she spent five minutes roaring with laughter, she assured him that yes, with certain precautions taken, and it wasn’t on the worst of cramping days, it was perfectly fine.

But (Y/N) had shut down each time, insisting a few days without sex wouldn’t hurt all the while appearing shy and embarrassed. He hated that she felt that way, but he didn’t pressure her. He simply reminded her it was on the table, whenever she might be ready.

“I know,” Her small hand moved to his cheek, caressing it, expression softening, “Perfect man.” And then her lips found his and the sweet moment was over because it was fierce and possessive and Flip could feel her trembling with anticipation, with need. For him.

With the countless amount of times they had come together, Flip still felt an intense sense of rightness, of home, whenever he was inside of (Y/N), pulling sounds and curses from her lips as he moved. Whether it was a quick and passionate release like this or a night of never-ending pleasure, each and every time was always perfect. Exhilarating. Because they were made for one another, and every kiss or moan or touch only proved it; it was easy, so fucking easy to sink into that feeling of perfection, of irrevocable love so intense it was like taking a hit of a drug every damn time.

“Love you,” He murmured into her hair, his hips pounding into her relentlessly as her legs only encouraged him, tight around his waist to urge him closer, deeper.

Her response was automatic, “Love you more, Flip.” And then she was jerking beneath him as she crashed over the waves of her release, crying out as her walls fluttered back-arching, fingers digging into his shoulders.

His own orgasm washed over him, a long, low moan rumbling out of him as he filled her, his movements slowing, sloppy as he coated her walls with rope after rope of cum. “Fuck!” He finally cried, pulling out to jerk himself a few more times, another few spurts coating her stomach.

With a groan, he flopped on the bed next to her, careful not to push the pile of donation clothing off. Lazily, he draped an arm across her torso, kissing her shoulder. They stayed silent for a short while, catching their breath in the glow of the afternoon sun. These were always his favourite moments; when it was just the two of them blissed out and tired and content.

“I think we should move in together.” He blurted out suddenly. Inwardly he smacked himself on the head for His callousness. He had been thinking about it for a while now and had planned many ways to say it.

But of course, he just spewed out his thoughts with wild abandon. Christ.

(Y/N)‘s head jerked off the bed, and she leaned on her elbow, looking down at FLip with wide eyes. “Wait, seriously?” She was giving him a cautious but promising smile. His heart was pounding in his chest, harder than it had been just ten minutes ago.

Flip nodded, “Yes, pretty girl, seriously. Been thinking it a while,” He sat up, crossing his legs before reaching down to stroke her hair, “We don’t have to if you’re not ready, but I wanted you to know that I’m ready. I hate spending nights without you or coming here to an empty house. I love waking up with you, hell, spending all my time with you.”

He wondered why he chose this exact moment to ask her, when he was naked, his cock softening from their romp, her stomach coated in his spill. It wasn’t exactly romantic, though it did manage to increase the vulnerability he was feeling.

“I, wow, Flip. I’d love that, I hate spending nights apart too. I sleep so much better with you keeping me warm,” (Y/N) giggled, then sat up and took his hands into hers, “There’s a lot to discuss before we make a decision, but I’m ready too, Flip.” Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his.

“Well, can I tell you what I was thinking, and then you can tell me if we’re on completely different pages?”

(Y/N) nodded, a smile splitting wide across her face upon hearing that he’d put so much thought into it. “Let’s hear it, detective.”

Flip grinned, “Well, I’ll be honest I like your place much more, not just for its proximity to the station. And I was thinking, I could rent out this place pretty easily, make some extra cash. Pay half the bills and whatnot at your place, and then maybe when we’re ready, we both sell and get a place a little bigger. Maybe something with a large backyard?” He’d meant to say less, but the more he spoke, the wider her smile grew, eyes sparkling in delight. A warmth was growing within him, spreading through his body. He felt almost giddy.

Instead of replying, (Y/N) launched herself into Flip’s arms, toppling them into the donation pile of clothing, and started peppering him with kisses.

"I'll take that as a yes?" He asked through his wide grin.

(Y/N) giggled, "Oh, detective, it's definitely a yes."

“Christ, it had to be the hottest day so far this year, didn’t it?” Flip grumbled, wiping his arms across his forehead and considering removing his shirt, though he wasn’t sure all of his latest love marks had healed up, so he kept it on begrudgingly.

(Y/N), as if knowing exactly when Flip would hit his limit in the heat, suddenly appeared at the propped open doorway, a large glass of lemonade in hand. John and Ron appeared behind her, following her outside with their own glasses. He watched, grateful for his sunglasses, as she walked toward him, hips swaying in her linen shorts, breasts curving beneath the thin white T-shirt she wore. Though she usually kept her hair down at home, it was too hot today and instead had it pulled into a high, messy ponytail.

Patting his arm comfortingly, she handed him a cold glass, “Here, take a minute, you guys are nearly finished.” And her eyes surveyed the remaining boxes, the armchair and the stereo system, all that was left of the items he’d brought from his old house.

“Thank you, pretty girl.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead before gulping down the lemonade like a dying man, already imagining the cold bath he’d be climbing into later on. Preferably with his new roommate.

“Bailey’s got burgers and beers ready in the back, so once you finish up you boys come through and have a rest, alright?” She smiled around at them, Ron and John both nodding eagerly, just as ready as Flip to be finished.

It only took twenty more minutes to get the rest inside, and Flip was impressed when he came through the door the last time and saw how neat everything was. Evidently, while they’d been hauling things inside, (Y/N) had made quick work of organizing anything she could lift. Even though Flip insisted she not do any of the hard work, he could tell by the number of missing boxes that she had carried a lot of them to the rooms they were meant for, getting a head start on the unpacking process.

When he followed his helpful friends outside, he found (Y/N) and Bailey laughing together on the back deck as they plated the burgers. Next to the grill, they had a table set up with all the fixings, including potato salad and, of course, more of (Y/N)‘s baking, this time in the form of mini sugared donuts.

Before he could make his way toward her, (Y/N) caught Flip’s eye and pointed at the lounger, a silent order to take a seat. With a grin he flopped down onto the seat, grateful to be off of his feet and out of the sun. Under the shade, it was much cooler, a soft breeze playing across his sweaty skin.

John walked up to his wife and kissed her on the cheek, thanking her for cooking for them. Ron had copied Flip, sitting in another lounger, his eyes closed. The atmosphere was relaxed, the best part of a busy moving day.

With a beer in one hand and a piled-up plate in the other, (Y/N) plopped herself into Flip’s lap and handed him his reward. With a grateful groan, he pulled the plate out of her hands and immediately started devouring the burger with one hand, the other snaking around her waist to hold her hip. She took a sip of his beer, watching him eat with a happy smile, her cheeks flushed from the heat.

“You two are such an affectionate couple,” Bailey pointed out with a smirk, “Even with a burger you find a way to cuddle, it’s almost annoying.”

The elder (Y/L/N) sister was, in many ways, opposite to (Y/N). She had a cooler, calmer personality, her humour more sarcastic and her gaze a little intimidating at times. Flip liked her, and her husband, quite a lot. They often had dinners together on Friday’s, and Flip had even taken John to the gun range a handful of times, discovering that despite (Y/N)‘s hatred of guns, John and Bailey were a little less wary of them.

“Nah, it’s groovy!” Ron amended with a grin, taking the plate Bailey was handing him with a grateful nod.

“I don’t know,” John said between bites of his food, pointing his burger between Flip and (Y/N), “I think of all the couples I know, you’d be the ones who’ve had sex on every surface and piece of furniture.” Ron and (Y/N) burst into laughter, Bailey shook her head, a small smile on her lips.

Flip flushed, his hand squeezing (Y/N)‘s waist, but made no reply beyond a slight grin. With a bark of warm laughter, John nodded his head, happy with himself.

The rest of that early summer afternoon was enjoyed in good company, the group casually conversing as they lounged in the shade, until the setting sun was low enough in the sky to capture their notice. They all pitched in on tidying up, bringing the leftovers inside while (Y/N) wrapped up a couple of donuts for Ron to take home. Congratulations and thank-yous were exchanged, along with heartfelt hugs and cheek kisses.

And then, it was just Flip and (Y/N), waving goodbye from the front door with wide smiles; alone at last. His mind on drawing a cool bath, Flip was caught off guard when he was suddenly pushed against the wall, and (Y/N)'s lips were crashing into his.

Flip was never one to question these types of moments, instead, his hands found the curve of (Y/N)‘s hips, pulling her close as his tongue licked into her mouth, and a moan escaped them both. They stayed like this for a few minutes, making out as they clung to one another, until (Y/N) pulled back and smiled up at him with wide eyes.

“You don’t have to go back to your place tonight, right?”

Flip shook his head with a smile, “No, I’m meeting the new tenants there tomorrow afternoon.”

Her eyes darkened considerably at his response, pupils blown with desire. Flip’s hands tightened on her hips in anticipation, eager to hear her next words.

“In that case, wait out here for about three minutes and then meet me in the room, okay detective?” She murmured, then pulled away and danced off toward their bedroom.

Flip stayed against the wall, considering for a moment and then deciding to strip off his little remaining clothing. He heard the sounds of the tub being filled as he pulled his shirt over his head, and his cock twitched in anticipation. He then wandered into the kitchen, helped himself to a glass of water, and then figured it had probably been long enough.

Making his way down the hall, careful to skirt around a few boxes piled somewhat precariously, Flip felt an overwhelming sense of joy; the stressful work was over, and now he was living with his girl full time. If anyone had told him last year that he’d come back to work after that fucking Klan case and meet the love of his life, he’d have scoffed at them, convinced he was an unlovable son of a bitch.

And then (Y/N) came along and found her way into his heart, shattering every doubt he had of himself and somehow, amazingly, fell in love with him. He’d never been happier, a sentiment that he knew he thought almost too often, but if the other shoe was going to drop, it missed its chance. He even liked fighting with the woman, for Christ's sake. Though they didn’t argue much beyond occasional bickering, especially since she apparently had an unlimited supply of patience for his various sour moods, they did sometimes had what Flip considered a ‘blow out’.

After each one of these intense fights, they would somehow meet in the middle, always willing to compromise with one another no matter how passionately they’d been arguing. And then, the sex that would follow was always mind-blowing, fast and powerful, and selfish. They’d each work to bring themselves off, which was never the case otherwise, usually striving to bring as much pleasure to the other as they could.

But Flip had always heard that makeup sex was on another level.

He had known for a long time now that he wanted to marry her. They’d spoken of it a few times, casually, each sussing out the other’s reaction carefully. Flip had learned that she hadn’t ever wanted a big wedding, something her sister had wanted, which had solidified the decision in her mind that it wasn’t for her. This suited him just fine, as he wasn’t one for big parties and it meant he could invest more money in the ring, get her something she could be proud to wear.

But first, there was tonight.

When he walked into the master bath, completely naked and already mostly hard, his cock stiffened further at the sight in front of him. Of her.

(Y/N) turned to face Flip, and though his eyes swept over her beautiful face, they didn’t linger as he took in the sight of her, standing wearing his favourite buffalo plaid shirt, unbuttoned with absolutely nothing else on. She’d taken her hair down, and it fell in waves around her shoulders, brushing against her stiff buds.

He couldn’t even form words, he was so turned on, seeing her wearing his clothes, standing ready for him to do whatever he wanted with her. He came undone entirely when, upon seeing his leaking, hard cock, she fucking whimpered.

With a growl, Flip closed the distance between them, swiftly lifting her onto the bathroom counter, which happened to leave her dripping heat at the perfect height for him to thrust forward, filling her in one motion. Fuck, she was tight around him, and so wet already.

“Fuck, pretty girl,” He groaned as she cried out his name repeatedly, “So fucking wet for me already.” He adjusted his arms, putting each under her legs so that she was pressed back and folded, exposing her enough to find an angle that tore screams of pleasure from her as he slammed his hips into her, splitting her open most satisfyingly.

“Fuck, fuck, that’s so good, so perfect Flip.” She whined, trying to keep herself steady on the counter as he absolutely ruined her with brutal thrust after thrust. He could hear himself growling and groaning out her name each time he pulled back, living for the way she screamed his when he would slam back in.

Keeping his arms hooked under her legs, Flip removed his hands from the counter and pressed them into her lower back under the shirt, both forcing her body a little closer and helping her to stay upright. He was impressed at her flexibility, though he checked her face as he moved, ensuring she was comfortable. The way her eyes rolled back told him everything he needed to know.

“You take my cock so well, you know that? Perfect little girl,” He broke off and moaned as he felt her walls tighten further around him as he spoke, her orgasm closing in. “Fuck, you love it when I tell you what a good girl you are, don’t you?”

Her mouth fell open for a moment before she could find the ability to speak, “I love it, I’m such a good girl for you, you fucking fill me so well, Flip,” (Y/N) whimpered out, her body beginning to tremble. “Fuck, I’m going to come!”

He increased his pace, her words bringing him closer to the edge, “Go on then, cum all over me, pretty little girl, and I’ll fill you up. Fucking give you all my cum.” He growled out, and her eyes rolled back again as her body seized up, her walls fluttering around him and her cries unintelligible. When Flip looked down at where their bodies connected, he saw just in time as her juices squirt out for him, splashing him in the warmth and fucking sending him barreling over the edge, his movements slowing as he pushed himself as deep as he could and releasing his cum into her.

It took several moments to come down from their high, the combination of the happy, emotional day, and the two days they hadn’t been able to have sex because of the busy work that was moving, made it so that their peaks were nearly debilitating. Flip could have sunk to the floor, he was so exhausted. Just able to remain standing, he instead slowly slipped himself out of (Y/N), both of them watching as their combined fluids seeped out of her deliciously. He was careful to let her legs down slowly, and she groaned in a little discomfort as he did.

“Bath time,” He whispered, helping her off the counter and to the toilet first. Once she finished, he stepped into the lukewarm water and helped her in after him, lowering them slowly until they could cuddle up, (Y/N) between his legs, her back on his chest. The water was a sweet relief to both the heat of the day and their sore muscles. They laid together for a long time; until the sun was gone and the twilight light was too dark for them to see anymore and sleep was a whisper away.

“You ready for a nice long sleep, detective?” (Y/N) asked him as they dried off, her eyes half-closed with exhaustion that he was certainly was mirrored on his face.

“In our bed, darling.” He replied, with a sly smile. She giggled happily, tossing her towel into the hamper.

When they climbed into bed together, still naked, (Y/N) laid her head on Flip's chest. One hand trailed lazily along his flat stomach, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

“I love you so much, Flip Zimmerman.”

His heart stuttered. He brought the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her to tilt her face up, meeting her tired gaze. “I love you more, pretty girl.” And he leaned forward and pressed their lips together in a goodnight kiss.

Both of them fell asleep easily mere moments later, wrapped up in one another in all of the best ways.

Did you enjoy this chapter? Please consider reblogging or commenting—likes are basically just a bookmark!

Tag list ✨

@tashastrange89 @finn-ray-nal-beads @fizzywoohoo @iamnotthecatladynextdoor @morby @pradaxstyles @10blurredsmoke10 @mermaidxatxheart @paintballkid711 💜

#reader insert #fanfic #fluff #adam driver x reader #adam driver #flip zimmerman x reader #friends to lovers #adam driver x you #angst #smut #flip zimmerman smut #zimmerman x reader #multichapter #new chapter #feedback appreciated

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astralpenguin · 4 years ago

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@transnaturalweek day 6: euphoria

1.9k, ao3 link

“I want to do something to my hair.”

Jack and Kaia looked up from the puzzle they’d been slowly working on together. Claire was standing in the doorway, breathing heavily as if they’d been running.

“I thought you liked your hair long,” said Kaia.

“I do,” said Claire. They stepped into the lounge and collapsed onto the sofa nearest the door. “Well,” they said, “it’s not that I like it long so much as I don’t like it short.”

“Why don’t you like it short?” asked Jack. “I think you’d look great!”

Claire shrugged. “You’re not wrong,” they said. “I cut it short when I was like fourteen and it looked pretty good, except for how I looked almost exactly like my dad did when he was fourteen.”

Kaia winced.

“Yeah,” said Claire. “I’m not risking that happening again. No way.”

“But you still want to do something with your hair?” asked Kaia.

Claire groaned. “Yeah, something,” they said. “Mostly I just want people to stop looking at me and assuming I’m cis. Doing something to my hair might work, but I don’t know what.”

“You could dye it?” said Jack as he placed a piece of the puzzle down. His head then snapped up and his eyes shone with excitement. “Can I help you dye it?”

“Aren’t you God?” asked Kaia. “Couldn’t you just snap your fingers and make their hair a different color?”

Jack’s face fell into a slight pout. “I guess, but that wouldn’t be as fun.”

Claire laughed. “Sure,” they said. “Let’s dye my hair.”

Jack’s smile reappeared on his face. He jumped to his feet and ran from the room. “I’ll ask the others if they want in on this too!”

Kaia rolled xir eyes and smiled as xe stood. “He’s like an excitable puppy.”

“He’s three,” said Claire.

“And God.”

“And God,” agreed Claire. “And he wants to help me dye my hair.” Claire shook their head and smiled.

Claire and Kaia waited by the front door for Jack to come back downstairs. They only had to wait a couple of minutes before he was bounding down the stairs so fast that he almost ran right into them, only just managing to stop himself in time.

“Alex said to leave her alone and let him sleep.”

Claire snorted. “Of course he did.”

Kaia elbowed them in the ribs. “She’s been on call for three days, don’t be mean.”

Claire gasped. “Me? Mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What about the others?” Kaia asked Jack.

“Patience said that they think it’s a great idea, and Magda said to get her some pink dye as well as whatever other color you end up choosing.”

Claire frowned. “I hadn’t decided on a color yet. I could’ve gone for pink. They don’t know. I don’t even know yet.”

“Claire,” said Jack, an overly patient tone to his voice, “Magda is psychic.”

Claire blinked.

They flung the front door open and stode out.

“I’m going to dye my hair pink just to spite her.”

Kaia caught Jack’s eye. They grinned at each other, and they both followed.

Claire did not, in the end, choose to dye their hair pink.

The store they went to to pick out the hair dye had a huge range of colors, and the trio spent nearly an hour wandering up and down the aisle and debating the pros and cons of each option. Claire wanted something bright, that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for being a natural hair color even at a distance, and even though they’d declared that they were going to choose pink in order to prove the psychics wrong, they ended up more drawn to some of the other options.

Kaia made sure to grab a bottle of pink dye for Magda.

Eventually Claire settled on purple.

When they got home, Claire and Jack raced to the bathroom, eager to get started. Kaia hung back, detouring to Magda’s room to deliver the pink dye she wanted. Magda and Patience were both lying on their fronts on Magda’s bed, watching something on one of their phones.

“You want us to let you know when the bathroom’s free?” xe asked as xe handed the bottle over.

“No, that’s okay,” said Magda. She put the bottle to one side and smiled up at Kaia. “I need to bleach my hair before this will show up.”

“Normally you would,” said Kaia. “But we’ve got literal God here with us, and he’s very excited about dyeing people’s hair. He’d probably be happy to help you skip the boring step.”

“It still weirds me out that Jack is God,” said Patience, not taking their eyes off the screen.

“Honestly, same,” said Kaia.

A muffled yelp came from the bathroom, followed by the sound of two people bursting into laughter.

“I’d better go supervise,” said Kaia, glancing around behind xem. Xe looked back at Magda. “I’ll let you know when we’re done, but there’s no pressure to do it today.”

Magda nodded.

Kaia closed the door to Magda’s room behind xem and went into the bathroom without pausing to knock.

Claire’s shirt had been dropped on the floor and kicked to the side. They were sitting up against the bathtub with their head tilted over the edge and hair loose inside of it. Jack was standing next to them and holding the showerhead close to Claire’s hair, running the water across Claire’s scalp.

“Hey,” said Claire as Kaia walked in. “Jack’s giving me the proper salon experience!”

“Why screaming?” asked Kaia. “Alex is still trying to sleep.”

Claire grinned. “He forgot to wait for the water to warm up first, so I basically got an ice blast aimed at my head.”

“The water’s warm now though!” said Jack, looking proud of himself. “I was able to make it warm up faster so we could get on with washing Claire’s hair, and so Claire wouldn’t be cold for too long.”

Kaia closed the bathroom door and leaned back on it. “Isn’t that an abuse of your God powers?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t care though.”

Claire’s grin grew even wider. “That’s the best attitude to have! What’s the point of having powers if you don’t use them?”

“There’s no point at all,” said Jack, almost as if he was reciting something that he’d been told before.

Kaia couldn’t stop xirself from smiling as xe said, “Okay, but when his dads inevitably asks who the bad influence was, I’m pointing them at you.”

Claire blew Kaia a kiss in response.

Once Claire’s hair had been washed and the dye had been applied, they were faced with some time to kill before they could wash the dye out.

“We could dye your hair purple too?” said Jack.

“We can’t,” said Kaia. “My hair’s too dark for it.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I can make it so the dye works anyway.”

Kaia laughed. “I told Magda you’d say that. Thanks, but it’s okay. I don’t want to dye my hair today.”

“What about you?” said Claire. “We could do your hair.”

Jack thought about it for a few moments. “I don’t want purple hair,” he said. “I think I like my hair the way that it is. I would like to paint my nails purple though.”

“That, we can do,” said Claire. They looked over at Kaia. “Babe, do you have purple nail polish?”

Kaia shook xir head. “I can ask the others if they have some?”

“Don’t bother asking Alex,” said Claire. “If you disturb his beauty sleep, she might bite you.”

Kaia paused with xir hand on the doorknob. “Are you speaking from experience?”

Claire nodded sagely. “If I didn’t know what actual demons are like then I’d swear he was one.”

“She didn’t try to bite me earlier,” said Jack. He seemed genuinely confused about the direction that the conversation had taken.

“That’s because you’re the baby of the family,” said Claire, as if it were obvious, “and nobody’s allowed to be mean to the baby.”

The look of delight on Jack’s face was almost blinding.

“Family?”

As Claire stammered out a response, Kaia took the opportunity to slip out of the bathroom. Xe knocked on Magda’s door and waited to be called in.

“Do either of you have any purple nail polish? We’re painting Jack’s nails.”

Magda paused the video they were watching as Patience stood. “Yeah I do,” said Patience. “Let me go grab it.”

As they left the room, Kaia turned to Magda and said, “He did end up offering to skip the lightening-my-hair step if I wanted to dye my hair too. So the option’s there for you if you want it.”

“Thanks,” said Magda

“Here you go,” said Patience, walking back into the room and holding the small bottle out to Kaia. “One condition.”

“What is it?” asked Kaia, taking the bottle.

“Don’t let Claire do the painting.” They smiled and shrugged. “I’ve seen what their nail polish looks like, and I actually try to keep mine neat.”

Claire only owned a single bottle of silver nail polish. It was only ever applied to the nails on their toes, and the bottle was covered in splashes of nail polish from the many times that Claire had not been paying close enough attention to what they were doing when using it.

“You’ve got it,” said Kaia.

Claire only grumbled a little when Kaia relayed Patience’s condition to them. They couldn’t deny that Patience had a point. The minor disaster zone that was Claire’s single bottle of nail polish spoke for itself.

Kaia and Jack sat cross legged in front of each other, and Jack held his hands perfectly still while Kaia painted his nails. Once xe was done, xe handed the bottle over to Jack and he painted xirs. Xe didn’t manage to hold xir hands as still as Jack had held his, but Jack managed to paint xir nails perfectly anyway. Once he was done he closed the bottle, put it to one side, and snapped his fingers.

“What was that for?” asked Claire.

“Our nails are dry now,” said Jack. “That way we won’t end up smudging them.” He held his hands up in front of his face and smiled. “I really like this!”

Kaia sighed fondly and stood. “Definite abuse of God powers.”

“And I didn’t even have to directly encourage it this time!” Claire said. “He just did it! I’m so proud!”

Kaia returned the nail polish bottle to Patience, who was glad to see that it was undamaged.

The three in the bathroom then only had to wait a little longer before it was time to wash the excess dye out of Claire’s hair. Kaia took charge this time. Xe spent longer washing Claire’s hair than was strictly necessary, but as Claire’s eyes slipped shut as xe ran xir hands through their hair and over their scalp, xe knew that Claire didn’t mind.

And, finally, it was done.

Just like he’d done for his and Kaia’s nails, Jack clicked his fingers and Claire’s hair was suddenly dry.

They stared at themself in the mirror in silence for long enough that Kaia began to wonder if xe needed to start worrying, but xe abandoned that train of thought when xe saw Claire start to smile.

“I love it!” they said. They turned around and pulled Jack and Kaia into a hug. “Thank you for helping me with this.”

“It’s nothing,” said Kaia.

“Thank you for wanting this,” said Jack. “I had fun!”

“Technically you suggested it, Jack.” Claire squeezed them both tighter before letting them go. “And you’re a little genius.”

Kaia didn’t know if xe’d ever seen Jack smile so much in such a short space of time before.

And Kaia knew that xe was biased, and that Claire always looked amazing to xem, but they really did look beautiful with their new purple hair.

#transnaturalweek #spn #supernatural #kaia nieves #claire novak #jack kline #magda peterson #patience turner #fanfic #el creates

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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years ago

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Rangers, Lead The Way - Chapter 2 - Jay and Hana

written by @anotheronechicagobog

warnings: swearing, cannon typical violence, jealousy, abandonment

When Jay had gotten a call from Kenny at three-thirty in the morning he didn't exactly know what to expect. Sure, he could have called because someone died, but he could've also called because he wanted to debate the pronunciation of 'avocado' (something he'd already done twice). So when Kenny's name flashed across his phone screen he just took a deep breath and went to the hallway, leaving a sleeping Hailey alone in bed. "Halstead."

"Hana got shot."

"What? Hana? Your Hana?"

"Yeah- it was a fugitive. She- she's fine. Shot in the foot. She was on leave for a bit, stayed with her parents, but now she's on desk duty. She was going to be with us, but apparently, she was helping the cyber division track some hackers, and they're connected to an organized crime group in Chicago. And she's going to be working with the unit that's been conducting the investigation into that organization. Your unit."

"Yeah, we were told that an FBI cyber analyst was coming down to work with us but they didn't tell us who. Okay, well, she'll be perfectly safe. Our tech room is in the basement with secure entrances, and I'll see if I can get either myself or Hailey assigned to work with her."

"Thanks man, you have no idea how much this means to me."

"Actually I do, remember?"

"Yeah, any advice on how to get through it?"

"I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be hell, but you'll just have to hang in there and trust me."

"Okay."

"... So I'll finally get to meet Hana..."

"Yeah, I'm hanging up now. Bye."

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"Everyone, meet special agent Hana Gibson from the FBI. She's the tech specialist here to help us out with the Anderson family. Play nice." After his... Enthusiastic introduction, Voight walked back into his office and shut the door. "Hi, I'm detective Jay Halstead and this is my partner Detective Hailey Upton, it's nice to meet you. I can show you where you'll be working if you want?"

"That would be great." Jay moved to the desk by the stairs. "Okay, this desk is just like ours, older than our boss and with a PC on it. The tech room is downstairs, this is mostly for basic searches and so that the tech expert can be with the group when we debrief and work the board and the like. The stairs over here take you down to the garage which is where the tech room is. The stairs are old so they creak a lot but don't worry, they're perfectly safe."

"Sorry to interrupt, but is that a cage?"

"Yes, but don't worry, we don't use it. It's from the old guard, you know, when cops were assaulting people for no reason and no one would say anything. At least now people are talking about it."

"I sense a 'but'."

"But... I wish that cops who were still like that actually got arrested, or never made it out of the academy."

"You and me both."

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"Okay, so the Anderson family has been selling legit products online but then stealing and selling the credit card info, they've been covering their tracks pretty well up until now. That means that something changed. What that is could be key to catching all, and I mean all, of them. Work your CI's, talk to victims, flip some people. Figure out what it is." The team nodded and turned to their partners to figure out their next move.

"Should we head out to Cook County? There's an inmate there connected to the Anderson's, right? Maybe they could give us something."

"Actually, I was thinking maybe I could head out there with Ruzek and you could stay with Gibson because you found their online pattern and figured out which products and websites were theirs. Maybe you two could find more together."

"Sure, that sounds okay but, we're good, right?"

"Of course we are, we'll always be good. I just think this will be best for the case, plus you have the most experience working with the FBI, and her being here has put Voight on edge which has put everyone else on edge."

"Good point, I'll see you later." His eyes followed her until he couldn't see her anymore and he let out a breath, it was different this time. Last time, when Hailey hadn't been here, OA had kept an eye on her but his partner wasn't there so that made it a bit easier, but Hailey was here and now so was Hana. It would take some finessing to have both of their backs but he figured if they were in the same place it would be a little easier. "Halstead? You ready to head out?"

"Yeah, let's go."

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Cook County was as unpleasant as always. Angry convicts yelling at them through their cells that they wanted to slit his throat. Lovely. But that wasn't what got to him. Leonard Mitchell, the man they were there to see, wouldn't say anything helpful. He wasn't even threatening them or insulting them, he was just asking "where the smoking blonde from last time was". It was taking an enormous amount of restraint to keep him from jumping across the table and tackling the guy. "You're here for hacking the Chicago Municipal Courts website and unsealing confidential information. You're in the high-security ward and have more restricted access to places in the prison than most inmates. You don't have much going for you, maybe if you give us some information we can help you out."

"That's a joke, I'm not saying anything to either of you. Now that blonde, get her to show up for a conjugal visit, then maybe I'll consider it."

"Okay! So, we're done talking, we're going to search your cell and work station now, and you know what, because you have been so unpleasant to deal with today, we're also going to search the cells and workstations near you. Have fun explaining to your neighbours why their contraband got carted off by Chicago PD." Jay marched out of the interrogation room before he lost his cool even more than he already had. He gestured for the warden to get some guards together to start the search. He took a deep breath to try and calm down. "Hey Halstead, are you okay? I mean, what he said about Upton..."

"I'm fine. I don't like hearing anyone talk about my partner that way, but I'm fine."

"Really? Cause the stuff he said was pretty..."

"She's back at the station with Gibson in probably the most secure room there, far, far away from that perv. And if she's okay, I'm okay."

"You should ask her out. I mean, I know it might be weird considering I'm her ex, but you're so far gone on her it's ridiculous and I think that you'd make a cute couple. Think about it, man"

"Uh, yeah. I'll think about it, come on, let's go see if the warden's ready for the searches." Jay's heart was pounding and he felt like he'd just jumped out of the way of a moving train. Nobody knew about them yet, but they were all criminal investigators surely they'd picked up that at least something was different.

They searched Mitchell's room and found a burner phone... Behind his toilet. "Man, I am so glad I don't have to touch that thing. That's Upton and Gibson's job."

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"So I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, we found a cell phone. The bad news is, it was behind his toilet."

"How lovely."

"Well, you can thank Leonard Mitchell for that. Hey, how's it been working with Gibson?"

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"You seem really interested in her, that's all. Do I need to be worried?"

"No, I just want to make sure that she feels welcome and won't give us a bad review to the FBI."

"I know what you look like when you're lying, Jay."

"Hailey..."

"Just... Go back upstairs, Jay."

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"How's everything going?"

"Other than the fact that I'm in the doghouse, good."

"What'd you do?"

"I was a little too protective of Hana, I guess. Hailey picked up on it and I couldn't exactly explain without blowing our cover."

"That sucks, man. I'm sorry but honestly, it sounds like you were gonna end up sleeping on the couch either way."

"Yeah, how are you? You holding up alright with Hana gone?"

"No. You were right, this is hell. I keep looking around to make sure she's covered or to offer to get her that terrible coffee she likes and then she's not there and it feels like whiplash." Jay could practically feel himself sharing the weight on Kenny's shoulders. "It doesn't get any easier, it actually gets a lot harder, but she won't be here forever. She'll be home soon and you'll be able to breathe again."

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Hailey was still giving him the cold shoulder when he went around to take lunch orders. She was curt "my usual" before turning back to her computer screen and completely ignoring him. He did what he could to not let the pang in his chest play out on his face but from the way Hana looked at him it was obvious, he'd failed. "What about you Gibson? Do you need a copy of their menu?"

"No, that's okay, I looked it up. I'll get the spicy shrimp pad thai."

"You got it." He was about to leave when Hana gestured for him to lean down close to her. "Just apologize for whatever you did, it'll go a long way. She's been off since you dropped off the cell phone." He wanted to say something, explain that he was just caught between a rock and a hard place, but the words were trapped in his throat. Hana sent him a I-know-what-I'm-talking-about-if-you-don't-listen-to-me-you're-probably-going-to-regret-it look and all he could do was allow his shoulders to slump and nod.

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The intense silence of the bullpen was interrupted by Hailey entering behind Hana, who looked incredibly confident on her crutches. "We got something off of the phone." Hailey moved to the board with some papers as Hana plopped down into the office chair at her temporary desk. "It took a while to crack some of the files but I got it. They're transactions between an off-shore account and a shell company based out of Arkansas. While the account was set up there, it's been used mostly in New York, Washington DC, and Chicago. The most recent transaction was for 85K."

"Hana and I also found some emails with photos of military-grade weapons. Guns, missiles, and grenades. Mitchell isn't the buyer or the seller, it looks like he's mediating between the two. We don't have an ID on the buyer yet, but we have one on the seller. Lori Anderson, member of the Anderson crime family. Got no idea what they're planning, but the Anderson's were particularly interested in armour-piercing weapons and rocket launchers. And two days ago she asked Mitchell if he could put her in contact with an explosives supplier. We need to talk to organized crime, both from CPD and FBI, this looks bad. There are still files and emails that we have to go through, and his calendar makes no sense it's all in code. It's probably pretty important because he was in prison and couldn't actually go anywhere. We're also still combing through the contraband from the other cells just to make sure none of his neighbours were also involved."

"Alright. Upton, Gibson, good work. Keep at the phone. Atwater and Burgess you two talk to organized crime, see what you can dig up and alert them of our discoveries. Ruzek and Halstead, flip any CIs you've got. We need to get ahead of whatever they're planning."

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They were supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be safe. They were in the precinct, they were surrounded by on-duty cops, there was another detective unit across from Intelligence, Platt was at the front desk, Hank-don't-you-even fucking-dare-Voight was in his office. They were supposed to be safe. But they weren't.

They'd just left one of Adam's CIs twitching in excitement down the street as he counted his money when they got the call over the radio.

"10-1! 10-1! Shots fired at police at 21st district! We're pinned down!" They had a moment of stunned silence together before they hauled ass to Jay's truck and high-tailed it back to the district, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Jay's body was moving on autopilot, which probably wasn't good considering he was speeding in a large vehicle down busy roads, the only thing that was going to calm him down, that would quell and panic and rage bubbling up in was seeing Hailey alive. He would move heaven and earth to make that a reality.

Pulling up at the district he vaguely remembered he had to look out for Hana too, but lord help him, and whoever stood in his way, if he didn't see blonde hair and blue eyes attached to the fiery woman who held his heart.

The lobby reminded Jay of Kandahar, there were bullet holes lining every vertical surface. Blood pooled under the bodies of the injured. He did a quick sweep of the room, finding nothing but injured cops and civilians, none of whom were Hailey or Hana, or the attackers. The door to intelligence hung open, barely attached at the hinges. "They went up to intelligence! Move your asses!" Platt didn't spare them a second glance as she went back to ordering the remaining able-bodied patrol officers around.

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"Kim!"

"I'm okay, I'm okay."

"We're okay too, just so you know."

"Where did they go, Kev? What happened?"

"They went down to the garage-" Jay didn't have it in him to finish listening, he just ran, gun raised. "Hailey! Hana!" It was bad enough that he might lose Hailey, the woman he loved more than anything, but losing Hana too? He wouldn't be able to look Kenny in the eye ever again.

"We're over here!"

"We're okay!"

And then he could breathe again. Oh thank god, she's safe, Hailey's safe. She's mad at me but she's safe... Does my heart always pound this fast when I'm not with her and I'm just noticing now? No, it's probably adrenaline because... I almost lost her. But I didn't. They were tucked into separate corners of the tech office, Hailey, covered in blood that she immediately indicated wasn't hers, was armed with her Glock and Hana armed with her crutches. There were five men in black tactical gear with ski masks lying in various positions on the floor. Four had obvious non-lethal bullet wounds, a courtesy from Hailey, and the fifth was still moving and being hit repeatedly by Hana with one of her crutches. "Stop. Moving. Already. You. Ass!" Jay would've been more impressed if he wasn't still coming down from the adrenaline. "Thank god. You're both okay? Hailey?"

"We're fine."

"Hails-"

"We're fine, just help guide the ambos here, please?"

"...Okay." God, he could feel his heart start to splinter. Less than a minute ago he'd thought that his world had been savagely destroyed, but now... All he wanted was to hold her and it only made him ache more when she pushed him away. He just walked over to the garage door to allow the paramedics easier access, only his footsteps and groans of pain coming from the goons kept the room from being dismally silent.

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"She's completely fine, so before you freak out just know that she's in the exact same shape she arrived here in."

"That is a terrible way to start a phone call Halstead! Was that supposed to calm me down or help in some way? What even happened?"

"The Genna's hired some local weapons enthusiasts the bust into our precinct and steal what we knew about them. They trashed our bulletin board and tried to get to the computers in the tech room but Hailey and Hana whooped their asses. When I got there Hana was actually beating one with one of her crutches. Hana's a badass."

"Damn right she is... But she's okay?"

"She's pissed off, but there's not a scratch on her."

"Good... That's really good."

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"Hailey?" Jay knocked again, using every last thread of hope he had that she'd answer. It didn't matter that she was still upset with him, he just wanted to see her face. She and Hana had been whisked away by the FBI and IA right after the ambulances picked up the hired help. He just wanted to see her for more than thirty seconds, reassure himself that she was okay and that she still loved him. That he could fix everything, that he would at least get to hold her one last time. "Hailey, please open the door." He was only met with soul-crushing silence. "Please."

The relief he felt when the lock turned and the door opened could not be described. "Hana is inside if you want to talk to her."

"I'm here for you, Hails. Please, just... Talk to me. I love you, I love you more than I ever thought possible to love someone and today I found you hunched over, covered in blood. It doesn't matter that the blood didn't end up being yours. I was- I still am- terrified. I could have lost you today and I don't know how to face that. Can I just have a hug, at least, please? I just- I can't-" And then she was wrapping her arms around his waist, her tired gravity pulling him to her. He honestly considered being able to wrap his arms around her in return, and burying his face into her hair a gift from the gods. "I was so glad that you weren't there, because it means you weren't getting shot at, I've had to deal with you getting shot more than enough times, I couldn't deal with it again, Jay. I... I love you too." Jay didn't know how much longer they stayed like that, enveloping each other, but he cherished every second of it. And when they finally parted it was like coming down from an adrenaline high. "Do you want to come in? We were about to order from Bartoli's."

"I would love that."

"Good, cause we've left Hana waiting for a while."

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"So, now I get to have the legendary deep-dish pizza, huh?"

"Yep. Best damn pizza in the world."

"Damn straight."

"You know, I think you two are a little biased."

"You sound like the partner I had while I was in the FBI, OA Zidan, he was always riding me about my opinion on pizza." Jay froze. He could feel himself freeze up. He could feel Hailey and Hana eyeing him in confusion. Shit. "What is it, Jay?"

"Sorry, I just don't like remembering that my partner was away from me for so long, and had another partner in that time period."

"Really, Halstead? You don't need to get all territorial, Hailey clearly doesn't want to be anywhere but with you. Seriously, you should have seen her when the FBI and IA showed up-"

"Hana!"

"What? He's the one who got all stiff when you brought up the FBI"

Phew, they didn't know, thank heavens.

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Everyone was back the next day, ready to keep moving, to catch the people who organized the break-in of their precinct which injured twenty-three and killed four. It was bad enough that they'd tried to bust into Intelligence in the first place, but to hurt innocent people in the process? That was just plain wicked.

Hailey and Hana were working side by side, delving into the cyber goings on of the Genna family, Kim and Kevin were working with the crime lab to analyse the precinct, and Jay and Adam were back to flipping CIs. Jay felt better about where things stood with Hailey, but he was still grumpy that he couldn't be in the temporary bullpen with her today. He knew that she was capable and that she didn't need him to hover, but that didn't make being away from her after she was almost killed any less difficult. They were supposed to be in the most secure place in the precinct, how were any of them supposed to feel safe working in a place that had been breached by mercenaries in only a few minutes? He tried to shake off the worry and fear, but he just couldn't. And it was made worse by the fact that it wasn't only Hailey who had been in danger- Hana was too. And Kenny had already lost so many people that he really didn't know how he would've handled that situation. Having to tell one of his best friends that the woman he was in love with was dead while dealing with the exact same senario.

The second last CI on their list had been dodging them all day, and Jay's sanity was already hanging on by a thread- he did not have the strength or patience to deal with this. So instead of trying to track him down again, he just put out a BOLO and waited until patrol brought him in, kicking and screaming. When he entered the interrogation room Marcus went on a tirade, "what the FUCK, man!", "we had a deal!", "are these handcuffs really necessary?". Jay just stared at him. He didn't have the energy to try and get the guy to shut the fuck up, so he just sat silently across from him, trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible. "... Are you okay, man?"

"No, not really, Marcus. See, I've been calling you all day. I've called up other CIs and they were all okay to meet. But not you. No, you ghosted me and I had to get patrol to drag your ass in here. You still have robbery charges I could lay on you. This is about to get a whole lot worse because I have exactly no patience to deal with any BS right now, but yours especially. So. The Genna family. Tell me everything you know."

And he did. He sang like a damn canary, which Jay attributed to luck, and Adam attributed to Jay looking like he was going to tear the poor bastard limb from limb. Seriously. Adam made a mental note not to piss off Jay, which he subconsciously realizes means that as long as he didn't hurt Hailey he'd be fine. But he didn't have time to dwell on that as Jay exited the interrogation room looking like the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow. "I've gotta get this to the girls, you're not gonna believe what this bastard knew."

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An apartment, down in Canaryville, was occupied by Daniel Anderson's mistress. And she wasn't just his mistress... She was his accountant. She didn't just file his taxes, she managed his money, she knew everything that it was used for and how they got it in the first place. Jay ran to the temporary tech room ready to drop a bomb, only for his fiery girlfriend to beat him to it. "We found out where they got the weapons and ammo! The navy didn't put out a report until they'd finished their investigation, but it's their stuff. It all came from Norfolk, but they were shipping it to Kandahar when they were robbed by a twelve-person team, well-skilled and heavily armed. But look at this surveillance video, where part of the leader's sleeve got torn off."

"That's... That's Daniel Anderson. He's got that tattoo. We can get a warrant with that, but what about this- Daniel has a mistress in an apartment in Canaryville. She's his accountant, she knows everything. And if we can get a warrant with what you found, we can search that apartment too because it's in his name." Hailey smiled that vindicated smile that just lit up her whole face and made her eyes shine with pride. Jay could feel himself mirroring her and he just couldn't look away, finally feeling like they got their groove back, their relationship back. "Hey guys? I'm glad you made up but can you either get to work or get a room? I don't need a front seat to this."

"Oh, admit it Gibson, we're your OTP."

"I admit to nothing, Halstead."

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Honestly, the raid of all of Daniel Anderson's properties, and consequently the collapse of the Anderson crime family, was dismally anti-climactic. They found boat-loads of evidence, Daniel's wife, mistress, and right-hand man all turned on him, and the FBI and NCIS were currently fighting over jurisdiction even though the case was already solved... By the CPD. Truthfully no one minded, because it meant that once they submitted their case notes and raid reports, they were done and might not even have to go to trial, the feds could handle that. While the majority of Intelligence decided to go to the regular watering hole, Hailey and Hana had made other plans and were dragging Jay along for the ride. And it was all going well, until they started talking about roommates. "I like Zadie, but she's gotten annoying now that she's dating my partner. So has he honestly. I mean, who thought that Kenny Crosby, an ex-army ranger would be acting like a thirteen-year-old that was in his first relationship? 'Is that text from Zadie? Is it about me? Were you guys talking about me while you were in the kitchen together this morning?' He was It's... A little exhausting. All he can talk about, is her. And whenever we hang out it always involves her somehow. He won't say it but I know he was a little disappointed when I came back and interrupted their 'love nest." All that Jay was able to gain from that other than the echo of sadness from behind her eyes, was that Crosby was dating someone who was not Hana. Which would be weird if he talked about her constantly on the phone, which he does, have an intimately trusting relationship with her, which he does, and ask one of his old army buddies to keep an eye on her while he can't because he cares about her so much and can't bear to lose her, which he did. So in conclusion; the fact that Kenny is dating someone who is not Hana is weird and will require further investigation.

"So he's constantly asking you about his girlfriend?"

"Well, she is too. But it's more annoying with him because he's my partner, we work together."

"But you live with her."

"It's... It's just different." Jay could see that she was mentally grasping at threads while trying to keep herself from falling into a black hole, this clearly meant much more to her than she was letting on so he decided to drop it. It was good timing too, because Hailey returned to the table with their food. Hair up, with a cute little Greece-themed apron on, ignoring her older brother's teasing from the kitchen. "Σκασε ηλιθιε!" (shut up idiot!)

"Μην μου πεις να σταματήσω, αυτό είναι το εστια��όριο μου!" (Don't tell me to shut up, this is my restaurant!) Jay found himself chucking at the Upton sibling banter. They interacted a lot less than he and Will did, though he supposed part of that was because he and his brother ran into each other through their work fairly often, and it was nice to see them... Happy with one another. Hailey usually looked like a constipated pigeon whenever she talked about her family so it was nice that she had reconciled with at least one sibling. After they were all able to move out, their relationships with each other got much more contentious. Theodore was the middle child and believed that they should quietly encourage their mother to leave their abusive father and just silently support her, Declan was the oldest and quite firmly just didn't care about their parents anymore and wanted nothing to with either of them because one was the abuser and the other was the enabler, while Hailey was the youngest and wanted to drag her father to prison by his ear herself. "Your brother seems like quite the joker."

"Oh, he is. He's always been the comedian in the family, a bit of a cross between SpongeBob and Chandler Bing. When I was seven, Theo put these gummy spiders in random places all over the house. It scared the crap out of my dad when he opened the- a top kitchen cupboard and about twelve of these spiders fell out, scared him even more when Theo grabbed one off the floor and bit into it, I think he ate three in total, one was completely whole, talking about how 'tasty' they were before my dad needed to sit down. It took him longer than he will ever admit to realize that they were just candy."

"Oh, that is good. I used to use some of those YouTube jump scare videos on my parents. I thought it was the funniest thing ever, especially because I used Elmo jump scares. So they'd be freaking out, and I'd just ask them why they were so afraid of a red puppet. My mom still doesn't trust me to show her videos."

"Well, it sounds like you and my brother would get along like fire, you should meet him later. He said he'd join us for dessert." Wait... What? Oh no... I know that look, she's trying to set Hana up with her brother! As much as I'd like Hana to be my sister-in-law, that would preferably be through a different brother.

."That sounds great, I really like Theo. What was that thing we had last time we ate with him and... Her name was Kate, right? Do you know how they're doing? I feel like I haven't heard about her in a long time." Hailey gave him a look. A I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that look. "No, they're not dating anymore. I thought I mentioned that."

"Oops, seriously though, what was that dessert we had with them?"

"That was revani, we can ask if that's what my brother has here today."

"Uh- what is revani, if I may ask, as the only non-Greek and non-Greek-dating person at this table?"

"Ha, of course you can ask Hana. It's a semolina cake, flavoured with lemon and orange zest. It's really good."

"That sounds great, but do you think I'd also be able to order some takeout for tomorrow? I just have a long day of travelling via bus tomorrow and I don't know when I'll get the chance to eat, so I figure having a big breakfast might help with that."

"That sounds like a cool idea. Hailey, why don't we all order some food to go and eat it tomorrow morning together?"

"You mean as like a big Greek breakfast?"

"Yeah."

"I wasn't thinking that initially but I'm glad Jay did, it sounds great."

"Alright, yeah, let's do it. I'll go talk to Theo and order somethings that reheat well." Hailey left them with a smile to go bother her brother in the kitchen, their discussion in Greek filling the restaurant with jokes and quips only a few present were able to understand, forging smiles on the faces of strangers as they listened to the voices in the kitchen. Hana looked apprehensive, and he doubted it was about the long bus inter-state bus ride. "Hana, I'm sure that your partner missed you, maybe he didn't say it, maybe he needed a distraction, but he missed you."

"How do you know? You don't even know him." If only you knew.

"Trust me on this."

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"You fucking idiot." Jay was trying to keep his voice down so that he didn't wake Hailey, who was asleep in her bed (where he wanted to be), or Hana who was asleep in the guest bedroom. As much as he loved her with his entire being, Jay had to admit that Hailey was a fucking demon if you woke her up without 'just cause'.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me Crosby!"

"What the hell Halstead?!"

"You called me at three-thirty in the morning, worried out of your mind about Hana, asking me to keep an eye on her, to protect her, all while you're dating someone who isn't her!"

"Oh, yeah, I'm dating her roommate-"

"Zadie. I know. Why do you think I called you to yell at you at two in the morning?"

"Hey, back up man. I don't know what you think you're talking about, but just because I'm dating Zadie doesn't mean that I don't care about Hana. There is very little I wouldn't do to keep her safe... If I could even do it."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I... I was right there. I should have been able to help her. So, so why couldn't I help her? Huh? She is so important to me, okay? I don't even know how to describe it."

"Try."

"She... My mom told me that to make a woman fall in love with me I had to make her laugh, but every time she laughs I'm the one who falls more and more in love. She is astonishingly intelligent and I have never been more glad to feel like a complete and utter fool just by standing in someone's presence. If I had to crawl to hell and be tortured by the devil himself to keep her safe, I'd do it. I have never felt as wholly accepted by anyone else in my life, she has found ways to motivate me to climb out of my own grave on my darkest days. Every time a look at her, I see a glowing, deliriously happy future that I know I don't deserve." Heavy silence bore on both sides of the phone, dragging Kenny deeper into the dark crack in his chest, and delivering Jay an epiphany.

"... Have you ever thought that maybe it's about what she deserves?"

"Hm?"

"Listen, man, not everything is about you. This is about her. You just said you would let the devil tear you apart to keep her safe, and yeah maybe you don't deserve her, but she deserves you. She deserves someone who would do whatever it takes to make her laugh and keep her safe at whatever the cost all in the same day, and it sounds like that's you."

"Jay..."

"Just think about it man. And while you're at it, stop neglecting Hana, okay?"

"What?"

"You constantly talk about Zadie, you always involve her somehow when you're hanging out with Hana, and Hana's been getting the vibe that you're upset she came home and disrupted the little bubble you had going on with Zadie."

"She told you that?"

"Me and Hailey, when we were all out at dinner. Just listen, pay a bit more attention to her, stop treating her like the middle man between you and your girlfriend, and work on your self-worth, man. You're a good person and an even greater friend, don't sell yourself short."

"Thanks, Halstead."

"No problem, Crosby."

"So what exactly makes me a 'great friend', Jay?"

"Uggggghhhhhhh."

"Hey! You said it, can't take it back!"

"... This is why we can't have nice things Kenny, goodnight."

"Wait you didn't tell me-"

#One Chicago #Chicago PD #fbi cbs #FBI Most Wanted #jay halstead #hailey upton #kenny crosby #hana gibson #jay halstead x hailey upton #kenny crosby x hana gibson #kenny x hana #oa zidan x maggie bell #OA Zidan #Maggie Bell #zibell #upstead

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keanureevesisbae · 4 years ago

Text

The alluring charm of Henry Cavill - Chapter 8

Summary: The Celebrity Project has ended, however there is still a little event, where the contestants comment on favorite moments selected by fans. However, there is one big revelation.

Henry Cavill x Adelaide Park (ofc)

Wordcount: 2.6k

Warnings: Just messing with the otp, that’s all

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Three days pass. Henry and I are still in the cottage, but there are no cameras around us. I think I am and will be forever grateful that they are gone now. We can finally breath and act like a normal couple. Thanks to the Celebrity Project, I met Henry and I’m thankful that I did, but those camera’s are a pain in the ass and will never be missed.

Jennifer Lopez and Charlie Puth showed everyone that they were a whole lot better than the rest of us. Henry and I came in second, but we are fan favorites and to be honest: I think that is the best prize I could’ve ever won. Tonight there is a special live event with the other duos and after that, it’s officially over.

I can’t wait for that.

I keep trying to make some lunch for Henry and me, but ever since the camera’s are gone, Henry has turned into a piece of velcro. He distracts me with kisses on my temple, wraps his strong arms around my waist as he stands behind me. ‘Stop tickling me,’ I chuckle, as he pushes up my shirt, so he can touch my bare skin.

‘I’m not tickling you,’ he retorts with a chuckle. ‘I’m hugging you.’

‘You are tickling me,’ I laugh. ‘Come on, Henry, pasta will be ruined.’

He simply shrugs. ‘I don’t care.’

‘You are awfully clingy,’ I note. ‘What is up with you?’

Henry reaches over to turn off the gas and turns me around, to hide his face in my neck, kissing me there. ‘Just obsessed with you.’ He bites his lip when he looks at me again. ‘You look beautiful, Addy. Every time I look at you, you are even more beautiful than you were the last time I saw you.’

This should not make me blush, but obviously it does anyways. Everything he says and does to me, I turn into a giggling and blushing mess. ‘Shut up,’ I whisper.

‘No, never.’ He hoists me up in his arms with a satisfied grin on his face and carries me as if I’m nothing to the couch.

I sit on his lap and whisper: ‘What are you doing, Henry?’

He takes a deep breath, as he frowns a bit. ‘Am I going too fast?’ he then asks. ‘I can stop if you want me to, Addy.’

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I like this, I really do, but it’s real now. I haven’t done this when it’s real.’ I simply shrug and add: ‘And now you stare at me and I figure there is so much going on inside your head and I have no idea what.’

His hands rest on my hips, his eyes locked with mine and a small smile toys on his face. ‘You want to know what is going on inside my head?’

‘Yes.’

‘I keep thinking about how I’m so lucky. I didn’t even want to participate,’ he admits. ‘But I met you here and fell in love so quickly. I have never fallen in love with anyone this fast. I keep asking myself what I did to deserve you. You deserve so much better than this. Better than me.’

I shake my head. ‘Don’t cut yourself short like that, Henry. If there is someone who doesn’t deserve this, it’s me. And don’t you dare to tell me otherwise.’

But Henry wouldn’t be Henry, because he already opens his mouth, daring to tell me otherwise. I lean in, to shut him up with a kiss. While he lets it happen and I fully surrender myself to his lips, his words keep running through my mind. He is falling in love with me. I’m falling in love with him.

When I let go, I let out a shaky breath. So much is running through my mind. Love, fear, lust.

‘Come here,’ he whispers, pulling me close to his chest as I melt against his frame. ‘You are tense. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ However, I just come to a realization. ‘Oh my.’

‘What is it?’

‘Are you my boyfriend?’

Henry starts to laugh, letting his head fall back.

‘Why are you laughing at me?’ I ask him, slapping him across his chest. ‘Forget I asked.’ I already want to step off his lap, however he is faster and stronger. He pulls me flush against his chest. ‘Let me go,’ I laugh.

‘I wasn’t laughing at you, Addy. I was laughing because you are adorable. If you want me to be your boyfriend, I’d be honored.’

Good thing I was already blushing. ‘You want me as your girlfriend?’ I ask him.

‘I’d love that.’ He places his hands on both sides of my face and runs his thumbs over my lips. ‘You are beautiful and my girlfriend.’ He sounds so giddy and my heart misses a few beats. ‘My girlfriend Adelaide Park.’

◎ ◎ ◎

Henry has wrapped his thick arm around my shoulders as we sit outside our cottage in front of some large screens. We are catching up with the other couples and Jennifer mentions something about not being able to wait until she can sleep in her own bed again and not hearing Charlie snore again.

‘And from the looks of it,’ Justin says to me, ‘You two will be sharing a bed more often.’

‘Don’t say stuff like that,’ I chuckle, as I am nearly puking with embarrassment.

Justin starts to chuckle. ‘So, what did you two do these days without camera’s?’

His wife Hailey slaps his stomach. ‘Don’t tease her like that. Look at her cheeks.’ She turns to Henry and says: ‘Come on, mister Witcher, protect your girl.’

Henry only clears his throat and Justin quickly tells us that he won’t do it anymore. The energy Henry Cavill possesses.

I now know for a fact that I should never ever let him go.

Jennifer quickly gives a short speech, telling us how great it was to get to know us, to be part of this first ever season of the program and how much she would love it, if we would do a reunion after a few months.

We watch some fan reactions of the last episode and much to my dismay, we have to rewatch our kiss a billion times. It’s embarrassing to watch the first time, but it’s not getting any easier the fourth or eight time.

‘Look at this response on Twitter,’ Jennifer laughs. ‘“They are so cute, it makes me wanna hurl”. You two are disgustingly cute, that’s a truth.’

The night continues and I hum in content when I know it’s almost over. We watch footage of us when we first arrived here, the only ones not being awkward, were Justin and Hailey obviously.

‘But, what was Henry like before he started here?’ the voiceover of a man sounds through the boxes. He tenses up beside me and I look at him, before I return my eyes back to the screen again.

Henry is in an office I don’t recognize, with men I don’t know. ‘I have to work with her?’ I hear Henry ask, as he is looking at my headshot. ‘This is so unfair. Have you any idea how unfair this is? I’m supposed to win this thing. How am I gonna win this, if I have to work with her?’

I swallow hard, as I stare at the screen and sit up straight. I shrug off his arm from my shoulders. Is this real?

‘We never said it would be easy, Henry,’ I hear someone else say. ‘But work with Adelaide, make sure you two can win this thing and please, don’t make it too obvious what your intentions are.’

I feel tears in my eyes. Intentions…

‘Fine, but when I win, James Bond is mine?’ Henry asks.

‘Addy, listen to me,’ Henry whispers, but I don’t. I listen to what is happening on the screen. I recognize this, when the screen switches to outside. This was the day we went shopping, the day where we snuck in kisses.

‘You’re losing, Henry. You what that means, right? You’re not getting James Bond,’ a different male voice says.

‘We’re not too far behind,’ Henry answers. ‘I’ll get her to man up, so we can win this.’

I think I would’ve preferred if Henry just punched my nose back into my face. I’ll get her to man up? Did he seriously just say that.

‘And, I never knew you were such a good actor. I almost believed you actually care about her.’

On screen Henry sighs. ‘Maybe after this, I’ll get even more jobs.’

The air has turned cold as ice. Everyone is quiet and I stare at the blacked out screen. The only thing I hear is the pounding of my heart in my ears. My eye twitches as my jaw clenches. I need to get out of here. I need to get away from him.

Henry carefully places a hand on my back, but I stand up and walk inside. Thankfully we were at our cottage, since it has the best lighting, so I’m back there in a few seconds. I slam the door shut behind me and rush to the living room.

I should’ve known. I should’ve fucking known. This was obviously too good to be true. How could I be such an idiot? Finally, fucking finally I have cleared my reputation of being so stupid and ditzy and now this happens. The whole world knows I simply fell for Henry Cavill, because I was easy.

I’m such a dumb cow.

‘Addy, let me explain,’ Henry says, who walks into our bedroom. No wait, not our bedroom. The bedroom. A bedroom.

I grab my suitcase before I place it on the bed. ‘What is there to explain?’ I ask him, as I start folding my clothes. ’It was pretty fucking obvious to me. You only par- parti- par-ti-ci-pa-ted to get that stupid James Bond part. You don’t like me, despite what you said to me. You just used me to get the job and more job offers.’ I push passed him, to grab my stuff from the bathroom.

At that exact moment a cameraman barges in, not wanting to let this moment go to waste, but somehow I don’t seem to care. I don’t even want to care. I’m just too mad at him right now to give a damn.

‘I didn’t use you,’ Henry says.

I open the door a lot harder than I’m supposed to, letting it smash against the wall, as my eyes fill with tears, all because of his wrong doing. ‘Enlighten me, Henry, what did you do then? Because judging from what you and I just watched and the rest of the world just watched, it made it seem like you were using me to get what you wanted.’

He sighs. ‘I meant what I said to you. I like you and I am falling in love with you.’

‘Hurray,’ I deadpan. I put everything in my suitcase and close it.

Henry swallows hard. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to the airport, so I can buy myself a ticket home, to visit my parents. You know, I know for a fact that they care about me for who I am and they would never ever use me the way you used me.’ I stare at my suitcase for a while and seeing my passport on top of it, makes a sob leave my eyes. I hide my face in both of my hands, as my shoulders shake when I cry.

‘No, Addy, please,’ he says, placing his hand on my shoulder, but I slap him away.

‘Stay away from me,’ I spit out, ‘and don’t you dare call me Addy anymore. Let… Le… Let me…’ Why can’t I find the right words to say now? ‘I’m going to tell you a few things and you cannot interrupt me.’

‘Okay,’ he simply says.

‘You stay as far from me as possible. I would like you to never ever mention me in an in… interview again. I don’t want you in my life anymore, neither do I want to be part of yours. You bet… betra…’ I take a deep breath as I try to get the word out of my mouth correctly. ‘You be-tray-ed me, Henry. You used me and I genuinely thought you cared about me. You know how hard it is for me to open up and… Never mind, I just hate the way you make me feel right now.’

‘There isn’t anything I can do to make it up to you?’ he asks. ‘Because I want to make this up to you. There must be something.’

I shake my head. ‘This isn’t something you can fix. What you told whoever those men were and what you told me… Those things aren’t the same. It’s either one or the other. And yes, you can change your mind, but the least you could’ve done, is told me about it. If you meant what you said to me, you would’ve had the decency to be honest with me. You should’ve told me your second agenda before you told me you fell in love with me, before you kissed me.’

Henry blinks a few times. ‘Adelaide, this can’t be the end.’

‘It’s the end,’ I say with more certainty than I have ever heard myself speak with. I simply grab my suitcases and walk out of the room.

Tears run over my cheeks as I brush passed the others, who want to know if I’m okay, but I’m not. I’m not okay and I know I won’t be for awhile. I need to go to see my dad, to hug my mom. I don’t want to be in Italy anymore, I need to go home and be with them.

I already spot a taxi at the stand, but before I can approach him, I hear a: ‘Adelaide, please wait a second.’

I stop walking and I hear two pair of footsteps. Those stupid camera people, I’m not going to miss them.

‘Don’t I get to say something to you?’ he asks, as he stands in front of me.

‘You said enough behind my back already,’ I tell him. ‘Get out of the way. Don’t make this harder than it already is.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry won’t cut it,’ I tell him, a lot harsher than I did before.

Henry rubs his face, before gently holding my hand. I know I shouldn’t let him do this, but I just want to feel his touch one more time, because I know this is going to be the last time I’ll ever feel it.

‘Henry, please, let me go.’

‘I am willing to do anything in the world to make it up to you, Adelaide Park. You are one of a kind. You are the one that I want to get to know even better.’

‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Just don’t. Don’t contact me ever again, don’t audition for the part as my love interest and please if you ever see me before I see you, walk away. I can’t have you in my life.’

‘No, please,’ Henry says, holding my hand up to his chest, placing his other on top of his own. ‘I can’t lose you, Adelaide. What I said to my agent, before we met… It was true. I only participated because I wanted James Bond, but what I told you is true as well. I don’t want James Bond anymore. I just want you.’

‘Let me go,’ I say, not looking at him. ‘Please, Henry, now.’

‘Adelaide,’ he whispers.

‘Right now.’

He lets go of my hand and sighs deeply. ‘Is this the end?’ he asks. ‘Please, this can’t be the end.’

My sniffle is his answer and it’s all I can give him. ‘Goodbye, Henry.’

#henry cavill #henry cavill x ofc #henry cavill x oc #henry cavill x asian ofc #henry cavill x adelaide park #henry cavill fandom #henry cavill fanfic #asian ofc #adelaide park #the alluring charm of henry cavill

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writefinch · 4 years ago

Text

Dear Dairy, Pt.1 (cn: noncon, Mm, kidnap, emphasis on *forced* feminization, induced lactation, milking, bondage, drugging, induction of gender dysphoria in a cis guy, things of that nature)

7th July 2018

Cold day today. I dusted off my scarves for the first time this year. Not literally, they'd been vacuum sealed and packed away when the weather turned in October. I threw out the red and yellow knit scarf, something I should have done last year, as it's far too Harry Potter. I was going to pick out the UMIST scarf but that felt a touch dull for the first scarf of the year. In the end I picked out the green silk paisley, which I felt provided a contrast with the pink shirt. I wore them with the second-hand grey Armani that I've yet to have tailored; I haven't yet decided if it's worth the trouble. I'm leaning towards yes, as I received two compliments today, one from Jason's database administrator, a charming and flirtatious--to say nothing of attractive--lady from Perth. We've talked about the possibility of meeting up for drinks at some point, and I'm increasingly inclined to take her up on the offer.

Experiment C2 is adjusting to his newfound freedom since his release last week. It was sad to see him go, and I'll cherish the time we spent together, our first night especially when he violently objected to the idea of servicing me. Oh, how he kicked and fought, clawing at his neck chain, scratching me, biting, swinging wildly. He bloodied my nose rather viciously and left me in no mood for sex that night, to the extent that I almost let him go entirely.

Of course, his demeanor changed altogether after I bagged him. A clear plastic bag over his head, taped around his neck, watching him gasp and writhe for air that isn't there, screaming his silly little head off until he's sure that he's taken his final breath, then tearing a tiny hole over his nostrils. I let him suck in four generous lungfuls of air before I bagged him the second time, and I went through seven bags before allowing him a rest. After that he became such an agreeable and solicitous cocksleeve you'd have thought he was raised in a merchant marine!

Still, he was unsuitable both physiologically and psychologically for the experimental interventions, and I only have so much space in the cellar, so I had to let him go. Some of my social acquaintances are keeping a close eye on him. He's been told that running his mouth will lead to nothing but the cold grave, and I believe he's a bright enough lad to take that to heart.

I'm beginning the search for his replacement tomorrow.

20th July 2018

I've found him! I've found him I've found him, he is everything I've been looking for, he is perfect, it is as if God placed that boy on earth for no other purpose than my need for him. I can barely contain my excitement.

He is an itinerant surf bum, twenty years of age, single, underemployed, estranged from his family. He has flowing blond hair, a few wisps under his chin that can barely be called a beard, deep brown eyes, and a lithe, rangy figure that seems to be slowly growing into the top-heavy carrot-shaped build of a classic surfer. He's been living in town since May, surfing most days, doing temp jobs, lodging in the spare bedroom of a friend of mine.

What a perfect physique! His body is accustomed to being dashed over rocks and whipped by surf, what fun I will have finding and surpassing his tolerances for pain! Oh, to restrict and ration out air to a boy who has trained himself to hold his breath underwater since he was a young teenager, to see those taut muscles stretched over a rack, I cannot wait, I can't wait.

I won't speak or write his name. I now take every action with the foregone conclusion that he is mine, and that he is already Experiment C3. In my mind, he is already in my cellar.

My friend has kindly allowed him to get behind on his rent, and C3 apparently plans to move to Sydney in ten day's time, driving out across the country in his decade-old Ford Ka, surfboard strapped to the roof. When he disappears a few days before that, people will assume he left to avoid paying his rent.

They won't be wrong, in a sense. C3 won't be worrying about rent for a long, long time...

26th July, 2018

It hasn't been an easy choice, and it is in fact a decision I've been struggling with for some time now, but I've decided to let my hair go grey. I'm almost forty for heaven's sake, and I noticed my first grey a year before the financial crisis. Ever since then I've been religious in my application of dye and toner, carefully concealing each and every one of the pale little buggers that pops up, but it's gone from something I'd do after a haircut to something I'm doing twice a week. I won't rush it, I'm going to ease off the dye over the course of the next year or so, but by next July I'll be au naturelle salt and pepper.

Work remains dull but tolerable. I know I'm blessed to be able to do most of my duties from home given my hobbies, but there's a certain sense of removal from everything, as if it's not really a job at all and I'm back at university doing a coursework-intensive compulsory module. On the other hand, I do enjoy going to the office in a way that I did not when I was going there five days a week!

Experiment C3 is screaming his head off again, I think. It's very faint, and I've turned off the air conditioning in the sitting room so I can hear it coming up from below. I suppose I can't blame the boy, given the circumstances. He hasn't seen me since the drugs wore off, and he's in the same configuration I first kept C2 in: his feet are in snowboard boots and locked into clips in the floor, his neck is in a steel collar connected to an eyebolt on the floor by a one-metre chain, his wrists are cuffed and pulled up towards the ceiling by another chain, he has noise-cancelling headphones strapped over his ears blaring white noise, and he's wearing a blindfold snug enough to prevent him from even blinking underneath it.

He's been there for seven hours now, since three in the morning. He can neither stand nor sit nor lie down, he cannot turn around, he cannot see--though it is pitch black in the cellar even if he wasn't blindfolded--he cannot hear his own voice, and I very much doubt he has any idea how he got there.

As I said, I haven't been down to see him properly yet, so I'm monitoring him at a distance via CCTV and also his pulse and blood oxygen readings. I'm keeping him watered through an IV drip and I'm not at all worried about feeding him just yet, though I'm sure he'll be getting hungry given that I emptied out the contents of his guts with an enema while he was still unconscious. I want him properly good and woozy from sleep deprivation before I introduce myself, either forty-eight hours or until his vitals get a tad skiffy, whichever is shorter. By my word, I am not an impatient man!

Of course, given the close monitoring required, I'll only be getting a few more hours sleep than he will. I suspect I'm getting the better half of the deal. Ah, the poor thing just wet himself. He needn't worry, it's all going into the bucket between his feet, and it'll go to good use later.

I've calmed myself down since his capture, for practical reasons as much as anything else, but I am still abuzz with energy. I am already looking forward to writing my next entry!

28th July 2018

I introduced myself to C3 today.

He spent an impressively long time in the stress position before he was unable to push his legs and instead dangled from his wrists, almost twelve hours, at which point I let the wrist rope go slack and allowed him to collapse. To prevent him from sleeping I intermittently blasted him with high pressure cold water whenever his pulse dropped below 100, for about a further four hours until I decided he'd had enough rest and strung his wrists back up.

He lasted five hours that time, so I let his wrists down again and stood sentry with a paintball gun, giving him a good and proper three-round burst whenever he stopped whimpering. Up again, barely an hour, down again, where I pinned him to the floor with wiring from an electric fence, set to deliver low-intensity zaps across his arms and chest whenever it seemed as if sleep was a possibility. He only got a few shocks, I think the first few put him in such a state of alarm that he didn't dare relax enough to be given another.

I strung him up a few more times, sometimes combining the motivators--his quivering thighs made a delightful target for paintballs as he tried to hold them in a crouching squat--until we reached the forty-ninth hour. I then played my recorded introduction tape through his headphones. It was identical to the one I'd played for C1 and C2, which was itself similar to the one recorded for B4 through B9.

Of course, as the deaf and blindfolded boy was crouch-squatting in place hearing my voice tell him that his old life was forfeit, that he was livestock now, that he would be used as a sex slave, that disobedience would only lead to misery, and the details of the hormone treatments he would be on, I was standing in front of him, masturbating.

My timing was impeccable. Just as the last lines of the recording said "if you're wondering when you'll meet me, I'm right in front of you," I came all over his whorish face. I'm afraid I'm no Peter North, I've no more than four spurts and the first one is always rather watery, but I nailed him right between the lips with one burst and smeared the rest over his face with the tip of my cock. He froze up rather delightfully during the whole ordeal, barely flinching as I cleaned off the tip in his hair.

I took the microphone and spoke directly into his headphones. I told him he'd been in his predicament for two days so far, that he was to obey my simple instructions, and that if he did he would be allowed food and allowed to rest. I told him that I would not require him to speak at any point during these instructions, and that if he so much as whispered I'd keep him strung up without food for another two days. He nodded in agreement, which earned him a hard slap, as I'd not asked him to nod or shake his head. I told him then to nod if he understood, which he did.

I freed one of his arms at a time, telling them to keep them in place and move them only as and when I told him to move them. He obeyed--a far quicker learner than C1--and I put him into the straitjacket. I unlatched his boots one at a time, putting him in ankle cuffs with a short length of heavy chain between them. I injected him in the buttocks with his first dose of anti-androgens, a painkiller, and his hormonal cocktail, and I removed the IV from his arm.

At that point I led him to his cage, a 2x3 metre cell, 1.5 metres high. I removed his blindfold, though it did him little good as it was pitch black in the entire room--I'd switched off the lights and was working via a set of light amplification goggles--and pushed him onto the wipe-clean bedroll.

"Lie still like a good little boy until the lights turn on, and then you can help yourself to some food," I said to him. He made a sound as if to respond, then silenced himself, lying still in his bonds.

The lights were on a timer, and they came on harsh and bright when I was upstairs, watching him through the CCTV on my desktop with a fresh pot of coffee. Three of the walls of his cage were walled off with a tarp, allowing him to see about a fifth of the basement through the remaining wall. Inside his cage was his bedroll, a doggie bowl full of oatmeal and bananas, a small plastic trough filled with fresh water, and a litter tray.

I considered staying up and watching him, seeing the fear grow in his eyes, his first attempt at eating cold food without the use of his hands, the humiliation of pissing in a litter tray, but I was exhausted. As soon as I've finished writing this entry, I'm going to take a well-deserved nap.

4th October 2018

The truffle salt from Coles is a waste of time. Don't misunderstand me, it's useable, it's palatable, and it has the necessary truffle aroma. "Has" is the key word there, it's got the half-life of Fermium and after a week in the cupboard it's now just table salt with black specks in it. I think I'm going to invest in some decent truffle oil at Christmas.

C3 is coming along marvelously. The combination of injections and a high-fat, high-calorie, vitamin-rich diet have had a visible impact on his physique. His skin has softened even further from a clear and healthy surfer's complexion to almost peachlike smoothness and he now has visible jiggle on his thighs, stomach and buttocks. Most importantly, he's now the not-at-all-proud owner of a set of A-cup breasts, complete with sensitive, pebble-sized nipples.

His breasts are extremely sensitive. He's told me as much directly, but I've confirmed it through experimental means. A few light stripes under the nipples with the cane used to bring a wince to his face when he first came under my care, now it brings him to his knees, and the mere sight of the thing leads him to cry and whine rather prettily.

He did have some issues with portion control, in that he wasn’t eating the full servings of food I had prepared for him. This was unreasonable and short-sighted on his part: while plain, I have not asked him to eat anything that I wouldn't willingly eat myself, and while I am not a professional cook I am certainly a talented amateur.

The solution was a simple one: if even a smear of food remains in his dish, I do not feed him for the next two to four days. I only had to enforce this rule twice, and he's finished every meal I've put in front of him for the past two months.

He's gone without sleeping for the last forty-eight hours, he's gone without speaking for the last three weeks, and I've added a low dose of LSD to his drinking water. Tonight he should be somewhat tractable for the induction of a hypnotic state. I am not trying to control his behaviour--there's nothing I want him to do that I couldn't compel him to do through more reliable means--but for an in-depth interview. In concert with a lie detector and a regulated dose of barbiturates, I am going to make him bare his soul to me.

There are a few specifics I'm interested in, such as confirming my assessment of his sexuality and gender identity, and it never hurts to shore up my security by inquiring of any planned means of escape or rescue, but in great part I am doing this for morale effect: I want him to have no respite from me, even inside his own mind. He will learn that he has no more control of his thinking than he does of his eating, sleeping or exercising.

Speaking of which, I had to leave him in an armbinder for a few nights when he insisted on doing press-ups in his cell. The additional restraints distressed him greatly, and he's seemed afraid to even move lest I restrain him further. That was back in August, and I have since acquired an elliptical trainer which I allow him to use daily, good behaviour permitting.

I will write again tomorrow with details of tonight's interview, and I only hope it's more productive than C2's interview was.

5th October 2018

Well, that was elucidating.

I left C3 unrestrained for the interview. It was his first time free of shackles and cuffs outside of his cage since he'd arrived, as I wanted him to be relatively comfortable and I was confident that his drug cocktail would prevent any serious escape attempts.

He is not a natural hypnotic subject and I was only successful in inducing a semi-trance state. I don't think he achieved a trance, but I think he believed he was in a trance, and for my purposes that was more than sufficient. He talked for hours and provided an unabridged history of his life so far. His parents, his brothers, his schooling, his love of surfing and camping, his romantic attachments and rejections, his childhood friends and bullies, his fear of dogs, his earliest memories, his deepest shames, enough to fill a short memoir.

The interview lasted for ten hours, with breaks every two hours to allow him to pee (as I'd also allowed him to drink lime cordial from a cup while he spoke) and to adjust his dose of drugs and deepen his trance state. He cried frequently and easily. He bears a great amount of shame and guilt for someone so young and so relatively innocent--raised by Catholics, naturally--and spent half of the fifth hour in uncontrollable hysterics. I let him rest his head in my lap and stroked his hair as he cried, and he clung on to me like a man drowning. Once he ran out of tears he had a bout of cathartic laughter, and after that a calm passed over him, and he remained in a state of detached, cooperative calm until I ended the interview.

Of course, most of this was filler and background information for the parts that truly interested me: his sexuality and gender identity. Both were perfect. His sexuality is less important but still delightful. He is entirely heterosexual and repulsed by men. He still has nightmares about the one time I have molested him so far, when I coated his face with cum shortly after his chapter. You wouldn't believe how hard I got as he told me that!

He sometimes masturbates in his cage, which he tells me is mostly from boredom than any sexual desire, and he fantasizes about sex with women. He has little interest in sadomasochism, no interest whatsoever about taking a submissive role, and aside from a weak interest in pegging he is plain vanilla. He has fantasies about sex in public, fucking multiple women, being woken up by receiving oral sex, and seducing older women.

His gender identity is much the same: male, through and through. He has insecurities about being slight and physically unimposing--related to bullying in school--and about being insufficiently masculine. He takes pride in the callouses in his hands and the scars on his body from surfing, and wishes that the thin, pale stubble on his face was thicker.

It's of little surprise then that he finds the changes from the hormones to be a cruel and unwanted imposition. His breast growth makes him feel powerless and disgusted with himself, he can feel his muscles weakening, the tenderness in his breasts is terrifying and degrading, and even the topic of penile and testicular shrinkage made him choke up and sob. He says that even when I allow him to sleep, his mind feels clouded and he finds it increasingly difficult to identify the particulars of his emotional state, which swings and changes in ways he is not used to.

Again, I must reiterate how promising this is. My experiments concern the induction of sexual neuroses and physical development on non-consenting subjects. C1 was unsuitable because he--well, she, more likely--was a little too keen to embrace the role I had planned for her.

C3 is sleeping now. I haven't actually left our impromptu "therapy room" and he's drifted off with his head in my lap. He needs the rest. I have big plans for him, after all.

24th October, 2018

I took a trip to the cinema today. Specifically the single-screen cinema in the back of the adult bookshop. C2 is turning tricks for the manager. I don't think it's his first career choice but for some reason he's been unable to get a job anywhere else in town. He tried being an independent streetwalker for a while, which didn't work out well for him as he was quickly picked up by the local police and treated rather roughly. Almost as if they were keeping an eye on him!

The manager of the adult bookshop got in touch with him, I believe he was waiting for him outside the local lockup in fact, and informed him of a safe, reliable means of plying his trade. Now he sucks cock in the back room cinema along with a handful of other whores in exchange for a roof over his head and ten percent of the ticket sales.

He was apparently given a second tour of the police cells for not handing his tips over to the manager in a timely and honest manner, so his left eye was still swollen shut when I saw him today. His garb was delightful: pastel pink yoga leggings with the Adidas stripes down the sides, and a duck egg blue midriff-cut t-shirt with "BOY" on the chest, with a female gender symbol in place of the O.

I sat down next to him in the otherwise empty cinema and flashed him my ticket, which had set me back $84--worth every penny--and he flashed me a charming smile. There was no glimmer of recognition in his eyes, like all of my experiments and side projects he'd never seen me without a mask. He put his hand on my thigh and told me his name, which I've already forgotten. The feature began, a rather energetic video from the noughties with Kelly Wells, Hillary Scott and Layla Riviera, prompting C2 to get on his knees in front of me. He gagged a little when he unzipped my jeans, not because I was unwashed but because I'd applied a generous quantity of deodorant and aftershave so that he would not recognise me via scent.

I enjoyed a slow, leisurely blowjob for the next hour, where he displayed all the basic techniques I'd so painstakingly taught him as well as a few new ones he'd picked up more recently. There's something to be said about consuming porn this way, not just the oral service but also watching the film from the beginning, without skipping forward to my favorite parts or switching between videos, letting myself slowly build towards my climax at the same pace as the on-screen action. I came just before the money shot, pulling out to cum all over C2's face as Kelly Wells guzzled piss on the big screen, and let C2 lick and suck my balls until the credits rolled.

Before he or I got up, I took out $20, waved it in front of his eyes, and then used the notes to wipe cum up from his face. He flinched at the roughness, scowled, told me to cut it out, and put his hand on my leg as if to push away from me. I said three words.

"Punishment position three."

It was as if I'd reached inside him and squeezed. He let out a pitiful squeak, straightened up on his knees, pushed out his chest, put his hands behind his back, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and let his tongue hang out. I stuffed the cum-soaked banknotes between his mouth.

"Be good, C2," I told him as I stood up. He didn't move a muscle as I walked out of the cinema, and as the door closed behind me, I heard a single muffled sob. It was an enjoyable experience and I certainly needed it after the last few days because C3 has really been a handful.

It began on the weekend when the first signs of lactation appeared. C3 has been getting increasingly upset with the changes to his body, his widening hips, his weight gain, his shrinking musculature, his shrinking genitalia, and his C-cup breasts. The breasts are especially upsetting, he complains that they ache constantly and are tender to the slightest touch. In any case, when the first droplets of milk dribbled out of his nipples something snapped.

Through tears, he told me that he refuses to eat, that he cannot live with the things I am doing to him, and that I should either let him go or kill him. Obviously this is unacceptable. I told him I was not treating his request with any seriousness, and that if he did not eat his meal, he would go without for the next several days. He nodded forlornly, but still refused the food.

I strapped his hands into leather mitts to prevent him from improvising methods of self-harm, and continued as normal. For the next three days, he refused to respond to commands or obey orders, remaining silent and going limp. He wailed in pain when I caned his soles and slapped his tits, but he continued to wallow in self-pity.

He was ravenously hungry by Wednesday, but when I gave him the opportunity to eat, he would not. I left the bowl of food in his cage overnight, and in the morning it remained untouched. He had not thrown it out or despoiled it, he had simply ignored it in an admirable, if misplaced, display of willpower. I gave him one final warning that there would be serious consequences if he did not eat now. He refused, so I applied the consequences.

I fitted him into a padded restraining board, on his back, his arms, legs, chest, stomach, forehead, chin, wrists and ankles held in place by canvas straps. He could not move an inch, not that he was trying particularly hard. A hollow dildo gag with a breathing hole went into his mouth, principally to prevent him from trying to bite off his own tongue. I catheterized him and inserted a hollow plug into his backside, not overly gently in either case, much to his consternation.

Then, intubation. I fed a heavily-lubricated silicone hose into his left nostril. He thrashed and twitched, as is expected when such a procedure is performed without the aid of benzodiazepines. Undeterred, I asked him to start swallowing, lest the tube end up in his lungs. He did as much gagging as swallowing, but after a few eventful minutes I felt the tell-tale glide of it being pulled down his esophagus and into his stomach.

Once the tube was taped in place under his nose, I attached the free end to a pump until it drew fluid out from within him. A few drops of this fluid onto pH paper revealed it to be stomach acid, which hopefully meant that the hose was not in his lungs. I then attached the hose to the feeding machine, and explained to C3 exactly how it would work.

He would have his meals and water combined into a slurry, kept at a cool four degrees celsius, and injected into his feeding tube. The pressure inside the hose would make breathing difficult or impossible while the food was being pumped, and the volume of his meals--around a litre and a half of slurry--meant that each feeding would be spread out in thirty second bursts, delivered semi-randomly over the course of an hour.

As I told him this, I undid my belt and began to masturbate. Despite the obvious temptations, I had not molested C3 in an overtly sexual manner since that first facial at the beginning of his captivity. By combining molestation with removal of autonomy, I wished to impress upon him the importance of obeying me with whatever autonomy I allow him to have.

I pressed the button on the feeding machine as I approached my climax. C3 squealed and gurgled like a drowning cat from the sensation of ice-cold sludge pumping through a tube in his sinuses and down into his throat, choking as the diameter of the tube expanded enough to cut off his breathing. He thrashed in his restraints with such force that he almost moved the gurney beneath him!

Seeing tears stream from his eyes was too much, and his eyes were precisely where I aimed. I landed a good few ropes on each eye, which he scrunched shut in disgust. When the tube stopped pumping I pried open his eyelids with my fingers and made sure a good quantity of my burning, stinging cum got in each eye, then smeared the rest across his face. He tried to blink it out, with little success, and before he could do much else I applied the padded blindfold. He hates and fears the eye-shutting pressure from the neoprene padding at the best of times, and wasn't overjoyed to wear it with his eyes gunked up with sperm.

He's been like that for the last three days, unable to move, speak or see, fed three meals a day through his nose. The only interaction he's had is when I've unrestrained his individual limbs and allowed them some movement, one at a time, to prevent bedsores and deep vein thrombosis, and when I come down to grope his sensitive tits. He is only able to relieve himself through the catheter and through enemas.

After a few days of stick, he's almost ready for the carrot. Tonight I am making pork carnitas with soft tacos, which he has told me is his favourite meal. I have also purchased one of the Harry Dresden books, which he told me he is an avid reader of. When dinner is ready, I will make him an offer: he will ask me for normal food and apologize for forcing me to use the feeding tube. In return he will be allowed out of his restraints and returned to his comfortable cage, along with his favourite meal and a good book, which he will be allowed to read during his spare time as long as he behaves himself.

I hope he accepts, for his sake and mine.

16 November 2018

C3 had his first true milking today! I've been teasing dribbles of milk from his nipples with my fingers for weeks, but today the volume was so high that I had to deploy a handheld breast pump. He whimpered for the duration but was obviously relieved by the reduction in pressure. It was as if he found the whole ordeal rather humiliating.

The milk is rich, a touch gamey, and less sweet than expected. I don't think the taste will be anything to write home about while his stress levels are so high, and I think that will be the case for some time. I've taken half for myself, and I'm mixing the other half into his food.

He's been docile since the force feeding. The intensity and inevitability of the punishment is part of it, but the rewards are equally important. My deal is that he can ask for anything once. Obviously I laugh at certain requests--he's not getting a phone or a two-way radio--and some things require compromise, but otherwise I have been accommodating. His cell now contains a lamp he can turn on or off, two dozen books and graphic novels, an old mp3 player, and a box of wet wipes. His relief from the constant boredom of being confined in a cage for twenty hours a day is palpable, and he has chosen the comfort that obedience brings over the misery that stems from disobedience.

He has asked if he'll ever be free from this basement and I truthfully said yes. One day he'll be walking around outside free of physical restraints and he will sleep at night in a bed he can truly call his own, though I'm unsure if he'll ever truly be free of me. He takes comfort in the fact that he has not yet seen my face or anything that might identify me, as he reasons that I am therefore not incentivized to bury him in a shallow grave to protect myself. His conclusion is correct but his premise is wrong; he'll know who I am eventually and I still won't fear him.

I'm currently milking him once per day regardless of his feelings on the matter, and I think this has hidden from him the fact that he now needs to be milked. Without his daily milkings the pain in his breasts would become unbearable, and soon he will develop mastitis if he's not milked. This will form another important part of his development: begging for things that are distasteful but necessary. With the exception of the wet wipes, there is nothing inherently humiliating in the things he's asking for. I believe he'll find begging to be milked intensely humiliating, and more humiliating still because of the tolls I'll extract from him when he goes down that road.

A brief note on his physical changes: his breasts are bigger but they remain C-cups for the time being. There are now a striking set of stretch marks on the sides and undersides of his breasts, along with some smaller, subtler ones on his thighs and buttocks which have also thickened up nicely. At some point I'm going to give him a regular schedule of retention enemas until he gets stretch marks on his belly befitting a pregnant little broodslut. His skin is delightfully soft and I'm shaving his face daily until the home electrolysis kit arrives. The combination of hormones, daily exercise bike sessions, and a lack of any upper body resistance training has changed his physique from a surfer's build to a more bottom heavy one.

As soon as I have finished writing this entry I am going to give him two gifts. The first gift is an ear piercing. It will be home to a yellow plastic tag, a miniature version of a cattle tag. The second gift is his name. He's not C3 anymore, and he's certainly not whatever stupid name he called himself before I acquired him. He has lovely tits and he's a milk cow, so his name will be Cowtits.

Cowtits. I think it suits him.

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famouskittychild · 3 years ago

Text

Cheeky Mandos - ...and we're off

(Sorry I had a terrible writer’s block in the past 6-ish weeks - I went from reading fanfiction and being inspired by other’s visions to “I’ll never be able to write anything like these and I’m useless” in a single day :( I’m getting back into the groove finally, so I’m hoping to post more soon.)

There will be 18+ content (in the coming chapters soon) so if you are a minor, please don't read further.

Also the characters will be quite open and relaxed about things like gender, attraction, sexual activities, relationships etc, so if you prefer your Din (and their partner) possessive and/or monogamous , this won’t be a good read for you!

***

This pairing is Din Djarin x gn reader / tall reader. I’m short (and cis and woman). There’s so many short (and female) reader stuff out there, I wanted to write for people on the other end of the “why is your height not normal” / "definitely female" spectrum. If I make mistakes or you have advice, or ideas you'd like to see, please tell me!

Word count: 4267

Summary: You’re an armourer and some shiny guy just showed up.

First full piece/chapter/course! In which people seem to catch things. Thoughts? Viruses? Dropped facts? Who knows!?? Also contains a dilettante’s attempt at space electronics and some barely-canon-reminiscent Mando world-building. Still no spiciness sorry, marinating is a long process :P

Rating: T for some mentions of heavier topics.

CW: Mentions of mandalorian history, playing somewhat loose with canon lore (as in, my SW knowledge is patchy. sorry.)

Author’s note: I tried to find more info but it seems like the mandalorian alphabet doesn’t have names for the individual letters so I used aurebesh (also I liked the little Dorn(e) meta in there). And sorry for the bad puns. They’ll keep coming.

Prologue

One - ...and we're off

***

You aren’t worried about taking a stranger on board, you’ve done that plenty of times before. You hope he’s willing to put in the effort himself, too, just as he promised at the assembly.

The stranger leaves behind his ship, saying a friend will come to pick it up together with whoever might want to join the cause. You spot him from the cockpit as he walks over with a repulsor pallet in tow. He stops for a moment when your droids surge past him, busy at their pre-flight tasks, before moving on towards the ramp.

All his baggage is a satchel at his hip and a small bag on his shoulder, and two large crates of weaponry. You put him up in the spare cabin, the one that had been Sal’ee’s, your former apprentice, before she went on to be a journeyman. He stands in the middle of the room, staring at the two cots on opposite sides of the room, the lockers, the fresher in the corner.

“All mine? Where will you sleep?”

You don’t understand the surprise in his voice.

“Over there” you show him, pointing at the cabin opposite from his. It’s much more lived in, some of the blankets and trinkets and pillows visible through it’s open door. “There’s a third cabin that I mostly use for storage but has more fold-up bunks in case I need to transport more people. That’s rare though.”

“Ohh.” He nods, then turns to look around his room again. “Okay. I thought all of these rooms were cargo space.”

You smile, and quickly think through your to-do list. You’ll have to rearrange your schedule somewhat but it’s not that big of a bother.

“Come on, I’ll show you around the ship.” Before he gets lost in its cavernous interiors, you might add - but you don’t. If his reaction to a separate cabin and his current ship - an old ARC170 - is any indication, he must be used to very cramped quarters.

***

Your trusty Brick, a beat-up YV 929, is armed to the teeth and ugly, just as you like it. The ship is a scavenged one, gutted from most of its original factory issue armaments, engines, and even wiring. It was perfect for your former master when she found it at a scrap heap: she wanted to rebuild it herself, deliberately piecemeal; panels sourced form here, engines from there, concealments added. She modified the inner workings of the engines so that the power lines could be redirected to a concealed forge.

That forge is your pride and the main reason you haven’t settled at a permanent place yourself. When your master retired from travelling, the ship passed to you, and you continued her mission of offering your knowledge and expertise to those of your people who otherwise had no access to an armourer.

…

The next standard month is spent with adjusting, both for yourself after getting used travelling alone again since Sal’ee left, and for the stranger who found himself a passenger on someone else’s ship. Apparently he used to live a very similar life to yours, with the exception that he was a hunter not a craftsman.

You travel together, share meals, research the places you are directed to. He joins in the effort that is maintaining the ship. Still - he is very taciturn at the beginning, keeping his words to the bare minimum. The first few days it feels as if you are still on your own aside of your droids. By the middle of the month, he progresses from short answers, through sharing information, to willingly starting to tell stories; but you know that chatting will never be his defining feature.

His armour seems to fill the spaces of the Brick’s corridors. You feel as if it’s not him who has the presence, but that set of glinting, perfectly made handwork of an armourer you already admire. Some of the pieces were sourced elsewhere, you can tell by the different shapes and designs; they seem haphazard and mismatched compared to the rest. Most of the set is the work of a single person. On those, there’s not a single uneven line, a broken curve, an edge at the wrong place. The angle of the panes of the metal, the ridges, the simplicity and elegance of them all - you have to hold yourself back from touching them, to admire them. You would give a lot to hold those pieces in your hand, to study them, to analyse them with your eyes and hands and with your tools.

You’re a master, yes. But so much knowledge was lost. So many masters gone, with their knowledge and their workshops. Apprentices became heads of Forges in the absence of the more skilled. The survivors still to this day have to piece together half-remembered lessons and forgotten details, experiment with techniques that were known before but the methods got lost as decades of civil war and occupation and murder kept eroding your heritage.

Sometimes a set of armour comes along that is just made in a way you never had an opportunity to learn. Often the person who forged them is long gone. Not the stranger’s armourer though. As far you can tell, she’s alive. Or at least was, when he last saw her. Not too long ago; though your usual method for guessing forging dates is mostly useless as it is based on the condition of the suit’s paintwork. Which he doesn’t have, so you can only guess from the small amount of scratches. You try to ask once, but whilst he’s forthcoming with general stories, he doesn’t go into details.

It’s a common theme with him. He talks about people and planets and events, and leaves out a lot - and you don’t even notice it first. Only when you try to glean information about his armour do you realize how well he fuzzes over those facts and nuances. It’s only up to the peculiarities of Basic and its use of gendered pronouns that you know his Armourer is a woman, or at least he considers them so. He doesn’t even tells you his own name, and when you ask your Elder in one of your communications, she tells you he didn’t gave it to them either. You keep introducing him as a friend, and that is the end of it for a while.

***

The visits to this first few coverts with him are… interesting. You can see him fidgeting from the corner of your eye. He always follows half a step behind and off to a side, as if not wanting to be in your way. He keeps quiet and doesn’t mix much, and around small children and droids, he is positively withdrawn. He only comes alive when he talks about his mission.

You had learned early on during your apprenticeship that keeping the helmet on is a safe bet when meeting with unfamiliar mandalorians. That led to later getting in contact with his type of believers too, despite their notorious secrecy even from the rest of the People. When you tell the stranger about that, he immediately showers you with questions, but you can’t give an answer to most of them. You never met with anyone from his particular covert, or heard of it. No name, no description seems familiar. It’s painful to watch his shoulders slump after daring to hope.

During the course of the month spent travelling, he gradually comes to be more social. He starts to stand and walk beside you. He doesn’t withdraw to the background anymore; he can actually be quite chatty if approached the right way. Droids still make him stop, though he warms up to kids in his own way. He’s good with them, at least in your opinion, though you know some would still call him aloof and distant. He isn’t a cuddler, nor does he crouch down to ask cutesy questions. He juts sits nearby them, and in that way of children having a good sense about adults, they know he’s trustworthy. They go up to him to chatter, to hand him a toy to hold, to ask him to fix a latch on their boots; than they go back to play.

He teaches you too, inadvertently at first during everyday conversations and later by his own volition, about his Way. About his Creed. It keeps throwing you off how much it differs from most that you had met before. Not even meeting briefly with people who followed the same Way as him could prepare you for the details that he does share. The degree of strictness, the loyalty, the barest bones Old Tradition beliefs and their willingness to follow them is very rare amongst the People as far as you can tell. Their devotion earns your respect.

At other times, your jaw hangs open and you can’t believe you are talking to an adult roughly around the same age as yourself, who by his own admission had spent three decades living as a follower of the Creed - not knowing about things children are thought through plays and songtime. His ignorance is so staggering, your admiration towards his unknown Armourer wavers. How could she keep so many things hidden from them? Why not talk about your own history? Your greats? Your artefacts?

About the many other who would call them vod’e, siblings?

You are an armourer, a craftsman, a person who makes a living by making things with your hand. You’re not a leader, or a scholar, or someone who decides what to tell your people. You do have a status within the community, but that is a status of service. From what the stranger says, their Armourer was a leader in every aspect: elder and lorekeeper and moral guide and more. All in one. It is something you can see developing from the old songs and histories amongst groups who take tradition more literally.

You are good at observing people, even at copying their habits to make them feel more comfortable with you, but less good at determining their underlying motives. The reason you think of him as “the stranger” even after travelling with him is because it’s so hard to figure out what drives him. There’s a melancholy to him that overrides the more typical mandalorian fight-readiness or aggression. You see how he gazes off to the distance sometimes, turning his head to the side and freezing. How he keeps to himself when he can. But you can’t tell why. Grief? Regrets? Determination to change? Planning something greater and being preoccupied with that?

He doesn’t pick fights to test you. He spars with you when you invite him to, he helps when you ask, and often even without it. He’s polite and considerate; he keeps conversation to practicalities and interesting stories, and doesn’t bother you with anecdotes or insistent questions about trivialities or your private life. He even does the dishes.

He’s deadly boring in his reliableness.

You are used to being on your toes around people all the time. When you meet a new group, it’s all unknown people. With ones you had already visited, the problem is having to remember them. They remember you of course, the ‘wandering armourer’; and surely you remember them too.

What is worse, when people stay the same but you don’t remember them, or when they change and you just can’t place them?

He becomes a good excuse after you’ve been to several coverts together. It’s interesting to notice how your dynamics change even further once you two get into a comfortable routine. You start to retreat to your forge and tools, and let him take all the attention. And he doesn’t just talk about his mission anymore, or lets little ones play around him whilst he’s quiet. He converses with people about news, about their children, about weaponry. You have more time to focus on your work.

Sometimes, people ask you what do you think of his mission. You tell them that you will follow what your clan decides, and that’s mostly true. It is something people don’t often debate, at least.

He quickly becomes a part of your everyday life. You are content with your usually solitary travels. You know that your family, your clan and your friends wait for you at home. They message you and you can find the time that suits you to message back. You don’t miss the constant hubbub of the covert most of the time. But now that you have someone that is not a droid, someone who is your equal in every aspect, on board again, it’s not even lonely anymore.

***

“So what’s up with you and droids?” you ask one day, after you got back from a covert and are safely in hyperspace to the next destination. You tinker with your astromech’s navigational systems. Poor 2-T keeps bumping into walls and crates. Again.

The stranger looks at you and your droid, than over at Mouse who for a change isn’t zooming around at foot level.

“Bad memories.”

“Gunk sat on you?” You tease. You hope it’s just something silly and not him having some sort of snobbish organics-are-better philosophy. He is quiet, and you focus on your work. He’ll talk if he wants to, that much you know already about him.

Inside the body of your astromech, a rivet from stars knows where is stuck between two circuit boards and blocks the access to a short-circuited piece of wire.

“Kriff. Toots, this will take a while, sweetie. Can’t access that kriffing panel.” He chirps back something and you read the translation on the small display. “No, it’s not that. My hand can’t fit in that small space. Let me find those pliers… should be in that other drawer somewhere.”

You search in the chest of tools, and despite your usually good organization, you can’t find them amongst the droids’ tools where their place is.

“Let me help.” The stranger’s voice beside you makes you jump. He can be awfully quiet. “Sorry. I think I might’ve put them back into the wrong drawer. I used them the other day when I fine-tuned that scope.”

He points at another drawer, where you keep your fine electronics stuff. No wonder he mixed them up. He stands beside Tootee a bit awkwardly until you find the tool.

“Here! No problem by the way. “ You turn back to him and to the droid, than have an idea. “Do you mind a bit more help? You can say no if you don’t want to work with the droid, I’ll understand.”

He doesn’t object yet, so you go back to 2-T and show the stranger the area you’re working on. You see him lean closer in your peripheral vision.

“That’s where I need to get that burned piece of wire out and install a new one, but first, I need to get that rivet out of the way.” You point at the root of the problem, than explain your plan, pointing out each part in turn. ”If you could hold those using this, than I could get here, remove this, with that tool, than have to get those bundles out of the way too, so than that wire there could come out. Easy.”

You look up at him, and his helmet is way closer than you expected. You can almost see your reflection in that black visor as it stares back at you for a second, and you almost apologize again, when the stranger starts to speak.

“Just have to hold the wires to the casing, or pull them like…” he moves his hand in the air, showing what he means.

“Hold them to that panel, there, with the pliers, so I have room to access the rest.”

He thinks for a moment, than he starts to tug one of his gloves off.

“You don’t need to take that off, just hold the pliers” you tell him, but he shakes his head.

“No, I can fit my hand in there, I’m pretty sure. If not we can try it with the tool.”

You realize that this is the first time you see his skin. Than it occurs to you that he might very well misunderstand this whole situation. You just asked him to hang his hand inches from yours in an enclosed space; inside a droid nonetheless, just after you basically told him you noticed he has a problem with them. It would be so easy to get caught up in there, to touch his hand, and hush it up as coincidence. Especially now that he took his glove off as well. He might even think that it was a careful plan of yours: have an area to work with were your slightly larger hands don’t fit but his might.

Your fingertips already tingle from knowing you can’t make mistakes. Which means you’ll probably do. He reaches between the panels and gets to the part where you got stuck. He wiggles his fingers a bit and scrapes around.

“Ha, found some wires. Are these the ones you need out of the way?”

You peer down into the quagmire of electronics, trying to find the best angle to see everything.

“Yes, those are the ones. Just hold them like that.” You try to focus on what you are doing, but after those earlier thoughts, your hands are jittery. You somehow manage to remove the obstructing rivet, than find the burned out part and replace it without accident, the stranger patiently holding things out of your way. You direct him here and there, occasionally stumbling as it’s a lot of instructions, or at least a lot of “could you please” and “thank you”. It gets particularly awkward when you stumble over the lack of name spectacularly.

“Could you pull those the other way, so they aren't that taut, please? Thank you, you. I mean thank you.”

“Din. Din Djarin.” Your head snaps up while the rest of your body freezes. “I should have told you my name sooner, but I’m so used to not telling it… and it just became more awkward to bring it up as time passed. I apologize.”

You close your mouth that of course was hanging open in surprise, than shake your head.

“I thought at first that I missed it when you said it so I was ashamed that I didn’t remember.” That did happen before, and it was one of your greatest worries about meeting new people. “I actually asked my elder. Sent her a comm. So when she told me you went nameless, I didn’t wanted to demand it.”

He doesn't answer right away. His voice is softer when he speaks a bit later.

“Thank you. For being considerate.”

You smile and try to wave it off. Which results in your hand slipping and pawing at his, still motionless and stuck in the inside of the astromech.

“Oh shucks, I’m sorry… didn’t meant to.” You withdraw your hand quickly, and start to look for your tools to cover your mistake.

He doesn’t seem bothered, luckily. You calm down, reminding yourself not to behave like you drank one too many glasses of your cousin Ree’s home-made tihaar, and finish the repair.

“You can let those go now, I’ll finish from here. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome, any time.”

He sits back on a nearby crate and watches you work for a while, ignoring Mouse zooming around the room. You’re surprised a bit: you didn't expected him to stick around. And than he starts to ask about 2-T. How long you had him, is he temperamental, can you install a vocoder on astromechs, and why not. His tone is somewhat cautious, his voice stiff, like someone asking about a dangerous predator. You remember how you asked him about his distance with droids, but don’t want to push that question. He already told you his name today.

…

By the time you finish with the rest of the repairs, clean Tootee up and tidy around your workplace, interrupted by having to leave hyperspace and land at a spaceport, it’s the middle of the night in local time. You planned to have a nap and search out the local covert just before dawn.

You go to the galley to have a bite before turning in, and the stranger - Din, you remember, although his last name is less clear - is cleaning up some dishes. There’s another bowl in the middle of the small table, covered by a plate.

“That’s for you, if you’d like to have it. Used up the last of that spice mix we got” he tells you as you enter. You sit down and stretch your legs out one side. As you take the plate off from the steaming bowl, you think about how nice it is to find warm food on the table and not having to cook your own all the time.

“Thank you.” You pull the bowl close and take the spoon that he put beside it. You swirl the soup - it looks very good: clear broth with lots of veggies and other fillers in it - and gather your thoughts. “So ummm… I want to ask something before it gets awkward again.“

He finishes piling the bowls and cups and sits down on the seat opposite. You blurt the question out before you might change your mind.

“What was your name again? Din, that was clear, but the rest… sorry but it sounded something like “jarring”?”

He chuckles, and it’s a clear sound even with a vocoder, no snort or sigh to distort it.

“It’s Djarin. Dorn-jenth-aurek-resh-isk-nern. Djarin.” You nod, a bit embarrassed, and he continues. “Don’t worry, you aren't the first to ask. Probably not the last either.”

“Thanks for being patient. I’m not the best with names, to be honest.”

He tilts his head.

“Is that why you are always so focused when someone introduces themselves? I can ask them to repeat their names for me too if you want to, than both of us can try to remember them.”

You blink at him.

“That’d be…” Unnecessary, and don’t bother, and it’s not your job, you think - but stop yourself. That would actually help. No shame in accepting it. ”That would be nice. Thanks.” You are good at a few things, like making things with your own two hands. Not gaping when something surprises you, or remembering faces or names, any names, not just people? Nah.

You tuck into your soup, and the two of you sit in companionable silence. You wander if Djarin sits there because he wants to, or if he’s waiting for more questions from you. You asked a lot from him during the last few hours, and he was really kind with all his help and telling you his name and not being bothered when you misremembered it.

You are halfway done with your meal when he stirs. He leans forward with his lower arms on the table, and takes a deep breath. You wonder what his question will be - you commit to answer whatever it might be. He deserves that after today.

“So you asked earlier about me and… droids, right?”

Your hand with the spoon stops in the air. You weren’t expecting this question, at all.

“Yes…” You want to say he didn’t have to answer. But you already told him that. You’re sure he remembers that too - since he brought the topic up again. “Yes, I did.”

He shuffles on his seat a bit, and looks out to the side like he sometimes does. You lower your spoon and eat, letting him gather his thoughts.

“When I was a kid… I don’t know how old you were then, but during the war. The Clone wars.” You nod, understanding what he’s getting at, and he continues. “We were… the place I lived came under attack. Some separatist battle droids. Mandalorians saved me.”

You swallow your soup. That was the shortest possible description of someone having their entire life and probably everyone they knew ripped away from them and finding a new way of life for the decades to come.

“I’m sorry” you say, because really, what else is there to say. He nods, and gazes off again. Than he shrugs his shoulders, as if he wants to shake the weight of the past from them.

He gets up, and walks around the table on his way out. He stops beside you for a moment and hesitates, and you almost turn towards him to ask what he needs when you feel him squeeze your shoulder. Than he straightens and steps away.

It’s warm where he squeezed it, and you remember how long ago it was that someone touched you.

You need to talk to your friends asap, and hug at least some of them. He turns back from the door.

“Get some sleep before dawn, all right? Have to be sharp to remember all those new names.” You don’t see him wink but you’d bet he does behind his visor. You scrunch your nose at him and pout before smiling, and he dips out of the galley.

Your hand is still hovering in the air, holding the spoon, while you listen to his footsteps getting more distant as he walks down the corridor to his cabin.

It’s just your luck that you don’t need your wits the next place. It’s only two people with the same, simple name and you met both of them before.

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x tall reader #din djarin x gn!reader #post season 2 #mandalorian oc #armourer oc #cheeky mandos #my writing

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babi-correia · 4 years ago

Text

What Could Have Been (Part 15)

Words: 1286 Warnings: None?

“What do we got?” Voight asks as Intelligence gathers around him. Kevin grabs his notepad, flicking the pages to the beginning.

“The Emergency Center was heavily sabotaged, their servers have been completely destroyed, thus explaining the inability to respond to calls.”

“What about the fire here? It’s very odd for a building to randomly catch fire in the middle of the winter.” Voight continues.

“Severide says it’s foul play, for sure. Mainly with the bomb.” Jay says, leaning against his table. “It’s very weird, mainly with the fact that it would only catch the firefighters, because most of the researchers are home for the holidays.”

“What if it was directed at the firefighters?” Kim suggests hesitantly, earning confused looks from the rest of the team. She looks at Adam before she continues. “We got that package about (Y/N)… Maybe it was Eric. He has a weird grudge towards her because she knows Jay.”

“Are you sure?” Voight asks, noticing the distraught look on Jay’s face.

“Not sure, but it’s the best theory we have.” She says, wringing her hands together. “And Adam’s CI said he heard a buzz about the whole university ordeal being planned.”

“Why go after her and not me?” Jay asks, anger seeping into his voice. “His problem is with me, not her.”

“He wants to get to you, to anger you, make you drop your guard.” Adam says, crossing his arms. “He knows you’re pissed at this, and he’s counting on your anger to make you be brash and create an opening for him to get to you.”

“Well, he’s succeeding.”

“Jay, why don’t you get to the hospital? I think (Y/N) would really like to see you when she wakes up.” Voight suggests, noticing the weight on the younger detective’s shoulders. “I can give you a ride there on my way to question my CIs.”

“What?” Jay’s brows furrow in confusion. “I can take my truck.”

“I want your truck to be inspected. He rigged a random room to get to (Y/N) and was able to, I don’t want to risk your car being tampered with in any way.” Voight explains, grabbing his jacket and keys.

Jay grabs his jacket and beanie, rubbing his hands on his face as he goes down the stairs after Voight. Trudy sends him a sympathetic look as he follows Voight through the main lobby, and he nods at her in an appreciative way.

The trip to the hospital is quiet until Voight stops his car by the ER door and turns towards Jay.

“I know how you’re feeling right now, like it’s your fault.” The Sergeant says, making Jay look at him. “But it’s not. Eric’s twisted in his head, there was no way we could have predicted or prevented it. You went above and beyond, there was nothing more you could have done.”

“Will says she’s not out of danger yet.” Jay mutters. “That the rod did quite a bit of damage, she lost a lot of blood, the gash on her leg severed a muscle. She’s still in ICU and unconscious, and they don’t know if she’s going to be able to keep on being a firefighter, much less part of Squad.”

“Halstead, none of that is your fault. You helped her the most you could and quite probably saved her life. And now you’re going to be there for her through the recovery, and we’ll nail that son of a bitch down.” Voight says, nodding towards the hospital. “Be there. We’ll let you know if there’s any developments.”

Jay nods and exits the car, entering the ER and spotting Will almost immediately. The older brother leads the youngest into the waiting area filled with firefighters. Their heads turn as they see the brothers come in and Boden, Casey and Severide seem to have a silent conversation before nodding.

“51.” Boden calls, making everyone turn to him. “We have to get back to our job. Jay will stay with (Y/N) and keep us updated. Let’s go.”

The firefighters clap Jay’s shoulder or nod at him as they go by, recognizing him as a trustworthy person to stay and “keep guard” on you. It makes him feel weird on the inside, but he pushes it aside as Will guides him into your room.

He sucks in a breath as he sees you laying in the hospital bed, pale, unmoving, hooked up to numerous machines.

“This looks worse than what you told me on the phone, Will.” Jay manages to say, gingerly sitting at the foot of the bed and resting one hand on your shin. He feels the guilt gnawing at his mind along with an anger he can’t contain; he’s sure that if he’s the one to catch Eric, he won’t make it to prison.

“It does, but it’s mostly preventive.” Will says, looking between Jay and you with a confused face. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I’ve known her for longer than you.” Jay chuckles, spotting your dog tags on the small table by the bed and pointing at them. “We served together on my last tour.”

Will’s brows knit in confusion as he approaches his brother, leaning against the foot of the hospital bed.

“You never told me about her.”

“Well… It’s complicated.”

A couple of days later and Jay feels at his wit’s end: they have nothing on Eric and you still haven’t waken up. He’s sitting on the crappy hospital chair, laptop atop his legs, left hand scrolling through the little information they have on Eric while his right hand holds yours. His right leg bounces as he feels his patience dwindling and his desperation nipping at his subconscious.

Will walks into the room, making his normal rounds and taking in his brother’s nervous behavior.

“If you bounce that leg more, the laptop is going to fall.” He remarks, marking your vitals on the chart.

“Shouldn’t she be awake by now, Will?” Jay asks, the desperation evident in his voice. Maybe the coffee Mouse had brought him wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“Jay, this is a game of patience. It will take some time for her to recover even after she awakes. The wounds are closing up nicely, but they still did a lot of damage that needs to be reversed with physical therapy.” Will says, setting the chart back on its’ spot. He watches as Jay runs a hand through his face, the bags in his eyes evident, as well as the longer beard. “Shouldn’t you go home and rest for a bit?”

“I’m fine, I just don’t want to leave her side.” Jay admits, earning a nod from Will.

“You know where to find me if you need anything.” Will says, leaving the room.

Jay closes the laptop and sets it on the floor, turning to you and holding your left hand with both of his, leaning his forehead against them.

He stays like that for a few moments, listening to the steady beeping of the machines until his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He fishes it out, unlocking it and looking at the text on the screen.

Ruzek: We got a lead. Will text details later.

Jay’s heart jumps in his chest at the news, his free hand gripping your tighter as he types back a reply.

Jay: If you get him, let Voight do his thing and let me know.

He feels excited in a weird way that makes him feel guilty for a brief moment before he looks at you again; Eric had put you in an hospital bed, fighting for your life, and there is no way that Jay is going to let him get away with it.

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haro-whumps · 4 years ago

Text

Group Whumpees 14: Headway

CW: slavery, multiple whumpees, aftermath of abuse, property destruction, migraine, actually a pretty fluffy chapter all things considered

Tag List: @bleeding-demon-teeth @theycomeinthrees‌ @redwingedwhump @whimperwoods @inpainandsuffering @whole-and-apart-and-between @whump-whump-whump-it-up @whumpingupastorm @newandfiguringitout @lonesome--hunter @looptheloup @icannotweave @deluxewhump @whumping-every-day @yeet-me-out-a-window @what-a-whumpy-world @burtlederp @swordkallya @finder-of-rings @fairybean101 @adventuresofacreesty @arlennil @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @lumpofwhump @thatsthewhump @pinkdiamondprince @shameless-whumper @whump-only @kiretto-laorentze @eatyourdamnpears @whumpzone @bluebadgerwhump @fanastywhump @jo-castle @muffindaddy @whumpsy-daisies

Please let me know if you were not alerted or if you asked to be added to the tag list and I missed you, tumblr’s been messing up badly lately.

Masterlist

Nyla was… conflicted.

But it didn’t do her any good to be conflicted, so she put on her smile, fastened her shoes, and got to work.

Master had been very generous the day before, giving them a truly absurd amount of time to just sit and relax--threat of ghosts notwithstanding. But now it was time for her to resume her routine, as much of it as she still had.

And, since they’d been preoccupied with ghosts, or non-ghosts, or whatever it was Greyson had seen and Master Galo had dealt with, that meant Master Galo’s “crash course on queerness” needed to happen this afternoon. Which, hm, well, it was rather unreasonable to be nervous about it, right? Master was kind, and the last gathering had been a net positive. Maybe it was just because it was something to look forward to, and Nyla was nervous about things to look forward to.

Also there was that dumpster out front and Nyla wasn’t sure what it was for (perhaps another volley with the art pieces?), but she would deal with that when Master ordered her to.

She was passing by the front door when it opened and her heart leapt into her throat. She whirled, stepping back, but a familiarly massive outline stepped in and she relaxed, smile turning a little less forced.

“Welcome home, Master,” she greeted, kneeling as she took his extended hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. He was damp with sweat and smelled like cut grass and warm air. “Did you enjoy your volunteer service?”

“Yeah; it’s gorgeous out. Partly cloudy and kinda hot, perfect early summer day.” Master Galo pushed his wet hair away from his face, Nyla watching the way his arms flexed and moved and observing her own lack of fear response.

Don’t think about it.

“I’m starving though; any idea when lunch is?”

“Apologies, Master, but it won’t be ready for another half-hour yet,” Nyla said, knowing Sasha had only just gotten it in the oven. Her smile tugged at the corners of her eyes, face tight.

“Sweet! Enough time for a shower then,” Master Galo said with a bright smile, loosening some of Nyla’s nerves.

Nyla gave a short bow, hands clasped in the folds of her apron skirt, and took a deep breath as she rose back up, watching Master Galo’s back as he climbed the steps two at a time. Alright then. (He really did have a nice back) Alright then.

Do your job, Nyla, focus.

It’d be easier if she had anything to focus on. She almost wished Master Galo would host something, bring over guests or Guests of his own. Something Nyla could be active for, something that would require planning and management and preparation.

But it wasn’t her place. Master Galo would do as Master Galo pleased and she would facilitate where she could and be good and patient and pleasant and useless if Master wanted her to be because it was fine, it was fine.

“You were right,” Nyla said, voice quiet and weirdly flat for her. Evan looked up at her inquisitively, a winter boot balanced on his good thigh and a polishing rag in hand. “We’re entirely out of things to do.”

Evan snorted. “Told you.” He waved the boot good-naturedly, though smug as a cat,” I mean, c’mon Nyla, it’s barely even summer.”

“I’m bored--I’m, stir-crazy,” she whispered, ridiculously daring but if she didn’t complain to somebody she was probably going to explode.

“I think Greyson is the only one who isn’t--or, well, I mean, there was that whole thing yesterday…” Evan trailed off, and Nyla chanced a small, barely-audible groan.

“What am I supposed to do?” she lamented, and Evan carefully scooted himself sideways, making room for her on the boot bench.

“Come sit and be bored with me. I’m always down to complain about things, and hearing you go at it is pretty new.” He patted next to him, and Nyla glowered at the clean, unassuming wood before plopping down next to him. She huffed, lifting up the hem of her dress and pulling a loose threat taut so she could snap it.

“I just wish he would give us tasks. I wish we’d had the… talk, this morning.”

“Yeah.” Evan handed her the matching boot to his own and she diligently started polishing, feeling instant relief at having something to do with her hands. “Waiting for it… sucks.”

Nyla felt a strange little curl of emotion in her and nudged him with her elbow. “Well, you would know better than I.”

“Hey!” Evan gasped, looking at her in honest shock before laughing, open mouthed and still surprised, and Nyla smiled. “So now little miss perfect is going to scorekeep?”

“Little Miss Perfect, I like the sound of that.”

“We should bore you shitless more often,” Evan said, leaning forward with playful curiosity dancing across his features.

“Don’t get used to this,” Nyla said, turning up her nose and deliberately sitting with pristine posture. “I’m just having a psychotic break real quick and then I’ll be back to normal.”

Evan laughed, and she smiled, a pang of pain shooting behind her eyes as she did but she was having a nice time, so she smothered any wince before she made it. “Well I better take advantage of it while I can, then.”

The sound of the water shutting off had both their heads snapping upwards, despite the fact that neither of them could see through the ceiling, and Nyla’s perfect smile was back in place, tension in her temples. “...It seems you may have to wait,” Nyla stated, setting down the boot and brushing out her apron, gathering herself. She quickly finger combed her hair, smoothed down her apron once again, and Evan caught her around the wrist.

“You okay?” he asked. Ah, she’d fiddled too much.

“Just nervous, I suppose. Nothing that won’t be resolved after lunch.”

Evan nodded slowly, letting her go, and she changed her perfect slave smile to her “don’t worry the family, I’m fine” smile. Like usual, he seemed to buy it, and Nyla slipped her perfect smile back in place with a whirl of skirts and went to serve Master Galo lunch.

He’d demanded that Grey ‘take it easy’ yet again, and Nyla decided, rather selfishly, that that meant she would take his duties as butler from him that day. But then, was it truly selfish, when Sasha would just as likely faint if she was asked to, and Evan couldn’t walk on that leg of his? Lilah was able to do it, sure, but old habits die hard and Nyla couldn’t help but want to keep their littlest as far away from their owner as often as possible. Even though this one was kind.

Then the five of them were crowded together on a couch, Master Galo standing with his laptop hooked up to the TV in front of them. Nyla subtly covered Sasha’s hand with her own, where it gripped her sleeve, and Lilah leaned against Greyson with her legs hooked over Evan’s good one.

“Alright, so, queer shit 101,” Master Galo said with a bright smile to the group, hands propped on his hips. “I am going to attempt to keep things basic while still covering the bases, but please ask questions if you have them. In the great words of someone older than me, I don’t know what you don’t know. And I also don’t know what misconceptions you might have, though given Auntie Bethany, I can make some more or less solid guesses. So, without further ado.”

Master Galo hit a key on his keyboard and the slide changed, “Queer! Our first term, the word used for the entire community of people who are neither cis nor straight. In recent years people who wish to gatekeep, meaning to exclude people from our community, have voiced backlash against the word ‘queer’ as being ‘too-inclusive’ and have recruited well-intentioned but ultimately inexperienced youths to cycle their rhetoric. That is bullshit. Queer is our word, it is a good word, just because ignorant and hateful people are bigoted against us does not mean it isn’t our word, and it’s an all-inclusive label for anyone and everyone who finds their home among us.”

Lilah tentatively leaned forward, hand extended, and Master Galo pointed to her with arched eyebrows. It wasn’t as threatening as Nyla might have once considered it. “What’s ‘cis,’ sir?”

“That is on my next slide, I promise. For right this current moment, just know that queer is the big main umbrella word for everyone. It covers all the bases, all your base are belong to us.” Lilah nodded as Master Galo chuckled at his own joke. Nyla didn’t get the reference, but she recognized that he’d made one.

“Cool, so, you will see many squares with lots of stripes throughout this presentation. You don’t have to memorize anything, I just think they spruce up the slides, but for reference this one is the queer flag. You may or may not be familiar with the rainbow flag, that one’s a little different, we’ll get to that.”

Master Galo flipped slides. “Transgender!” he announced happily, a blue, pink, and white flag on the TV behind him. “You have seen this flag on various articles of clothing and buttons I own. And stickers. In general I have this flag around a lot, but! That is because, I am trans. You know this,” he said, making a broad gesture towards their group.

“The word ‘transgender’ effectively means ‘anyone who isn’t cis,’ and yes I will explain. So! Say there is a little baby, and the midwife or doctor lifts the little newborn body up to examine, and says ‘she’s a girl!’ Now, say, years down the road, that person thinks of herself and says ‘yeah sure I’m a girl.’ That is what’s called ‘cisgender,’ when the gender you were assigned at birth matches up with your own sense of self. Now, say that same baby grows up, but says ‘actually, I’m not a girl.’ That would make that person transgender.

“I am what’s called ‘binary trans;’ I was assigned female at birth, grew up, discovered I was actually a dude, and here we are. Thus, I am called a transman. The same thing happens for transwomen, but in the opposite direction. Transmen are men, transwomen are women, but some people are neither a guy or a girl. They are what is called,” Master Galo switched the slide.

“Nonbinary!” Nyla squinted, tentatively raising her hand, which Evan and Lilah were also doing. “Okay wow, lots of questions, Nyla?”

“I… apologize, sir, but I’m not sure I understand. They’re not a man or a woman?”

“Correct.”

Nyla shared a quick, anxious glance with the rest of her family.

“Okay, don’t worry,” Master Galo said, holding up his hands with a small chuckle, “I will explain. First, Evan and Lilah, was that your question too? Yeah, figured as much, okay. So, I have found the easiest way to visualize nonbinary genders is like this: Say men are blue, and women are red. Or pink, but that’s just a light shade of red, so, anyway, color theory is not today’s presentation. Back on track! If you’re imagining gender like a color wheel, that means some people are gonna be purple, right?”

Nyla nodded slowly. Okay, that made sense. A combination of traits both male and female.

“But, on that same vein, not all other colors are purple. Sometimes colors are green, or yellow, or orange. Men and women do make up the majority of the human population, but not all of it. There’s lot of ways to have a gender, and none of them are wrong.” Lilah raised her hand again and Master Galo pointed.

“How does that--I mean, if you have a vagina or a penis, shouldn’t that be, I mean, hard? To…”

“Okay, okay, good point. Very good point Lilah, I jumped the gun a little. Backing up a bit!”

Master Galo clapped his hands lightly, no force or noise to the motion, and Nyla had the brief thought that the gesture made him look somewhat teacherly. Which made sense, given… everything happening, but there was something distinctive and pleasant about that thought. Hm.

She wasn’t gonna worry about that. Focus.

“So, biological sex and a person’s gender are two seperate things. Often, they go hand in hand. That’s where cis people come from. However, while biological sex is, y’know, biological, gender is a social construct. Which means, it has more to do with perception and sense of self, and nothing to do with your actual physical body. So, since this is the 100 level course, I could frame it as, gender’s in your head and sex is in your genitals, make sense?”

Another round of slow, wary nods.

“It’s technically a little more complicated than that, but we’re not gonna get into that today.”

Evan raised his hand again, and Master Galo pointed at him with a smile.

“So… Sir, do you, have a dick?”

Master Galo’s lips instantly folded in and he raised a hand to cover his mouth, his shoulders shaking a little, and Nyla felt a spike of anxiety, crown of her head feeling taut. But it was laughter, a wheezing chuckle escaping her master when he said, “Uhm.”

He took a deep breath, “So, no. I do not. I don’t really want or need bottom surgery and am comfortable with my genitals the way they are. Bottom surgery is not a necessary component of transitioning, and some people, like myself, don’t have it done. However,” Master Galo continued with a rush of air, “it is generally considered extremely rude to ask a trans person about their genital structure unless you have the explicit intention of sleeping with them. I am aware you meant nothing by it!” Master Galo rushed, hands held up as Evan began to flounder. “You weren’t intentionally being rude, it’s chill. Just, for future reference, if you ever meet another trans person, that’s on the list of questions you don’t ask.”

Master Galo cleared his throat, looking a little red, but in good humor about it. He turned back to his screen with a, “Now, Lilah, you bring up an interesting point.” Master Galo flipped forward a few slides, to a screen with a yellow square that had a purple circle in the middle of it.

“Intersex! Sex, like gender, is not actually straightforward. There are many ways to be intersex, ranging from genital structure to chromosomes to secondary sex characteristics. But ultimately sex, like gender, is on a spectrum. Just because the majority of people fall easily into little categories of, urg, ‘biologically male’ or ‘biologically female,’ which for the record are not phrases you should… use, but since this is an intro to queer shit I’m making this as understandable as I can. Anyway.” Master Galo seemed to gather his thoughts. “Right! People fall into one category or the other most of the time, but not all of the time! And the ‘not all of the time’ people are intersex. Some intersex people do not feel that their biology automatically makes them queer, and do not percieve themselves to be part of the queer community. Others take comfort and community among us, so it’s always up to the person.

“Anyway, flipping back a few slides, nonbinary! This is the umbrella term for everyone who does not fall completely into ‘100% a man’ or ‘100% a woman.’ There are many ways to be nonbinary, but for the record, many nonbinary people prefer to be referred to with they/them pronouns. Not all! But, like how men use he/him, or women use she/her, many nonbinary people are referred to with a singular ‘they.’ I am aware my aunt may have had grammar-based arguments complaining about nonbinary people and gender neutral language, but I promise the singular ‘they’ predates my aunt by multiple centuries.

“Genderqueer,” Master Galo said with another slide, “This one goes hand in hand with nonbinary. Effectively, it means ‘neither fully masculine nor fully feminine,’ and is, as the word ‘queer’ might suggest, an inclusive, broad term for people who don’t have a particularly hard line definition for their gender.

“Genderfluid, meaning that a person will shift between genders depending on the day. So like, some days this person would wake up and say ‘I’m a girl today,’ and other days ‘I’m a boy,’ and maybe some days they wouldn’t feel like either of those at all. Again, this varies from person to person, but the general idea is that they flow between genders.

“Agender, meaning they have no gender at all.”

Again, Nyla, Lilah, and Evan’s hands rose. Nyla was surprised to see that even Greyson’s hand lifted, if only a little, on that. Master Galo smiled with a huff, but Nyla didn’t feel threatened. “Let’s go with Greyson, yeah?”

“How would someone simply not have a gender, sir?”

“So, if we’re imagining genders as like a color wheel, agender would be like, white, blank. No color. No gender. People ask them ‘are you a guy or a girl’ and their answer is a flat out ‘no.’”

Nyla was struggling with that. Nyla was struggling with that one pretty hard. Her brain felt tight. She got the concept, but…

“Master?”

“Yes Nyla?”

“Would it be alright if we understood in theory but not in practice?”

“Yeah, this can be hard for people to wrap their heads around, mostly I just want to introduce you to the concepts. That’s perfectly reasonable Nyla.”

Nyla dipped her head in thanks, her family nodding as well. Master Galo flipped the slide.

“Neutrois. Hand in hand with agender, if we’re using the color thing then, like. If agender is white, then neutrois would be black. People who are neutrois might describe their gender as ‘null’ or ‘void’ and other descriptors of the like. Again, I just want to introduce you to the concept, you don’t need to be able to conceptualize it perfectly.

“Okay last one under the trans umbrella,” Master Galo said, “Bigender. Someone who is multiple genders simultaneously. So, for simplicity’s sake, you could say someone who is both a man and a woman at the same time.” Master Galo smiled at them. “There are many other genders people have, but again with this being the introductory course, I just wanted to hit the big ones. Any gender questions?”

Nyla tentatively raised her hand. Master Galo smiled at her, and his expression took the edge off her anxiety.

“So, we know you, had surgery on your chest, sir,” Nyla said, hoping she wasn’t being rude by bringing it up, “do nonbinary people also engage in,” she floundered, not sure what the word for it was, but she wasn’t going to ‘um’ or stutter (even if he’d said it was okay, she could do better, and she would).

“Some do,” Master Galo mercifully cut her off. “Some people are fine looking the way they do, or use cosmetics to accentuate certain features, and some receive surgeries. It all depends on personal comfort. And also sometimes to alter others’ perceptions, I knew someone who had no real issue with their chest but other people would assume they were a girl because of it and surgery was affirming and helpful with other people’s way of viewing them, which in turn lowered their discomfort.”

“And, sir?” Master nodded. “If a person’s name is, very feminine or masculine?”

“Most of us change our names!” he said brightly, “Like how I picked Galo for myself. Many nonbinary people will also change their names to something a little more ‘neutral.’ Again, not all though.”

Evan raised his hand that time. “You picked your own name, sir?”

“Yup! When I started to transition I changed my name. I should show you all the movie it came from sometime; it’s real fun you might enjoy it.”

“Sir?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“What was your name before Galo, sir?” Evan asked. Master Galo made an unidentifiable noise, but Nyla didn’t think that it was good. Her spine lengthened and her hand left Sasha’s on her arm to clench neatly in her lap.

“Sooo, you don’t get to know that,” Master Galo said, ducking his head with a slow gesture of his open palm towards Evan. “The name I had before Galo is what is called a ‘deadname,’ the name a trans person was assigned at birth that has since been put to rest. Again, I know you are being curious and I would definitely like to encourage you to continue asking questions, but, that’s another one of those questions you should not ask anyone who is not me. Asking for someone’s deadname is considered rude, and referring to someone by their deadname is extremely rude and actively malicious.”

“Sir, I wasn’t--”

“Easy, Evan, I know,” Master Galo said with a patient smile. “It’s good that you ask me these questions, and not someone else, because you’re learning, and I know you don’t mean any harm. But, in sum, the name I had before is not relevant, and it is not something to be shared. Any other questions at the moment? We’ve had good ones.”

A brief bout of silence, and Master Galo flipped the screen to the only flag Nyla did recognize.

“Onto sexual orientations! Sexualities, they’re called. You will probably recognize the gay flag, this is another one of those umbrella terms meaning ‘anyone who isn’t straight’ while also having the capacity to mean ‘someone who is exclusively attracted to their own gender.’ It is a term meant for everyone in the community, much the same way queer is. Yes, Evan?”

“Are you gay?”

“No, actually, I’m pretty much straight. I’m aware that men can be attractive but don’t really feel attraction to them.” Master Galo cocked his head. “You worded that kind of intensely there, you alright buddy?”

Evan was already stiff, and Nyla recognized the way his mouth twitched when he was biting down a snarl. “I’m fine.”

The lack of an honorific made the family tense, eyes on Evan because he was, like a moth to flame, doing something stupid again, but Master Galo either ignored it or didn’t notice.

“Cool. So, along with ‘queer community’ and ‘gay community,’ you may or may not have heard the phrase ‘LGBT.’ This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, and is sort of the most widely-in-use acronym for the queer community.

“Lesbians! What would the world do without them,” Master Galo said, flipping to a slide with lots of pinks and oranges. “Nowadays, lesbian is the word for women who are exclusively interested in other women, but historically it was used to describe any queer woman at all, back before bisexual really entered into people’s vocabularies. For the record: nonbinary people can be and often are lesbians. Anyone who has literally any ties to femininity and is attracted, more or less exclusively, to women and people with ties to femininity, counts as a lesbian.

“Bisexual! People who are attracted to 1. their own gender and 2. other genders. Sometimes it’s phrased as ‘attraction to men and women,’ which, for the record, is a fine way for you to conceptualize it here in the introductory course, but I want to be clear that bisexuality does and always has included nonbinary peeps.” Master Galo smiled. “Bixesual is a perfectly good and normal thing to be; there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, and if Nyla had to guess she’d say he was deliberately not looking directly at any of them in particular.

“Pansexual! Hand in hand with bisexuality, pansexual people are attracted to others regardless of their gender. It can be difficult to distinguish between the two, but for some people the differences between sexualities are important. For some people, not so much, and they identify as bi and pan simultaneously. Again, we fall back on the ‘it all depends on the person’ idea. I will state that pansexuals are not attracted to everyone, they’re just attracted to every gender. Just because someone is of a certain gender doesn’t mean others won’t still find them ugly.

“Asexual! The umbrella term for people who don’t really feel attraction to other people, no matter the gender. We love respect cherish and support asexual people,” Master Galo said, oddly firm on that one. Lilah raised her hand.

“So, they just, don’t? Anybody? Sir?”

“Yeah, so, like, a straight man would only feel attraction towards women, and no attraction to men. A gay man would feel attraction to men, and no attraction to women. A bisexual man would feel attraction to men and women. And an asexual man would not feel attraction to either.”

Lilah nodded. “Okay, thank you sir.”

“However, ace--asexual--is an umbrella term. There are multiple ways to be asexual.”

Nyla frowned minutely, but then her smile was back in place. She wasn’t really sure how there could be multiple ways to not feel attraction to someone.

“There’s the spectrum of sex-positive, sex-neutral, and sex-repulsed asexuals. Sex-positive asexuals enjoy sex, the action, they just don’t think anybody’s hot. The activity is fun, but no one they look at hits that ‘oh hot I wanna have sex with them’ vibe. Sex-neutral asexuals don’t find anyone attractive, and don’t have any particularly strong feelings towards sex. It’s on par to like, going for a jog or having dinner together. Sort of a bland ‘whatever’ feeling. Sex-repulsed asexuals don’t find anyone attractive and do not, under any circumstances, want to have sex with anyone, ever. All of these are good and well! There’s no ‘wrong’ way to be asexual.”

“Next up we have grey-ace. 99% of the time, they don’t find anyone attractive, but every once in a blue moon they’ll see a person and go ‘oh hot.’ They are still asexual, they just have occassional feelings of attraction to seemingly random people. Or maybe they have a highly specific type! Again, depends on the person.”

“Last up for the ace umbrella, demisexual. Demisexual people are capable of feeling physical attraction, but only after a strong, meaningful, romantic bond has been formed. This is different than waiting in a relationship until you’re close. The person does not feel attraction, at all, until a committed bond has been formed.” Master Galo paused, letting them turn that over in their heads, but when no one asked any questions he flipped the slide once more.

“And wrapping up our crash-course on queer terminology, aromantic. Aromantic is similar to asexuality in all aspects, except that instead of talking about physical attraction, it’s about romance. Some people just do not feel the inclination to form romantic bonds with others. They still might, depending on the person, just like an asexual person still might engage in sexual activity, but the attraction isn’t there. They don’t see people and go ‘I’d like to see if this could work out as a romantic relationship’ they’re just in it for friends. Grey-romantic and demiromantic people are, again, much the same, but with romance, feeling that 99% or only gaining the capacity for a romantic relationship after a strong, meaningful, committed bond of friendship has been formed.”

Master Galo took a big breath. “Any questions?” he asked with a proud smile.

Nyla honestly felt like she had too much information rattling around in her brain to even begin formulating a question, but Evan raised his hand.

“I don’t mean to be rude, sir,” Evan said, sounding like he was struggling not to grit his teeth.

“I know. Go ahead.”

“So, since you’re a transman, and you’re straight, then you’re only attracted to women..?”

“Yep!”

“And then, if a woman is attracted to you..?” Evan trailed off.

“That would still be considered ‘straight’ attraction, yep. The woman in question might be straight, or bi, or pan, or maybe ace! It’s all up to her. But her attraction to me would be ‘opposite-sex attraction’ yeah.”

“Was that rude sir?”

“No, no, you’re good, bud. And now you know!”

“Thank you sir.”

“Of course! I’m glad you’re asking questions. Anyone else?”

Another beat of silence.

“Alright, cool, good talk team. To wrap it all up, there are all sorts of ways people can experience gender and attraction, and none of them are wrong. Everything I talked about today is good, natural, and worthy of respect. Go ahead and let me know if you ever have questions in the future, I’m perfectly willing to talk about it.”

He took in a deep breath.

“The queer community has long faced oppression on a global scale. However, many cultures saw queerness as natural and didn’t much question it until, ah, interlopers became involved, and rerouted the course of history. But regardless of acceptance or ostricization, all cultures have their own queer histories, their own words and perceptions.

“In recent years, and I mean really recent, queer people have started making great strides in changing legislation and public opinion of us towards the positive, though we still face a number of obstacles. You have probably noted that I am not fond of police. This is in no small part due to the fact that I am transgender. And then of course people like my aunt and various religious institutions will also condemn myself and my peers, due to malicious misconceptions or just straight up bigotry.

“So I understand why you all may… struggle, with this information, for a bit. But I assure you, nothing is as bad as my aunt made it out to be, and if you ever want to know more I’m happy to talk with you about it.” Master Galo beamed and propped his hands on his hips. “Which about wraps this up.”

The doorbell rang. Everyone, including Master Galo, tensed.

“I think I’ll answer that,” he said. “Uh, dismissed? No, wait, wait here, we’ve got a group project I wanna work on this afternoon.”

Nyla was not in a habit of thanking god for much of anything, but she thanked god for that. Finally, a task.

Master Galo made a pleased noise and a bit of chatter Nyla could identify as friendly, there was the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, then the door swinging closed.

She was on her feet and smiling when he returned, leaning his big arm on the doorway and looking happy. “Sweet, so, the stuff we ordered has started to arrive, which leads me to another thing I wanted to talk about!”

Master Galo rounded back in front of the couch where he’d been, clapping his hands together and smiling. Nyla tentatively sat back down. ‘So! I would first like to establish that I am not suggesting you break up your current sleeping arrangement. However, you’re not gonna be able to fit all the stuff you collectively ordered into that one room without it turning into a nightmare, so I’ve thought about it and it’s my idea that you all should have rooms that are your own space. Not to sleep in, obviously, just rooms that you can use to store your stuff and you can decorate them to your own interests and you’ll have a private area you can go to if you need alone time. Sound good?” Master Galo asked, looking to Nyla, to Lilah, scanning over the group.

“You are quite generous, Master,” Nyla said, but no, no, that wasn’t quite right, for him. “Thank you,” she tried again, simpler, far too rude for Mistress, but for Master…

He smiled at her, pat her on the head far too briefly, and said, “You’re welcome. Let’s go check out what arrived, yeah?”

All of Nyla’s dresses, the skirts and top Sasha had ordered from that company, and a couple of Lilah’s things were in the first two boxes, and Evan’s t-shirts and jeans were in the third. “Sorry Greyson, looks like your stuff isn’t here yet.”

Greyson nodded, outwardly impassive, and given that it had barely been his idea to order anything at all that made sense. Nyla and the others followed Master Galo to the basement, their Master helping Evan down and hastening the process, and showed them the rooms he’d selected for them. Nyla hesitantly stepped into “hers.”

It felt wrong. She’d cleaned and examined this room countless times before, but now, standing inside it felt incorrect.

The bed had been folded up into a couch, which was standard for the beds housed in the series of apartments in the basement. The sitting area and kitchenette that existed in the middle of these rooms were indicative that these were for long-term guests, not, not slaves. The closet, filled with more hangars than she remembered, the dresser, the small desk, they were for people, not Nyla.

Except, apparently, they were for Nyla now.

“Oh, shoot, that lock is totally broken,” Master Galo’s voice came from elsewhere in the apartments, “Here, go for this room, then, sorry I totally hadn’t noticed that earlier.”

A broken lock? It was something Nyla had failed to notice, too. Her heart rate accelerated and her head felt tight; Mistress would cane her for missing something so obvious, but she deliberately swallowed and took a deep breath. Master Galo was not Mistress. She couldn’t keep expecting him to act like her.

He was so much kinder. Gentle, and careful, with a sweet voice and warm hands that only ever touched her--

Nyla yanked a hangar off the closet’s bar with far too much force, utterly graceless, and it caused all the other hangars to clatter together and make a right ruckus. Her heart picked back up again, because she was clumsy, noisy, a fumbling little blushing nuisance! She unfolded her first dress and willed herself to remember that making noise was okay, it was allowed now, she could make noise and still be perfect, no one was mad at her, no one was going to come hurt her.

And where was her smile!?

She really was falling to pieces, she thought to herself, pulling another hangar off the rod properly and fitting another dress onto it. Smiling. She was smiling, she was grateful for this unexpected and unasked for privilege (weren’t they supposed to ask for things? Why was this happening unprompted?!), she was graceful and perfect and, fine. She was fine. Her temples felt tight, but she was smiling and composed and fine.

It really was satisfying to see her dresses hung up all neatly, though. When her skirts and sweaters and undershirts arrived, she’d be able to finish filling the closet, and it would look so neat and it would be hers and it was selfish, to be so vain and materialistic, but maybe since Master Galo had ordered it, that meant it was okay?

She rubbed at her right eye and stroked her hand down the material of the first dress, admiring the ruffles around the neckline and the neat, black stripes of the sewn-in green vest. She would get to wear that. She would get to wear all of them, with their pretty patterns and their pleated skirts and their ruffles and lace and bows.

It felt far too pretty for the likes of her.

She wished she knew how to properly show her Master gratitude.

She wanted, she--wanted. She didn’t want to be caned or cut or bleed or cry, but she wanted to do something, something physical, something to show just how much she appreciated everything he was doing for them, to make him happy, like he’d made her happy.

But what did a slave have to give, except her body and her service? He’d already made it clear that he didn’t want either of those, aside from her now mind-numbing chores, and that was hardly something to make him happy. More of just an expected base behavior out of her, out of all of them.

She didn’t know his favorite foods; Greyson never reported any particular signs of delight no matter what Sasha tried, at least nothing that stood out from his regular compliments. She didn’t have any way to engage with his hobbies. She couldn’t kneel at his feet and beg him to hurt her with her lips on his shoe. His base state of friendly and cheery made it impossible to tell what he liked best. The only real, solid thing she knew he liked was when they asked him for things, and it was the receiving of things that Nyla wanted to express gratitude for!

It was the weirdest, strangest, most unfamiliar form of frustration she’d ever felt. Maybe--maybe it wouldn’t count as Attending him if she offered a massage? Greyson was better at it than her, and she hadn’t had much practice in the last decade and a half aside from occasionally working a knot out of Sasha’s shoulder or soothing the nerves out of Evan or Lilah. But she’d been trained properly, and she could quickly skim an internet article sometime to refresh herself.

Oh but if Master Galo figured out she was trying to Attend him, even just a little, he might get mad, and she wouldn’t be able to handle that. She would just have to be extra-perfect for him. Sit and not kneel, smile, be unobtrusive but able to fulfil his every whim or need, maybe ask him for things? But what else could she possibly want that he hadn’t already given her?

She brushed down her apron and left “her room,” walking primly to the family bedroom and pulling out all the clothes from her drawer, which were smaller in number now that her other dress had been sliced open. She went ahead and grabbed Evan’s clothes too, and Master Galo was in the sitting area in the middle of “their rooms” when she walked back. She nodded to him, and he smiled at her before tilting his head and gesturing at the clothes in her arms.

“What’s that?”

“My clothes, as well as Evan’s, sir, from the shared dresser.”

“Oh, good memory,” he praised before returning to his phone, and she couldn’t help but flush faintly under his casual approval. She went into “Evan’s room” and found him sitting on the couch, elbow on his good knee and hands pressed together in front of his face. He looked mad.

“Are you alright?” she asked quietly, so faint ideally their Master would be unable to hear. He looked up at her, dark eyes glinting with what she just knew meant trouble, and hauled himself up onto his crutches. He made as though to walk past her, and Nyla turned in confused alarm, which morphed into full alarm when he closed the door.

“Evan! Master Galo is--”

“Right there, yeah I know,” Evan said, voice mercifully quiet even though he flipped the lock. Nyla could scream if she wasn’t rooted to the spot in shock. Evan took the clothes that were his and gave her a brief “thanks” before he threw them on the floor.

“Evan,” Nyla hissed in bubbling horror, staring at the rumpled fabric.

“Hey, it’s ‘my’ room, right?” Evan sneered as he sat back down with a heavy thump, wincing when he jostled his wound. “Which means I can make a mess of it if I want, right?!”

“Evan, these rooms are gifts--”

“That we didn’t fucking ask for. We’re supposed to ask, right?”

“He told us, it’s because we don’t have space in the main room for the things we did ask for!” Nyla hissed, “And keep your voice down!” She didn’t mention that she’d been having the same doubts. She was trembling, clutching her clothes to her chest. “I--I need to go. I need to finish putting my things away.”

She stepped away from him, needing to pause at the door to summon her smile, to suppress her wild shivers, to take a deep breath and gather herself, and when she flipped the lock she heard Evan call after her, “I’m sorry.”

She turned back again, carefully crafted smile slipping, and Evan had his face in his hand, the other clutching the edge of the cushion. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just--sorry. I’m sorry Nyla.” He ran his fingers back into his hair and gripped, hard, pulling at his roots. “I’m sorry.”

Her shoulders dropped, chest squeezing, and she swaned over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him. He startled, letting go of his hair, and she reached up her free hand to cup his face. He closed his eyes as she leaned up and kissed his cheek, and nuzzled his face against hers as he pet a hand down her hair.

“Just try to work through whatever this is before you leave the room, okay?” she asked softly, trying to be gentle with him, to not get scared and frustrated like she normally felt when he got like this. Master Galo wouldn’t hurt him like Mistress did; she didn’t need to be scared, didn’t need to be frustrated with Evan because he had more time now. “Master Galo’s in the sitting area.”

“Yeah,” Evan answered her, finger combing his bangs to the side. “Yeah. Sorry. I will.”

She kissed his forehead as she stood, and was able to summon her smile much easier this time. She rubbed at her right eye, brushed down her skirt, and went back to “her room” to finish hanging up her clothes and arranging her underthings in the drawers.

When she finished, she skimmed her fingers over the dustless wood of the dresser. “Her” dresser. Pink with floral designs, old fashioned and expensive, an ‘antique’ that was as good as new. It was… surreal. She left the room, crossed to her Master, and slipped to her knees, then rump, to sit next to his feet. Her hands folded neatly in her lap, and she blinked away the weird feeling in her eye.

“Thank you, Master,” she said again, wishing she could say it better, express it better.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” he said gently, leaning forward in his seat and petting his fingers through her hair. She allowed herself to tilt her head, eyes slipping closed, and she savored the touch. His knee was right there, it would be all too easy for her to lean in and lay her head against it. But no, no, she was better than that. He hadn’t expressed a desire for her to submit to him in that way and she was going to be perfect for him.

“Master,” she started, reminding herself that he liked questions, that technically all times were good times and she couldn’t pester him with too many, “is there a way you would like to be thanked? I am grateful, and want to show it to you properly.”

“No, Nyla, you don’t need to,” he said gently, and he sounded almost sad. “Just saying ‘thank you’ is enough.”

She tried not to feel disappointed. At the very least, she wouldn’t show it. “As you like, sir.”

The others joined them, Sasha sitting as close to Nyla as she dared, Greyson kneeling at Master Galo’s other side, Lilah sitting on the couch in a way that made them all panic slightly but reaped no consequences. When Evan joined them, a noticeable stretch of time later, Master Galo made no comment on his late appearance, only smiled and put his phone away.

“Great, you’re all here. So, about the project I mentioned. You may have noticed the dumpster out front. I would like everyone to please work together and move all of my aunt’s canes, chains, whips, restraints, muzzles, cages, knives, and the like into the dumpster. Anything she used with the purpose of hurting or humiliating you, I would like to see go. I’ve got a power drill and I’m gonna work on her, uh, dungeon, and rip up those D rings in the den and music room, but just, like. Anything you can think of. Anything used with the purpose of you guys’ pain. Get rid of it, please.”

Someday, Nyla would stop being surprised by all of Master Galo’s many surprises.

Even so, an order was an order, and like many of Master Galo’s commands she found this one easy enough to obey. Nyla rose with all her grace, curtsied, and walked a direct path up two flights of stairs to the fireplace in Mistress’s boudoir.

Mistress had never used the fire pokers on Nyla. Lilah, sure, Evan, occasionally, but Nyla had kept herself perfect, too perfect to burn. But the fear, the ever present knowledge that she could burn, at any moment, at her Mistress’s slightest whim, the moment she stopped being flawlessly, untouchably perfect, had kept her tense as a coiled wire. She stopped by the main floor’s fireplace and grabbed those pokers too, one set in each fist, and all too gleefully hoisted them into the dumpster out front.

She diligently visited every fireplace in the house, after that, removing everything that could and would have burned her, had she not kept herself perfectly poised on her self-made pedestal. Evan was in Mistress’s room, Lilah the den, Sasha the music room. Greyson, Nyla wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but wasn’t going to get bent out of shape over it. She rubbed her right eye, then temple, and returned to the basement.

Master Galo’s power drill was loud, making her wince and the space behind her eyes sting, but she entered the Punishment Room regardless. He’d collected a small pile near the door: the shackles he’d removed from their anchors in the wall, the thin mats Nyla was pretty sure were intended for yoga that had served as sleeping pallets to the two cells, the oil and wax sconces and dishes that had hung from the walls and ceiling. The wooden horse. All of the tools, the whips and floggers and knives. Nyla gathered up an armful, and Master Galo paused in his drilling to smile at her.

“Hey, thanks.”

“Of course, Master. Do you require any other assistance?”

“No, I think I’m good. Dismantling my evil aunt’s evil shit is kinda cathartic, really.”

Nyla bowed, and trotted back up the steps with her load of chains and whips and manacles. It was satisfying to hear them clatter down into the dumpster. She felt weird. Good?? Strange.

“Oh, are you hauling stuff for Master Galo?” Evan asked. Nyla nodded with an affirming noise. “Great, so he’ll stay down there. Lilah, hand me that cane, Grey, don’t throw that in yet.”

Nyla looked and saw that Greyson had brought the dog cages up from the utility room. Greyson cocked his head at Evan, but set them down on the drive. Evan, crutch under one arm and heavy, metal cane in his dominant hand, proceeded to beat the shit out of the cages.

The family mostly just stood there, and watched, as he reduced the cages to little more than messy heaps of broken wire. He was panting, hard, by the end of it, and tossed the cane into the dumpster.

“Did you reopen your--” Lilah asked, cut off by Evan’s, “I’m fine.”

“Okay, it just looks like you might’ve ripped a stitch out, from all’a that.”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t have done any differently,” Evan said, laughing a little and pulling Lilah in for a hug. “Fuck, that felt really good. You guys should try that.”

“I think th-that’s a y-you thing,” Sasha remarked, and Nyla chuckled. Then giggled. She rubbed at her eye, and headed back inside to grab another armload from the basement. She got the wooden horse up under her arm and shimmy-stepped her way up, the thing large and cumbersome but she couldn’t wait to get it out of the house. Greyson helped her lift it into the dumpster, and Nyla grabbed a third round.

It was on her way back down to grab a fourth armful that the pain struck her, right as her foot came down on the top step. She recognized it instantly for what it was. Ordinary pain was, in a rather hard to describe manner, very different from migraine pain. It was impossible to confuse the two.

A migraine. She was having a migraine. Oh of course, her head had felt tight all day! And her eye, that was her aura, oh, she was so stupid! How could she not have seen this coming?

Oh, god, the pain was settling in fast this time, too. It never set in all at once, but the speed was less gradual than usual, right then. She whimpered. The basement would be no good. Master Galo was using power tools down there, right across the hall from the family bedroom. Her normal migraine spot, under her nice, dark, quiet bed, wouldn’t work this time.

Think, she had a limited amount of time before the pain got bad. Where should she go? The butterfly room? That was nice and dark, no windows, but would it be quiet? She naturally gravitated towards the idea of a bathroom, where the tile would feel cool against her forehead and she could turn off the lights. Upstairs, probably, she went upstairs, hoping to escape the noise of things landing in the dumpster and her family moving and talking around her. Near the back of the house, not the front, not near the driveway. The bathroom off the lilac bedroom? She went straight for it, closing her right eye since she couldn’t really see all that well out of it.

God, it hurt so bad. She closed the door, plunging the bathroom into merciful blackness. It was quiet, just what she needed, her family and Master would be busy for a while yet, they wouldn’t need to come looking for her. She could just stay where she was, curled up against the bathroom floor, in the dark, in the silence.

God, god it hurt.

And she knew it was only going to get worse.

Galo had the bars unscrewed and the dungeon stripped down to nothing more than walls, the floor, and an archaic looking chandelier that he did not have the electrical expertise to deal with. He needed someone with, like, training to deal with that.

Nyla hadn’t come back for a while yet.

Which, okay, it was a big house and she probably had plenty of grudges to act out against inanimate objects, but it was weird that Nyla of all people would start helping haul away the stuff he piled up and then stop midway through. It wasn’t like her.

And when Galo’s brain told him to worry, he was starting to come to terms with the fact that it was usually right. Did it count as anxiety when it was true?

He hauled up a load after scanning the basement, and finding no one there. He got rid of the evil library books as he paced through the first floor, as well as the armchair from the den. He found Greyson and Evan, but no Nyla. Hrm. He asked if Greyson would please take care of the D rings in the den and Evan volunteered himself, which, whatever worked. Upstairs he ran into Sasha in the music room, and he pried up the D rings like he said he would since she didn’t exactly seem like the type for power tools, and was glad to hand the task over to Lilah when she gravitated towards him, leaving the drill in her capable hands.

But where was Nyla?

It was ridiculous to think that she’d been kidnapped by Barbra but Galo couldn’t help but jump to that conclusion. He stalked through the second floor, trying not to be visibly distressed lest he upset the other slaves, but running out of places to look. He opened the door of a guest bathroom, if only for the reason that it was closed, and his eyes widened with horror to see his girl lying in the fetal position on the floor.

“Nyla!” he shouted, rushing forward and dropping to his knees. She flinched, worse than he’d ever seen her jump, and curled in tighter, a muted scream passing her lips, and Galo’s panic bubbled over.

“Nyla, Nyla what’s wrong, what happened?!”

“Please!” she begged, sounding so small. “Please, please no, migraine, Master, please stop!”

Oh--oh. Oh, and his yelling would only have made it worse.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, guilt consuming him as he bent and caught sight of her silent tears. “What do you need, what helps?”

Galo didn’t know anything about migraines, other than “head hurt.” He knew they were awful, horrible things, and Nyla deserved to never ever have one. But he didn’t know--would medicine help? Was this one of those things that nothing helped, and she’d just have to wait it out? How long did they last? An hour? Should he touch her?

“Painkillers. Dark. Quiet. W--” she choked on a sob, high and pained and Galo’s heart broke into a thousand pieces. “Water, please, cold.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go get painkillers and a glass of ice water? Do you--is the bathroom good? Is this a good place for you to be?”

“My bed,” she whined, hands over her eyes and body trembling faintly.

“Okay,” Galo said, mindful of each word, keeping his voice as quiet as possible. “Can--can you walk? Should I carry you? Should I touch you at all?”

“Just, don’t rattle me, please, don’t--hit my head, please, Master--”

“Never,” Galo breathed, and his heart broke all over again, to know that she still feared him so much, that Nyla had so little trust that she thought he would ever hurt her, much less when she was like this. “Never, Nyla, please, please believe that. I will never hit you.”

Nyla’s breath hitched, a little gaspy inhale, and then she slowly reached one hand out, and gripped Galo by the pant leg. Galo froze, standing on the edge of a brand new precipice, and tried to make his brain work, tried to think fast for once in his goddamn life, but his brain continued its sloth impression and he couldn’t process what this meant, though he felt its importance.

“Help me,” she begged, though it felt more like an admission than a plea.

“Please, I don’t want the others to see me like this; I hate it when they see me like this,” she continued, and that felt closer to normal.

“Okay, okay, I can’t promise we’ll be able to avoid them but I’ll try my best. I’m going to pick you up now, alright?”

“Okay,” she whispered, barely moving her lips, but he understood why she wouldn’t want to nod her head, right then. Carefully, he gathered her up in his arms and stood. She curled in immediately, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, and he felt like he was holding the most breakable, easily-shattered entity in the universe. He felt a surge of protectiveness, a bone-deep need to take care of her, to make it better in any way he could.

When they passed by the music room, its door open and Lilah inside with the drill, Nyla whimpered and pressed her hands hard against her ears. She wasn’t just pressing her face into his shoulder at that point, it was like she was actively trying to burrow into him, curled up so tight and stiff against him he felt she might shatter. He moved away from there as fast as he could, wanting to spare her everything he was able to. He tried to keep his gait smooth as he walked, slow on the stairs, and he actually did manage to avoid running into any of the others slaves.

He settled her down onto the cool sheets of her bed, wishing the slaves had softer pillows and wondering if he could get them any without them freaking out about it, and settled a palm between her shoulderblades.

“I’m gonna get that glass of water and those painkillers. Do you need anything else?”

“The blinds,” Nyla gasped softly, and Galo shut the blinds of the tiny skylight tightly, angled up so practically no light filtered in at all. He moved quickly, giving Greyson a probably-unconvincing smile as he passed him, but Nyla had asked that the others not know, so Galo wasn’t going to say anything. When he returned, he helped her sit up and handed her the medicine and the cup. The cool water seemed to help.

Galo knelt by the bedside, elbows and forearms laid out in front of him on the mattress and his chin on the sheets. He stared worriedly at Nyla’s face, and wasn’t even thinking when he reached out and stroked a hand over her hair.

Realizing halfway through what he’d done, he snatched his hand back with a quietly hissed, “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to touch your head.”

“T--” Nyla swallowed, “Touch is fine, Master. Just, no… patting, or, percussion. Touch feels, good sir.”

“Yeah?” Galo whispered, no more than a breath. “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked quietly, stroking a gentle palm down from the back of her head to mid-spine.

“...Yes,” she admitted tremulously. “But--they last a while, Master.”

“Shhh,” Galo hushed, “I’ll stay. The others are busy and they’ll be fine, just focus on you for a little while, shh.”

Galo pet gently at Nyla’s hair, her shoulders, her back, needing to reposition a couple different times as certain parts of his body got tired or sore or lost blood flow. By the end of the first hour, Galo’s anxious concern had burned itself out, and the mild worry that remained was going to bat pretty hard with his boredom. By the end of the second hour, he’d fallen into a light doze and had been there for a while, his hand covering Nyla’s much smaller one, his thumb stroking very, very slowly over the skin on the back of her hand. He was fully asleep by hour three, Nyla’s fingers curled around his tighter than she’d ever dared before, so what a shame that he was asleep for it.

His impromptu nap came to an abrupt end when Nyla shifted, eyes flicking open but otherwise staying exactly where he was. Oh his neck was gonna have a SERIOUS crick in it.

“Nyla?” he asked softly, “Do you need anything?”

She shook her head slowly, and he perked up to see her voluntarily moving it. “It’s mostly gone now, Master.” She sat up very, very slowly, rubbing at her neck, and Galo mirrored her from his spot on the floor.

“Okay, that’s good,” Galo said, still speaking quietly, “Is it like, a fade-out kind of thing?”

“Yes sir,” she said, slowly stretching out her legs and wincing a little.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Sore, sir. And hungry, and--exhausted.”

She sounded tired. Galo was pretty sure he’d never heard her sound quite this tired. Carefully, watching her face for any sign of a negative reaction, he reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I’ll get you something to eat, yeah?” he offered softly. “You can stay here and rest.”

Nyla shook her head again.

“I can get up, sir. I don’t want to trouble you and the others will have noticed our absence and I need to walk out the stiffness and eating here would get crumbs in the bed, Master.”

Well, Galo could only really argue with one of those, but doubted Nyla would buy that she wasn’t causing him any trouble anyway. He stood, his own body protesting the movement, and stretched his arms up high above his head.

“Thank you.”

Galo glanced down, letting his arms drop, and smiled kindly when Nyla didn’t continue.

“Of course, Nyla, I’m here for you if you ever need me.” Then, because Galo was allergic to Emotional Moments, “Sooo, are we telling your friends we got abducted by aliens for the last,” he glanced at the time, “three and a half hours, or?”

Nyla giggled weakly, which, ten points to Gryffindor!

“I don’t mind them knowing, sir. It’s just when I have the migraine that I…”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Galo said. Not wanting to be seen while vulnerable.

So what does that mean that she let me? he thought with a flip in his stomach, but pushed the thought from his head.

Sasha seemed anxious when they entered the kitchen, but interestingly enough that anxiety did not seem to spike when she caught sight of Galo. Though that might have been because she simultaneously caught sight of Nyla, who was, as near as Galo could tell, Sasha’s main comfort in life. Best friend? Were they best friends? They might be best friends.

Galo wished he knew more about the lives of the people he Literally Lived With.

“Migraine,” Nyla said with a tight smile, by way of explanation, “Master Galo helped me.”

That did successfully key Sasha up, and Galo smiled, lips pressed thin. He should leave. His presence was an intrusion and would only make them feel like they couldn’t talk freely.

“I’ll leave you to it, then?” Galo offered, moving away from Nyla and sliding his hands into his pockets. Open. Nonthreatening. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

“You don’t have to, Master.” Or maybe he didn’t. “I’m sure you’re hungry too, sir.”

Nyla sounded uncharacteristically nervous, but that also made sense. She was vulnerable, at the moment, fresh off a migraine and not at her absolute best.

So why was she asking him to stay, then? He wished he knew what she was thinking.

“Yeah?” he asked, searching her face and then Sasha’s, who seemed more shocked than anything. “Okay, cool. We can eat together.”

It was stiff.

Which, yeah, expected. Nyla apparently got peanut butter cravings post-migraine, which, huh! Who knew people got cravings after demon headaches, not Galo!

Sasha did not like that Galo was there. Galo did not fault her for that one bit. Nyla was coming down off a migraine and Galo was preventing Sasha from fussing over her, and Sasha really only seemed to know what to do about him in the mornings because they’d had their nice routine and Galo really didn’t hang out in the kitchen beyond that. He should, like, dedicate some time to Sasha. Lock himself in the bathroom and let her sniff him through the door, he thought with a private chuckle to himself.

He now understood why Lilah had asked for extra kitchen stools, since there was quite literally only the one. Galo had the closest thing to an argument that he’d had, with Nyla, firmly insisting that she be the one to seat herself, then awkwardly stooped over the counter with all his bulk and height.

“Ahaha,” Galo ‘laughed’ self-consciously with a rub to the back of his head. Maybe he should’a sat after all. “Sorry, don’t mean to loom imposingly. Really, I can just… head out.”

Sasha looked away, lips thin, but Nyla’s eyes remained on him.

“You, are not all that imposing. Sir.”

Galo blinked, and was peripherally aware that Sasha was now also looking at Nyla like she’d spouted a second head. Nyla was flushed, and staring at Galo’s shoulder rather than his face, but swallowed and continued.

“When you first arrived, the size of you was frightening, sir,” she said, her voice quiet but Galo was far too enraptured to have missed even a single word. “But you kept Barbara from stealing me, and rescued Evan, and yesterday you gave Greyson both comfort and lenience.”

Nyla reached out her hand and placed it, very delicately, on top of Galo’s on the counter, Galo’s eyes tracking the movement in a fashion that might be described as gobsmacked.

“You have always been kind to us, Master. Stay.”

“Oh,” he said, as something important clicked in place.

#whump #slavery #slave whump #gw #nyla #galo #greyson #evan #sasha #lilah #migraines #aftermath of torture #multiple whumpees #mine #writing #my friend and her husband both get migraines and let me pick them for research purposes #i'm so sick of looking at this #*flings it into the void of tumblr* take it

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